mind and heart of God must be interpreted through the action of God, and not through the action of men. Thus God's action in redemption gives significance to the words of revelation which are to be interpreted by God's action rather than by man's. It is God's action in redemption in Christ and in the Holy Spirit by which we are to learn the meaning of God's love.

Hence Christ is emphatically the Word of God. In him is spoken the great Word of revelation. His person, his life, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and continued reign are the true revelation of God. The revelation by words is secondary and subordinate.

3. When God has revealed himself by actions, a revelation by words is possible, supplementing the revelation by action. A mother, revealed already to her child through acts of love, can take the child on her knee and explain its filial duties; and every word is now powerful with the power of a mother's love. So God, entering into human history with the energy of redeeming grace, may inspire individuals with knowledge to be communicated to others. But these private revelations must always be dependent on and subordinate to the public acts of his redeeming love. A general reveals the plan of his campaign by his acts in prosecuting it. But, as incidental to it, he gives sealed orders to this general and that, sends despatches to this one and that, takes some into his counsels, and declares, explains, and vindicates his plans. These private communications are afterwards of great use in throwing light on his plans. But they are incidental and subordinate to the grand revelation which he makes in the action of the campaign. So we have inspired communications from prophets and apostles, but all incidental and subordinate to the grand revelation in the divine action in redemption, and pre-eminently in Christ, the Living Word.

4. Revelation, therefore, is not an end in itself, but an incident to the divine action in redemption. A mother in her care of her child, a general in the conduct of a campaign, a statesman in the administration of government, reveal

themselves; but the revelation is incidental to their main purpose, and is not itself the end for which they act. So God's action in redemption is incidentally a revelation; but the revelation is not the end for which he acts.

All God's action must be sincere and hearty. It must be the expression of what God is. He cannot act merely for show or for effect. His action is the expression of what he is; it carries in it all the earnestness and energy of God. So the blessed sunlight, which reveals the sun and illumines all things, is the outpouring of the light and heat which burn with energy inconceivable in the sun, raging in cyclones of fire, bursting in volcanic eruptions which might throw up the earth as a stone into the air, streaming in cones of flame eighty thousand miles into space, and in a few minutes falling back into the burning mass. So God's love, glowing with the infinite energies of the Godhead, and pouring through all space with blessing, will certainly reveal itself; but the revelation is not the end for which he acts.

If the revelation were the end of the action, the action itself would cease to be the action of love; the revelation would cease to be a revelation of love; and the whole manifestation would cease to be a moral power quickening love in man. Any theory which represents the incarnation or any divine action as designed only to show God, and so to produce a moral impression on his creatures, is void of meaning; for God's action can reveal God and become a moral power upon man only as his action is the sincere and hearty expression and outshining of what God is. The supposition that revelation is an end in itself drives us into this erroneous theory-a conception derogatory to God, and making his action not real and hearty, but scenic and sensational. It also leads legitimately to the fundamental error of rationalism — that the evil into which man has fallen is not sin, but ignorance, or at the worst error, and therefore that he needs not redemption, but instruction.

Writers on the Evidences of Christianity often argue as if the grand design of God in all the divine action recorded

in the Old Testament and the New was to prepare the Bible as an authoritative revelation of his will, and leave the Bible in the world to effect its renovation. But it is not the written word, but the living Word; not the Bible, but God's grace in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, which is the power of salvation to men.

5. It follows that miracles are not to be regarded simply as seals of the truth of revelation, as credentials of inspired messengers, certifying their authority to reveal God's will, but as a part of the divine action in human history redeeming men from sin. As the divine love worked its way into human history, its divine energy could not always be contained in the ordinary courses of the divine action, but leaped from its overcharged conductors, and scintillated and flashed and electrified in miracles. It sometimes encountered obstacles which could not be removed by ordinary action, and which were miraculously swept away. Especially, in entering humanity in Jesus Christ, and offering the oblation of sacrificial love in the redemption of man, the action was necessarily and in its very essence miraculous. Therefore we no longer point to miracles as simply the external evidences of the divine authority of a book; we no longer draw the internal evidences of the divine authority of that book from its superior morality alone, thus sinking Christianity to the level of rationalism; but we regard Christianity as the action of God redeeming man from sin an action which is primarily redemption, necessarily historical and supernatural, and incidentally a revelation. And we claim that Christianity is true on the grounds that it is the only rational and satisfactory exposition of the condition, history, and destiny of man in his relation to God, and the only manifestation of God which in every age meets man's spiritual necessities.

6. The objection of F. W. Newman and others, that a book-revelation is impossible, is now seen to be without force. It is founded on the supposition, itself rationalistic, though apparently accepted by some writers on the Evidences, that the Bible is simply a revelation of moral truth and duty,

and that the end of all God's supernatural action was to make and authenticate this revelation. To this it is objected that moral truth and law must always be judged by man's moral or practical reason, and therefore cannot be substantiated by outward authority, not even by miracles. Certainly, a miracle cannot prove that it is right to hate one's neighbor. But the objection is of no force against God's supernatural action in redeeming men from sin, and the revelation of his love incident thereto.

IV. The Knowledge of God revealed through his Action in Redemption is a Moral Power in the Establishment and Administration of his Kingdom.

Every action spreads its influence beyond the time and place in which the power is exerted, as a candle shines far beyond itself into the darkness; as the cholera, once when it swept around the world, originated in the filthiness and other unwholesome conditions of certain crowds of pilgrims in the East. This is true of all action, but especially noticeable in respect to memorable acts. A mother's love continues to be a moral power on the son, though he dwells in another hemisphere; and after her death it is purified and intensified into a heavenly power. The memory of the martyrs is an inspiration in every age. At the stake Latimer said to his companion: "Fear not, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as, I trust, shall never be put out." The young men praying near the haystack in Williamstown are still missionaries to the heathen. Howard still inspires to benevolence. The great name of Washington still overshadows and protects his country. "Stat magna nominis umbra." Every heroic life is a power so long as its history is read.

These are analogous to the moral influence of God's historical action in redemption. Of his propitiatory sacrifice Christ said: "It is finished," and died. His earthly life ended, and became a part of the history of the past. But in that life and death he made propitiation for our sins, and opened the

way of deliverance from their power; he triumphed over death; he disclosed the infinite love of God our Redeemer; and in all the ages his name is above every name; and his appeal: "Do this for my sake," finds a willing response. The same moral power, though less marked, is inherent in the action of God in the history of the Jews. It is a study and a guide to all generations. Thus God's past action in history is a moral power in all subsequent generations; and this must not be overlooked in considering the divine agency in the establishment, administration, and triumph of Christ's kingdom.

Here, however, it must be observed that the moral power of God's past historical action is an incidental result of that action, not its primary end. An action of which the primary end is to make itself a moral power is an action from which the essence of the moral power is left out. It is a revelation that reveals nothing. The very conception breaks down, like the conception of motion in which nothing moves. There would be no moral power in a martyrdom suffered for the purpose of creating moral power. The martyr would be a witness testifying nothing. The moral power is not in the dying, but in the character manifested in the dying, and which, under the circumstances, would equally have necessitated the dying if it were to be forever secret.

So Christ did not come into the world and die primarily to create a moral power. The supposition eviscerates itself. It has been already said that all God's action is the sincere and hearty expression of what God is. Its moral power does not lie in the action, but in the divine thought and character expressed in the action. If we leave out of Christ's work the idea of atonement, -- if he did not suffer for us, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God, and was not the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, then we leave out the essence of his moral power. God in redemption reveals his entire character in harmony. God is not a nature having instincts and wants seeking gratification. His action is not the development of a nature according to necessary impulses.