fication complete, and the consecration entire. By this time, however, I came to see, that, if not entirely backslidden, I certainly had been in a lukewarm and dangerous state. I had also made such alarming discoveries of heart depravity, that I was ready to accept deliverance at any cost; and now, able to bear the final test, the Spirit, Who had been tenderly touching the dearest idol, spoke clearly to my inner consciousness these crucial words, "If thou wouldst be perfect sell what thou hast and give to the poor." I now saw that such was my attachment to money, that every cent must be taken from me in order to disengage my affections and save my soul. With a keenness of suffering which I cannot describe, I consented, through triumphing grace, to literally part with all. Here I died. Here I was truly crucified with Christ. Here I learned the deep meaning of killing, of crucifying, of dying.

From this time forward I was conscious of the completeness and irrevocability of my surrender to God, but, for some two and a-half months, I alternated between light and darkness, between joyful certainty and painful doubt, as to my true spiritual status. During this time, however, I was satisfied that my first love was restored and greatly intensified. But nothing would satisfy me now but conscious purity; and I became so anxious to see and commune with one who consciously enjoyed it, and so eager to have my own heart settled in its possession, that I took the cars for a camp-meeting, an institution which I had been opposing for some years, as detrimental to the best interests of the Church. But in my intense hunger, I hoped to meet some one, even at a common camp-meeting, who could sympathize with me and give the information which I desired. There, at the earliest opportunity, I related my experience just as it then was, and stated my purpose in visiting the grounds. A sister, who was in the clear experience of holiness, hearing my statements, and understanding the situation, sought an introduction, and proceeded to impart the instruction which I needed. She told me I was where there was nothing to do, except to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God, and make confession with the mouth. At this I was disappointed, and inclined

to question the theological accuracy of the instruction. In my trouble, I wandered off by myself in close meditation upon what I had heard, and the Spirit impressed me with the thought that the sister had done nothing more or less than repeat to me what the Scriptures speak to one in my condition. Under this thought I proceeded to make the effort, by Divine help, to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God, when I was arrested by the fear of practising a delusion upon myself. At this point, after some prayerful study, I was enabled to see that if I obeyed God in this matter, He would assume the responsibility of any delusion and unhappy results. This new light enabled me to make the reckoning more definitely, and, with some considerable ambiguity, to confess with the mouth. This step, however, was followed with such an influx of light and power as enabled me, in a few minutes later, to confess with much less hesitancy and equivocation.

Now the way of faith opened to my spiritual vision with such clearness that I definitely made the reckoning and unequivocally declared the fact. This was followed immediately by a flooding of love and heavenly sweetness, which I have no language to describe. I was now, eleven weeks after the restoration of my first love, fully persuaded of my entire sanctification.

some

This new experience put me into a state of restlessness to declare the great salvation to my brethren in the Church. I, therefore, arranged to go out of business and re-enter the regular work of the ministry. For two years I served a congregation with great pleasure to myself and, I believe, great profit to those who attended upon my ministry. At the close of this time I began to feel that my sphere of usefulness was not as wide as my aspirations to spread holiness, and, having the means in my hand for travel and support, I entered into evangelistic labours upon my own responsibility. The success which attended my efforts in this department of Christian work, was, in my own view, literally marvellous.

Being of a feeble constitution, and inheriting rheumatic infection, I was, by excessive toil, in the course of two years, thrown down with exhaustion and disease. For five consecutive months I was confined

to bed, for ten months more I moved through the house upon a wheeled chair, and for the last two years I have, with pain and difficulty, moved my distorted body short distances by the aid of crutches. Through all this period of suffering, I have been kept contented, peaceful, and at times ecstatic. During the last year, though I felt no woe was me if I did not do it because of feebleness and suffering, yet by a sweet permit from my Heavenly Father, I have preached, in a sitting posture, over one hundred times upon the wondrous theme of Christian purity.

At present writing, the attitude of my soul is that of complete, unreserved, and eternal surrender to God. Self, property, and everything pertaining to me, have gone out of my heart into my hands, and are held in trust and used for the glory of God. I find my highest delight in talking, preaching, writing, and contributing of the means in my hands, to spread this wonderful doctrine and experience. Just now I feel, with almost unendurable sweetness, the bliss of the purified. Hallelujah!

THE GLORIOUS DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST.

BY REV. CLEMENT CLEMANCE, B.A., D.D.

CHAPTER VIII.—(Phil. ii. 9-11.)

HAVING expounded this passage, and

having shewn how the blending in Christ of supremacy and subordination throws light on various passages of the word of God, we have now to show how Christ's incarnation and exaltation make Him what He is to us, and also that they make Christianity and the Christian Life just what they are.

Christ taking our flesh on Him and clothing the Godhead with it, is the basis and centrepoint of an entire framework of Christian doctrine; this doctrine most exactly meeting the wants of which we are conscious. Yea, more than this; the significance of the entire Gospel plan comes out of the reality of the two natures as blended in Christ.

First. Jesus Christ as God clad in the likeness of man is to us a direct revelation of God. We can study a human life, we can enter intelligently into a human history; it is that which touches us at a

thousand points of our own experience; and if we are told that that human life is to us a copy of God, we are thankful to be taken so far; but then we come to ask and surely the question is not too subtle for the intelligent thinker-Is Jesus Christ a copy of God to us because He is more like God than any other man, or because He is Himself the out-shining God in human form ? It makes a vast difference as to the feelings with which a man will look on the person of Christ, whether he adopts the one or the other of these views. The question is: Is Christ a Godlike man, or is He God in man? If the former, I admire and copy; if the latter, I also worship and adore. If the former, I must still look up beyond the creature form to Him who made it; if the latter, if here is very God, I can rest here. In Christ my fondest loves can nestle, on Him my highest hopes may be fixed, to Him my most reverent worship may be paid. And surely Scripture speaks here with no dubious utterance. "God was in Christ." "The word was God." Word was made flesh." Thus, then, we have not only a fleshly form of one who is like God, but "God manifest in flesh."

"The

The revelation of God in Christ is not simply a fuller revelation of God than I see in other good men, but a revelation altogether distinct in its kind. Standing alone in the universe, unparalleled either in Heaven or in earth, "in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY.

Second. Round the Incarnation the doctrine of the atonement gathers. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." Observe, the expression is not "Christ reconciled the world to God by what he did." No; but God was there reconciling the world unto Himself. That is, God was there doing the work Himself. Christ's death is God's own work. The atonement is the work of the God-man. God allied himself with human flesh, that God in human form might die. The Church of God is that which He hath purchased with "His own blood." God-man has been "made sin" for us. The atonement is not the work of a Godlike man, but the work of GOD IN MAN. know how easy it is for the Unitarian, that he may not seem to despise the Word of God, to retain the terms Divinity, Atonement, Sacrifice, and yet rob them of

The

I

the fulness of their meaning. Let us be very wary on this point, and very jealous of our Saviour's honour. You may kill a man that you scarcely mutilate a limb or distort a feature, by simply bleeding him to death. And you may bleed the fair form of Christianity to death, without mutilating many words in the Creed; but let me say, and that with all the earnestness of one who feels that his own standing for eternity depends upon it, that if you take away the absolute Godhead of Christ, the life-blood of His atonement is gone, and you have "another gospel which is not another."

Third. There are other doctrines which gather round the Incarnation, namely, the succouring of those who are tempted. The fulness of the revelation of God and the value of the atonement grow out of the alliance of God with man. The tenderness of Christ's sympathy for those who are tempted, grows out of the alliance of man with God. Because Jesus Christ was man, He became in that form exposed to the thousand influences of evil which beset man. The evil was not within Him, yet human weakness was His, and susceptibility to temptation. His was no imagi'nary conflict with the evil one, either in the desert or in Gethsemane. He came as man in real personal collision with the prince of the power of the air. He suffered, being tempted; and thus causes His sympathy with us to be so priceless in its value. How many thousands have felt it a well-spring of comfort to be able to say:

"Touched with a sympathy within,

He knows our feeble frame;

He knows what sore temptations mean,
For He has felt the same."

This was one end for which He was subject to temptation. Then there was another end to be answered by it. Because Christ was made in the likeness of men, death became possible to Him; He became a man, that death might be possible, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death. "Have you ever noticed," wrote a beloved friend who was near death," the glorious redundancy of the apostle's words, ' He—also— Himself-likewise took part of the same'?" This friend had death before him for many months, and he found in these words the richest divine comforts. We want a Christ

that can live like us, and when we come to die we shall want a Christ that could die like us. And here He is ready to deliver those who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Fourthly, there is another end subserved by Christ's incarnation, viz., by taking our manhood He has connected it with the living Godhead, and imparted to it immortal vigour and honour. He took human nature in its weakness, and allied it with His Godhead, that in. Him its weakness might be lost, being joined with everlasting strength. Being made perfect through suffering, He is the captain of salvation; being a captain of salvation, he is bringing many saints unto glory. We are members of His body, of His flesh, of His bones. "This is a great mystery," says Paul; "but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." As our Mediator, with one hand He touches the Godhead, and with the other, Manhood: linking the two in a wondrous combination, never to be broken and never to be impaired. Our weakness for a time, that His strength might be ours for ever!

This centreing of Christian doctrine around the incarnation of Jesus Christ, together with the intellectual completeness of the whole, is what Dr. Bushnell has called one of the watermarks of Christianity. "To frame," he says, "such a fitting of ideas and doctrines by human invention out of the materials of natural sagacity and reason, we may fairly say is impossible. There have been as many as nine avatars or incarnations, the Brahmins tell us, of their god Vishnu; and multitudes of incarnations can be cited from the Pagan mythologies. But when has there been developed round the pretended supernatural fact, any scheme of ideas or truths, internally agreeing with it and having their roots of life in it? It is a very easy thing, we may admit, tổ imagine a supernatural fact, an incarnation, for example; but to fit it with a range of doctrines and holy ideas such as will connect it with human experience, and make it practical, is what no mortal wisdom was ever able to do. Thus, if there were given the fact of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, or His miraculous birth as the son of Mary, there is no philosopher of mankind who could invent

around that central fact a system of ideas and doctrines, that would not, by their wild extravagance and also by their manifest want of any vital agreement or coherence with it, turn it into mockery. Much less could he form a vehicle of doctrine that would make that central fact a power in the practical life, and dovetail it into the experience of mankind. But all this is accomplished most easily and naturally in Christian doctrine." * Yes, Brethren, this incarnation, this veiling of Christ in human flesh is, not a fact far off from us, without bearing on our deepest wants and highest life. It is our gospelGod in Christ-it is the good news on which we want to lay hold in life's work, life's sorrow, life's suffering, life's decay; and see, Christian Brethren, how our wants are doubly met. We are worn and weak and weary, exposed to all assaults of temptation, and we want one who by experience understands all that, and who can come and enter into our deepest feelings, and such a one is here. And yet, we want one who is strong as God Himself, beyond the reach of all the storms and ragings of time's troublous sea, and such a one is here! At the back of all this human tenderness, or, if you will, as its substratum and prop, I find the mighty God, the everlasting Father!

In this twofold personality, then, we can make our boast and glory. We can adore, and yet we can love. Here is a gentle hand which can wipe away every tear, and yet an almighty arm on which we can lean. The Father's equal one comes and stands by my side, as a brother with brothers, and to a common experience of suffering with my own, He joins the majesty and might of the infinite God!

We cannot afford to let go either side of Christ's Person, the Divine or the human. Which could we part with? Methinks we are entering on a fierce conflict;-nay, WE ARE IN IT! Elements are at work which indicate that soon the Church will have to put on her strength to defend the honour of her Lord! We fear not the issue. The enemies of our faith are ever (though unconsciously) furnishing us with weapons of defence against their own assaults. It is said that the fiercest hurricanes rage around a centre of perfect calm.

* Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural."

So be it here. Let the tempests of con-
troversy rage. They may. Christ is in
perfect calm, unmoved by all; and so may
we be.
Be it ours, indeed, to study
the laws of storms, and to institute a
series of signals, by which men may in a
moment be warned to keep in the har-
bour. But let us keep there too, that the
storm may spend itself without, while we
are securely moored in the haven of truth.
Here, in God, in Christ, immovable rest
for heart and soul may find long and divine
employ. The rest of faith may be ours.
now; ere long, in more genial climes,
we shall enjoy the rest of sight; and then
shall we adore our God in Christ without
the most distant mutterings of tempest,
or the faintest forebodings of a storm;
and then, in the infinite calm of heaven,
we will study the glory of Him whom,
"having not seen we love," for

"His beauties we can never trace,
Till we behold him FACE TO FACE."

ERROR CORRECTED.

"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God."-2 Cor. iii. 5.

THE impression is quite common that

among holy beings, the believer, when imperfectly sanctified, is the only one who has no sufficiency in himself for holy living and work. Hence, the sentiment so often expressed, that if we should cease wholly from sin, and "stand perfect and complete in all the will of God," and especially, if our evil tempers, dispositions, and tendencies (indwelling sins), were wholly removed, we should cease to be dependent upon Christ for grace to serve God acceptably, and should cease to recognise ourselves as thus dependent. In other words, in this state, were it attained, we should "be sufficient of ourselves," and our sufficiency would "no longer be of God." Such, if this sentiment is true, will be our state in eternity. Our sufficiency will no longer be in God; but we shall be all-sufficient in ourselves. A horrible doctrine, one based upon an utter misapprehension of the immutable and necessary relations of creaturehood in every state and condition of existence to God. All that is affirmed, in the passage above cited, holds as true, and will to

eternity hold as true, of saints in heaven as of saints on earth, and does, and ever will, hold as true of angels as of men. The common sentiment of all truly holy 'beings in existence is: " "We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God." It is the omnipresence and all pervading influence of this sentiment which distinguishes and peculiarizes the sacramental host under Christ-the host made up of saints on earth, and the "innumerable company of angels," and the spirits of just men made perfect in heaven-from the rebel host under Satan--the host constituted of wicked men on earth and fallen and lost spirits in hell. Every angel who "kept not his first estate," fell, through resistance to, and rebellion against, the sentiment of no sufficiency in self, and all sufficiency in God. Resistance to the same sentiment "brought death into our world, and all our woe.' "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” that is, no longer abjectly dependent, but selfsufficient as gods are. Here we have the central element of sin in all its forms, the spirit of proud, rebellious selfsufficiency, as opposed to the divine. meekness of utter self-renunciation, and absolute dependence upon the all-sufficiency of God. As we approach a state of entire sanctification, the spirit and sentiment of self-sufficiency drops out more and more from the heart and life, and its place is taken up more and more with the sentiment of utter self-insufficiency, and all-sufficiency in God. Whenever that state is fully attained, the sentiment of proud selfhood, the "I will " and "I can," has totally disappeared out of our being, and that of Godhood, the "not as I will but as Thou wilt," and "Thou canst," occupies and controls our being in its entireness. We might as properly and truly affirm that a little leaven of treason in the hearts of all is indispensable to perpetuate in any people loyalty to their country and government as to affirm that "a little leaven" of sin is requisite to perpetuate in believers the consciousness of no sufficiency in self, and of all-sufficiency in Christ.

A recurrence to the revealed relations of Christ Himself, to the Father, while the former abode in the flesh, presents a perfect verification and illustration

of the doctrine above stated. Prior to His incarnation, Christ, as we read, "was in the form (condition) of God," that is, had life and all-sufficiency in Himself. When, on the other hand, "He (Alford) deemed not His equality with God a thing to grasp at, but emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form (condition) of a servant," He laid aside wholly all selfsufficiency, and took upon Himself the utter insufficiency of creaturehood. In the state which He voluntarily assumed, He had no "indwelling sin," and was fully possessed of "a divine nature." In Him consequently was creaturehood in its normal condition. Do we find in Christ in this state the sentiment of self-sufficiency, or of absolute dependence upon the allsufficiency of the Father? What is Christ's testimony upon this subject? “I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge!" Here our Saviour affirms of Himself the identical insufficiency in Himself that is represented by the words "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves." With no creature was the sentiment more Omnipresent and more absolute in its influence than with Christ, viz.: "I can of mine own self do nothing," that is, “I am not sufficient of myself to think anything as of myself, but my sufficiency is of God." The words of Paul, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God," are perfectly identical in meaning with those of Christ, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, even so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." Here then we have a distinct revelation of the relations, not merely of believers, but of all holy beings to self-insufficiency on the one hand, and to the all-sufficiency of God on the other. No saint on earth, no one of "the Spirits of just men made perfect," nor any angel before the throne, has any sufficiency in himself to be, to do, and to become what God wills, any more than Christ had in Himself to "finish the work which the Father gave Him to do," "There is none good (good in, and of, himself) but one, that is God." There is in the universe of God no work nor device that is pure and holy, and acceptable to God, but what is "wrought in God" and in the Spirit of absolute dependence upon the