The Lord from Heaven

Sir Ropert ANDERSON kindly invites me, as an old friend, to prefix these few lines to his book on THE Deity or Curist. I count it an honour to do so.

On the supreme greatness and significance of the subject I need not dwell. ‘To Christianity, if it is the Christianity of original fact, and not of late and arbitrary theory, the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, true, proper, absolute, 1s vital. It was an insight into that vitality which, in the fourth Christian century, made Athanasius strong contra mundum — against the world,” at least against a vast proportion of the then professing Church, backed in some stages of the struggle by the nominally Christian State. He saw that no compromise was possible, if man’s salvation was to be proclaimed and received in its divine fulness. His opponents were prepared to say practically anything of the greatness of the Christ short of this — that without reserve, without compromise, sans phrase, He is God.

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And the victory was won, for the Church and for the world, on two grounds, which have everything to do with each other. On the one hand, it was shewn that the Gospel record of the Lord cannot be fairly explained, just as it stands, without the recognition of His true Deity — manifested in true Manhood, but true Deity none the less. On the other hand, the human soul, then as now, once fully awakened to itself and to its needs, to its mysterious greatness and to its mysterious but awfully real sinfulness, can find rest only in a Saviour who is, in equal truth, one with man and one with God. Such a Saviour bridges, as with living adamant, the gulf of doom and sin, which severs creature from Maker. A Saviour not guite God is a bridge broken at the farther end.

The author handles his great theme with a penetration and force all his own, and at the same time with worshipping reverence, and with whole-hearted reliance on the Written Word. I pray our Master’s blessing on this close study of the witnesses for the glory of Christ, done not by an official advocate of the Faith, but by one long versed in weighty and difficult duties of civil law and order, accustomed through his

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whole life to the keenest quest of facts, and to the ruthless exposure of fallacy.

Just here and there, upon details which do not touch the real argument, my personal opinion may vary somewhat from the author’s. But I say this only to accentuate my sense of the value of the whole work, its reverence, its penetration, its suggestiveness, its witness to the glory of the Christ of God.

HANDLEY DUNELM.

Some years ago the Author was asked to mediate between the Committee of one of our Missionary Societies and certain of their younger agents, whose faith had been disturbed by Moslem hostility to the truth of the Sonship of Christ. Though not unversed in the literature on the subject, he could find no book that definitely met the difficulties of the missionaries, and the project of writing such a book was suggested to him. And a recent correspondence disclosed the fact that, by those who deny the Lord’s Deity, that truth is supposed to depend on the special texts which teach it explicitly.

These pages accordingly seek to unfold the doctrine of the Sonship, and to call attention to some of the indirect testimony of Scripture to the Deity of Christ. The book is not controversial. It is a Bible study. And if the perusal of it proves as helpful to any, as the writing of it has been to the Author, its purpose will be satisfied.

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He wishes here to acknowledge help received in the preparation of it. ‘To the Bishop of Durham he is under very special obligations for kindly and valuable criticism and counsel. And his labours were lightened by his friend, Miss A. R. Habershon, who, besides aid freely given in other ways, prepared for his use 1 New Testament “concordance” of the names and titles of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It may be well to mention that in these pages the references to Scripture do not specify which of our Versions is quoted, save where it is desired to call special attention to the reading adopted.

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