against the Holy One of God; his death, in which was manifested the mighty power of the kingdom of darkness among mankind, seemed to be their most splendid triumph, for here the mightiest opponent of this kingdom succumbed to their machinations. But the relation was reversed, and since the sufferings of Christ were the completion of his work of redemption, since Christ by his resurrection and ascension to heaven manifested the victorious power of the redemption he had completed, since now as the Glorified One, with the power of a divine life that overcame all opposition, he continued to work in and by those whom he had redeemed from the power of sin and Satan,-it was precisely by that event which appeared as a victory of the kingdom of darkness that its power was destroyed. In this connexion Paul says, in Coloss. ii. 15, that Christ by his redeeming sufferings had gained a triumph over the powers that opposed the kingdom of God, and had put them openly to shame, just as the chiefs of vanquished nations are led in a triumphal procession as signs of the destruction of the hostile force, thus the power of evil now appeared annihilated. And a similar image in Eph. iv. 8, represents Christ, after he had made prisoners of the powers opposed to him, as ascending victoriously to heaven, and distributing gifts among men as the tokens of his triumph, just as princes are wont to celebrate their victories by the distribution of donatives. These gifts are the charisms. As the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the impartation of divine life to believers, and especially the founding of a church animated by a divine principle of life, are proofs of the conquest over the kingdom of evil, and of the liberation of the redeemed from its power; so likewise the manifold operations of this divine life in redeemed human nature, are so many marks of Christ's victory over the kingdom of evil, since those powers belonging to man, which formerly were employed in the service of sin, are now become the organs of the divine life. Now, through redemption the power of the kingdom of darkness is broken, and a foundation is laid for the complete victory of the king

And in opposition to this mistake, he now says that he speaks only of what the heathens believed subjectively from their own standing-point, which stood in opposition to the Christian, and with which Christians could enter into no sort of communion, that those beings to whom they sacrificed were daμóvia in the Grecian sense of the term.

dom of God and its total separation from all evil. But till this final consummation is effected, the kingdom of Christ can only develop itself in continued conflict with the kingdom of evil, for the power of the latter is still shown in them who have not been freed from it by redemption, and by them the kingdom of God as it exists in the believer is opposed, though all that opposes it must in the end contribute to its victory. And even in the redeemed themselves, points of connexion with the kingdom of evil exist, as far as their lives are not purified from a mixture of ungodliness. Hence Christians are called to act as soldiers for the kingdom of Christ, 2 Tim. ii. 3, against all the power of evil, both that which meets them from without in their efforts for the extension and promotion of the kingdom of Christ among mankind, as well as against all from within, which threatens to disturb the operations of the divine life in themselves, and in so doing to retard the internal advancement of Christ's kingdom, Eph. vi. 11. It is the dictate of practical Christian morals, that as every talent is transformed into, charism, it becomes appropriated for this divine equipment of the militia Christi. If Christians only rightly appropriate divine truth, and make all the powers of their nature subservient to it, they will find t terein the most complete equipment (the πανοπλία τοῦ θεοῦ) ir. order to carry on this warfare successfully. Whenever Paul mentions this invisible kingdom of evil, it is always in connexion with the presupposed sinful direction of the will in human nature, for the doctrine of Satan can only be rightly understood by means of the idea of sin derived from our moral experience. In the copious discussion on the nature and origin of sin, and on the reaction of the work of redemption against sin, which is given in the Epistle to the Romans, Satan is not mentioned; and when Paul first turned to the heathen and led them to the faith, he certainly appealed at first only to the consciousness of sin in their own breasts, as in his discourse at Athens. Moreover, he always contemplated this doctrine in connexion with the redemption accomplished by Christ. Believers have reason to fear the invisible powers of darkness only when they expose themselves to their influence by the sinful direction of their will, and are not careful to make a right use of the means granted them in communion with Christ, for conflicting with the kingdom of evil; that kingdom which the

Redeemer has overcome once for all. Paul employs this doctrine to arouse believers to greater watchfulness, that, under the consciousness of an opposing invisible power which avails itself of every germ of evil as a point of connexion, they may carefully watch and allow nothing of the kind to spring up; and that they may rightly appropriate and use the divine weapons furnished by the gospel against all temptation; 2 Cor. ii. 10, 11; Eph. vi. 12.

We have now to speak of the gradual development of the kingdom of Christ, as it advances in conflict with the kingdom of evil, until the period of its completion.

The

With respect to the manner in which both nations and individuals are led by the publication of the gospel to a participation in the kingdom of God, Paul deduces the counsel of redemption and everything belonging to its completion, both generally and particularly, from the free disposal of the grace of God, irrespective of any merit on the part of man. peculiar form of his doctrinal scheme is closely connected with the manner in which he was changed from being an eager persecutor of the gospel into its zealous professor and publisher. And this free movement of grace, not measured and determined according to human merit, he brings forward in opposition to a theory equally arrogant and contracted, according to which admission to the kingdom of God was determined by the merits of a legal righteousness; the Jewish people, by virtue of the merits and election of their progenitors, were supposed to have an unalienable right to form the main-pillar and centre of the theocracy. Accordingly, he contemplates the free arrangements of grace in a twofold contrast; in contrast to claims founded on natural descent from distinguished ancestors, and a peculiar theocratic nation—and to claims founded on the meritoriousness of a legal righteousness. In reference to the former, he makes the contrast on the one hand of natural descent determined by law, and therefore founded in a law of natural development, and defined by it; on the other hand, a development not to be calculated according to such a law of nature, but one which depends on the free disposal of divine grace and of the divine Spirit; the arrangement according to which the promise is fulfilled as the work of God's free grace. In the former case, the development of the kingdom of God proceeds by outward propaga

tion and transmission-in the latter, a development ensues in virtue of the invisible and internal connexion of the operations of the divine Spirit, and of the communication of divine life. Paul illustrates this universal contrast,' this law for the theocratical development through all ages by a particular example, the example of Abraham's posterity, from whom the Jews deduced their theocratic privileges. He points out how, among the immediate posterity of Abraham, not that son was chosen who would have carried on the line of his descendants according to the common course of nature, but one who was miraculously born 2 contrary to all human calculation; that this latter, and not the former, was destined to be the instrument of fulfilling the divine promises, and of continuing the theocracy; such, he shows, was the law of its continued development. Most unjustly has Paul been charged here with an arbitrary allegorizing which could carry weight only with the readers of that age.

We do not here perceive in him a theologian entangled in Jewish prejudices, of which his education in the school of Pharisaism could not divest him, but a great master in the interpretation of history, who in particular facts could discern general laws and types, and knew how to reduce the most complex phenomena to simple and constantly recurring laws. Thus he here infers, with perfect correctness from a particular case, a universal law for the historical development of the theocracy, which he illustrates by that fact. He applies the same law to the Jews considered as the peculiar theocratic people in relation to the theocratic people formed from the mass of mankind by the gospel. Since those who, according to the law of natural descent from the theocratic people, imagined that they had a sure title to admission into the kingdom of God, were yet excluded from it; on the contrary, by a dispensation of the divine Spirit, which could not have been calculated beforehand, towards the heathen nations, who according to the order of nature, since they were entirely

1 The same contrast, which has always made its appearance among the conflicting views in the Christian church, the contrast between Judaism in a Christian form, as in catholicism and other similar modes of thinking, and the free evangelical point of view of the visible church depending for its development on the invisible efficiency of the divine word.

2 κατὰ πνεῦμα, not κατὰ σάρκα; Gal. iv.

distinct from the theocratic people, appeared to be altogether excluded from the kingdom of God, a new theocratic_race was called into existence, in whom the promises made to Abraham were to be fulfilled.

With respect to the second point, that of founding a claim for admission into the kingdom of God on the merits of a legal righteousness, Paul meets this arrogant assumption by the fact that the Jews, who by their zeal in the righteousness of the law, appeared to have the most valid title to such a privilege, were excluded from it owing to their unbelief; and on the contrary, the heathen, among whom there had been no such striving after a legal righteousness, were unexpectedly called to partake of it.

As in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, he contemplates only this one aspect of the dispensation of divine grace in the perpetuation of the kingdom of God, and for a polemical purpose, it might seem as if he deemed the dispensation of divine grace to be in no respect affected by the determination of the human will-as if happiness and unhappiness were distributed among men by a divine predestination entirely unconditional; and as if he deduced the different conduct of men in reference to the divine revelations and leadings from a divine causation which arranged everything according to an unchangeable necessity. This principle if carried out, would lead to a denial of all moral free selfdetermination in general, contradict the essence of genuine theism, and would logically be consistent only with Pantheistic views. But on such a supposition, the line of argument which Paul here adopts would be entirely inconsistent with the general design of this epistle. He wishes to prove both to Gentiles and Jews, that, owing to their sins, they had no means of exculpating themselves before the divine tribunal; that all were alike exposed to punishment; he particularly wished to lead the Jews to a conviction that, by their unbelief, they deserved exclusion from the kingdom of God. But on the hypothesis to which we have just referred, he would have

1 However improbable it appeared that Abraham would obtain offspring for the continuance of his race, in the manner which actually Occurred, there was as little probability that the true worship of Jehovah would proceed from nations who had been hitherto devoted to idolatry.