eval Church! Now I attempt from
time to time, reverently but very simply, to treat some inspired Epistle
somewhat in the same way. I place myself before it as much as possible
as if it were new to me and others. I seek, with something of the
curiosity which such conditions would create, to collect and arrange its
theology and its ethics. And then I bring in upon the results of my
study the fact that it is God's Word, the Word which I am to embrace,
and live upon, and act upon, to-day.

"For example and suggestion, let us turn to the EPISTLE TO THE
PHILIPPIANS; few but golden pages, precious product of those two years
of St Paul's physical imprisonment but blissful spiritual liberty. To
stimulate our consciousness of what the Epistle contains to reward
search, and search alone, let us try to place it before us as what it is
not now, but once was, a newly-given oracle of God. It was once read for
the first time, perhaps in the house of Lydia. Let it be to us, so far
as thought can make it so, what it was then. And let us remember all
the while that it is really even now new, for it is immortal with the
breath of the Spirit of God. It not only 'abideth,' but 'liveth,' for
ever.

"Let us take two titles under which to classify the results of our
inspection of this primitive Document. First, its doctrine of Christ;
then, its doctrine of Christian Life. As a subordinate third title we
may collect what it indicates of Christian life as exemplified in the
Writer's allusions to his own experience.

"I.--The Christology of the Epistle.

"(1) We trace hints of the _human history_ of Christ. He was man, in
reality and in seeming; He died a death of suffering, the death of the
Cross [ii. 7, 8; iii. 10.]; He rose again, for there is a power of His
Resurrection; [iii. 10.] and, apparently, He so left this earth that it
was known that an immeasurable exaltation attended His going, so that
the heavens are now His seat [ii. 9.], from which He is definitely
expected to return. [iii. 20.]

"(2) Going back to antecedent and prehistoric matters of faith about
Him, we find here that before He became man He subsisted in possession,
lawful and natural, of the manifested reality [Greek: morphe] of
Godhead, equal to God [ii. 6.]. His appearance as man was the sequel of
His own action of will in that eternal state [ii. 7.]. It was a novel
and voluntary assumption of the condition of the Bondservant, the
[Greek: Doulos], of God. Antecedently