The concluding words of the psalm seem to show that this latter "work" of Jehovah is partly meant And let the pleasantness (or, tender friendship) of Jehovah our God be upon us (hovering over us like an angel); The work of our hands prosper thou upon us; Yea, prosper thou our handiwork (ver. 17). This pious Churchman rejoices in the thought that he, not less than Ezra and Nehemiah, has a share in the great work of reformation. He will need no other comfort all the days of his life. God's tender friendship is assured to His people, and therefore to him. The fate of his soul after death does not appear to have occupied his mind; such questions emerged somewhat later among pious Israelites. It may be difficult perhaps for us to sympathize with such self-abnegation; but we must admire the faith which underlies it. Jehovah is everlasting, and Israel His people is also immortal till its work is done. Is not this a grand confession of faith? It reminds us of those sublime words of the late lamented Bishop Lightfoot, spoken only last October out of the depths of his inward experience, "For what, after all, is the individual life in the history of the Church? Men may come and men may go-individual lives float down like straws on the ocean of the waters till they are lost in the ocean of eternity; but the broad, mighty, rolling stream of the Church itself—the cleansing, purifying, fertilizing tide of the River of God-flows on for ever and ever." In one respect, however, Bishop Lightfoot differed from the author of the 90th psalm. He at least believed in both kinds of immortality—that of the Church and that of the individual; and this surely is the secret of the Christian's strength. It is not out of selfishness that we crave to live after death not merely in the Church upon earth which we have helped to make, but in that ever-growing Church above to which belong the spirits of just men made perfect. For an immortal Church upon earth there cannot be, and why all this vast expenditure of providential discipline if the chilling of our globe is to make it all of none effect? Nor need we Christians a better authority for the continuance of the soul than those deep words of our Lord, "God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living." In the light of this faith, and of the sister-truth of the immortality of the Church, we are delivered from all feverish anxiety, whether respecting ourselves or the great universal Church, and can say in a fuller sense than the Hebrew poet "The eternal God is thy dwelling-place, 1 See my study on Ps. xvi. Aids to the Devout Study of Criticism (T. Fisher Unwin), pp. 248-274. * Deut. xxxiii. 27, Authorized and Revised Version; perhaps referred to in Ps. xc. 1. (The translation, however, needs correction.) "WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM." BY REV. W. A. CHALLACOMBE, B.A. We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is. -1 JOHN iii. 2. It is well that we can enjoy the blessings of peace without even a consciousness of the horrors of war. It is equally well that pious souls can derive solace and encouragement from parts of God's Word without even a knowledge of the criticism to which that Word has been subjected. Upon the wall of a friend's house the other day I saw this text, "We shall be like Him." It was the solar star in the textual system which illuminated her room with the light of God's Truth. What cared she for all the critical literature called into being by that thought? My friend would turn with a sigh from Alford's note with its index of countless tomes, and say, “Well, I know we shall be like Him." One almost yearns for this ignorance, which is bliss indeed. But, alas! our innocence of criticism is gone, and as we read that text the question comes, " Whom does the Apostle declare we shall be like? God the Father, or God the Son?" Let us study for a while this question. By far the greater number of commentators decide that the pronouns refer to God the Father. Yet in the face of the majority, it appears to us that the tenor of Holy Scripture, which here, of course, is the only court of appeal, is very strongly in favour of the view which takes the pronouns to refer to God the Son. Let us first look at the context. The weight of our proof here is considerably lessened by the arbitrary interval which, in consequence of the division into chapters, seems to occur between the thoughts of St. John as expressed in the last verses of chap. ii., and the opening verses of chap. iii. If we read straight on from ii. 28 to iii. 8, it is at once evident that the appearances of Christ are occupying a very prominent place in the Apostle's mind. As he looks out into the unknown future from the standpoint of an adopted son of God, and has, in common with all the early Christians, the ever-present longing for his Lord's speedy return, he thinks of that second advent as the harbinger of unspeakable privileges. Nor does the more literal, though, as we think, less correct reading of the R.V., "If He shall appear," &c., militate against the view that the appearance of Christ is here spoken of. It has been said that the manifestation spoken of thus doubtfully would be more likely that of Jehovah, whose appearance to men is always, both in fact and promise, very indirect and veiled, than to the Son of God, whose epiphanies have been. direct and unconditioned. But does not this theory depend on the misrepresentation of the force of éáv? This conj. with the pres. subj. of the verb points us to the unknown time rather than to the event itself as being uncertain. Hence, for ordinary readers, the "when" of the A.V. is to be preferred to the "if" of the R.V. Again, the two predications, "We shall be like Him" (in this, the first of the two, the word ouotos, "like," is used of external form and appearance), "We shall see Him as He is," are And beyond our conception if we try to realize them as spoken of Jehovah. yet the Apostle writes down these assertions with all the convictions of one who has assured knowledge of what he states: "We know," &c. If St. John referred to Jehovah, whence learned he these amazing facts? Not from the Old Testament, for in the prologue of his Gospel we have his own deliberate declaration, "No man hath seen God at any time." Not certainly as far as we know, from Christ; for on the one hand He most emphatically taught that Jehovah, in His own peculiar and absolute existence, had never been seen by man (cf. St. John v. 37; vi. 46); whilst on the other hand He also declared plainly, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." It seems to us quite impossible that one who had learned such lessons could even imagine that one day he himself and others would be like the essential Being of God, except so far as that Being had been made visible in the person of Christ. The true conception of God, when stripped of limitations of form or anthropomorphic ideas in which we have clothed it for readier perception, is that which Jesus declared true to the Samaritan woman, "God is a Spirit"; "He is without body, parts, or passions." Nevertheless, He hath appeared to us in the person of His Son. That Son we are distinctly told "was the express image of His Father's person, or substance." Here, then, is the point at which we are in closest likeness to God, viz., when we are like Christ. That we shall be like Him when our salvation is perfected is most plainly taught throughout the New Testament. One line of Divine truth points out unmistakably that our ultimate salvation will result in inward and moral likeness to Christ. As an example of this evidence, take Rom. viii. 29, "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son." Another distinct, though parallel, line of truth emphasizes the outward similitude which will exist finally between Christ and the fully saved. Phil. iii. 21 is typical. “Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory." Thus to predicate that we shall be like Christ is as much in harmony with Scripture truth as the conception of being like God in His real and incorporeal nature is opposed to it. The other assertion is equally difficult if we take it as referring to Jehovah. The verb (ofóμela) emphasizes the outward object of sight rather than the inward perception of the subject, whereas the sight of God's Being is a pure inward conception only helped objectively by representations. Again, the words "kabús éσtiv,” “as He is," point out that that which is to be seen will be absolute existence or the proper and essential character, rather than mere representation of however perfect a kind. St. John had seen the Saviour in His glorified body ascend into heaven; he had also heard the two angels declare that "This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” He thought naturally of his Lord as seated in glory "retaining all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature"; a Divine Person, with a real though glorified body, who would again become the object of his sight when, as St. Austen said, He should return "in eadem forma atque substantia." Thus he could easily conceive of seeing the Christ as He then was, i.e., in His bodily though withal glorified nature. Could he, not only. easily but in any way whatever, hope in the same manner to see Jehovah? We think not. If so, his hopes were groundless, at any rate according to the theology of St. Paul, and, we think, the whole of Scripture. Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 14-16. "That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: which in His times shall shew the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the Light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see; to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen." As Christ during His ministry of reconciliation declared, revealed, or showed forth the God of grace, so in His own times He, i.e., Christ, will declare the God of glory. We shall see Jehovah in our glorious Jesus. We therefore take our text to mean, first, the second advent of Christ will seal the full salvation of those who shall have passed away or still be living in the true character of adopted children of God; secondly, that full salvation will consist (1) of likeness to Him both outwardly and inwardly, (2) of blessed communion and admiration, both of which will be complete through perfect knowledge. And thus in Christ, and thus alone, so we think, shall we see God. THE CONSERVATISM OF THE “SERMON ON THE MOUNT." In the previous part of our Lord's discourse there was much that to the national mind might have conveyed the idea of innovation. The duty of being poor in spirit was not a new thing, but the reason assigned for it was entirely new. The Rabbins had based it on the remembrance that we would soon be food for worms; Christ based it on the opposite ground that we were heirs of an immortal kingdom. The practice of mourning was not new in Judæa any more than elsewhere, but it was a very uncommon thing in Judæa to see in mourning itself a source of blessedness. The promise of tuition to the meek was as old as the days of the Psalmist, but it was contrary to popular expectation that the meek should "inherit the earth." The blessedness of the undefiled had been a theme for the songs of Israel, but these songs had not promised more than the encampment of God's angels around them, had not ventured to say, "They shall see God." The beatitudes have in them an air of originality. The originality lies not in the precepts, but in the rewards; not in the things commanded, but in the reason given for the command. In the old regime, the law is a provision for human degradation; in the new, it is the privilege of elevated men. In the old, it is spoken to the world on the plain; in the new, it is addressed to humanity on the mount. Nevertheless, from its very key-note, the Sermon on the Mount is conservative. Its very opening word, "blessed," is suggestive of, and was perhaps suggested by, that initial chord in the harp of the Psalmist, in which he proclaims the beatitude of the man who meditates on God's law day and night. The transition, therefore, from the blessings of the future kingdom to the requirements of the ancient law is in our Lord's mind swift and easy. If at the outset He had seemed to place His disciples on a higher platform than the old régime, He hastens to tell them that the platform is itself based upon the soil of the past. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets." "Do not imagine that the movement I am inaugurating is one of unqualified liberalism. Do not suppose that I design to cut your feet from the past and usher you into a world wholly new. On the contrary, I claim to restore the old, to bring back the elements of Judaic life to their primitive simplicity. I profess to build My temple upon the stepping-stones of your dead selves. I propose to realize your national ideal; not by leading you forward against the Romans, but by leading you back into the recesses of your former history to gather up the fragments that remain. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Now, the question is, why did our Lord deem it necessary to assert the conservatism of His mission? Why did He say on the very threshold of His great sermon, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil?" How could any one imagine that He came to destroy the law? It is true that in the next age we find His disciple Paul using similar language, "do we then make void the law through faith? nay, we establish the law." But then Paul is speaking in the next age-an age which confessedly exhibited. the struggle between a conservative and a liberal theology; law was then popularly regarded as the antithesis of faith. At the time when Christ. spoke the Sermon on the Mount there been no such antithesis; faith in the object of the Christian consciousness. faith had good reason to warn his followers that he came not to destroy the law. But where was the reason in the present instance? The terms. "law" and "grace" were not yet in the air. The question of justification by faith or justification by works had not yet been formulated. There was no room for a party who said, "I am of Apollos," and a party who said, “I am of Cephas." One would think that the defence of a conservative principle was an anachronism, and that the writer of the first Gospel had. transferred to an earlier age the experience familiar to his own later day. could, in the popular mind, have Pauline sense had not become an Paul as the distinctive Apostle of But we forget that the word "law" in the New Testament has another antithesis; it is not only opposed to faith, but to lawlessness. It will be remembered that in addressing the Thessalonians on the nature of that very kingdom of heaven which is placed in the foreground of the Sermon on the Mount, Paul has to warn his audience of a danger in their |