MR. R. W. DALE ON THE EPHESIANS.*
THE student who has carefully followed a good commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Bishop Lightfoot's, for instance, or Bishop Ellicott's (Mr. Dale expresses his special obligations to the latter), cannot do better, if he desires to gain a harmonious view of the whole, than make himself acquainted with these admirable lectures. We often study details, especi- ally when the details are so full both of difficulty and of interest as in the letters of St. Paul, till the general bearing -and scope of the document are obscured. To this tendency, Mr. Dale's exposition, with its masterly and comprehensive grasp of the subject, supplies an excellent corrective. The terse and vigorous style, rising on occasion into a manly and impressive -eloquence, of which Mr. Dale is well known to be a master, gives lucid expression to thought that is precise, courageous, and original.
We naturally tarn to what the lecturer has to say on some burning questions of modern theology. The Epistle to the Ephesians contains the words on which, more than anything else, the Universalists found the Scriptural argument for their teach- ing. God is "to sum up all things in Christ." Mr. Dale is dis- tinctly opposed to Universalism. He enunciates, among the articles of the "unity of doctrine," which he perceives among the past and present divisions of Christendom, the dogma "that the doom of the impenitent is irrevocable." He believes -this dogma to have been unmistakably set forth in the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, and to have formed part of the groundwork of belief which St. Paul took for granted in those whom he addressed. "It would be understood," says Mr. Dale, " that while those who had incurred irrevocable exclusion from the life of God were to receive the just punishment of their sin, and to perish, the rest of the moral universe was to be organised into a perfect unity for eternal ages of righteousness and glory." It is not made quite clear to us what is meant by this " moral .universe." Mr. Dale's language in describing the "restoration of all things" becomes, for once, somewhat vague and unsatis- fying. It certainly does not touch the central difficulty of the subject. St. Paul and his converts believed in a speedy triumph of their Lord over all opposing powers. We are -confronted with the fact, that after nearly two thousand years the triumph is still immeasurably distant, that "exclusion from God " appears to be the doom of the vast majority of men, even on the largest supposable conditions of union with him, much more on any conditions that would approve themselves to Mr. Dale's fellow-religionists. The " moral universe" may, of -course, include many other orders of beings besides man ; but if we think of man only, of man as he is and has been since the foundation of Christendom, the " all things " that are to be "summed up in Christ" are reduced to a very small fragment of creation,—unless, indeed, we can believe, as Mr. Dale, it seems, • The Epistle to the Ephesiasia ; its Doctrine and Ethics. By B. W. Dale, M.A., Birmingham. London : Hodder and Stoughton. 1382.
cannot, that there are states of probation beyond that which appears to leave so many reprobate here.
When Mr. Dale comes to speak of one of the causes of this deplorable fact, the "taint of blood" which seems to shut out so many from all hope of better things, he does not get be- yond the conventional language of the preacher. Surely, it is little better than idle to say to the man who complains that, under the pressure of inherited tendencies to evil, he "cannot do the things that he would," "Place yourself in God's hands." If these words have any meaning at all, they signify a resist- ance to evil inclinations, a breaking through of evil habits, that constitute the very difficulty against which the man struggles in vain. How is a man whose moral fibre is so weak that he
cannot keep himself free for a day from drunkenness or lust, to rise to the supreme effort of resigning himself to God P In an interesting passage in Lecture xv., Mr. Dale refers to the subject of the ultimate sanction of morals. He would esta- blish, it would seem, two methods of appealing to the conscience.
Where this is not already hardened, it should be taught" tolove righteousness for its own sake," without an appeal to the divine authority. If St. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, does appeal
to this authority, it is because they lacked "the true moral dis- cernment and the delicate moral sensitiveness" to which only the other method is appropriate. But is this distinction really founded on fact ? If God revealed in Christ is all that the lecturer in such eloquent language proclaims Him to be, must He not be the foundation of all morality? And if conscience is His voice, can it be right to appeal to it without a reference to Him ?
It is natural, in reviewing such a book as this, to deal chiefly with points where we find ourselves to differ from the writer. But we are glad to express our hearty sympathy with Mr. Dale's general teaching. We would refer our readers especially to what he says on the relations between Judaism and Christianity, and on the attitude of mind with which we should regard the Old- Testament Scriptures (pp. 211-219), and to his admirable obser- vations on Christian unity (pp. 289-293). The central idea of this unity has never been better expressed than in the following words :—
"The unity of the Church has been manifested in a new and original type of the religious life, which, notwithstanding local, temporary, and accidental variations, has been the same in all Christian countries, from the earliest Christian centuries down to our own time. The prayers of the Church, its hymns, its devotional manuals, the sorrows and joys of saints, are all penetrated by the same spirit, and bear witness to a unity which is unbroken by differ- ences of race, of language, of civilisation, by differences of theo- logical creed, and differences of ecclesiastical connection."
But we are inclined to accord the first place among these lectures to the tenth, bearing the title of "Salvation by Grace." It is from beginning to end a noble exposition of a truly evangelical theology, and we may appropriately conclude this notice with a quotation from it : —
" The original idea of the Divine grace, according to which we were to find all things in Christ, and Christ was to be the root of a perfec- tion and glory surpassing all hope and all thought, was tragically asserted in the death of Christ for human salvation. Our fortunes— shall I say it ?—were identified with the fortunes of Christ ; in the divine thought and purpose, we were inseparable from him. Had we been true and loyal to the Divine idea, the energy of Christ's right- eousness would have drawn us upwards to height after height of goodness and joy, until we ascended from this earthly life to the larger powers, and loftier services, and richer delights of other and diviner worlds ; and still, through one golden age of intellectual and ethical and spiritual growth after another, we should have continued to rise towards Christ's transcendent and infinite perfection. But we sinned ; and as the union between Christ and us could not be broken without the final and irrevocable defeat of the Divine purpose, as separation from Christ meant for us eternal death, Christ was drawn down from the serene heavens to the shame and sorrow of the con- fused and troubled life of our race, to pain, to temptation, to anguish, to the cross, and to the grave, and so the mystery of his atonement for our sin was consummated. In his sufferings and death, through the infinite grace of God, we find forgiveness, as in the power of his righteousness and as in his great glory we find the possibilities of all perfection."
Previous page
