GREENWICH, APRIL 10TH, 1903
GREENWICH, APRIL 10TH, 1903
To C. S. Romanes.
Dear Sir, — You will pardon, I trust, the delay in answering your letter. It has arisen from my having been laid aside by sickness. I am glad to seek to remove from any mind any difficulty that may have arisen from anything that I have said. But I may remark in the first instance that no one is bound by anything I have said except myself, for no one is called on to receive it. The point is what does Scripture intend to convey in the use of certain expressions? I am not ashamed to put out my convictions as to its meaning, but they have no authority over anyone else. The root of all I have said in regard to eternal life lies in this — that I am wholly unable to conceive of it in any intelligible way without the apprehension of a moral universe of which Christ is the Sun and Centre and in which the seat of every wholesome influence lies in the centre of the system, and where every part of the system comes under the influence of the centre. It is a system analogous to our solar system. In the latter the conditions that are essential to life reside in the sun. It is the seat of light, warmth and rule, without which all animal life would be impossible.
[p. 197] These conditions are divinely appointed and every being that comes into existence down here is formed in correspondence to these conditions, so that when it comes into the scene the conditions are life to it. A newly-born child has eyes that can take in the light, lungs that can breathe the air and a body that is susceptible of rule and all these come into exercise when it is born because all the necessary conditions are existent in the sun and are available. Now I believe the same to be true in spiritual life; in Christ, the Son of God, the Sun and Centre of the moral system, subsist all the conditions essential for spiritual life. Hence when Scripture speaks of the gift of God it is “eternal life in Christ” and again “God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son”. Christ is the Eternal Life. Life subsists in Him in the sense that every condition is there that is essential to our living. Light is there in the fact that He is the revelation of God. Love is there, which is the proper atmosphere of the christian circle in which we breathe a pure air, and rule is there, for it is the influence of Christ acting on the entire new man that holds the christian in the orbit of God’s will. Our part is to abide in Him and we are thus delivered from the lawlessness that is in the world. These conditions are in a sense external to the christian, but as he is fitted to live in them by the work of God, they may be said to abide in him. You will say that I have made little allusion to the work of God in the believer. I regard this as distinct from the conditions that are essential to his living. It evidently begins in his being quickened by the voice of the Son of God so that he is morally alive to God in the Spirit, and his spiritual constitution is formed by the living bread that came down from heaven, it is digested into his moral being. But in connection with the moral universe of which I have spoken, one must distinguish between the conditions that are essential to life and the person that enters into these conditions.
[p. 198] Judging from the terms of Scripture, it is the conditions that God has commanded that are designated ‘eternal life’. And yet, as in the case of the new-born child, there must be the most perfect correspondence between the person that enters into the conditions and the conditions themselves so that it can be truly said that the conditions abide in the person that abides in them. It is in this light that the matter presents itself to me, though the thoughts that are common have once had place in my mind. As regards your last question, I believe the wicked will have their part in the lake of fire for ever with the devil and his angels for they are his children.
Faithfully yours,
F. E. Raven.