from all sin. It is not by the blood of the son of Mary, but the blood of the Son of God that we are brought out of nature's darkness into the marvelous light and liberty of sons of God. Peter declares; 'It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins, for we are not redeemed by such corruptible things as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ. Blood goes readily to corruption. Silver and gold are insoluble, save in strongest acids. No other matter resists corruption as they do. However they wear away, so they are destructible. But the sacrificial blood of Christ, that perfect life of holiness in him, which is able to cleanse every man from all sin, was in the beginning with God and everlasting as God himself.

Jesus was the Lamb of God. The lamb was the truth or faith offering, and the Greek word for lamb was probably derived from a Hebrew word meaning truth. When Jesus an unknown man walked along the banks of the Jordan, and John the Baptist called attention to him saying; "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, the people understood it was the living truth in the person of the Messiah, and the introduction of Jesus fell upon the ears of the people with added emphasis, by reason of the symbolic language.

"The Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world. It has been six thousand years since Adam and Eve were created, and it has been millions since the foundations of the world were laid; but Jesus was slain less than two thousand years ago, at Calvary on the criminal's hill. The living truth, the holiness of personal life by which the sins

'I Pet. 1:18-19. John 1:29. Rev. 8:1.

of the world shall be taken away, and as it was offered in the presence of men by Jesus, was in the person of the Father, before the foundations of the world were laid.

If it was right for God to placate his wrath and gratify his vengeance against sinning men, by taking satisfaction in the sufferings of his only well beloved Son, then it is right for parents to punish their children to gratify their own angry passions. If it was necessary to maintain heaven's righteous law that God should so afflict his own Son, or eternally punish men, then the church fathers as the vicegerents of God, were righteous in putting to the rack or burning stake all those who endeavored to live by faith, instead of in obedience to their dogmas. If righteousness compelled God to do, as the atonement theory represents him, then the persecutors of the martyrs, for disobeying the religious laws were the most Godlike men the world knows; and it is safe to say that this principle held as divine righteousness prompted the cruel persecutions, which put to death almost as many people as are in our nation.

A man may be justified before the law who in fact is a criminal, but one justified before God is pure at heart. 10 By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for the righteousness of God is manifested without the law. The just shall live by faith, and not by the deeds of the law; it is by grace and not by works that we are saved. It is not by the operations of the natural man, either by Jesus or by ourselves, but by holiness of the divine life that we see God.

The ministry of Jesus was to bear witness to the truth, that men might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. There is a wide difference between a martyr,

10Rom. 3:20-21.

giving his life in testimony for the truth, and a bullock slain on the altar, to appease the wrath of a heathen deity. There is a wide difference between a good man who prefers to die, rather than to be untrue to a sacred trust, as a good shepherd who would give his life for the sheep; and the practice in the benighted parts of darkest Africa, in annually slaying one of the most beautiful maidens, as a sacrifice to placate the god of harvest. There is a wide difference between a kind missionary going to the heathen to tell the good news of God manifested in the flesh of our elder brother, as our hope; and in going there to be slain as a substitute for wicked outlaws, justly condemned to die. There is a wide difference between the church sending missionaries into fields where they have been slain by cannibals, and sending them there as food for those human demons, and the church's wrath against cannibalism being expiated thereby. There is a wider difference between Jesus coming among men, to show them the powers of divine life in humanity, to show them the possibility of their salvation through their spirits quickened by the truth, and not drawing back though the cross and the tomb came in his pathway; and dying to appease the wrath of a monster, who had determined to wreak out his anger on the spirits of men throughout an awful eternity.

CHAPTER XII

DOGMA OF THE HOLY GHOST

HE theological and commonly accepted definition of the holy spirit or holy ghost is an individual deity, having a mysterious sameness with God the Father, spoken of at times as the Comforter sent by Jesus Christ, an agent with wonderful regenerating power; but if offended relentless as a demon, and leaves the offender in hopeless despair, to spend an eternity in woe.

It is described as the third person in the trinity of the Godhead, consisting of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost. The dogma of the trinity is authoritatively stated in the Athenasian Creed, written in the fifth century and adopted as the orthodox belief of the evangelical Christian church and so remains till this day. The following are extracts from it. "The person of the Father is one, the Son is another and the Holy Ghost is another. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God. Yet there are not three Gods, but one. He who wishes to be saved must THINK thus concerning the trinity. This is the catholic faith which unless a man fully and firmly believes, he cannot be saved."

The word ghost is an old English word, which at the time our Bible was translated meant spirit, but since has acquired the meaning of apparition, the manifestations of departed spirits, phantoms. For this reason the translators of the Revised Version of the New Testament used the word spirit instead.

The words holy ghost and holy spirit are given capital

initials in our English New Testament. All the pronouns referring to the holy spirit are put in the masculine gender. But in the Greek text there are no capital initials, the words from which holy spirit are translated are in the neuter gender, and all the pronouns referring to them are in the neuter gender also. Both the capital initials and the masculine gender have no higher authority than the Athenasian Creed and are the work of the translators. Yet we would not charge them with intentionally doing violence to the inspired word. It is hard to rise above religious tenets of faith. At the time the Bible was translated into English, religious thought was in the grip of theology, reverenced as the oracle of Jehovah, with the prestige of a thousand years. They probably tried to make the English translation express what they thought the inspired writers must have meant. "Moreover, King James was very careful to provide that neither church nor state should suffer from the enterprise, for he issued instructions to the translators to depart as little as possible from the other received translations, especially the Bishop's Bible; and above all to sanction no innovation that would disturb the orthodoxy and peace of the church."

It is not claimed by the friends of the tenet that the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Ghost is clearly taught in the Old Testament. Moreover, there is only one passage in the New Testament, where the doctrine of the trinity of the Godhead, and the personality of the Holy Ghost is set forth. This passage is in 1 John 5:7 and reads, For there are three that bear witness in heaven the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, these three are one. All Biblical exegetes agree that the passage is spurious, and consequently the translators of the Revised Version left it out. The manuscripts

'See Bagester's Com. Teach. B. Can. p. 10.