Читать книгу The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things - Andrew Jukes - Страница 11

eternal Word stooping to come out of man's heart and in human form. And yet this could not be done without the Truth by its very humanity laying itself open to the charge of being merely human and not divine, and to the humiliation of being rejected for having our infirmities upon it. Love can bear all this, and God is love, and the truth can bear it, for truth must conquer all things. And therefore while it submits to take a human form, in which it can be judged and die, (for it must die and to some of us has died, in the form we first apprehended it,— a trial of faith sooner or later to be known by all disciples, who, like apostles of old in the same strait, are sorely perplexed at this dying, for they have trusted that this is He which should have redeemed Israel,— ) it must also live and rise again, and glorify that human form forever. But because it has thus stooped to come in human form, out of the heart of man, even as Christ came forth from Mary, for us, therefore like Him it shall be stripped and mocked. But those who are stripping it know not what they do.

§ II. The Testimony of Scripture.

I pass on now from the nature of Scripture to its teachings as to the destiny of the human race, and more especially of those who here either reject or never hear the gospel. I feel how solemn the enquiry is, not only because no subject can be of greater moment, but because what appears to me to be the truth differs from those conclusions which the Church has stamped with her authority. Believing, however, that the Holy Scripture, under God and His Spirit's teaching, is the final appeal in all controversies,— regarding it as the unexhausted mine from whence the unsearchable riches of Christ have vet still more to be dug out,— acknowledging no authority against its conclusions, and with the deepest conviction that one jot and one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled,— I turn to it on this as on every other point, to listen and bow to its decisions. And knowing, for by grace this Word is no stranger to me, that like Christ's flesh it is a veil as well as a revelation,— knowing that it has many things to say which we cannot bear at first, and that, if taken partially or in the letter, it may appear to teach what is directly opposed to Christ's mind and to its true meaning;— in this like not a few of Christ's own words, as when He said, “He that hath no sword, let