descent for future safety. Jesus went still farther in his criticism. Like John, he did appeal to men to live a righteous life, not however with the ultimate motive of winning God's favor in the day of judgment but in order to attain genuine sonship in the present. This was the way of true salvation, the present realization of the messianic hope, and as the minister of this truth Jesus may indeed have deemed himself the Messiah. On one occasion John is reported to have sent messengers asking Jesus if he is this final minister of salvation. In substance he replies affirmatively, but the proof of his claim was not to be looked for in the establishment of a miraculous judgment of sifting and purging as John had preached. Rather his Godlike life of service for mankind was his testimonial. Of course he does not deny the reality of divine favor, and in fact he makes it displace the narrower conception of the divine favoritism: God's blessings abound toward all men, the wealth of his love is unlimited, he desires all to share in his goodness by making absolute choice of him.

Jesus' doctrine of salvation is determined by this thought of God's activity among men. He is regnant here and now. The nature of his rule is fatherly, he discards all narrow favoritism, he gives himself unreservedly to the interests of humanity, and the ideal for humanity is the realization, on its part, of the Godlike life. Jesus prescribes no other doctrinal programme for the attainment of salvation: become sons of God in childlike, trustful fellowship, and under the inspiration of this fellowship live the life of unselfish service. It is the urgent desire of God that all men should enter into the full realization of this new life, he is ever encouraging them to do so, and Jesus' work is all directed toward this end. But it is for man to say whether or not he will enter into this new relation. There is no barrier between him and God save that which his own will has erected.

This is the soteriology of Jesus, and its simplicity has almost been its undoing. It lacks the Pauline dialectic, it is free from the theological intricacies of later times. It attaches no vital importance to any form of organization, and it presupposes no theory of infallible mediators whether in the form of books or persons. It centers attention on two things: on the one hand is God, immediate, loving, inviting; on the other is man with a free spirit holding his destiny

in his own hand. Will he commit his way unto God, and walking in harmony with the divine spirit realize the highest ends of life? Or will he refuse, living for self and the world, and so suffer the unspeakable calamity of shutting God out of his life?

But how shall men get rid of the debt which past sins have laid upon them? Must they not by some means placate an angry God whose mandates have been disobeyed and whose dignity has been insulted by rebellious humanity? Jesus knew no such angry deity. His father would gladly receive every penitent who came; forgiveness for the past was procured by the very desire to forsake it and to live the new life. The real problem was not how to escape the anger of God, but how to break the power of sin which hindered the attainment of the higher life; and Jesus had a remedy for this evil. His contemporaries talked of judgment from which only those would escape who had succeeded in getting rid of sin before God came, while Jesus preached that God is now present delivering men from their bondage. Personal alliance with the Father is the secret of escape from the present power of evil. Getting rid of sin, instead of being a prerequisite to the divine coming is an integral factor in its realization. Man's receptivity for the divine rather than his perfect attainment of holiness conditions the coming of God, and without his presence in life the hope of any worthy attainment is meager. Here is one of the most distinctive features of Jesus' religious thinking: God's presence means salvation, and Jesus, revealing this truth in his own career, is the great minister of salvation.

In its more external features, the theological thinking of Jesus corresponded in general to the intellectual ideas of that age. The modern outlook upon the world and its history was then unknown, consequently it is vain to look for this in his teaching. He did subject various ideas of the time to criticism and correction, yet not on scientific but on religious grounds. For example, men then talked of angels and demons in a realistic way and so did Jesus, but in contrast with Jewish transcendentalism, and the attendant development of angelology, he brought God back from the remote regions and made him walk again with men in true spiritual communion. This was no denial of angels' existence, but they could no longer be thought to serve any important religious function. Also belief in

evil spirits was not denied, but their power was practically abolished by faith in the nearness and supremacy of God. Similarly other phases of Jesus' teaching employed current thought and terminology, but their essential content was determined by the new vitality of his personal religion. His whole theological method was controlled by his own deep religious experience.

Jesus' religion had also important ethical and social aspects. The conditions of society and the point of view of that age differed so much from those of modern times that the real import of his teaching has not always been grasped. We cannot assume that he had definitely in mind all the problems of modern society, nor is it fair to give his words and deeds the interpretation which modern conditions might place upon them. Perhaps he would have taught and acted otherwise had he been placed in these modern surroundings. So far as his specific words are concerned, they should always be interpreted in the first- and not in a twentieth-century setting; while for the purposes of modern application one must seek the general principles underlying his specific teaching. These are always fairly evident.

Jesus lays down two controlling principles for the guidance of conduct: God is to be loved with full devotion of heart, soul, and mind, and one's neighbor is to be loved as oneself. Each principle carries with it many practical implications. The first means nothing less than a determination to make God's conduct an absolute standard for life, the rule of the divine is the ideal of human action, sons are to live as the Father lives and to be perfect as he is perfect. Therefore genuine sincerity of motive must characterize all life; so men are exhorted to maintain secrecy in almsgiving in order to guard against pride and hypocrisy, to preserve the genuineness of their devotions by praying to be heard of God and not of men, and, if they choose to fast, to make it a season of secret personal discipline. In the life of the true son no place is to be allowed that type of selfishness which seeks such credit from men as a disfigured countenance, a wordy prayer, or a public demonstration of generosity might prompt. Jesus seeks to inspire all the motives of life with these fundamentally unselfish qualities.

The character of all action is determined by the ideal relationship

between the Father and his sons. They will put his cause first, seeking his kingdom and his righteousness at the cost of all lower ideals; they will be optimistic yet trustfully submissive to the divine will, and they will live the same sort of self-giving life as does he. If he loves all men so must they; if he abhors favoritism they must do likewise; if his interest is to seek and save the lost this must also be theirs; if self-seeking is eliminated from his attitude they must strive to abandon all selfish thoughts; if it is characteristic of him to forgive and forbear they must practice forgiveness and forbearance, in short their entire conduct toward their fellows will be modeled after the perfect standard set by the Father. These were the controlling principles in Jesus' own life. He cast in his lot with the poor and lowly, he despised not the needs of publicans and sinners, he freely gave himself for the sake of others, and when he was smitten he smote not in return but forbore and forgave because he believed this also to be the Father's will.

Such, in outline, is the personal religion of Jesus. His serene faith withstood all the storms that beat against it because it was founded upon the consciousness of vital communion with God. His whole theological thinking was dominated by this personal experience of a divine father whose presence in the world meant a full salvation and whose contact with men inspired them to live the life of ideal social service.

The secret of Jesus' supremacy is his own loyalty to this ideal of a life of unhindered fellowship with God. The maintenance of harmonious relations with the divine, and the emulation of the Godlike life in one's own life, is still a great religious ideal. Moderns may wish to phrase it in more secular language and call it the establishment of right relations with the universe, or it may be stated in the warmer, richer phraseology of Jesus and called the demand for the realization of spiritual sonship to God. But struggle as we may with terms the ideal remains, and not the least important feature in Jesus' significance for modern men is the fact that his religious life reveals the secret of transforming the ideal into the real.

THE TRANSCENDENCE OF GOD IN ITS RELATION TO

FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY

A. OOSTERHEERDT
Chicago, Ill.

Recent writers on religious metaphysics have laid extraordinary emphasis upon the immanence of God. In so far as this stress comes as a protest against the practical deism of the churches and the popular atheism of the masses, it is eminently proper and just. While emphasizing, however, the immanence of God, there is great danger of slighting his transcendence, and of thus erecting an insidious pantheism, which cannot fail to have a baneful effect upon a healthy freedom and the hope of immortality. To show that the freedom of man and his immortality depend upon the transcendence of God, and that the transcendence itself must be based upon faith, is the object of this paper.

How thoroughgoing this emphasis upon the immanence of God has become may best be seen from some quotations. Thus R. J. Campbell in his remarkable book: The New Theology, says that "the starting-point of the new theology is a re-emphasis of the Christian belief in the divine immanence in the universe and in mankind." "The New Theology holds that we know nothing and can know nothing of the Infinite Cause whence all things proceed except as we read Him in His universe, and in our own souls. It is the immanent God with whom we have to do, and if this obvious fact is once firmly grasped it will simplify all our religious conceptions and give us a working faith." What he means by "God" is shown from the next quotation: "When I say God, I mean the mysterious Power which is finding expression in the universe, and which is present in every tiniest atom of the wondrous whole. I find that this Power is the one reality I cannot get away from, for, whatever else it may be, it is myself."3 Campbell himself realizes how pantheistic this 3 Ibid., p. 18.

1 The New Theology, p. 4.

2 Ibid., p. 5.