Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

the continuity with the Messianic thought of the old covenant. Therefore Christian dogmatics must place foremost the thought of the kingdom, together with that of the person of Christ. And this is of very special importance in an evangelical-catholic system of dogmatics, such as the author desires to give. For only by means of the idea of the kingdom can he substantiate that of the union of all churches and confessions which he wishes to bring to dogmatical expression. The neglect of this point causes here and there an impression of arbitrariness as we follow the author's general course of thought in the fundamental part.

However, I must not take leave of the beautiful book with an objection. Let us, in closing, give a look into the deep and truly theological heart of the author, by quotation of a passage where he gives the establishment of the doctrine of the person of Christ from the third dogmatical source — that which is found in the personal experience of the believer. He says: "§ 93. My religious experience, in its origin, preservation, and growth, testifies to the central importance of the person of Christ in that experience.

66

"When I try to separate the essential from the accidental in the process of formation of my inner life, and thus to see in what way my Christian faith and life have arisen, recollections of my childhood come up, first of all, before my soul. Thankfully do I think of the hand that pointed to the story of the Bible, of the mother's prayer that called upon the Saviour, of the testimony of a father, less frequent, but all the more impressive, which gradually grew to a confiding interchange of holy thoughts and longings. Such impressions were deepened by the pastor's instruction in divine things, which made familiar to me, as the holy and saving truth, a system of facts and doctrines whose centre was Christ. Every model set before me, all that was most earnest and holy in the persons and customs which controlled my youth, was most closely connected with an acknowledgment of Christ. How should I throw doubt upon it? At first, I believed on Christ because of my parents and other relatives, because of my teacher and the training the church had given Even in my choice of a calling the influence of the world around me-that Christ-loving world in which I grew up was by no means small, although that calling freely won me and my whole heart. Later, too, in the riper years of youth, I followed the guidance of theological teachers and Christian friends, their eloquent words and the close chain of reasoning in their testimonies. And lastly, the pastoral office, with its fixed ordinances and customs, and that of theological instructor in the midst of an association where faith in Christ rules, has exerted a marked influence on the cast of my theological convictions. But I am just as clearly conscious that I owe my faith and my personal fellowship with God not so much to men, but to personal intercourse with the living Christ. This has always remained the same, through all changes of impression and of

me.

views, while so much received in childhood has either faded away or taken other form; and not only so, this has become ever more and more the determining and directing element in me. Let me begin with that which was at least the first stage for me, and which has remained the innermost experience. The consciousness of my sin and of God's grace to lift me up was changed from a dead letter into life, first, through my own personal acquaintance with Christ. It was never hard for me to see the truth of what I had learned, that all men are sinners, and do not answer to the ideal of human perfection; that they are justified without merit through the grace of God in Christ Jesus and faith in that grace. But what sin is, and how sinful sin is, I have not learned to understand, like Paul, by the law, but at the sacred portrait of the Saviour, and by the offering of his love upon the cross. It was in Christ I first learned that standard for my heart and life which showed what is in those words, 'fleshly, sold under sin.' The cross of Christ first taught me the hatefulness and curse of my sin. But, at the same time, I felt more and more that I might set as my law and destiny the ideal I saw in Christ, though it lay above my power and nature. I must learn to see in that sin that was borne and condemned upon the cross, something to be separated from myself, something not to be tolerated. The Saviour appeared to me as the real bearer, and the pure expression of our human destiny, because, as advocate and surety in the presence of the holiness of God, he offered himself to me; he promised to raise me to his own holiness and glory, and already sealed that promise to me by giving himself as a new aim for my wishes, my hopes, my sympathies, my estimation. In the troubled hours of sorrow and loss I have found him, and him only, my comfort, as the Giver of the power of the life that fadeth not away. I know no period of great stirring in my inner life, no moment of great influence upon my later course, which has not been essentially a renewed and wider shining forth of the glory hid in the person of Christ, and a time when my heart established some new relation toward him. Whatever in my religious development and experience has not come into living contact with this focus has remained a dead knowledge and opinion, but has grown to no life and no power. My inner knowledge of God, learned not in human schools, but in the school of the Holy Spirit, has concentrated itself more and more in the face of Jesus Christ. The more I learn to think, the more does God, without him, become to me the incomprehensible, the inapproachable, the unspeakable; God becomes all the more distant from me, the more my spirit seeks to convince itself of his reality. In Christ the fulness of life of the invisible Father comes near me as life and love, as holiness and brightness, as a being that never ends, a power ever present, and I find access to the inapproachable. In Christ is solved for me the enigma of my own heart and life, this half-way position between sense and spirit, betwixt bond and free, betwixt the entanglement in sin and death and

the destiny to eternal life, between the weak, impure beginning and the aim of perfection. The enigmas in the world about me, too, in the arrangement of society, in the historical development of peoples, - lose all their mystery, all their oppressiveness for my mind, when I consider them in the light of God's fatherly management of all things, of time and eternity, earth and heaven, as that is determined in Christ. Finally, when I view those means by which my relation to God has been and is now conditioned and nourished, I am pointed by all to the working of that life which is in the person of Christ. These means are the word concerning Christ, and in the word Christ's spirit; they are the life of Christ in the members of his body, and the love of that brotherly communion which is in Christ. Only what comes from him, what beams from his hidden glory, only that has become in me light, power, peace, blessing. The hereafter of our human life has always seemed especially dark to me. No matter how powerfully the longing for an endless life wrought in me, stili no theory of the soul's immortality would satisfy me; for all experience and observation only confirm the view that the soul suffers together with the body in all that affects the latter. And it was still harder to conceive of a bodiless existence beyond the grave. Now, all the more confidently do my hopes beyond the grave and corruption rest upon the fellowship with Christ, on my share in his indissoluble life, on the hope of a glorifying of the body through the power of him who has risen. I am content without a revelation and understanding of the condition after death, because "being with Christ" includes all else for me, and in communion with him dying brings not death, but gain. Thus my personal experience tells me, more directly than any historical testimony can, that in Christianity all is contained in the personal fellowship of life with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. Do I wish to define clearly what is essential, what is the principal thing in Christianity, then I must understand what Christ is for me and in me. I have all from God in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And, therefore, I cannot but join in the apostle's confession: 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we have believed and seen that thou art the Holy One of God"" (p. 125 sq.). Other works which have recently appeared are:

Imman. Herm. Fichte. The Theistical View of the World and its Confirmation. Duties of present speculative study.-Die theist. Weltansicht u. ihre Berechtigung. Ein kritisches Manifest an ihre Gegner, u. Bericht über die Hauptaufgaben der gegenwärtigen Speculation. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. oct. s. 283. 1873. Price, 13 Th.

s. 301.

-

1873.

A. Immer, Professor in Bern, on New Testament Hermeneutics.. -Hermeneutik des N. Ts. Wittenberg: Herm. Kölling. oct. Price, 13 Th.

0. Pfleiderer, on the Doctrine of Paul. - Der Paulinismus. VOL. XXXI. No. 123.

74

Ein

Beitrag zur Geschichte der urchristlichen Theologie. Leipzig: Fues's Verlag. 8. s. 518. 1873. Price, 3 Th.

Herm. Gebhardt on the Doctrine of the Apocalypse and its Relation to that of John's Gospel and Epistles. Der Lehrbegriff der Apocalypse u. sein Verhältniss zum Lehrbegriff des Evangeliums u. der Episteln des Johannes. Gotha: Besser. gr. oct. 8. 444. 1873. Price, 2} Th.

1873.

Carl Twesten on the Religious, etc., Ideas of the Civilized Peoples of Asia and of the Egyptians. Edited by M. Lazarus. - Die religiösen, politischen u. socialen Ideen der asiatischen Culturvölker und der Aegypter in ihrer historischen Entwickelung dargestellt. Herausgegeben von M. Lazarus. II. Bde. Berlin: Dümmlers Verlag. gr. oct. 8. 674. Price, 4 Th. L. Nottrott on the Gossner Mission to the Coles. - Die Gossnersche Mission unter den Kohls. Halle. s. 455. 1874. Price, 13 Th. Th. Keim's Restoration of Celsus's Attacks on Christianity in 178 A.D.— Celsus wahres Wort. Aelteste Streitschrift antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum vom Jahr 178 nach Christo. Wiederhergestellt, aus dem Griechischen übersetzt u. erläutert, mit Lucian u. Minucis Felix verglichen. Zürich: Orell, Füssli u. Co. gr. oct. s. 293. 1873. Price, 23 Th.

1874.

J. L. Füller's Commentary on the Apocalypse. Die Offenbarung Johannis erklärt. gr. oct. s. 730. 1874. Price, 3 Th. Nördlingen. Oehler's Theology of the Old Testament. Dr. Gust. Fr. Oehler, weiland ord. Prof. zu Tübingen. Theologie des Alten Testaments. I. Band: Einleitung und Mosaismus. Tübingen: Heckenhauer. gr. oct. s.555. Price, 3 Th. II. Band Prophetismus u. Alttest. Weisheit. s: 352. In the "Literarischen Centralblatt," the first volume of this work is reviewed, by "E. S." in substance, as follows: The work must be welcomed as from one who in his lifetime rendered much valuable service in the study of the Old Testament. It contains a mass of material on the subject, in the author's way thoroughly treated, and often showing great care and wisdom in selection. Serious faults are: (1) The division of the subject into Mosaism, Prophecy, and Chokma or Wisdom. This is not according to development, and causes confusion. (2) Much valuable matter in the work is not there at home, but belongs rather to a historical or archaeological work. (3) The lack of a wide Oriental culture, on the author's part, causes a lack of proper handling of other Semitic religions, and of the essence, origin, and distinctive character of the Hebrew religion. (4) The work and results of the school of critics opposed to the author is undervalued. A work on the Theology of the Old Testament, following that by Schultz, should have reached a much higher mark. And yet this book must be received gratefully, as a real enrichment of literature on the Old Testament.

The work has been edited by H. Oehler, from his late father's lecture manuscript.

RECORDS OF THE PAST: being Translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian Monuments. Published under the Sanction of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. Vol. I., Assyrian Texts. 12mo. pp. 176. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons. 1874.

When has it fallen to a critic's lot to notice a volume like this? A volume of translations from the records on the Assyrian slabs! The Assyrians and Babylonians were known to have existed; but the details of their history, their knowledge of the arts and sciences, their achievements as a race, their religion, their world of thought, were matters about which the world was almost totally ignorant. Within a few years past some of the strange mounds which line the Tigris and Euphrates have been opened. And, behold! there were lying, safely preserved, the fullest records of those ancient people. What we have before us in this small volume is only a specimen of what we may expect. It is difficult to persuade one who has not studied the subject, of the vast amount of literature or records that has been recovered. Nor can we stop here to show how vast that literature is. Here we have an inscription of Khammurabi, who lived before the time of Moses. His inscriptions are written in Accadian, with a single fortunate exception, which is in the Babylonian language, proving, for one thing, "that the Babylonian language was the same in the days of Khammurabi as it was a thousand years later in the days of Nebuchadnezzar." He records with pride his efforts to supply his city with fresh water, and alludes to some other works, the object of which was to benefit his people (pp. 5-8). Very many of their kings were public spirited men. Sennacherib took pains "to care for the health of the city by bringing streams of water into it, and the finding of new springs" (p. 29). Again, he speaks of "planting the finest trees," and that he caused "the uprising of springs in more than forty places in the plain." These he "divided into irrigating canals for the people of Nineveh, and gave them to be their own property" (p. 31). Again: "To obtain water to turn the flour-mills, I brought it in pipes from Kishri to Nineveh, and I skilfully constructed water-wheels." He brought water from a river nearly two miles away "into reservoirs, and covered them well" (p. 32). Assurbanipal took great interest in literature and learning, in preserving the old records, and in preparing new tablets for public use, corresponding practically to our public libraries (p. 58). Their building and constructing of palaces and of public works was also very extensive. There is mentioned a "hall of assembly," which was "a vast building" (p. 27). Yearly annals were published by authority (p. 34). Out of three palaces which Assurbanipal captured he collected "thirty-two statues of kings, fashioned of silver, gold, bronze, and alabaster" (p. 86). The Phoenicians were their shipbuilders: "In Syrian ships I crossed the sea [Persian Gulf]” (p. 43). We notice the Semitic brevity with which they write or speak: "Collect thy army! strike thy camp! make haste to Babylon! stand by our side!

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »