CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 13:8.—Read “Jesus Christ is the same.” “The unchangeableness of Christ is a reason for not being swept about by winds of strange teaching. But a suggestion has been made that “Jesus Christ” is spoken of as the “end of the conversation” of those whose faith we are to follow. The order of the Greek is “yesterday and to-day the same, and to the ages.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 13:7-8
The Example of Christian Leaders.—There is evident reference here to some well-known persons—well-known then, but wholly unknown to us—who had, in a remarkable way, borne their testimony to Christ, and endured a great fight of afflictions for His name’s sake. It would perhaps be helpful to us if we did know something of them, but the story of Stephen will help us; the missionary life of St. Paul will help us; the martyrology of the early Church will help us. We need not unduly force meaning into the expression, “them that had the rule over you.” Order in Christian communities is secured as order is secured in other communities—by the appointment of officers, and the voluntary submission to authority voluntarily entrusted to individuals. St. Paul says, “Not that we have dominion over your faith.” The dominion was entirely in the range of outward order. The writer refers to some elder, or bishop, or apostle, or teacher—perhaps to more than one—who had gained the love and confidence of the Jewish Churches, and had recently been taken from them, probably to gain the martyr’s crown. He makes but a passing allusion to the obedience which such leaders may claim; he fixes attention on the character—the spiritual character which they had borne; upon their faith, and upon the inspiration which Jesus Christ was to them. The “issue of their life,” their supreme aim, had been the glory of Jesus Christ; yes, of Jesus Christ, who is worth glorying in, and whom we also should be glorying in, and glorifying, seeing that He is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” The subject suggested is the regard in which we should hold the Christian teachers, who, having nobly served us, have passed to their reward. The A.V. has, “whose faith follow.” The R.V. has, “imitate their faith.”
I. We should regard our teachers for their work’s sake.—This may be difficult while the work is being done. It is not often that a man’s work can be fairly estimated until all personal elements are withdrawn, and it can be calmly and dispassionately judged, fitted into its surroundings, and seen in its adaptations. But just such estimates we ought to form in order to the correction and improvement of our own service to Christ and our generation. What others have done is guidance and suggestion for us; it need not be the crushing of our individuality; it should be a direction of our individuality. The
(1) method, and
(2) sphere, of their work may be imitable;
(3) the spirit of their work certainly is. In what an earnest worker has done, and the way in which he has done it, “he, being dead, yet speaketh.”
II. We should regard our teachers for their life’s sake.—“Imitate their faith.” It was the motive-power of their lives, and it ennobled those lives. We say that what Christ was—“holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners”—was even more important to His redemptive work than what He formally did. And the same is true of our Christian leaders. What they were, in gracious character, in spiritual power, in holy life, does more for us than any things they actually accomplished. If we endeavour to realise who the persons are that have most influenced us, we shall soon find that the list is composed almost entirely of saintly charactered men and women. We are reminded that we too are gaining our best power on our fellows, not by what we do, but by what we are in the spirit of the doing.
III. We should regard our teachers for their aim’s sake.—“Considering the issue of their life”—“the end of their conversation; Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” You can never read a Christian teacher or leader’s work aright, save as you estimate the measure in which Christ was the inspiration of it. Did Christ lead to noble endeavour? Did Christ guide to wise methods? Did Christ help to endure? Did Christ touch all doing and all relation with heavenly, Divine charity? Was it that one aim—the honour of Christ—that ennobled their lives? Then we know what can also ennoble ours.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 13:7. Christian Fasts and Festivals.—The Church contemplates the observance of a number of special days, not Sundays. The weekly festival does indeed stand out from among all the others as the most important and most imperative upon the Church. It is the Divine institution of the Mosaic law carried into Christianity, and changed from the seventh day of the week to the first by apostolic usage. But it does not follow that our meeting together to worship God should be confined and limited to this weekly festival. Taking our stand on the recognised principle of commemorating the Resurrection, and therein the blessings and the glories of the gospel promises, does it not seem, at the first glance, reasonable, that if we can, with due judgment, light upon any other great leading events connected with the life of our Redeemer, or with those holy men whom He associated with Himself, and with each other, to be the pillars upon which His Church was to rest, we should appoint subsidiary days for their commemoration also? The Church has appointed thirty-six especial days throughout the year. Three sorts of days are mentioned by the Church as holy days.
1. Those which relate to some leading events connected with the life of our blessed Lord Himself.
2. The commemoration of the apostles and other saints of the Church. 3. The days of fasting and humiliation. Doddridge paraphrases the text thus: “Remember those dear and venerable persons who, having formerly presided over you in holy things, have spoken unto you the word of God, whose course is now finished. Though all your intercourse with them is for the present cut off, do not, however, forget their instructions and their examples, but be mindful of that faith which they taught and exercised, and let it be your great care to imitate them, considering the end of their conversation: reflect on the happy manner in which they quitted life, on that support which they found in their latest moments, from the truths which they had taught you, and on that heroic resolution with which some of them were animated to meet even martyrdom itself in that sacred cause; and let the remembrance of these things engage you steadfastly to retain their faith, and courageously to follow their steps.” This is just the spirit of the apostle’s meaning. He refers more particularly to his predecessors, James the apostle, and probably James the bishop of Jerusalem, both of whom had suffered martyrdom shortly before; and he exhorts them, and through them the Christian community for ever, to be mindful of those benefactors under God, who had laboured in the teaching of the word, and had sealed their labours with their blood. He bids them, though their intercourse in the flesh had been cut off, still to remember their instruction and example in “the communion of saints.” Old divines are not backward in their opinions on this duty of the Church. Jeremy Taylor says: “The memories of the saints are precious to God, and therefore they ought also to be to us; and such persons who serve God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy lives and doctrines published and imitated; and we by so doing give testimony to the article of the communion of saints.” The learned Hooker says: “Touching those festival days, which we now observe, their number being noway felt discommodious to the commonwealth, and their grounds such as hitherto have been showed, what remaineth but to keep them throughout all generations holy, severed by manifest notes of difference from other times, and adorned with that which most may betoken true, virtuous, and celestial joy?” “They are the splendour and outward dignity of our religion, forcible witnesses of ancient truth, provocations to the exercises of all piety, shadows of our endless felicity in heaven, on earth everlasting records and memorials, wherein they which cannot be drawn to hearken unto that we teach, may only by looking on that we do, in a manner read whatsoever we believe.”—William J. E. Bennett, M.A.
Preachers and Hearers.—Here are given three tests of a spiritual leader:
1. He speaks God’s message;
2. He lives for heaven;
3. He has faith in a personal Saviour. And there are three duties of the hearer:
1. To remember the messenger for his message’s sake;
2. To observe the testimony of his holy life; and—
3. To imitate his personal faith. God’s heaven-sent leaders deliver a heaven-given message. It is according to the written word (Isaiah 8:20; Jeremiah 23:28). Again, they speak the language of positive conviction, not negations, but affirmations (2 Corinthians 1:17-20); and, again, they are attended by spiritual power (1 Corinthians 2:1-4). The word is God’s, the conviction of a believer is behind it, and the Spirit’s demonstration attends it. Moreover, it is with solemn earnestness, not frivolity (see Jeremiah 23:32). The declaration of the message is experimental, for it is backed by a personal faith in a personal Saviour. No unconverted man is fit to preach or teach the gospel. The master of Israel must know these things heart-wise. The centre of his message is Christ, and He must be the centre of his heart’s faith and love and hope. If the truth is the ball, and the mouth the cannon, the explosive force behind the ball is the heart’s passion for Jesus. Such faith will be further confirmed and exhibited in a life which is under the power of eternal realities and whose end is Christ, heaven, and the glory of God. The thought is progressive. God’s leader speaks the word for God; convinced of its truth, he is led by it to a personal Saviour whom that word enshrines, and that faith remoulds and remodels his life.—Anon.
Considering their End.—“Attentively considering the end of their manner of life, imitate their faith.” That is, calling to mind the peaceful and happy, possibly even the triumphant, death of those religious teachers among you, who gave you instruction respecting the word of life, imitate their faith, persevere in your Christian profession, as they did, to the very end of life. There may be a glance at the martyr-death of St. Stephen.
The Duty of imitating Departed Worth.
I. The exhortation itself.—“Whose faith follow.”
1. Holding fast as they had done, to the end of life, the word of the Divine testimony.
2. Cleaving with the same steadfastness of faith to the Divine promises.
3. Imitating their faith in all its practical effects.
II. The motive by which compliance with it is recommended.—“Considering the end of their conversation.”
1. Contemplating their state in dying.
2. Considering their death as the final close of their earthly service.
3. Looking on their departure from this life as the commencement of a better.—R. Wardlaw, D.D.
Hebrews 13:8. The Unchanging Christ.—The writer of this epistle has been speaking of change. The old covenant was no more. The “many priests” had not continued by reason of death. The eleventh chapter is the record of the multitudes who had gone without seeing that for which they waited. This perpetual change was continuing itself in the Church. The Jewish Christians had seen their leaders taken away It is as with a sigh of weariness that the writer closes his admonition to remember these, to call to mind their fidelity in death. Then the ejaculation is uttered by him, broken and fragmentary, but the breathing of a name: “Jesus Christ yesterday and to-day the same, and for ever.” All is not changeful; He abides. The teachers go; Jesus Christ remains. You have other leaders, we have other fellow-labourers; but not another Lord. So He rests, so they may rest; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.
1. A change in our own lives makes all things seem unstable. Change, ceaseless, wearisome change, seems to be written on everything. When this is specially brought home to us, we feel the comfort of this text.
2. There comes on men sometimes a terrible fear of change. Those who know how terrible the changes of life can be are startled by little things, e.g. the unknown handwriting on a letter. There is no cure for such a terror of changes, there is no security, no hope, for man, save in Him who is unchanging. The longing for rest, the desire for what is stable and unchanging—this is our deepest want; it grows and strengthens in us as we grow older, wiser, better men. Is life to be all weary and changing? Till we enter on our final rest, is there no continuance? The text speaks of One who is even now unchanging. All is not fleeting; Christ is the same. Before we go to Him, He has come to us, and with us He remains, the longed-for changeless One. The words of the text are intended to give us just this assurance. The secret of our confidence in a changing world is the unchangeable Christ. Let time bring with it what it may, we are assured of His fidelity. “Yesterday” we found Him precious; He is the same “to-day,” solacing our newest grief. “Yesterday” we heard His voice; His name was on the lips of those who spoke to us the word of God. The teachers are gone, or we have outgrown them. But He is still the same; the Truth is with us. The deep reality of life abides the same. The words “for ever” fall strangely on our ears; the solemn future is unknown and unimaginable. We often fall back baffled in our endeavours to grasp the mystery of the world to come. But again the thought of the immutable One bears us up out of the confusion of changing things. There will be more familiarity than strangeness there, for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” He will not be unknown; He will be recognised who quickened, guided, sustained us, who was the steadfastness and identity of our passing earthly life. To those Christians who would read the words translated “for ever” in their original form, “unto the ages,” they would have a further suggestion. They were accustomed to look on God’s purpose in the universe as unfolding itself in a series of æons or dispensations. In the world to come there may be further dispensations, each fulfilling a thought, and all illustrating the mighty being of God. Here are changes, grand, stupendous, unimaginable. But in the midst of all is seen one unchanging Christ. Let dispensation follow dispensation, and the æons of the æons still open up, and broaden out, and deepen on, and lengthen themselves, immeasurable, inconceivable; Jesus Christ is “the same unto the ages.” The text does not speak of a thing that is the same, or even of a truth conceived to be the same, but of a Person who is the same. It is in our personal relations that we feel the identity or the changes of life. It is a Person, abiding ever, unchanging ever. He who is most of all to us, the life of our soul, whose love awoke us to life’s true value, whose care gave us first to know how deep and real friendship may be. Amidst the flux of things, the flow of events, the heart rests on one unchanging Friend.—A. Mackennal, B.A., D.D.
Christ ever the Same.—It is difficult to trace the connection of this verse. It seems to be inserted abruptly. The expression in Hebrews 13:7, “the end of their conversation,” is suggestive of the persecutions and martyrdoms of God’s saints; and then we may regard the text as a comforting assurance of the all-sufficiency of the living Christ, and we may recall how the sight of Him strengthened Stephen, the first Christian martyr. This view is quite in harmony with the spirit and the general subject of this epistle. The text is not so much suggestive of the doctrine of the person of Christ, as comforting to those who were almost overborne by temptation and trial. What a present, personal God was to David, that the present, personal God, in Christ, was to the apostles. If the element of the “ever-living Christ” were subtracted from the gospel, we should have only a dead mass of doctrines which could but corrupt as all earthly things corrupt. The text involves three things, and puts Christ in two contrasts.
I. It involves the Deity of Christ.—For it is the assertion of His immutability, His unchangeableness. The Deity of Christ is the key-stone of the gospel-arch. We say “Deity” because the term “Divinity” is used by some to indicate subordination and inferiority. (Illustrate by Socrates’ daimon.) The proof of the Deity of Christ which comes from the more incidental references is found by the devout reader to be more satisfying and impressive than the proof from formal texts. This we cannot but feel as readers of the New Testament. The attributes which exclusively belong to Deity are applied to Him. Eternal: “I am the first and the last … am alive for evermore.” Omniscient: “And Jesus knowing their thoughts”; “He needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.” Omnipotent: “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” The meaning of the sublime name of God, the “I am,” is given to us in this text.
II. It involves the sufficiency of Christ’s work for us. Unchangeable involves sufficiency and completeness. If the work of Christ were imperfect, it would need the change of alteration and completion. But it is declared that “by one offering He hath perfected for ever them who are sanctified.” There never can be another way of salvation. You make Christ to be a changeable one if you indulge the hope that He will save in any other than the gospel-way.
III. It involves Christ’s living and saving relations with us.—As our “Prophet, Priest, and King.” The unchangeableness of Christ is our title-deed to all the preciousness that the saints of all ages have found in Christ. What He was to them yesterday, He is to us to-day, and He will be to our children to-morrow. Then what has Christ been to the early Church, to the persecuted, to the martyr, to the sufferer? Nay, what has He been to us, in the experience of our own past?
IV. The text puts Christ in contrast with our associations.—It sets over against each other the changing world and the unchanging Christ. Moore’s verse, “I never sought a wild gazelle,” etc., expresses the feeling of men in every human pursuit. The changeableness comes out of the presence of sin, the consciousness of sin, and the struggling for immortality. The hold on anything earthly must be a shifting and uncertain hold. They only hold firm, and find what they hold to be firm, who hold Christ.
V. The text puts Christ in even stronger contrast with ourselves.—If He is ever the same, certainly we are not, either in circumstance or in feeling. “Though we believe not, yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself.” Man can no more be satisfied with himself than with the world. The unchangeable One offers Himself as the ground of confidence to the changeable: “Let him stay upon his God.”
Conclusion.—Let meditation take form that may prepare hearts for partaking of the Holy Sacrament. Fill up thoughts with the preciousness of Christ. Try the claimants to our love by this test—Will they keep ever the same? Ours will. The same, ever the same, even through the last water-floods.
The Sameness of Jesus Christ through all Ages.—In every sense of the word Jesus was and is the same, both in the sense that His character was the same all through, and that it is unchanged and unchangeable. His aim was one; His character was always the same. The character of Jesus stands up unabashed under that inconceivably great trial of the question, Is it suitable to the idea of God manifest in the flesh? It is. There is no break where weakness appears—no pride, no vanity, no rashness, no violence, no sentimental weakness, no levity, no presumption, though “thinking it not robbery to be equal with God.” By an easy transition we rise from this sameness of Jesus to the sameness of His unchangeableness in glory. Other men change in the different periods of their life, and often within short spaces of time. But Jesus is the same everywhere and always. And this same Jesus was taken up from us into heaven unchanged and unchangeable. It is the same Jesus who is “within the veil.” And He is there, what He was below, the soul of comfort.—Edward White.
The Everlasting Name.—Ages are to roll by; nations are to die, and nations are to rise and to take their places; laws are to grow old, and from new germs laws are to unfold; old civilisations are to crumble, and new eras are to dawn with higher culture; but to the end of time it will be seen that this Figure stands high above every other in the history of man! “A name which is above every name” was given to Him—not for the sake of fame, but in a wholly different sense; a name of power; a name of moral influence; a name that shall teach men how to live, and what it is to be men in Christ Jesus.—H. Ward Beecher.
The Ground of our Confidence.—A sublime contrast with things, with others, and with ourselves. Two things man yearns for—unity and constancy. This unity is the inspiration of knowledge, which is trying to find the One. This constancy is the secret of man’s interest in the reign of law. Can man ever get unity save in God, or constancy save outside his own sphere? Text an illustration of the abrupt construction, the bursting in of an exclamation in the course of an argument, which is characteristic of St. Paul; or rather, of all composition rhetorically constructed. “Jesus is the same,” etc.; therefore you who are followers of these “witnesses” may have abundant consolation and strength, in the assurance of the living presence of Christ. He is the same
(1) in His work yesterday;
(2) in His grace today;
(3) in His glory for ever. The same essential purpose has moved Him, and moves Him ever. How this central truth comes to us:
1. Freshening the story of our fathers. See what Christ was to them.
2. Lifting the load of the present. See what Christ is, and can be, to us.
3. Filling us with peace in view of the future. See what that future must have in it. No loneliness for us anywhere in that mysterious future; for the Christ whom we love, and now have in dear fellowship, is ever the same.
Ever the Same.—Such a proclamation of the personality, uniqueness, eternity, immutability, of the great object of faith, appropriately follows the mention of “faith,” and precedes the exhortation to simplicity and stability of belief and profession.
I. The essential attributes of the Saviour’s person, as the eternal and unchangeable Son of God.
II. The Lord Jesus, as unalterably the same in the office He sustains as the only and all-sufficient Saviour of believers.
III. The Lord Jesus is ever the same in His kind and compassionate dispositions towards His people.
IV. The Lord Jesus is unchangeably the same in His adherence to the declarations and requirements of His word.
Learn—
1. To anticipate the progressive advancement and final triumph of the Christian cause.
2. To rely on the fixed terms and settled arrangements of the gospel.
3. How great the encouragement which believers may draw from the grace of their Redeemer, amid all the trials and difficulties of the Christian course.
4. Whence come the strongest consolations and supports amid all the losses and vicissitudes of this mortal state.—Prof. Crawfurd.
The Unchanging Friend.—Two views have been taken of this passage. In our English Version “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,” is the end or aim of the conversation of those teachers and martyrs whose example of constancy and sacrifice is so earnestly commended. They toiled and suffered, inspired by the hope that thus they should honour Christ. Many, however, think that our text is better treated as a separate sentence—the words “end of their conversation” completing the writer’s reference to the martyrs, and poetically indicating the heroic deaths by which they sealed their faith. Then our text is seen to be an instance of abruptness, of thrusting in a sudden thought which comes to him, which we know was characteristic of the apostle Paul, and which is freely illustrated in the writings admitted as written by him. We will take the verse as standing alone, and specially suitable as a motto. It is the utterance of a thought flashing suddenly through the writer’s mind, and breaking in on the subject with which he is dealing. Turning for a moment from the example of the teachers whose faith we are to follow, this writer reminds us that Jesus Christ is all to us that He has ever been to others, nor need we fear the future, for He will be to us all that we have ever found He is. In this way the sentence stands fully out before us, distinct and clear, as a motto on which to base the sacramental meditations for a new year. Jesus Christ is ever the same; therefore all you who are followers of the holy witnesses may have their consolation. No one has any need to envy the apostles their fellowship with a Redeemer in the flesh, since to him that Redeemer both is and will be all that He ever was. He ever liveth. His offices as Prophet, Priest, and King are continuous, reaching right up to the for ever of our necessity. I am very often speaking to you on the subject which is, of all others, of intensest interest to me, about which I am always wanting to learn something more, and which I want to see from every possible point of view—the veritable humanity of our Lord, the mystery of the “Man Christ Jesus.” This much we can plainly see—that taking upon Himself our nature makes the Divine redemption to be a moral force on moral beings. It operates in sublimer degrees, but in the same ways as those in which men influence their fellow-men. Jesus Christ became a man that He might exert a man’s power on men. That is one side of truth; but we must see the other side. The full redemption—including both the justification and the sanctification—of fallen, sinful, morally helpless man must be an immediate and continuous operation of Divine power. This is true—He who saves the moral being man must be man. But this also is true—He who saves the morally ruined moral being man must be God; and therefore the essential attributes of Deity are shown to belong to Jesus Christ, who “is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” That which this sentence asserts concerning Christ is the familiar Bible declaration concerning God. “His years have no end.” The very striking expression in the ninetieth Psalm comes at once to mind: “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.” But this unchangeableness is an assertion which we dare not make concerning any things. “The fashion of this world is ever passing away.” “The moth or the rust” are corrupting everything; and the constant change of form and place has become so familiar to us that something of its exceeding painfulness has gone, and we only feel it oppressively when the changes take unusual or severer forms. The whirl of time brings ever-changing day and night, wintry bareness, spring buddings, summer fulness, and autumn droppings. Grand cities fall to ruins; abbey and cathedral and castle stand roofless, all covered over with the creeping ivy. Nations pass away. The mighty, gallant warships presently rot idly away in the harbours. All round the circle of life our thought goes, and it can find nothing of which it may say, “The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” “Dew, like liquid crystal, often bespangles the garment in which the young day presents himself rejoicing before us. But what so transient, so visionary, as the dew of the morning? It is the very type of instability. It greets us silently, with soft glances from its myriad of myriads of eyes. We hail it, admire it—we feel young in its presence; but it is gone, exhaled in an hour.” It is an assertion that we dare not make concerning other persons. Of all the unutterably painful things of human life, one stands out as supreme. It is the changeableness of the friends in whom we have trusted, thinking them to be true, and constant, and faithful. The psalmist finds words which many of us have wanted in the bitter hours of life: “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it … but it was thou, a man mine equal, my companion, and my familiar friend.” Who among us has failed to learn, in life’s stern hours, that it is hopeless work putting our trust in princes or in the sons of men? Who does not feel that he must lift his eyes away from his fellow-men, since of none of them can it ever be said they are the “same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”? We cannot even use such expressions concerning ourselves. We are not what we were yesterday. Probably not one particle of our body of to-day, from head to foot, inside or out, is the same as our body of twenty years ago. We do not think to-day as we thought twenty years ago. Our experiences are as changing as the varieties of the daily atmosphere in our most changeable climate. Sunny days of glowing pass to wintry days of chill. Spring breathings that waken life give place to wild winds that bruise the flowers and strip the branches, and to biting frosts that nip off the budding life, and drive the sap back again to the shelter of the roots. We may find the image of the world, of men, and of ourselves as we lie on the smiling river-bank and watch the ships go by. They are ever passing, passing, some to their “harbour under the hill,” some out to the ocean sailing. A line against the sky as we watch them coming. Beautiful with their “bellied sails” as we watch them go by. A line on the far horizon as they reach away out to the open west. On, on! the voice sounds day by day. Here is no rest, is no rest. “We’ve no abiding city here.” Nothing stays the same. For earthly things there is no enduring. And yet the writer of this epistle, fearless of contradiction, claims this unchangeableness for the Lord Jesus Christ. The text is almost the closing word of an epistle which has presented with unusual fulness and vigour the Divine claims of Christ, who is declared to be greater than man, higher than angels, “brightness [outshining] of the Father’s glory, and express image of His person.” Our text is really an efficient summary of the teaching of the epistle concerning our Lord. In no more vigorous language could he set our Lord forth as distinct from things, distinct from men, crowned with the attributes and bright with the glories that belong alone unto God. “Yesterday, to-day, and for ever” is a Hebrew form of expression; and the addition of “the same” to it makes it denote immortality, and proclaim the personality, uniqueness, eternity, Divinity, of the sole Object of our faith. The doctrine of the person of Christ is the prominent doctrine of our times. About it all the battle rages. Think for a moment how that doctrine gradually unfolded in the first century. At first Jesus was evidently a man, and apprehended by everybody as a man. He was the Nazareth carpenter’s son; and what Joseph and His mother knew about the mystery of His birth nobody else knew. He grew up at Nazareth a man among men. Not until He was thirty years of age was there any open ground for suspecting the deep mystery that surrounded Him. Even when He stood forth as a teacher most people could see only a man. Even when He did mighty works as a physician most people could only see an endowed man. All through His life the highest view the majority could take of Him was that He was a gifted prophet. If we realise the kind of thought which the people had of their anticipated Messiah, conceiving that He would prove a grander Judas Maccabæus, a second and more glorious soldier-hero for the nation, we shall feel that nothing more than a Divinely endowed man was expected by them. Moreover, the Jews were possessed with a profound passion for the conservation of one truth—the truth of the unity of God. They were not in the least likely to entertain the idea that Jesus was God. They would not believe that the Divine rights could be shared with any one. They were offended, and accused him of blasphemy, when our Lord claimed the Divine authority to pronounce forgiveness of sins. At the present day our Christian setting of the Trinity, and our claim of Deity for Christ, are the grave stumbling-blocks in the way of the conversion of the Jews, who denounce us Christians as worshippers of many gods (polytheists), on account of these doctrines. It does not appear that it was a part of our Lord’s mission to state in so many words what He claimed to be. It was His duty to live, and to be. The due impression of these would certainly be made. Privately and incidentally He did say who He was; but even in these instances He used ambiguous terms. He left our world, having started mighty wonderings and questionings in the minds of His disciples. They had a general impression of His life and relations which, at the time, they could not translate. They were prepared for the apprehension of the higher truth in the illumination of the Holy Ghost. The impression produced by Christ’s completed life, death and resurrection, and ascension may be put into a single word. All who had to do with Him felt that there was about Him a “beyondness,” an inexplicable something, a strange separateness. He was with them, but He was above them, beyond them, otherwise than they. It is a question whether any of those who knew Christ in the flesh ever put it to themselves while He lived—“Why, this is God.” The impression was on their hearts, but it had not gained shape or words. Olivet, Pentecost, and after Pentecost, were the revealers of the meaning which they had failed to find. Two men more particularly formulated this truth for the disciples. Just as the spirit, the truth, the principles of the Reformation, were in the deep heart of Germany long before Luther arose, and he only found for that Reformation a voice, so the unuttered feeling of the Deity of Christ was in the deep heart of the early Church, and the apostles Paul and John did but find for it a voice. The truth itself was the impression left by our Lord’s life: the shaping of the truth was given by the inspired genius of two apostles. Paul’s representation differs from John’s, because Paul had to deal with idolatry and superstition, the belief in inferior and attendant divinities, and it was necessary for him to assert the absolute uniqueness and sole authority over all things which Christ claimed. John had to deal with a specious philosophy, which said that Jesus the man received a Divine Spirit at His baptism, and this Spirit left Him a mere man again before His crucifixion. It was necessary therefore for him to defend the reality of the Incarnation. Evangelical Christianity then has one distinct foundation-truth on which it rests. And it is an everlasting rock. They are other truths which we hold to be essential to the faith. But the one characteristic foundation of evangelic Christianity is the proper Deity of the Lord Jesus, “God manifest in the flesh.” First recognised as Jewish Messiah, then declared to be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection from the dead; at last, the fullest and deepest in Him is discerned, and we ascribe the Divine attribute of unchangeableness to Him who “is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” It is a fact, but it should be much more; it should be an experience, something which we find out and feel for ourselves, something which we can only get by the study of the historical Christ, and the communion of the living Christ.