Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select points better suited to this purpose, as being equally familiar to all, and yet having a special interest for the Jewish converts, than those are from which the learned Apostle has drawn the four principal metaphors, by which he illustrates the blessed _consequences_ of Christ's redemption of mankind. These are: 1. Sin-offerings, sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement, καταλλαγη.[133] 3. Ransom from slavery, Redemption, the buying back again, or being bought back. 4. Satisfaction of a creditor's claims by a payment of the debt. To one or other of these four heads all the numerous forms and exponents of Christ's mediation in St. Paul's writings may be referred. And the very number and variety of the words or _periphrases_ used by him to express one and the same thing furnish the strongest presumptive proof, that all alike were used _metaphorically_. [In the following notation, let the small letters represent the _effects_ or _consequences_, and the capitals the efficient _causes_ or _antecedents_. Whether by causes we mean acts or agents, is indifferent. Now let X signify a _transcendent_, that is, a cause beyond our comprehension and not within the sphere of sensible experience; and on the other hand, let A, B, C, and D represent each some one known and familiar cause, in reference to some single and characteristic effect: namely, A in reference to k, B to l, C to m, and D to n. Then I say X + k l m n is in different places expressed by A + k; B + l; C + m; D + n.--And these I should call _metaphorical_ exponents of X.]
Now John, the beloved Disciple, who leaned on the Lord's bosom, the Evangelist κατα πνευμα, that is, according to the _Spirit_, the inner and substantial truth of the Christian creed--John, recording the Redeemer's own words, enunciates the fact itself, to the full extent in which it is enunciable for the human mind, simply and _without any metaphor_, by identifying it _in kind_ with a fact of hourly occurrence--_expressing_ it, I say, by a familiar fact the same _in kind_ with that intended, though of a far lower _dignity_;--by a fact of every man's experience, _known_ to all, yet not better _understood_ than the fact described by it. In the Redeemed it is a re-_generation_, a _birth_, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life, of a _spiritual_ life--that is, a life the actuality of which is not dependent on the material body, or limited by the circumstances and processes indispensable to its organization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the _differential_ of immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith and love is the _integrant_, and the life in Christ the _integration_.