"The Lord is If God sheltered and tended the Jews in an especial manner, might not the sweet singer of Israel say, as he thought of his own Shepherd life, my Shepherd, I shall not want?" And if Christ watched over us, and led us, and died for us, may he not be called the good Shepherd, who giveth his life for his sheep? The faithful minister of Christ even in our own time is called "Pastor," and his congregation a "flock." And may not God, as our heavenly Father, correct us; and Christ, as the head of the Church, rebuke and chasten us? Let the reader compare the following passages, and observe the Scriptural distinction: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Ps. xix. 14. I am Jehovah, and beside me there is no Saviour. Isa. xliii. 11. To the only wise God our Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Gen. xviii. 25. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. John iii. 16, 17. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. Acts v. 31. In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel. Rom. ii. 16. That God will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained. Acts xvii. 31. And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man. John. v. 27. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent him. John v. 23. He that receiveth you receiveth me. Matt. x. 40. But it is alleged that the argument from the "conjunction of the name of our Lord Jesus with that of our Heavenly Father" comes to a focus in two texts, the baptismal commission, Matt. xxviii. 19, and that "wondrous benediction which has dropped as the gentle dew from Heaven upon the Church of Christ for eighteen centuries;" "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen." For myself I have always preferred the former to the shorter formula, "I baptize thee in the name of Christ," which appears to have been used by the apostles; and the wondrous benediction is the one with which I am accustomed to dismiss my own congregation every Lord's day. But the baptismal commission interpreted for us by Mr. Bickersteth is baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of an exalted man, and of a certain influence of the 66 Father." And the apostolic benediction is "The grace of a creature, and the love of the Creator, and the communion of creative energy be with you all." But interpreting these passages for ourselves as we have been wont to do, without a thought of doctrinal abstractions, and with the simple desire to realize the meaning originally intended to be conveyed, a paraphrase would run thus: "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the one only true God, and of the Son, the Mediator between the Father and men, without whom we know not the Father and could not come to Him, and of the Holy Spirit, the Father communicating life to our souls, either directly or through His Son." So by 2 Cor. xiii. 14, we understand "The grace of him by whom we come to the Father, the love of the Father, which is eternal blessedness to our souls, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, without which we could not become God's children in character, and fit for our everlasting home in Heaven." In the change of order observed in these two texts, Mr. Bickersteth finds a confirmation of the doctrine of the Athanasian creed, "In this Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another." But I think the order adopted by the apostle was chosen because coincident with the necessary order of the Spirit's progress. Till we have the grace of Christ, we know not the Father, and till we know the Father, we cannot ask for His Holy Spirit. Is there such inextricable confusion here that we should take refuge from it in the distinctions of substance, essence, and person, characteristic of the Patristic and Scholastic divinity? If, in the apostolic age as much stress had been laid on belief in Christ's Deity as is laid by many now, surely our risen Lord would have said, "In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost;" and the apostle would have written, "The grace of God the Son, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of God the Holy Spirit." Would he have said communion of a person? It is also to be noted that immediately before the baptismal commission our Saviour says, "All power is given unto me." All Christians believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is, I repeat, no Christianity without belief in these three; without the Son to lead us to the Father, and the Spirit to help us in our infirmities, to sanctify us, and to lead us into all truth; but what the Father is in nature, and what the Son, and what the Holy Spirit, must be gathered from other portions of Scripture, if such matters be revealed to us at all. To be baptized in a name does not imply that he in whose name we are baptized is Almighty God. The Israelites were baptized" into (eis) Moses'," and some persons were baptized into John's Baptism. Further, such passages as the following ought to prevent us from placing too much reliance on the conjunction of names as a proof of the Trinity. “I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality."-1 Tim. v. 21. "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things."-Acts xv. 28. But it is said the names of the Father and the Son both appear in doxologies. Let it not, however, be supposed that because the New Testament has left upon our minds a distinct impression of two beings-the only true God, the Father, and Jesus Christ whom He sent, we therefore do not ascribe to Christ honor, dominion, glory. We, too, are in the habit of using, with our heart's fullest response, those sublime words of the Apocalypse, "Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth on the Throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." But when we employ this language we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that the Lamb to whom so much is ascribed is not represented as the one that sitteth on the Throne. If John, in Patmos, ascribed Glory and dominion to the Saviour, it is because he hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto his God and Father, τῷ Θεῷ καὶ Πατρὶ αὑτοῦ. Of the parallel quotations from Scripture in p. 28-36, I pass over some because I have occasion to notice them more fully elsewhere, and others with a simple statement of the argument contained in them, which I will leave to make its own impression. We are to believe in the co-equal Deity of the Father and the Son: Because, in Psalm lxxvii. 19, we read, "Thy footsteps are not known," and in Eph. iii. 19, we read, "The love of Christ which passeth knowledge." |