Just as the believer is said to be changed into the image' of Christ from glory to glory' by 'beholding' Him now 'as in a glass,' so the image will be perfected when His full glory is revealed at His appearing.

But if so, then Christ and the perfect righteousness of Christ is the living representative of what the believer will be; and it is not merely for the sake of his union and relation to Christ that his sins are forgiven, but on account of what that union must inevitably make him. Did only that union and relation with Christ exist, while it was without power to conform the believer to the moral image of Christ and of God,* then it is difficult to see how it would be possible for God to receive into His presence those who were thus still unredeemed from sin. But the union does conform the believer to Christ, and is the earnest of his complete redemption from sin; and therefore Christ and His perfect righteousness is the living representative of the Christian, the propitiation for his sin, the ever-living intercession for his failures and infirmities.

It is equally clearly taught that the whole human race are to be redeemed; that the effects of Christ's life and death will eventually make an end of sin,' and 'bring in everlasting righteousness'; that is to say-although those who now reject Him must perish, and although the enmity and sin of man is to manifest itself in its darkest and wildest form during the closing years of this dispensation yet that the influence of Christ will eventually prevail, and righteousness cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.' If so, then Christ is also the representative of what the human race will, and must be. Already His spirit has leavened the thought of the world and changed the character of races; and although prophecy tells us that there must be a great retrocession, yet it is

This, however, would plainly involve a moral contradiction.

rather the retrocession of some mighty wave which gathers itself together before surging forward with increased force to flood the shore. Thus, Christ and His righteousness is not the representative of the Christian only, but of the whole human race also; and just as He is the propitiation for the sins of the Christians, so, in like manner, is He the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. If His participation in human nature, and consequent relation to the whole race, was incapable of producing any more effect than it has had as yet, then the continuance of a race whose sin and misery ever tend to increase, would be contrary alike to righteousness and mercy. But it is not so; and Christ, as the perfectly righteous Man, is the earnest of the future, the representative of redeemed humanity and of the whole human race, for whom, therefore, as for the Christian, He ever liveth to make intercession.'

Let it be observed, also, that this is the principle of God's dealings with men from the earliest times. Thus when Israel sinned in the matter of Baal-Peor, and God's anger was kindled against them, Phinehas, zealous for God, slew one of the most open offenders in the sight of all the people, and the plague was stayed. Therefore the Lord said: Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son ' of Aaron the priest, has turned My wrath away from the 'children of Israel while he was zealous for My sake ' among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel ' in My jealousy. Wherefore say, Behold I give unto him 'My covenant of peace, and he shall have it and his seed 'after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priest'hood, because he was zealous for his God, and made an "at-one-ment for the children of Israel.'

Phinehas was the only man in the congregation who dared to openly witness for God; but had this been all, had his righteousness been without effect, so that he himself had been slain by the angry multitudes, still

greater wrath would have been the only result against people who had proved themselves so deaf to the call to repentance. But it was not so. The conscience of the people, dulled for the time, was not dead. They had been witnesses to many an act of God's judgment and mercy, and already there were many who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle'; and thus the indignant zeal of Phinehas against the madness of those who were rebelling against the command of God, was exactly calculated to send a thrill of conviction through the whole assembly. It was the manifestation of a righteousness to which their conscience bowed, a condemnation of their sin which they were forced to admit as just.

Phinehas was thus like the little leaven which leavens the whole lump; and because this was the case, his righteousness was an at-one-ment and propitiation for their sin.

In like manner we gather from the intercession of Abraham for Sodom, that the righteousness of ten righteous men in that city would have been a propitiation for its guilt. But there was only one, and although he vexed his righteous soul with their unlawful deeds,' we are not told that he, like Phinehas, protested against them. On the contrary, his attitude, when the angels came to warn him to flee, was only temporizing and conciliatory; nor was it, perhaps, possible for him to have done much good by any bolder action, for not only were the people of Sodom very different from the people of Israel, in being without the knowledge of God or any experience of His judgments and mercies, and their consciences therefore incapable of being roused by any mere protest against their wickedness, but Lot was an alien amongst them, and not, like Phinehas with regard to Israel, bound to them by ties of relation and affection. Lot's open condemnation of the people of Sodom, therefore, would have appeared rather as the act of an enemy

than that of a patriot anxious for the higher good of his countrymen. Yet, had there been ten righteous men, then their combined influence would not have failed to have awakened the slumbering conscience of the people, and thus have turned many to righteousness. If, indeed, they had been of the same race and blood as their fellowcitizens, they would have been the evidence that the latter were not hopelessly wicked, but that there was an underlying capacity for righteousness in them which would certainly have been called forth by a powerful appeal; and thus the presence of ten such righteous men would have been a propitiation for the sin of the city.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH.

WE have seen that the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of the Christian are implied to be of the same nature, i.e., both are the righteousness of faith; and it is necessary at this point to consider, a little more closely, their character and connection, in order to understand their bearing on redemption.

The Apostle Paul says: We' (i.e., he and his fellowApostles) preach Christ crucified' (1 Cor. i. 23); and again he says: 'I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified' (1 Cor. ii. 2). This implies that the doctrine of the Cross of Christ constituted the whole of apostolic teaching, and that all their instructions on holiness and faith, and on the righteousness of faith, were involved in that doctrine.

It should be observed also that this doctrine was to be an offence, and a stumbling-block to many-that is to say, there would be something in its character that would provoke their anger, and prove an obstacle to their accepting it. For the preaching of the cross,' says the Apostle, is to them that perish foolishness' (1 Cor. i. 18); and again he says: We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness' (verse 23); and again he writes to the Galatians :