genuinely Christian estimate of sin. “Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” But we have the Cross lifted up before our eyes and when, in the light of that, we begin to hate and dread sin worse than pain, then we shall have begun to make some real advance towards becoming that which we long to be, and all the time mean and aspire to be—Christians, disciples of the Crucified.
IV
THE MEANING OF SIN, AND THE REVELATION OF THE TRUE SELF
“In this we have come to know what love is, because He laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”—1 John iii. 16.
It is important that we should arrive at some clearer understanding of the nature of sin. Let us approach the question from the side of the Divine Indwelling. The doctrine of the Divine Immanence, in things and in persons, that doctrine which we are to-day slowly recovering, is rescued from pantheism by holding fast at the same time to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. God the Transcendent dwells in “all thinking things, all objects of all thoughts” by His Word and Spirit. The Word, the Logos, of which St. John speaks, is the Eternal Self-Expression of God, standing as it were face to face with Him in the depths of His eternal life. “In the beginning the Word was with God.” He is the Eternal Thought of God, Who includes within Himself this and all possible universes. And the Spirit, One with the Father and the Word, gives to the
Thought of God its realisation and embodiment in what we call things. And that realisation of the Thought of God by the Spirit of God is a progressive realisation—
1. In inorganic nature, as power and wisdom and beauty.
2. In organic beings, as vegetable and animal life.
3. In men, as the higher reason, including our moral and spiritual nature.
The long process of evolution is thus the progressive realisation of the Thought of God now becoming the Word, the expressed Thought of God. And this realisation is from within, a growing manifestation of God in created things. And its climax was reached in the Incarnation when
4. The Word became flesh; the Thought of God perfectly embodied in our humanity. And now this same progressive revelation of God is continuing on the higher plane into which it was uplifted at the Incarnation. The work of the Spirit is to form within the members of Christ’s Body, that Body which is constituted by His indwelling, the Mind and the Life of God Incarnate. “He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you.” So we get