Newspaper Page Text
March 31, 1909. THE PRESBYTERIA
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Contributed
"HE IS THAT SON OF MAN."
Luke 22: 69, 70, 71.
By Eliza Strang Baird.
He Is that Son of Man!
Our Savior and our King,?
Let all the universe rejoice,
And Heaven with anthems ring.
He is that Son of Man!
The mighty work is done;
Finished the eternal plan of God,
Offered the Sinless One.
He is that Son of Man!
How shall we further need
Angels or men as witnesses?
This is the truth, indeed.
He is that Son of Man!
Most full of power and grace,
Ueheld, the glory and the crown,
The Savior of our race!
Orange, New Jersey.
THE GRACE OF GODLINESS.
By John W. Moseley, Jr.
John the divine has crowded into the terse text, "He
that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so
to walk, even as he walked," a trinity of great truths
bearing on the grace of godliness. The Apostle says
in brief that the believer abiding in the Christ ought
to live as the Christ lived.
The believer abiding in the Christ is a definite statement
of the mystical union constituted between the
Christ and the Christian by saving faith. Notwith<;tan
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there is, in a sense, a real, a substantial, relationship
between the believer and the Christ. As every human
being is physically related to the first Adam into the
flesh, so every saved being is spiritually related to the
second Adam in the spirit. Naturally one with Adam,
supernaturally one with the Christ. The great Rabbi
converts this ethereal idea into the concrete with his
figure of the vine and the branches. He cries out, "I
am the vine, ye arc the branches," and forever fixes the
fact of a vital union betwixt the born of God and the
Son of God. All in him are the children of God' and
all the children of God are in him. There is a numerical
unity wrought out in the mystical union through
the mediatorial intercession of the Saviour. The petition
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from his sacrificial brow, is the continual intercession
of the ages within the Holy of Holies, "That they all
may be one; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us." One in us, yea, one
in me, for thou art in me and I in thee, and I in them
and they in me and we are one. Oh, the wonder of it!
Paul, the transcendental dreamer of the primitive
Christian period, grapples-with the problem of the mystical
union with Christ; and in a moment of ecstasy,
from some oriental peak of heavenly vision, he peeps
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over the battlements of the sinless city and sees in the
bond of bride and groom a translation of this rebus
of revelation. Hear him say ye are "married to another"
even to the risen Christ. Christ and Christian
at the altar of confession have plighted their troth, and
in a way as invisible and as intangible as the east
wind have become one for the eternal ages.
In imperial way the apostle of love, moved by the
heavenly inspiration binds the believer to the life of
constancy, delicacy and innocency wrought out in the
world-work of the crystal Christ. And why not?
Could nuptial vows be merely suggestive? The bare
idea is bestial! Shall the right to drag the wedding
garments in the mire of worldly wickedness and wantonness
reside in either party to the mystical union?
Surely not in the Christ. Can the Christ violate the
vows of the marriage morn and wallow in the sloughs
of sensuality? If the doors of the dual life are closed
to the Christ they are closed to the Christian. There
is but one walk for the Christ and one walk for the
Christian; and this walk is imperative. The command
of the contract is that the Christian ought to live even
as the Christ lived.
As the Christ lived is the ideal of the Christian. The
life of the Nazarene is the life of a man for men. If
the tyro of the studio is to hang his canvas in the
museum of the metropolis he must lose himself in -the
conceptions and colorings of a Raphael or a Reynolds.
If the Christian is to attain unto the excellency of the
life ideal he must sit at the feet of the Master. The
man Christ-Jesus for the joy of it by way of humiliation
and heartache brushed into the canvas of Christianconsciousness
a panorama of the life ideal for adoration
and emulation. For practical purposes gaze upon the
panel of the simple life.
The Prince of Heaven is the Christ in his divine
right. But to prick the bubble of secularity and sensuality
he divested himself of the robe and sceptre and
diadem ot state, disbanded tne legions ot angeis and
archangels, departed from the glory of the throne of
heaven and descended into the poverty of a mere man.
What a picturesque figure is this Galilean stepping
from city to city, rich with the memories of a Solomonic
splendor, garbed only in the majesty of a mere man.
See him there as he trudges over the crest of the
Mount of Beatitudes, or treads the foam crusted
waves of Gennesaret or tracks the narrow defiles that
lead from Jordan to Jerusalem. No blare of trumpets,
no blaze of pageantry, only a man is passing by. Hear
the melody of his voice as he laughs in derision at the
meretricious coverings of a harlot humanity: "The foxes
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the
Son of man hath not where to lay his head." The
Mount of Beatitudes, or tread the foain crested
master for the tawdry trinkets that enamor the vulgar
devotees of Apollyon. While the potentate of all the
earth filled land and sea with illimitable resources from
which might be builded the empires of the past and the
present, would it not paralyze to see him push aside
the elements of royal manhood and rush pell-mell with
the madding crowd in pursuit of the money-god? Satan
is subtle but how he misinterpreted the master-man