forehand to prepare it. Now this means that its associations were vivid both in His mind and in theirs, and through these associations His words must be construed. The feast was the most domestic of all the feasts in Israel; in it the father was more important than the priest, the house than the temple. The lamb was not the symbol of sacerdotal supremacy, but of family and racial unity, especially in the eye and purpose of God. Its blood was not shed to propitiate a vengeful Deity, and induce Him to pass kindly over the family for whom it had been slain and the house where i was being eaten, but rather to mark them as God's own, to be the sign that they were His and doing as He willed; in other words, the paschal sacrifice did not make Him gracious, but found Him gracious, and confessed that those who offered believed themselves to be the heirs of His grace. It was the seal of a mercy which had been shown and was now claimed, not the purchase of a mercy which was withheld and must be bought. It signified, too, that since the people were God's, they could not continue slaves, but must be emancipated and live as became the free, obedient to the Sovereign whose supremacy could brook no rival authority. It was the symbol, therefore, of unity, all the families who sacrificed constituted a single people; Israel knew only one God, God knew only one Israel. Jesus did not receive these associations as a letter that killed, but as the spirit which gave life. They were translated by Him from the traditions which acted as the fetters of the past on the present into the ideals which were to govern the future. He manifestly conceived Himself as the sacrificial lamb, for only so can we find any meaning in the reference to this blood; and the figure was beautiful enough to apply even to Him. It was the symbol of innocence, meekness, gentleness, of one who was led to the slaughter, and was 1 Luke xxii. 8.

dumb under the hand of the shearer; but it did not speak of a victim whose blood was shed to appease a vindictive sovereign. On the contrary, it told of His grace, and was the mark which distinguished His people. The blood could be in symbol only where it was in reality, and wherever it was it denoted a member of the family of God, a man spared, emancipated, introduced into all the liberties and endowed with all the privileges of Divine sonship.

C. So far we have been concerned with the relation of the blood to the covenant, but we are now met by another question: In what sense could it be said to be shed "for you" or "for many"? We have seen that He represented acts done to the least and the neediest of men as done to Himself; but the precise parallel of this is that the acts He does may be conceived as done by man; in other words, He is so the centre or keystone of family or racial unity that in a perfectly real sense His act is universal, while personal. His position is twofold: He conceives Himself as the Lamb sacrificed in order to mark and seal the people of God, i.e., establish His covenant, but He also at the same moment sits in the seat of the host or father, who sums up in himself the household, acts and speaks as their sole and responsible head. As the one He distributes the elements which symbolize the sacrifice; as the other He is the sacrifice which the elements symbolize. The ideas proper to these quite distinct relations, blend both in His consciousness and in that of the disciples. According to the one He is offered for the many; according to the other His act is their act, in Him they live impersonated. Hence His suffering at the hands of man is theirs, and theirs His surrender to the will of God. The outer letter which is abolished by His death, ceases to have dominion over them; the inner obedience which is accomplished by His spirit, becomes a fact of their history, and a factor of their new experience. In other words, by being made a curse for us

He redeems us from the curse of the law; and by means of the new spirit of life which is in Him, He sets us free from the law of sin and death. And so Paul sums up the innermost meaning of His words when he said: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believeth." 1

A. M. FAIRBAIRN.

CHRISTIAN PERFECTION.

I.

THE WORD "PERFECT" IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

IN modern religious life, the use of the word perfect to describe a definite stage of spiritual development and Christian character has been a matter of much discussion. Some have claimed for themselves or others, or as attainable, a measure of spiritual or moral maturity which may, they think, be fairly called Christian Perfection. Others have strenuously resisted all such claims. And this controversy has given rise to discussions about various side issues bearing upon the Christian life.

Inasmuch as the word perfect is found in the English Bible, in both Authorized and Revised Versions, as a description of Christian character, I shall introduce the subject by discussing in this paper the meaning of the word or words so rendered, and expounding the teaching of the Bible about the persons and character thus described. In a second paper I shall call attention to other important teaching of the New Testament closely related to the subject before us. And in a third paper I shall discuss Wesley's teaching about Christian perfection, and certain modern controversies on the same subject.

1 Rom. x. 4.

Of the words rendered perfect in the New Testament, the most important is Téλetos, an adjective derived from the substantive Télos, usually rendered end. But this latter word denotes the end, not as mere cessation in time or space, but as a goal attained or to be attained, the accomplishment of a purpose, or the full outworking of a tendency. Its meaning is well reproduced by the phrase "end and aim." This meaning may be detected even where the word seems at first sight to mean only cessation. So Luke i. 33, "of His kingdom, there shall be no end": i.e. it shall never have run out its complete course as did the ancient empires which have passed away. Similarly, Mark iii. 26 "if Satan hath risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but hath an end." If the supreme power of evil be divided, his power has run its full course: which is not the case. In other places, the idea of a goal or aim is more conspicuous. So 1 Peter i. 9: "receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls." Also 1 Timothy i. 5: "the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart.”

This idea of a goal to be attained or the full outworking of inherent tendencies underlies the entire use of the adjective Téletos. This last never denotes that which pertains to cessation, always that which pertains to a goal reached. The Téλeio are those who have attained a measure of maturity. This is made very evident by the other words with which the word perfect is contrasted. So 1 Corinthians xiv. 20: "be not children in mind, but in malice be babes; on the other hand, in your minds become fullgrown men." Similarly Ephesians iv. 13, 14: "till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full-grown man (ävdpa TéλEιov), to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we be no longer babes." Still more definite is Hebrews v. 12-14: "ye are become such as have need of milk and not of solid food. For every one that partaketh of milk is inexperienced

of the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But solid food is for full-grown men (TEλeiwv), for those who by reason of use have their sense exercised to discern good and evil." The animal and mental and moral forces latent in the child find in the adult their full development. The latter is therefore called, in contrast to the child, TéλELOS.

In 1 Chronicles xxv. 8 (LXX.) we have the contrast of τελείων καὶ μανθανόντων: i.e. of those whose education is complete and those who are still pupils.

The above passages, which might be indefinitely multiplied from classical Greek, make the meaning of TéλELOS quite clear. It describes an object in which inherent tendencies have attained full development, in which the ideal is fully realised.

man.

In the LXX. the word réλetos is used to describe an ideal In Genesis vi. 9 (compare Sirach xliv. 17) Noah is said to have been "righteous, perfect in his generation." In Deuteronomy xviii. 13, after a warning against sorcery, the writer adds "thou shalt be perfect before the Lord thy God." In 1 Kings viii. 61, Solomon urges the people, “let your hearts be perfect towards the Lord our God, to walk in His ordinances and to keep His commandments as at this day." He thus bids them tolerate no divided allegiance. In chapter xi. 4, we read that Solomon's "heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians." David, with all his sins, was loyal to the worship of God: his son worshipped other gods. Similar language is found in chapter xv. 3; and a contrast in verse 14. This frequent use of the word perfect in the LXX. to describe whole-hearted loyalty to God is in complete harmony with the root-idea of the word for such loyalty was the immediate aim of the spiritual education of Israel.

In the recorded words of Christ, the word Téλelos occurs