of intercession, I may call attention to three passages. The first is Romans 8:34: "He who died for us is Christ Jesus or rather it was he who was raised from the dead, and who is now at God's right hand and is even pleading on our behalf"; the second is Hebrews 7:25-"That is why he is able to save perfectly those who come to God through him, living forever, as he does, to intercede on their behalf"; while-"My children, I am writing to you to keep you from sinning; but if any one should sin, we have one who can plead for us with the Father-Jesus Christ, the Righteous" (I Jno. 2:1)-is the third. The thing contemplated in each and all of these is complete salvation from a life of conscious sinning to one of unbroken obedience and devotion to God, even in the midst of the sorest trials and sufferings, which the malice of bad men can invent and apply; and the teaching is that the pleadings of the living Jesus are mightily helpful in this direction.

When we ask for some more precise word as to how and why, we are met by such a one as this"So, also, the Spirit supports us in our weakness. We do not know even how to pray as we should; but the Spirit himself pleads for us in sighs that can find no utterance. Yet he who searches all our hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, because the pleadings of the Spirit for Christ's People are in accordance with his will." (Rom. 8:26, 27.) Are we not here taught a doctrine which modern evolutionary philosophy has begun

the serious work of propounding? Deep calls to deep in God himself, while he labors towards selfrealization in all portions of his vast creation. All other loves and yearnings are but local expressions of those which in him are infinite and all pervading. The love and yearning of Jesus himself are local and human, and derive their whole saving power from that infinite source which he named "The Living Father who sent me." 6:44, 57.)

(Jno.

The final word, therefore, is this. All mediation and intercession, the aim of which is the increase and absolute ultimate triumph of righteousness in every being and every relationship existing in our vast universe, moves forth from God and back to God, as a portion of that long toil which he has made his in the interests at the same time of himself and of all besides. And every being who is consciously taken up into the task may know that he is God's fellow-worker towards his own self-realization, the self-realization of his fellow men, and, through these, towards the selfrealization of God himself.

"That God may be all in all" is the unceasing cry of all the ages, till "the end.”

XVII

JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS

What a man thinks of his Bible from the viewpoint of ethical codes must largely depend upon the theory he holds as to the main purpose of God in blessing the world with the book. If he believes that God's chief intention in the matter was to bestow upon humanity, once and for all, a complete set of rules for our guidance in every particular of every relationship of our increasingly complex lives, he will consult the book continually with the expectation of finding within it the precise directions he needs in connection with each step that he takes. If, on the other hand, he looks upon his Bible as the principal vehicle of that revelation of himself to men, as Creator, Upholder, Moral Governor, and Savior, which God saw was absolutely essential to their highest development and well-being; and as containing only such moral precepts as from time to time represented the growing needs of the people, through whose seers this revelation was given; he will, consciously or unconsciously, do these two things in his own interests: First, he will study the book principally to learn all it can tell him about God, particularly as he stands revealed in the life

and teaching of his Son, Jesus Christ. And secondly, he will gather from the book all he can find there of a nature suitable for his guidance in the affairs of his twentieth-century life; and when he sees it failing him at some scores of points, he will look into the laws of his own church and country, in the full belief that the same God who guided the Israelite is guiding individuals and peoples still, by giving them new laws suitable to their various additional requirements.

Few, if any, to-day actually hold any other position toward the Bible than the second of those which I have just described. The debates which have arisen over the question of the Bible and ethical codes have grown out of the fact that some men still think that they regard the first position I have set forth as the correct one, though they do not really so regard it at all.

First of all, then, let me say that if we could find a man who really holds that the Bible contains this complete and perfect code, we should have in our presence an individual capable of believing that all necessary original thinking on questions of moral conduct was done by a few members of one small family of mankind, before the end of the second century A.D. The Bible is a product of the Israelitish mind as divinely enlightened. This process of divine illumination on the foregoing theory came to an end with the completion of the New Testament. This means that from that date to the end of human history

there could exist no need for, and therefore no experience of, such divine illumination as was imparted to and enjoyed by the seers of the Old and New Testaments. The question does not lie here between the illumination experienced by Jesus and that enjoyed by the Church from the day of Pentecost onward, but between the illumination bestowed upon the Church from Pentecost to the end of the apostolic period, and that experienced by the same church from the end of the apostolic period to the close of the Christian era. For Jesus, according to John, distinctly informed him and his fellow apostles that he had not taught them everything, but that they would themselves enjoy illumination by the same Spirit that had made him the teacher they had found him to be. By that Spirit and not by himself, they would be guided into all they needed to know. Is there anyone who really believes that the church during this brief period actually faced and permanently settled every question with a moral aspect that would become a practical one before the end?

When one speaks of questions with a moral aspect he opens up a large field. The world of thought and action was once divided by Christian thinkers into two departments, which were designated as sacred and secular. This is no longer done with any definiteness, for a certain divine illumination has made it clear that thought and action along the "secular" lines demand the guid