thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias or one of the prophets." (Verse 14). Many claim Jesus Christ as a mere man, a noble example, a brother in a higher sense. Again many claim for him a second personage in a re-personal Godhead, the Son of God in this sense. There is but one place in which and from which we may study the life and nature of our Lord, that is in the scriptures and especially in the four gospels. Upon the scriptures and the gospels rest all the facts we may have of his life and the means by which he brought men to himself and, "Taught them the things concerning himself." (Luke 24: 27). Therefore from the holy word and these same gospels must we pursue our studies and draw our doctrine.

The Old Testament fairly teems with prophecies concerning and foretelling his coming. He was to come as the Savior and Redeemer of men. His name was to be called, "Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9: 6). It was foretold, "That in that day there shall be one Lord and his name one." (Zach. 15: 9). 15: 9). What the New Testament teaches is the "He that hath seen me hath seen the father." (John 14: 9). "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God * * * and the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory * full of grace and truth." (John 1: 1-14). "I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." (Rev. 22: 13).

same.

* * *

The New Church teaches, as the very corner stone of its faith and life, that Jesus Christ is an only God and Lord, the Father Almighty, and the Savior of men, "In whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Col. 2: 9); that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (II. Cor. 5: 9); that Jesus Christ is Jehovah God, in his own divine human form. The Father and the Son are in him, even as the soul and body in man. The Son of God, that humanity which Creator took upon himself, in which he descended into the world, in which he appeared to men on earth which he glorified and made divine, by the bringing of the divine life, within it as the very soul of it down into the plane of the body itself

to give it power and life; to unite the human with the divine and thus to rise from the grave in a divine human, substantial body, a living symbol of God, a God whom men may know and think about, a God who in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, is able to succor them that are tempted." (Heb. 2: 18). The soul Jesus Christ is the Father; the body assumed, glorified and raised from the dead is the Son of God, the proceeding love and wisdom is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. One God, one Lord, Jesus Christ.

Our Lord did not claim to be a second person in the Godhead. He did not claim to be an associate with God. But he said he was God, for he said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14: 9). "I am the truth, the way and the life." (John 14: 6). "I and my Father are one." (John 10: 30). "The Father is in me and I in him." (John 10: 38). Therefore the New Church teaches from the word of God itself, that "God in Christ" is an only God; that to know Christ is to know God; to worship Christ alone is to worship God alone; not as an incomprehensible, a far-off God but as a God and Lord present and personal. "God manifest in the flesh." (1. Tim. 3: 16). Emanuel, God with us." (Matt. 1: 23).

The idea of God is primary of all, for such as it is, such is man's conjunction with heaven and the Lord, hence his illustration and illumination, his affection for the good and true, his intelligence, perception and wisdom." The New Church therefore, believes that the doctrine of Jesus Christ as God the Lord of all, Father and Regenerator is a doctrine capable of being introduced into the minds of all men and which proves itself by the letter and by the spirit of the scriptures, yea, by man's own intuitive knowledge.

"THE DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION AND REGENERATION."

"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." (II. Cor. 5:9). The New Church believes most emphatically that the life work of our Lord while in the world was a life work for the redemption of mankind, was for the purpose of bringing man closer to God by bringing God closer to man.

The work, in its truest sense, was indeed a work of atonement and reconciliation. Not to God, the Heavenly Father, as separate and distinct from God, his Son, not the reconciliation to man on earth of an angry God through the innocent sacrifice and blood, but in truth and in deed a drawing nearer of man to God, of God to man-an-at-one-ment, a meeting place between man and his Creator, whereby man might know and realize, in himself, the power of an Almighty love.

The New Church teaches that Jesus Christ came into the world as an only God, (as was shown above) to save men from their sins. He came to reconcile to himself all peoples and all nations. He came in order to free mankind from the dominion, the evil spirits from hell, that had hold upon the lives of men at that time. He came to deliver us from the power of hell, and to make us free men that we might, “In freedom and according to reason perform works, meet for repentance." He came, not to suffer as a substitute, but to open a broader field for man's redemption and regeneration by presenting to him a more clear, full and rational idea of God, a thought of God as a Divine man, capable of thinking and loving and helping man on earth. One having power over evil and power to relegate devils back to the hells in which they belong; one having power to hold them there for

ever.

"God is Love." (I Jno. 4: 8). That love was shown in the Incarnation and work of redemption. Man had changed. It was impossible for God to change. Therefore when man fell away from obedience to the Divine law, and immersed himself so deeply in the evils of life that, verily, it threatened the extinction of the human race, what could God do but come to him and save him? The Divine Love in the fulness of its mercy followed after man and sought to bring him back where it might again hold him in its embrace and warm man's feeble, almost helpless love for the good and true back into life and vigor. The Divine Love followed man and redeemed man from the jaws of hell. "He laid down his life that he might take it up again and present it as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, not in our steads,

but for our sakes, as the full and perfect medium of Divine life and help to us in our states of sin and helplessness."

The New Church believes repentence to be an entire change of mental condition from selfhood and all that belongs to it to the Lord. It is the conviction of man's own sinfulness and opposition to divine order, and the acknowledgment of the utter unsalvability of his own soul without the operation within him of divine love and wisdom, and the responsive co-operation of his own thought, love and deed.

This will lead to reformation, which consists in the reordering of nature, thoughts and deeds, from an interior sense of self-compulsion, in accordance with the truth that has now been revealed; and an earnest persevering desire and endeavor to direct the whole life's course into channels that are harmonious with the dictates of divine revelation and law. Regeneration is the result of a life's effort toward this

end. When regeneration is attained man lives wholly in and from the Lord's goodness and truth; which are continually imparted to all men, to be acknowledged and felt only by those who may be prepared, through shunning evils as sins, to realize them. It will be seen that the process from first to last is an active combat against the evils and falsities that are of self and of hell.

It might be said that faith in the Lord, according to the thought and doctrine of the New Church, is manifest when one has a sincere regard for the Lord Jesus Christ, which leads him away from what he forbids in the word. Conviction of sin is when man has a feeling sense that he is not living as he ought to live, and as he knows God wants him to live. He is repentant, when he is sorry that he has lived a life of sin, so sorry that he resolves hereafter to live as he ought to have lived. When the old life has been turned away from and the man begins to do what he knows he ought to do, he has been converted. And now when he continues steadfastly in this course, shunning evils because they are sins against God, until his will and inclination coincides with his sense of duty, he has been regenerated.

This is the New Church idea of redemption, salvation, and regeneration. There may have been a time when Juda

ism fancied its God to be partisan and a regressive form of Christianity thought it had ascertained and reached the utmost limits of the divine care; but the New Church claims to know absolutely and beyond the possibility of a doubt, that God is one, and "His tender mercies are over all his works.” (Ps. 145: 9). Therefore does it teach

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and do what he teaches"—"All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good."

"THE DOCTRINES OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD."

DEATH, THE AWAKENING, HEAVEN.

Our

One of the greatest blessings religion can give to man is the knowledge of how to live and how to properly prepare to die. Is the somber pall death casts over us the awful reality, the woeful curse we have so long been lead to believe? great trouble is ignorance of true life and its ways. The doctrine of the New Church comes to shed light upon this darkened scene, to show death a blessing and not a curse. We live in bodies and not from bodies. If we fail to realize this we neglect to realize the grand and sublime fact of an eternal creation which death does but further. Death does not end all, it is but the realization to the soul of life's highest aims and ambitions. It is but the other extreme of our lives. Birth ushers us into this world. Death ushers us into the

next world. It is an orderly step in life. Were none to die, none could people the heavens. There would be no angels and creation would have lost its object, for the very object of creation is a world of men who should so live, that out of them and their surroundings there might be formed a heaven of angels, who having built heavenly characters here in this world, might enjoy the blessings of heavenly states of peace and joy in the Lord, when they come into the next.

Death is not nor was it, due to sin. Through men's own evils the divine love that produced the peaceful sleep of preAdamic men, from which was to awaken in the spirit even as a babe awakens in its bed, has been changed. Therefore we find that today heredity, from ages past, has influenced the mind and body to such an extent that interiors suffer and