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CHAPTER XVIII.

Scriptural Passages ascribing Blessedness to the Deity--If they are more than Doxologies, they imply no Incapacity to sustain Volun tary Suffering-Divine Beatitude progressive-" Joy set before" "the Author and Finisher of our Faith"-Divine Immutability-Not impugned by our Argument.

THE scriptural passages ascribing blessedness to the Deity will, doubtless, be invoked in favour of his impassibility. The following are samples of these passages: "Blessed be the most high God."-Genesis, xiv., 20. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel forever and ever."-1 Chronicles, xvi., 36. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting."-Psalm xli., 13. "Blessed be the Lord forever more."-Psalm lxxxix., 52. 'Blessed be the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord."-John, xii., 13. "And worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever."-Romans, i., 25. "Of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever."-Romans, ix., 5. "Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate."-1 Timothy, vi.,

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We believe these passages to be rather doxologies than declarations of doctrine; rather ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving to the Deity than averments of his infinite beatitude. So thought MacKnight, the learned annotator on the apostolic epistles. The passage which seems to approach nearer than, perhaps, any other in the whole Bible, to a declaration of the unchanging felicity of the Godhead from everlasting to everlasting, is that which we have just transcribed from the first chapter of Romans, where it is said that the heathen "worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever." The learned annotator on the epistles, in his commentary on this passage, though himself a firm adherent of the prevalent theory, rendered the passage thus: Worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is to be praised forever."*

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But if any of the passages are to be regarded as declarations of the divine blessedness, they contain no affirmation or intimation that the beatitude of the Deity is fixed by a law paramount to his own volition, so that neither of the persons of the Trinity has capacity to become a voluntary sufferer.

The ascriptions of blessedness in scripture were often applied to Christ. It was of Christ that the apostle declared, "Who is over all, God blessed

* MacKnight on the Epistles, vol. i., p. 149.

forever." It was of Jesus Christ that he again declared, "Who is the blessed and only Potentate." These ascriptions were applicable as well to his manhood as to his Godhead. They reached and pervaded both of his united natures. The united being, the whole Christ of the Bible, was styled "the blessed and only Potentate." The whole Christ was denominated, "God blessed forever." And yet this same united Being had just passed through the most terrible furnace of suffering ever lighted up on earth. If the ascriptions implied declarations of unchanged beatitude, and reached the past as well as the coming eternity, then Christ suffered not. His passion was but Oriental imagery. It was Christ, termed in the passage from the twelfth chapter of John "the King of Israel," on whom the epithet "blessed" was bestowed as he was entering Jerusalem to be crucified. If the passage was intended, not as a mere hosanna, but a declaration of Christ's beatitude, it must have meant a beatitude of which he was capable of "emptying himself,” when required by the good of the universe and the glory of the Godhead; for in a few hours afterward he voluntarily paid, by his own unimaginable sufferings, the price of a world's redemption.

No direct affirmations of scripture were necessary to demonstrate the beatitude of God. It re

sults from the infinitude of his perfections. A Being of infinite power, knowledge, wisdom, holiness, justice, and goodness, has within himself infinite resources of felicity. But the felicity of the Deity is subject to his volition. He is not fated to the same unchangeable condition of blessedness whether he wills it or not. His beatitude is, like his glory, rather the emanation of his combined attributes than a distinct attribute of itself. Of his beatitude, as well as of his glory, the uncreated Son was capable of divesting himself for a time when he became a terrestrial sojourner in the flesh. His infinite power, and knowledge, and wisdom, and holiness, and justice, and goodness remained unchanged. But his glory and his beatitude he voluntarily cast aside for a brief season, that he might resume them again in increased and everlasting effulgence and perfection.

Had the second person of the Trinity peremptorily declined to suffer when his suffering was prompted by the affections of his own benignant heart, sanctioned by his own unerring wisdom, and approved in the council of the Godhead, none on earth can be sure that his bliss might not have sustained a greater diminution from the absence than it has from the endurance of suffering thus prompted, sanctioned, and approved. The aggregate of earthly happiness is measured by the span

of human life; the aggregate of divine felicity is weighed in the balances of eternity. None on earth can say that the brief suffering of the second person of the Trinity in the flesh has not augmented the totality of his beatitude, when tested by the arithmetic of heaven. Had he reposed unmoved on his throne, and beheld, afar off, the smoke of the torment of the apostate pair, and of the countless generations of their descendants, ascending up forever and ever, how can human reason venture to decide that, in the flight of endless ages, the eternity of his bliss might not have suffered more than it will have suffered from his mournful, but short earthly pilgrimage?

Reasoning pride has no grounds for concluding that the compassionate heart of our divine Redeemer might not have yearned unceasingly over the undistinguished perdition of a whole race, created by his own hands, in his own similitude, and seduced from unsuspecting innocence by the matchless wiles of one who had before beguiled from allegiance the third part of heaven. The ascending smoke would have been at once the memorial of a world destroyed, and the waving banner of his triumphant foe. Now has his divine and expiatory suffering bound that foe in everlasting chains, and proffered to every son and daughter of that world destroyed the healing and

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