ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF 
HIS RELIGIOUS FAITH. 
Some of the Truths Apprehended 
Through Personal Experience 
and Absorbed Through Medita- 
tion. 
[At our request Rev. Mr. Lincoln has consented to 
have the paper on his theological views, read on the 
occasion of his ordination and installation, at the 
Congregational church, Manchester, Friday, June 9, 
1905, printed in the BREEZE.— ED.] 
BY REV. C. ARTHUR LINCOLN. 
(Concluded. ) 
As to the attributes of God, I 
must make only a brief statement 
and leave the subject for further 
discussion through question and 
answer if it is so desired. ‘The at- 
tributes of God in distinction from 
the created universe are: (1) Eter- 
nal, (2) Omnipresent, (3) Un- 
changeable. His attributes which 
we conceive in direct relation to the 
temporal and progressive universe 
are comprised in the terms omnipo- 
tence and omniscience. His om- 
nipotence is His power to attain 
His end. His omniscience is re- 
lated with His moral being and 
bound up with that which is His 
end or purpose; it is not merely 
reason, but reason infused with will. 
In addition to these transcendent 
qualities of being, He possesses in 
perfect measure all the qualities of 
personality, so that God is indeed 
the Person of the universe, the 
ground and source of all reality. 
This omnipotence and omniscience 
are the servants of His holiness anc 
love. God is Holy Love. 
2. The Person of Christ. The end 
or purpose of God as Holy Love 
has been revealed to us in 
the establishment of the kingdom 
of God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ. The person of Christ has 
already been described as human 
and divine, an expression of the Son 
of God in the likeness of sinful flesh. 
Such an incarnation involves a pre- 
existence as its very foundation. 
The living Son of God by an act of 
self determination laid aside His 
absolute characteristics in so far as 
this could be done without impair- 
ing his integrity as a perfect moral 
being, and entered into human ex- 
perience in the humble form of a 
human child: As his life on earth 
developed and unfolded itself, He 
regained His divine powers and at- 
tributes. The more He lived in 
faith towards God and love towards 
man, did His inherent and_ divine 
powers become _ released, — His 
knowledge of God become increased 
and His energies become active and 
miraculous. At the very basis of 
His person was the active energy of 
the Holy Spirit of God from the 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
humble beginning in the womb of 
Mary to the full expression of His 
glory in the body of His transfigura- 
tion. Out of His naturally develop- 
ing religious experience grew His 
conception of His -Messiahship, His 
peculiar and unique relation to God 
as the Son of God, His peculiar and 
unique relation to man as the Son 
of Man, and His peculiar and unique 
office of mediator between God and 
man, Savior of the individual and 
the race, and Judge of men and na- 
tions. 
3. The Doctrine of Sin. Imme- 
diately upon the establishment of a 
firm belief in the incarnation follows 
the question of Anselm: “Why did 
God become man?” At once the 
doctrine of the atonement becomes 
the central point of interest. But 
this doctrine involves a whole long 
series of other doctrines from the 
Fall of Man in Adam to the Judg- 
ment Day in Heaevn. To me the 
duestion of the existence of Adam 
as an actual historical person is not 
important. So far as I am able to 
understand human nature and its 
history, man from the very first, 
even until now, has been under a 
double judgment: (1) That he is 
acting contrary to the law of his 
nature and (2) that he is blame- 
worthy. In the first chapters of 
Genesis J] think we get a remark- 
able parable illustrating the tragedy 
of sin for the individual and_ the 
race. The psychology of the first 
sin and of every sin is there depict- 
ed. In one sense every man is his 
own Adam in that he is responsible 
for his own failure and guilty of 
poisoning the moral atmosphere for 
others, and inasmuch as sin is uni- 
versal, intensively and extensively, 
it we are to accept the teaching of 
Paul, there appears to be such a 
thing as racial sin. Owing to com- 
paratively recent Bible criticism and 
to the speculations of certain evolu- 
tionary philosophers, new interest 
has been aroused in the question of 
the origin and propagation of sin. 
While I have great sympathy with 
certain phases of the doctrine of 
evolution, I am not content to say 
with John Fiske and others that 
the fall of man is a_ fall upwards. 
According to this view, sin marks 
progress in the race and the indi- 
vidual, whereas every sin of which 
I have knowledge marks lamentable 
regress. If we cannot in Genesis 
get an actual picture of the first 
sin, we can at least get an under- 
standing of the conditions of its oc- 
currence. These are found in the 
self conscious freedom of man, his 
knowledge of the law of his nature 
as being the will of God, his knowl- 
and-out of their own 
29 
edge of penalty sure to follow any 
infraction of that law, his deliberate 
and wilful breaking of his trust in 
God and his consequent disaster and 
degradation. By means of heredity, 
the taint of sin has passed down 
through the race so that every man 
born into the race breathes in a 
poisonous atmosphere. 
4. The Doctrine of the Atone- 
ment. It was into this race pois- 
oned throughout with sin that the 
sinless Jesus was born, sinless not 
only in the passive sense of being 
free from moral taint, but sinless in 
the active sense of being always in 
complete harmony with God. His 
whole life of teaching, preaching and 
works from His first call to repent- 
ance to His last cry upon the cross 
shows how desperate a strait He 
conceives man to occupy. Indeed, 
He conceives that His whole mis- 
sion arises from the fact that man’s 
relation to God is disastrous because © 
of the moral situation which may 
even become irreparable. He calls 
upon every man to change the 
basis of his life, abandon  self-de- 
pendence and_ seli-seeking, and 
through absolute trust in Him be 
born into a new and eternal fellow- 
ship with God. . 
That His death had a _ central 
place in the plan of the redemption 
of man is evident from His own 
consciousness and the consciousness 
of His disciples after His resurrec- 
tion. Such was the moral situation 
that only by this supreme sacrifice 
could the absolute justice, the su- 
preme holiness, and infinite love and 
mercy of God be vindicated to man, 
This is but a fragmentary descrip- 
tion of the act of Jesus which we 
call His atonement for us. Human 
reason has not yet penetrated the 
depths of its sacred mysteries, but 
human experience has abundantly 
proved its potency. Through a 
mystic union with Him who tasted 
death for every man thousands, yea 
millions, have with sins forgiven 
entered into a conscious relationship 
of eternal fellowship 
‘effable God. 
5. The Means and Instruments 
of the Spread of the Gospel. With 
the passing of Jesus in bodily pres- 
ence from the scenes of earth arose 
an experience among His disciples. 
and followers which they could only 
explain as being due to the actual 
though unseen presence of the liv- 
ing God among them. Out of their 
remembrance of the words of Jesus 
experience 
grew the belief in the divine per- 
sonality of the Holy Spirit. Before 
Jesus left this earth He had already 
formed the nucleus of the society of 
with the * 
