CHAPTER VIII.

Had there been any Distinction between the two natures of Christ in the Article of Suffering, it would have been indicated in the Bible—@Intellectual Character of Pau,,il—-Two passages from 1 Peter, declaring that Christ suffered in the Flesh,; considered and explained—-Bishop Pea carson again examiniied—-Term Flesh,. when applied to Christ, designates his whole united Being—-Term Body, when applied to Christ, has the same comprehensive Meaning—-So has the term Man—-Terms Crucified and Cross.

HAD there been any distinction between the two natures of Christ in the essential, the paramount article of suffering, it was not only to be expected, but it was important that the inspired writers should have pointed it out. It would have been one of the landmarks of Christian faith, not to be left afloat at the mercy of opinion. The inspired writers had been well schooled in the doctrines taught by the Holy Ghost, and were fully competent to expound them with simplicity and precision.

Take, for instance, the great apostle of the Gentiles; and at the mention of the name of Paul, we cannot withhold the expression of our admiration of his wonderful endowments, even at the hazard of a momentary deviation from the straight and onward pathway of our argument. For profoundness of intellect ; for loftiness of imagination ; for that glowing enthusiasm which breathes into genius the breath of life, he stood unsurpassed among the sons of humanity. Had terrestrial ambition contented him, he might have been the Demosthenes of his oppressed country, thundering forth against Roman domination the same pierceiniig bolts which the Athenian statesman, and patriot, and orator hurled at the head of Philip. He had drunk copiously of “,the sweets of sweet philosophy;” with the choicest treasures of the Grecian muse, he was familiar as with “household words;” but all his mental wealth and literary acquisitions were laid humbly at the feet of his Redeemer. The variegated and lucid colouring, and the richest flowers that he had gathered in the fertile fields of learning, he freely offered up to make more clear the lineaments, and to deck the lovely brow of that meek and lowly religion which had been cradled in the manger of Bethlehem, and brought up among the fishermen of Galilee.

Paul, so deeply instructed in the lore of Inspiration; Paul, who had been caught up into the third heaven, and shown things which it was not lawful for him to intimate "to ears of flesh and blood, " could not have been ignorant of the kind and extent of his Saviour’s sufferings ; and had there existed a distinction between his two natures in the grand article of suffering, the philosophic, the logical, the lucid, the discriminating Paul would not have failed to indicate it somewhere in his voluminoutis writings, even if omitted by the less-exteniided authors of the New Testament. It is not intimated by any of the inspired writers, because it was not intimated to any of them by the Holy Ghost. The distinction is earth-born. The general scriptural declarations of Christ’s sufferings, then, according to every legitimate rule of construction, apply to his divine and human natures unitedly. The Bible not having severed their meaning, it is as indivisible as the two natures of Christ.

St. Peter, indeed, speaks of Christ having suffered and died for us in the flesh. There are two passages in which this affirmation is made by that apostle. The first is as follows: “ For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”—@1 l Peter, 3iii. 18. The second passage is as follows: “Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.” —-1 Peter, 4iv. 1. Bishop Pearson has invoked these two passages into the support of the prevalent, theory that Christ’”s sufferings were confined to his humanity.⁶⁶Pearson on the Creed, p. 312. And as they are the only scriptural passages which he has cited as bearing directly on the subject, we are doubtless justified in concluding that they were the only ones he could find. With the profoundest respect for the learned and pious prelate, we are constrained to dissent from his construction. Several answers may be given to the argument sought to be derived from these passages.

First.. St. Peter might have meant to speak only of the time of Christ’”s passion, not of its locality. He might have intended to say that Christ suffered while he was in the flesh on earth, not that his flesh, or even his manhood, was the sole or peculiar recipient of his @ suffering. In his epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul, when referring to the “prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears,” offered up by Christ, designated their date by the words, “ in the days of his flesh.”—-Hebrews, 5v. 7. So St. Peter may, perhaps, be understood as- having merely declared that Christ suffered and died “in the days of his flesh.”

Secondly.. The passages from 1 Peter contain nothing beyond the simple affirmation that Christ suffered and died in the flesh, a proposition that no one of modem times is wild enough to deny. But they contain no declaration that he did not also suffer in his spirit, human and divine. The participation of his divinity in his sufferings is entirely compatible with the passages. The expression of the existence of one thing is, indeed, sometimes held to be the exclusion of the existence of a correlative thing. But that rule cannot govern the present case6. The aim of the apostle, in the chapters from whence these passages are taken, and also in the preceding chapter, was to impress on his brethren the duty of following the example of Christ, especially in the article of suffering. To give the more point to his appeal, he might natu. rally have placed in its front ground the outward and visible suffering of their common master. It would not be surprising if, on this particular occasion, he designed to present rather the imitable example of the suffering man than the imnimitable example of the suffering God, as the pattern to be followed by the suffering faithful. So that the declarations in I Peter, that Christ suffered in the flesh, even taking the term flesh in its restricted and literal sense, are not an exclusion, express or implied, of the conclusion that he also suffered in both of his immaterial substances.

Thirdly. But the most conclusive answer to the passages from I Peter remains to be stated. And as this additional solution commingles itself with various other matters of debate between the advocates of the prevalent theory and ourselves, we shall be excused if we examine it a little more in detail than we should have deemed necessary, had a reply to the passages from I Peter been the sole object in view. The Bible often employs expressions, applicable, in their primary and strict sense, to the outer being only, to designate also the inner being. Thus the term flesh, in its primary and literal import, expresses only the body. But it is often used figuratively in Scripture to include the immaterial as well as the material part of man. Take the following samples of this scriptural use of the term: “ I will not fear what flesh can do unto me,” exclaimed the Psalmist.—-Psalm, 56Ivi. 4. And again: “ For he remembereth that they were but flesh.”—@Psalm,rn 78lxxviii. 39. “ No flesh shall have peace,” saith the prophet.—-Jeremiah, 12xii. 12. And again: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.”—" Jeremiah, 17. 5.. “For all flesh is grass,” declared the apostolic Peter.—-I Peter, 1i. 24.

The incarnate God had flesh. The flesh in which he dwelt became the peculiar flesh of the eternal Word. It was moulded out of the common mass of human flesh, and was set apart and consecrated as the appropriate flesh of the Son of God.- It is now his raised and glorified flesh, seated at the right hand of his Father. Though the corporeal garment, in which he clothed himself, was taken originally from the great storehouse of humanity, it became unspeakably exalted by the transcendent dignity of its divine wearer.

The term flesh, applied by St. Peter to the incarnmate God, in the passages so much relied on by Bishop Pearson, was, we have little doubt, a figure of speech to denote the whole united person of the Redeemer, human and divine. That the apostle used the term figuratively, at least to a certain extent, will not be denied by the generality of our opponents. Few of them will contend for the unscriptural position, that the sufferings of our Lord were confined literally to his body. It would ill comport with the generally received conceptions to suppose that mere “ corporal sufferance” was accepted by the infinite Father as a full propitiation for the transgressions of the world. Even the advocates of the prevalent theory will, therefore, geni-ierally understand the declarations of St. Peter to import mental as well as bodilyv sufferingo-,s. But, in their allowance of a figurative meaning to his declarations, the advocates of the prevalent theory stop short at the line separating Christ’s”s human soul from his ethereal essence. Why stop at that line? Inspiration has left no landmark there. The landmark there, which has appeared for ages, is an earthly structure, reared by human hands. If the scriptural meaning of the term flesh, when applied to man, has ample capacity to comprehend the corporeal and immaterial natures of our whole aggregate race, why may not the scriptural meaning of the same term, when applied to the fles h of the incarnate Word, be capacious enough to include both of the united natures of the Son of God, though the chief element in the immaterial part of his united natures was his ethereal essence?

That the term flesh, in scriptural language, when applied to the incarnate God, includes his whole united being, human and divine, is not left to be deduced by any mere reasoning process. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”—-John, 1i. 14. Here the flesh consecrated by the in-dwelling Deity was clearly used to denote both his natures. But for this scriptural meaning of the term when thus divinely applied, we have still more explicit authority, coming direct from the lips of one of the Holy Three. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if a man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”—-John, 6vi. 51. In this passage, Christ used the terms “ my flesh” to designate that “ living bread which came from heaven;” which he gave “for the life of the world” " and of which, if any man eats, “ he shall live forever.” He employed the terms to denote the whole infinite totality of his mediatorial sacrifice. He used them as an appropriate name, when applied to himself, to comprehend, not only his body and human soul, but also that ethereal Essence, who had, from everlasting, occupied the right-hand throne of heaven.

If St. Peter used the term flesh, in the two passages under review, according to its scriptural meaning when applied to Christ—-a meaning which he himself had heard his beloved Master ordain and establish by the word of his own supremacy— then the conclusion is inevitable, that the apostle meant to declare that our Saviour had suffered and died in both his united natures. He used the term without exception or restriction, and must be understood to have intended all that the term imports. If this conclusion is correct, then the two passages from I Peter, invoked and marshalled against us by the modern representative of the prevalent theory as competent of themselves to vanquish all opposition, are found in the day of trial, though forming his whole array, to leave the service into which they had been impressed, and, passing over into our ranks, to form two of the chief supporters of our argument.

So the word body has its figurative meaning, and is often used to denote the inner as well as the outer man. Hence the expressions "somebody" and "nobody." Hence, when we use the colloloquial phrase “,everybody,” so constantly repeated in common parlance, we include not only the bodies, but also the spirits of all to whom we refer. The Scripture has borrowed the same figurative use of the word body, and applied it even to Christ. “ And you, that were some time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yvet now hath he reconciled in the body of his fle@sh through death.”—-Colossians, 1i. 21, 22. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”—-Hebrews, 10x. 1I0O. “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.”—-l Peter, 2ii. 24. In these passages, the inspired writers used not the word “body” merely to denliote the clay tabernacle of Christ; for then would they have made his sufferings literally and strictly corporeal, thereby sinking their dignity from the infinite to the finite. They used the term “body” as expressive, not only of the outward visible materiality, but also of the immaterial, breathing, living principle within.

When our Lord, at the institution of his commemorative supper, gave to his disciples the sacramental bread, declaring “This is my body,” he did not mean that the body of which the bread was symbolical consisted of the mere corporeal temple of his flesh. That alone was not the price to be paid for the redemption of the world. The terms “my body,” according to the sublime meaning of the divine speaker, comprehended the in-dwelling God, whose self-sacrifice was to sanctify that outer temple, and form a glorious structure of salvation worthy of its great Architect. The consecrated bread was typical, not only of the material, but also of the viewless and spiritual substance of the God incarnate. The terms were used by Christ to represent and designate the whole infinitude of his united being.

The scriptural custom of using the outer name to denote the inner being is exemplified in a still more striking instance. The second person of the Trinity, shrouded in flesh, was often called man by his own inspired apostles. Even he, who was caught up into the third heaven, frequently so teri-med his beloved and divine Master. Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you.”—-Acts, 2ii. 22. “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained.”—-Acts, 17xvii. 31. “For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.”—-Romans, 5v. 15. There is “ one mediator between God and men, th e man Christ Jesus.”—-l Timothy, 2ii. 5. “,But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God.”—-Hebrews, 10x. 12 . These inspired writers well knew—-they felt in every pulsation of their throbbing hearts— the melting, the exalting truth, that the manhood of their Redeemer bore a less proportion to his Godhead than the dim and fading star of morning bears to “ the glorious king of day rejoicing in the east.” "Yet they called him man. They thus gave a seeming prominence to his manhood, only as a faint emblem—-a shadowy figure of the ineffable splendours of the Godhead throned within.

But this scriptural usage is not of universal prevalence. .Qqualifying expressions often intervene in the sacred text to create exceptions. Thus, where, in speaking of Christ, the apostle declared, “ He was crucified through weakness.”—-2 Corinthians, 13xiii. 4,—-the term “crucified” must, in the particular instance, have meant the crucifixion of the body of our Lord by the wood and irons of the cross, without reference to those spiritual sufferings, which constituted, no doubt, the infinite ingredient in the price of man’s”s salvation. The body was “ crucified through weakness.” The incorporeal substance throned within felt not, either in its divine or mortal element, the distorting wood or the lacerating irons.

Buoyed up, as was the vicarious victim, “for the joy set before him,” the wood and the nails of the cross affected his human soul no more, perhaps, than they did his ethereal essence. They scarcely moved even the hoping, believing, exulting spirit of the penitent thief; they checked not the dying transports of the early Christian martyrs. It was the body of Christ, and not his spirit, either in its celestial or human constituent, that was “ crucified through weakness.” It is by its figurative use alone that the cross was made to” shadow forth in Holy Writ those viewless, nameless agonies which pervaded the inner being of the incarnate God. The term “crucified” in the passage under consideration, was restricted to its literal import by the qualifying adjunct.

Yet when applied in all its metaphorical amplitude to the sufferer on Calvary, the cross has a meaning high as heaven and vast as eternity. Though it strictly affected only the corporeal substance of our Lord, yet, when figuratively expanded, it includes also the vicarious sufferings of his human soul, and shadows forth to the awe stricken imagination those ineffable agonies which filled to overflowing the infinitude of his divine nature. The CROSS, in its ordinary scriptural import, is perhaps the most thrilling term to be found in the vocabularies of earth. The CROSS, the visible memorial of the humbled God—-the suffering God —-is a term in itself, indeed, brief and simple, yet presenting to the mental vision exhaustless elements for the study of eternity;—-into which the angels are still looking with holy, unsatiated curiosity. This is the crowning illustration of the scriptural usage of expressing things invisible by the things which are seen.