an,' created by a divine act, and consisting in
moral and spiritual likeness to God. It is not necessary to deal, except
incidentally, with the two former, but I desire to consider the last of
these--the putting on of the new man--a little more closely, and to try
to bring out the wealth and depth of the Apostle's words in this
wonderful text.

The ideas contained seem to me in brief to be these--the great purpose
of the Gospel is our moral renewal; that moral renewal is a creation
after God's image; that new creation has to be put on or appropriated by
us; the great means of appropriating it is contact with God's truth. Let
us consider these points in order.

I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
... created in righteousness and ... holiness.'

Now, of course, there are other ways of stating the end of the Gospel.
This is by no means an exhaustive setting forth of its purpose. We may
say that Christ has come in order that men may know God. We may say that
He comes in order that the Divine Love, which ever delights to
communicate, may bestow itself, and may conceive of the whole majestic
series of acts of self-revelation from the beginning as being--if I may
so say--for the gratification of that impulse to impart itself, which is
the characteristic of love in God and man. We may say that the purpose
of the whole is the deliverance of men from the burden and guilt of sin.
But whether we speak of the end of the Gospel as the glory of God, or
the blessedness of man, or as here, as being the moral perfection of
the individual or of the race, they are all but various phrases of the
one complete truth. The Gospel is the consequence and the manifestation
of the love of God, which delights to be known and possessed by loving
souls, and being known, changes them into its own likeness, which to
know is to be happy, which to resemble is to be pure.

The first thing that strikes me about this representation of our text is
the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies it.

The language is utterly unmeaning--or at all events grossly
exaggerated--unless all have sinned, and the nature which belongs to men
universally, apart from the transforming power of Christ's Spirit, be
corrupt and evil. And that it is so is the constant view of Scripture.
The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very
different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and
philanthropis