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the idea of the Logos, it came into close affinity with the Hellenist. The Jew would be attracted by those elements which allied it to his previous creed, but he would be repelled by the statements which gave it currency with the Greek; and the Greek would, in like manner, be both attracted and repulsed; attracted by that which the Jew would not be so willing to receive, and repelled by that to which the Jew would most naturally cling. The doctrine of the person of Christ would thus stand, as it were, in the centre between two conflicting tendencies; and it would prove its divine origin by gradually drawing the two together, as to a common centre. Thus it would show itself to contain a truth higher than either, yet adapted to both; and so persuasive and prevalent was it, that it at length drew together these two opposing tendencies, and made them one in the confession of the truth as it is in Jesus. And in this confession are contained the elements which animated the two contending parties, expressed in a higher form, and brought into a state of perfect union, and realized in the person of the God-man.

Had there been only the Greek tendency, this doctrine could never have been brought out; for the Hellenist had no definite sense of the personality of God, or of his highest moral attributes. On the other hand, had there been only the Jewish tendencies, these were too severely monotheistic, to allow them to come naturally to such a truth. Had the Greek and the Jew met in conflict, there would have been perpetual warfare, but no common or reconciling central truth. That reconciling truth was given only in the manifestation of God in the flesh.

Christianity thus solved the great problem which these two parties were discussing from opposite points of view. It contains the substantial truth of these two religions; since in the doctrine of the person of Christ it gives us the difference as well as the unity of the divine and the human, and thus leads to more correct views both of the nature of God and of man. Is heathenism seeking the apotheosis of human nature? In Christ it is given, for here is a man who is God. Is the true Jewish tendency that which seeks the completion of the revelation left incomplete in the law? This is given it in Christ, for in him is the revelation of the depths of the divine condescension and love; God has become man. Here is the point where the bond of unity between God and the world, which heathenism was always looking af

1 Hence, on the one hand the sect of the Ebionites, and on the other the influence of the Alexandrian philosophy, in the early church.

ter, is fully exhibited; but it is so exhibited, that the material notions of heathenism are entirely obliterated, and that the personality as well as the holiness of God, which are the great ideas of the Old Testament, come to their perfect expression. The highest view of man which heathenism could form was, that he is of divine off-spring, in a purely natural sense; but in Christ we have a man, who is not merely divine in nature, but all whose words and acts are divine; both in an ethical and natural sense, he is the Son of God. And thus he was fitted for his great work of reconciling man with God. And as far as man himself is concerned we have also, in the Christian view of his new life, a higher truth than ever Jew or pagan knew —and a truth which corrects and reconciles the highest conceptions of both. The pagan speaks of man as divine, without reference to his moral state; the Jew insists upon his obedience to the external law, without first and directly insisting upon a total change in his spiritual condition, upon his being made a partaker of the divine nature. Christianity would make men both in nature and in act to be the children of God and the brothers of Christ; but in opposition to heathenism, it enforces a moral likeness, and in contrast with the legal principle it demands a spiritual regeneration. And in demanding this spiritual and moral renovation, it annuls the heathen assumption that we are already by nature so closely connected with God that we need no moral change; while it also exposes the futility of that righteousness which comes from external conformity to the law. Thus the old man dies and gives place to the new, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit is made a partaker of the divine nature, and through the Son received into the fellowship of the Father. Man becomes the Son of God in a sense which neither Jew nor pagan ever conceived; and thus does the Christian faith rebut the errors which each held, and bring out the truth which reconciles the two, and which also leads man to a state of reconciliation with God.

But before the full truth could be received, it must contend against prevalent errors and partial principles. When introduced into the world it encountered masses of Jewish and heathen prejudices. It dissipated them, not by a sudden magical stroke, but by severe toil. The principle which gave life to the error lost its exclusive influence wherever Christianity was really embraced; and the innate and victorious power of the new principle is seen as it diffuses itself through a world filled with error, and forms a new world of its own.

To trace this triumphant progress of the doctrine of the Person of Christ is the appropriate office of a history of this doctrine. The animatiug principle of this history, as we have seen, is the new rev

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elation which was given to Christ, and which is laid down in the canonical Scriptures as a norm for all ages. Starting from this point, the history has to do, not with the simple faith of the church, which has been more nearly the same in all its centuries; nor yet alone with the successively framed confessions of faith, for these are but the condensed summary of ages of discussion; but the appropriate work of such a history is to exhibit the process and progress of human thought, as employed about the new revelation. It will show how men speculated upon a novel and grand truth; how they were often bewildered and led astray by their previous views; how the truth at length obtained full mastery; how its various elements were successively developed and combined; in a word, how that which was originally given in the form of faith, came to assume also the form of system and of science; how it came to be dominant in human reason, as it was from the first dominant in the human heart. And that historical view of this doctrine would be the true one which should be able to depict how it was introduced into the full current of human thought and feeling, and, with a quiet confidence in its ultimate victory, subjected to misrepresentations and perversions without number; and how it there worked still and constant, sinking deeper and deeper into the human heart, until when the hour had struck, it emerged in its grand and victorious progress, and, suddenly, as by enchantment, the bands fall from the eyes of Christendom, the mists are dispersed, and the radiant image of Christ stands forth in fuller form and glory than ever before. Such an exhibition would be a true one, for it would be animated by the same pulsation which beats in the history itself. Such a history will give the development of the doctrine in both its parts; it will show how the human or lower element was unfolded. To neglect this would be the Docetism of historical narration. It will also exhibit the evolution of the higher and divine element, for to neglect this would be the Ebionitism of an historical narration. Between these two tendencies the doctrine pursued its course; so to describe it is the duty of the historian.

The whole course of the doctrine is to be divided into three distinct periods, each of which has its special characteristics.

The first period comprises the first four centuries of the Christian church. It begins with the general consciousness that in the Person of Christ the divine and the human are united. Starting from this general assumption, the church proceeds to establish the concrete ele

ments which respectively belong to the idea of what is divine, and what is human. These two extremes being thus brought into direct contrast, it then becomes necessary and possible, still further, to inquire into the mode of their union. This is a necessary inquiry, because in proportion as the differences of the two are distinctly discovered in that same measure will the unity, from which they first started, seem to be endangered, and to need a fuller exposition. It has also then only become possible to answer this inquiry, because there could be no adequate conception of the mode of the union before the differences of the elements which are to be united had been clearly defined.

The second period, now, proceeds to perform the task, for which the first has prepared the data, and it works with these data. These data are the elements which belong to the idea of what is divine, and the elements which belong to the idea of what is human, both of which distinct elements have been combined in the great position, that in the Person of Christ are two distinct natures. Starting from the distinction of the two natures, this period would investigate the mode of their union in one person. The fact of their union is assumed. But so long, now, as there is such a conception of the divine nature as excludes all union with the human, or the converse, so long will this union be imperfectly recognized in the Person of Christ; that is, the two factors will not have equal rights conceded to them. One epoch will be liable to give the preponderance to one side, and another to another. These two epochs are found historically prescribed. One of the characteristics of the dogmatic views of the period before the reformation is that the divine (the theological) element has the preponderance; equally remarkable is the preponderance of the human element over the divine in the centuries after the reformation. Thus our second period naturally falls into two epochs; between them stands the Reformation, whose wide historical significancy in relation to our doctrine consists in this, that while it retained the substance of the theological truth of ancient times, it also opened a free course to the attainment of a correct knowledge of what belongs to human nature. Thus the period of the Reformation, continuing the two sides, is a testimony against the one-sidedness both of the earlier and the later epoch. It contains the essential elements of an era which was to introduce a new order of things. It is freed from the exclusive theological tendencies of the scholastics, and it bears testimony against the too great partiality for the human nature of Christ, which has been so prevalent in the later centuries.

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Finally, the third period, which begins with the commencement of the nineteenth century, has for its peculiar and special problem to exhibit the person of Christ, as the perfect union of the divine and the human, with a full recognition of the difference as well as equilibrium of these two elements.

ARTICLE IX.

REMARKS ON CERTAIN ERRONEOUS METHODS AND PRINCIPLES IN BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

By Prof. B. B. Edwards.

A MORE sober and just method of studying the Bible may be among the favorable results which will flow from the the political revolutions which are taking place in various parts of Germany. Some essential and salutary changes in the general habits of thinking and modes of investigation may be expected. We confidently look for this valuable moral product from these political strifes. The grounds for this encouragement are various. In the first place, a profounder and more practical religious feeling may be awakened. This was one result of the wars which followed the first French Revolution. It is said that there are indications in various parts of Germany of more earnest religious emotion. The "present distress," the uncertainties which hang over all earthly things, have led some to look for "a city which hath foundation." A natural consequence of these awakened sensibilities will be a more reverential regard to God's written word, a profounder conviction that it is infallible and eternal truth. In the multifarious and conflicting systems of morals each containing more or less of important truth - which have rapidly succeeded each other, in the attractive and exciting political theories which are now brought forward, not a few of which, on experiment, will be found insufficient or baseless, there may be a yearning of the heart for the simple truths of the Bible, a desire to place the feet on the rock of ages, a craving for an objective guide that cannot mislead. In other words, a revived sense of practical religion implies that serious state of mind without which the Scriptures will not be used aright, and will, therefore, be misinterpreted.