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The Fundamentals. amnesty of God in Christ, taking at His Word his benignant King. I t is the rebel’s putting himself into right relations with his offended Lord in this great matter of forgiveness and acceptance. It is not a virtue, not a merit, but a proper means. UNION WITH CHRIST. The word “by,” per, lends itself meantime to the expres sion of another aspect of the subject. One of the great prob lems attaching to the mighty truth of Christ our Righteous ness, our Merit, our Acceptance, is that of the nexus, the bond, which so draws us and Him together that, not in fiction but- in fact, our load can pass over to. Him and His wealth to us. The New Testament largely teaches, what lies assuredly in the very nature of things, as it puts the facts of salvation before us, that we enter “into” Christ, we come to be “in” Him, we get part and lot in the life eternal, which is in Him alone, by Faith. “He gave power to become the sons of God, to them that believed on His Name.” “Believing, we have life in His Name” (John 1:12; 20:31). Faith is our soul-contact with the Son of God, setting up (upon our side) that union with Him in His life of which Scripture is so full. And thus it is open to us, surely, to say that Justification by Faith means, from one momentous aspect, Justification be cause of the Christ with whom through Faith we are made mysteriously but truly one. Believing, we are one with Him, one in the common life with which the living members live with the Head, by the power of His Spirit. One with Him in life, we are therefore, by no mere legal fiction but in vital fact, capable of oneness with Him in interest also. THE MARRIAGE-BOND. “Faith,” says Bishop Hopkins of Derry, “is the marriage- bond between Christ and a believer; and therefore all the debts of the believer are chargeable upon Christ, and the
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