STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF
CHRISTIANITY.

"Which of you convicteth me of sin? If I say truth, why do ye not believe me?" (John viii. 46.)

"And Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that beholdeth me, behold(John xii. 44, 45.)

eth him that sent me."

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even he that cometh into the world." (John xi. 25-27.)

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matt xi. 28-30.)

PART 2. WHO IS JESUS CHRIST?

WE can state here only in the barest outline the Christian conception of Christ. A later study will attempt to justify this conception.

Jesus believed himself to be the one perfect man. Neither in his consciousness nor in the consciousness of his disciples do we find any indication that he ever sinned.

He believed himself to hold a unique relation to his Father, God. Again and again he asserted that he was the messenger sent from God to reveal to men the meaning of life.

He believed that the world would be judged by the standard of his own life.

He believed that there was within himself that which would satisfy the longings of the human soul

"It is not by chance that Christianity centers in Jesus Christ and that he is accounted God and man. For thus the highest expression of truth is found in a person. If God be Father and man be his son, if self-giving love for the highest benefit of others be the supreme principle of their common nature, then the religious and ethical aspects of our faith are summed up in him. His life and his death reveal this love as supreme, and that is the final end of man. To that Christ appeals, to that he likens his Father, and that he asks from men as the condition of discipleship. Man becomes through perfect service the complete expression of God. So that the Christian finds the true symbol of his faith not in any abstract principle of the nature of the Infinite, but in him who went about doing good, and gave his life that his brethren also might become sons of God.""

1"Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Religion," pp. 190, 191.

STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF
CHRISTIANITY.

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Gen. i. 27.)

"And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in a weary land." (Isa. xxxii. 2.)

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing." (John xv. 5.)

PART 3. WHO IS MAN?

ACCORDING to Christianity man is a self-conscious, free moral being, made in God's likeness, and capable of understanding, at least in part, the works and manifestations of God.

No other religion gives to man such high dignity as does Christianity. Here he is represented not only as created in the image of God but he is known as the friend and companion of God. Jesus was interested in every type of humanity-the Samaritan woman at the well, the poor, blind beggar at the roadside, the scarlet woman who slipped into the banquet hall and anointed his feet, the learned and respectable Nicodemus, the degraded taxgatherer Levi-Matthew, who was willing to make his living out of exorbitant taxes extorted from his fellow-countrymen-in all these he was intensely interested.

Jesus was no pretender. He was no flatterer. He was interested in these people because he saw in them something genuinely worth while. As Dr. Bosworth points ont: “He

represented this interest in human personality as not peculiar to himself but as shared by God and heaven.'

991

Now man is sacred because he is essentially akin to God, because there is a Godhead within him. Sin disfigures the image of God in man. It often lies dormant and undeveloped because of lack of attention, but the essential Godhead remains. One of the most remarkable things about Christ is his ability to see this kinship in the life of a man beneath all the veneer of poverty, ignorance, and sin.

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of our time is our new appreciation of the value and sacredness of human personality. Indeed this is the very basis of our great social awakening, and both of these in turn are the outgrowth of the more careful understanding and interpretation of the message of Christ.

Let all harmonies

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon
The princely guest, whether in the soft attire
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
And lending life to the dead form of faith,
Give human nature reverence for the sake
Of one who bore it, making it divine
With the ineffable tenderness of God;

Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,

The heirship of an unknown destiny,

The unsolved mystery round about us

Make a man more precious than the gold of Ophir.

—Whittier's “Among the Hills.”

"Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles," p. 115.

STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF
CHRISTIANITY.

"Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.' (1 John iii. 4.)

"Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bond servant of sin." (John viii. 34.)

"For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. vi. 23.)

"To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (Jas. iv. 17.)

PART 4. WHAT IS SIN?

JESUS says that the whole law can be summed up in love for God and love for our fellow-men. Sin is defined in the New Testament as the transgression of the law-that is, sin is disregard of God and of my fellow-men. St. Paul says: "He that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law." (Rom. xiii. 8.)

John speaks of the sinner as being a bond servant, as being under dominion. Sin must be a principle of the soul, a motive of life, an intention. It does not necessarily express itself in an act. Christ spoke of it as a desire of the heart, whether gratified or not. Evidently sin is something that goes to the very roots of a man's being. It is fundamental.

Perhaps we may define it as a person's deliberate attitude, act, or principle of life, which is in nonconformity with the will of God. It is putting my will over in opposition to the known will of God. In other words, the sinful life is the self-centered life; the righteous life is the Godcentered life.

Selfishness, then, is the root of sin. It is that unwillingness to love God and men and live on friendly terms with them, which attitude renders one incapable of thinking of the interest of others. Sin, therefore, is a great isolator. He who will not think of others cannot live a social life. He banishes himself. But personality can live only through association with others. The very term personality denotes social relationships. Hence the sinful, selfish man cuts