The Hope of the'^Church 125 naturally intervene again. The first coming of Christ was a descent of God into the life of the human race. The Scrip- tures teach us to expect another divine descent, not to bring history to a close, but to introduce new forces and to inau- gurate a new dispensation. 3. I t exalts the divine peTson and work of the incarnate Son of God. I t is in direct opposition to the Unitarian ten- dencies which pervade so large a part of modern religious thought. I t holds the truth of the Lord’s continued existence in a glorified body, and regards this fact as of primary im- portance and of prophetic significance. The personal existence of the risen Son of Man is not to be dissolved away into a mere general spiritual presence. The risen and ascended Re- deemer exists today in heaven in the true reality of His glori- fied humanity ; and “this same Jesus,” it is believed, shall be revealed one day in His glorious personality from behind the unseen veil, to carry on the redemption of the world to its full completion. .4. I t takes due account of the fall o f the human race. The tendency today is greatly to exalt man and to ignore the fact of the fall. The great advance that is being made in every department of human knowledge and activity predisposes men to form the highest conceptions of the possibilities of the race. The theory of evolution, which dominates modern thinking, leads men to expect a gradual perfecting of the race under the laws of its own being, which will issue at last, with the benefi- cent aid of Christianity, in a perfect state of human society and the redemption of the race as a whole. ' But human sin is too deep-rooted and too widespread for the attainment of this, end in the present order of things, even with the aid of existing spiritual agencies. I t is acknowledged to be the teaching of Scripture that, even with the aid of divine grace, the triumph of the kingdom of God in the individual is not complete in the present order, but only at his translation to a higher order at the resurrection. It would seem that the analogy should
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