The Things Which Remain: An Address To Young MinistersGoodsell, Daniel A. (Daniel Ayres)
Religion
The Things Which Remain: An Address To Young Ministers
Goodsell, Daniel A. (Daniel Ayres)
Theology, Doctrinal
Necessarily miraculous also is the doctrine, "He ascended into heaven."
In this He passed from the visible into the invisible; from the
conditions of human life to those of the life of a spirit; from the work
of redemption to that of intercession. If His resurrection be accepted,
His ascension presents no difficulties to faith. This, with His
incarnation, and the facts of His earthly life are the manifestation of
the tender side of God to the senses even as His wisdom and power are
shown to the senses by the facts and laws of nature. As to the doctrine,
"God is love," nature's word can never be conclusive. In the natural
kingdom joy and sorrow, ease and pain, love and hate, kindness and
cruelty, trust and terror exist side by side, as do life and death. No
man concludes, from nature alone, that God is ruled by love. Because man
can not conclude this, Ormuzd and Ahriman are found substantially in all
religions, as in that of the Parsees, except in the Christian. Here the
warfare is not to be eternal. The victory of good is to come. Divine
help is promised, that it may be secured in every soul. The conquest of
evil by good is within that Christian omnipotence which Paul knew. "I
can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." It requires a
Christ to show that the path to rest is through toil; that the way to
ease is through suffering; that the highway to life passes through
death. Only thus can "mortality be swallowed up of life."
[Sidenote: The Meaning of Jesus.]
[Sidenote: Christ as Revealer.]
In the unity of the Godhead, Christ is God in manifestation, redemption,
intercession, judgment. In the Trinity, in which we must believe God
exists, Jesus Christ is the personality expressive, at first visibly and
now invisibly, of the tender qualities of the Divine nature which,
manifested in part in the world of nature, are there so linked with
severity as to require special and peculiar revelation in the person of
Jesus Christ in order that God may be understood both as transcending
nature and as eternal love.
* * * * *
Surely the doctrine, "I believe in the Holy Ghost," will remain. It is a
misfortune that the word "ghost" has, in our English use, an unworthy
and terrifying significance. On this account it were well if we could
substitute for constant use the word "Spirit."
[Sidenote: The Holy Ghost.]
[Sidenote: The Energy of God.]
[Sidenote: The Interpreter.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The Things Which Remain: An Address To Young Ministers — John Shaqi
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