“This union [with Christ] is at the ground of regeneration and justification” (534). “The great difference of theological systems comes out here. Since Christianity is redemption through Christ, our mode of conceiving that will determine the character of our whole theological system” (536). “The union with Christ is mediated by his Spirit, whence we are both renewed and justified. The great fact of objective Christianity is incarnation in order to atonement; the great fact of subjective Christianity is union with Christ, whereby we receive the atonement” (537). We may add that this union with Christ, in view of which God elects and to which God calls the sinner, is begun in regeneration, completed in conversion, declared in justification, and proved in sanctification and perseverance. I. Union with Christ. The Scriptures declare that, through the operation of God, there is constituted a union of the soul with Christ different in kind from God’s natural and providential concursus with all spirits, as well as from all unions of mere association or sympathy, moral likeness, or moral influence,—a union of life, in which the human spirit, while then most truly possessing its own individuality and personal distinctness, is interpenetrated and energized by the Spirit of Christ, is made inscrutably but indissolubly one with him, and so becomes a member and partaker of that regenerated, believing, and justified humanity of which he is the head. Union with Christ is not union with a system of doctrine, nor with external religious influences, nor with an organized church, nor with an ideal man,—but rather, with a personal, risen, living, omnipresent Lord (J. W. A. Stewart). Dr. J. W. Alexander well calls this doctrine of the Union of the Believer with Christ “the central truth of all theology and of all religion.” Yet it receives little of formal recognition, either in dogmatic treatises or in common religious experience. Quenstedt, 886‐912, has devoted a section to it; A. A. Hodge gives to it a chapter, in his Outlines of Theology, 369 sq., to which we are indebted for valuable suggestions; H. B. Smith treats of it, not however as a separate topic, but under the head of Justification (System, 531‐539).