Christianity in Its Secondary and Manward Aspect

These words lead up to the practical side of this great truth. I have spoken of Christianity as being a divine revelation. In its secondary and manward aspect Christianity is the life that befits those who have received this revelation. Faith in Christ is not a psychological feat, neither is it adherence to a creed or cult. It is accepting a person. “As many as recewed Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His namze.”* And practical Christianity is to live as “the sons of God, without rebuke, blameless, and harmless.”+ It is thus that personal loyalty to Christ declares itself, and this is the only “Christian religion” that the New Testament recognises.t The Jew had a religion in another sense, the only divine religion the world has ever known. It was designed to teach deep spiritual truths, and to keep the minds of men in a state of expectancy for the full revelation of those truths. It had “‘a shadow of the coming good things.” And when Christ came, those who were spiritual, and understood their religion aright, accepted Him as the realisation and fulfilment of it all. But with the mass, who were unspiritual, and who degraded it to the level of a human religion, it became intensely anti-Christian (as human religion always is), and in its name they rejected and crucified Him. Hence

* John i. 12. + Philippians ii. 15. +See Archbp. T. French’s Synonyms (pncoxeia).

the prophetic denunciations which the critics so grotesquely misinterpret.* The Jewish altar was a type of Calvary; but when this, its spiritual significance, was ignored, it sank to the pagan level; the victim was but “a slain beast,” and the whole rite was both disgusting and profane.

“He is not a Jew who is one outwardly.” The true Jew was not “converted to Christ; he accepted Christ as being the One to whose coming his whole religion pointed, and who was the fulfilment of that religion in every part of it. Such was the express declaration of the first disciples: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write.” And it was upon “Moses and the prophets” that He Himself based His Messianic claims. This is not theory, but fact, and plain upon the open page of the New Testament. Christianity is avowedly based upon a divine revelation which preceded it; and therefore if the Old Testament be false, Christianity is false. It assumes the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures which the critics decry and denounce.

*See Hsc. Gr. Amos, v. 21-27; Is, i. 11-15; Jer. vii, 21-23.