Revealer.

In the unity of the Godhead, Christ is God in manifestation, redemption, intercession, judgment. In the Trinity, in which we must believe God exists, Jesus Christ is the personality expressive, at first visibly and now invisibly, of the tender qualities of the Divine nature which, manifested in part in the world of nature, are there so linked with severity as to require special and peculiar revelation in the person of Jesus Christ in order that God may be understood both as transcending nature and as eternal love.

Surely the doctrine, "I believe in the Holy Ghost," will remain. It is a misfortune that the word "ghost" has, in our English use, an unworthy and terrifying significance. On this account it were well if we could substitute for constant use the word "Spirit."

The Holy Ghost.

The Energy of God.

The Interpreter.

The Holy Spirit is the energy of God, whether working as Creator or in the processes of redemption. It stirs us to the depths when we consider that the Author of the worlds, the Source of the energies is He who transforms, renews, sanctifies, and witnesses in us. There is no question as to the pervasiveness and competence of the Power which "works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure." We are taught to trace all our religious uplift to the highest possible source. We gather a great sense of our worth by the dignity of this association as we do of the condescension of our Lord in making His home in our hearts. This Holy Spirit is in all Christians the energy of the entire spiritual life. By this we do the things which by nature we can not do. His is that Divine impulse which initiates, continues, matures, and satisfies the life of God in us. It is the indwelling, all-pervading Holy Spirit, which interprets that great word, "I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be one as We are."

The Doctrine of Energy.

And if the most advanced philosophy should yet be confirmed as true that there is nothing really but energy, none the less would the doctrine of the Holy Spirit abide. Back of all the individual energies of humanity; back of all the forces of nature is the supreme energy of God. If creation be our theory, it is the Spirit of God which broods on the face of the waters. If evolution be our creed, it is "in Him we live and move and have our being." All science is but the knowing of His way of working, and all theology is but the discovery of His mind. To know Him is to know all things. The latest Christian will be saying, "I believe in the Holy Ghost."

The Forgiveness of Sin.

Huxley on Depravity.

Not All Born Good.

Experience of Hell.

And what becomes of the doctrine of the "forgiveness of sins" in this outlook for "the things which remain?" Accepting Huxley as the incarnation of the skeptical spirit of our time, I quote from him his thought of sin, depravity, and punishment, as a hint of where the scientific spirit may yet aid us. "The doctrine of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man, the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgos subordinate to a benevolent Almighty who has only lately revealed Himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal, popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so.... That it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if they will only try; that all partial evil is universal good; and other optimistic figments." "I suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong have descended into hell and stopped there quite long enough to know what infinite punishment means."

Transmission of Evil.

Surely, the established truths of heredity confirm the doctrine that man, if not born depraved, is born deprived of tendencies toward good essential to his own welfare and that of the race. "Where sin has once taken hold of the race, the natural reproduction of life become reproduction of life morally injured and faulty. With evil once begun, the race is a succession of tainted individuals; an organism that works toward continuance of evil. Not but that good is transmitted at the same time, for it goes along with evil. Any virtue or value which is strong enough to live will pass from generation to generation even while evil is making the same journey."6

Depravation and Deprivation.

Natural Standards.

The Decalogue.

While we hold that this tendency, this natural sluggishness in laying hold of the things of the higher nature is not in itself guilt, it becomes so by the voluntary adoption of the lower forces as the guide of life. Nature has her own decalogue. There is a law written upon our hearts. The wasting of power by anger, jealousy, envy, covetousness and the like, and the degradation following their expression in acts of revenge, concupiscence, and mere rapacity, are known without revelation by all races which have not suffered the downward evolution. The literatures prove this back even to the days of Hamurabi. Thus natural standards of temper and conduct are seen to exist, below which men may not live without loss, and hence there are natural laws to disobey which is sin. The table given on Sinai, though given to Moses, was in the world long before Moses. But higher sanction was given it by the lawgiver, and the highest by the re-enactment of the Decalogue by Jesus Christ.

The Heart Law.

Effects of Sin.

Characteristics of Sin.

Results of Sin.

Sin is blameworthy because it is born of the human preference and the human will. The nation which, knowing most of the Divine will, disobeys, is the most guilty because the most knowing. The proportion of guilt depends on the measure of knowledge and the measure of opportunity. Hence there is some guilt among those who know only a part of the truth, and if a man perceives, without the aid of revelation, a law in nature and a penalty, and breaks that law, then is he a sinner. Some of the physical consequences may apparently be avoided by future obedience. But the inner and spiritual consequences of sin are the worst—these things; namely: In the weakening of the will; in the hardening of the conscience; and, later, in the recklessness as to consequences, indicated by that terrible indictment by Paul, "Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over." The consciousness of sin is practically universal. It is no invention of Christianity, though brought to its greatest force by Christianity. Religions, governments, literatures,—all and everywhere,—treat of sin as a fact. It is more than dominion of body over spirit; more than an incident of growth; more than a result of undeveloped judgment, tinged with emotion, and applied to questions of motive and conduct. Sin is the abnormal; sin is a variant from standard; sin is self-will and selfishness throttling duty. Where men accept a God, it is opposition to His law and government.7 If no personal God be believed in, then sin is willful opposition to the course of nature and to law, as proved by experience. So, in every case, it is unworthy, injurious, and guilty, and must be repented of and atoned for. The doctrine of sin will never be essentially disturbed.

A Supernatural Event.

Lacks Scientific Proof.

An Old Fallacy.