The Presbyterian of the South : [combining the] Southwestern Presbyterian, Central Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1909-1931, March 31, 1909, Page 7, Image 7

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March 31, 1909. THE PRESBYTERIA 1 ; " 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 flinor itc CIlKflAfv ifc tnnc/'nn - ?C 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 of his nnssinn liic nrooinnn K1 ?i u? , ,1 ..vu 111*3 utf II JI1VV.IUU9 IJIUUU IJ U1 51 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 i '. *.' 4- ' l" ; - jim# N OF THE SOUTH. 7 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