acknowledged, in some form, by wise and holy men both before and since the Apostle John, who says, "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and knoweth God." While the law is undoubtedly true that feeling and perception, as states of consciousness, have some tendency to exclude each other, and that a man may therefore be blinded by his feelings; it is also true that these states always to some extent co-exist, and neither can remain in the total absence of the other. There is no clear vision without attention, and no attention until interest be aroused; and there is no living interest in the spiritually beautiful, the holy, without adoration. No man who is cold to the issues of the late civil war, and without sympathy in the trials and sufferings of ordinary life, can give a just judgment of the statuettes of Rogers. No man without interest in dogs and other animals can justly estimate Landseer. No man who is unmoved by music is a competent judge of Rubinstein or of Wagner. And of what value is a criticism upon the labors of Agassiz or Bache or Peirce from a man who is without enthusiasm for any of the mathematical or physical sciences. It is evident that while enthusiasm may mislead, and too great a depth of feeling blind the judgment, it is even more emphatically true that coldness must lead to injustice; and that aversion or dislike to a subject will prevent the formation of correct opinions concerning it. Over-zeal leads to extravagance of opinion; coldness is deadness and consequent blindness; while the highest healthy enthusiasm gives the clearest sight. If then human testimony has any weight with us, we should give, other things being equal, the greatest weight to the testimony and opinion of those interested in. the question, and moderately enthusiastic upon it. If now we apply these self-evident remarks to the question of theology, we shall see that it is only those interested in religion who are likely to form a sound judgment on relig ious matters. It is perfectly reasonable to ask those who are not devoutly inclined to give at least great weight to religious opinions upon which the majority of more devout men agree. If, for any cause, I am inclined to doubt the being of God, the efficacy of prayer, the immortality of the soul, and the forgiveness of sin, and to sink into acquiescence with the notion that man perishes with death, then I ought to remember that those whose lives have given the best proof of a religious nature, and who have been most thoroughly and practically interested in such questions, have, with great unanimity, proclaimed these doctrines, which I am doubting, to be the most certain of all truths. In the hours of deepest need, when our holiest longings are awakened, God is not an unknown and unknowable mystery, but a Father; of unsearchable wisdom, of boundless love, of unspeakable tenderness; he is the only judge who can decide what suffering and disappointment, what agony and bloody sweat may be necessary for us in this life, to fit us for the unutterable joys prepared in the world to come, for those who love and trust him. The fact that in our hour of deepest emotion and of most thorough awakening we cling to these common tenets of holy men, gives to those tenets a new and strong probability. We were recently reading to a friend the report of a scene in the National Academy of Sciences. The Superintendent of the Coast Survey had poured out with great earnestness a chapter in his "Linear Associative Algebra," which he deemed of the highest importance; but it was necessarily clothed in language perfectly unintelligible to a majority of his hearers. When he had closed, and all were sitting in silent bewilderment, Agassiz arose and said, in substance, "I must confess that I have not understood one word of this communication, but I have heretofore had such ample reasons for believing in the speaker's clearness and soundness of thought, that I accept what he has now said as undoubtedly true, and unquestionably to become of great practical value.” When I had finished reading the anecdote, my friend surprised me by saying, with decisive clearness: That is precisely my position with regard to Jesus Christ; Jesus assures me of the paternal character of God, and of the immortality of the individual soul; how he gets his knowledge, I do not know; I cannot see those truths clearly written on the world, nor on the soul; without Christ I could only hope they were true; but I have seen, and do see, so many proofs of the wonderful wisdom and clearness of thought and holiness of character in Jesus Christ, that when he says that he knows they are true, I believe that he does know; theorizers may debate as they will concerning the character and degree of his inspiration, in what manner or sense he was an incarnation of God, it is enough for me that the whole record of the New Testament gives me perfect faith in his wisdom, his holiness, and his truth; so that when he says that he knows God is our Father, I know that he knows it, and therefore I know it. Nor was my friend unwise, much less unreasonable, in thus accepting, upon the authority of competent testimony, truths consonant with the intuitions of his soul, but beyond the reach of his faculties to attain. ARTICLE II. THE UNION OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN IN JESUS CHRIST. BY REV. PRESIDENT ROBINS, WATERVILLE, MAINE. IN the tenth chapter of the Acts, and thirty-eighth verse, it is declared that "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him." The question which the present Article seeks to answer is, Does the relation of the Holy Spirit to Jesus of Nazareth, as here asserted, furnish any clue to a right understanding of that mysterious life in which were so intimately blended the divine and human? It is admitted, on all hands, that now, as never before, the battle of the ages centres around the person of our Lord. Infidelity itself has been forced to see that in him there is, somehow, the source of the mysterious and indestructible life of the host marshalled in his name. It therefore directs its attacks against him. As a necessary result, believers in his name are put upon a more careful scrutiny into that wondrous personality whose deep secret we shall never, probably, be able fully to discover. Our question, then, is not one prompted by mere love of speculation, but by a reverent desire to know whether the Holy Scriptures teach us anything beyond the bare facts that Jesus Christ was both divine and human, whether they give us any hint of the conditions of the activity of these two factors of his unique person. It becomes us, indeed, to walk with cautious feet on holy ground; but it must not be forgotten that there is such a thing as a profane neglect of the teachings of the Word of God, as well as a profane scrutiny into the secret things which belong alone to him. It is not Christian faith, but heathen superstition, which conceals the object of its worship by self-invented methods. Christ is not an idol, that we should hide him behind the veil of a willing ignorance. He is set forth for our intelligent worship. He invites examination. In condescending grace he says, "Handle me and see." It is precisely this reverential study of the person of Christ, in order to attest the reality of his humanity amid the blaze of his essential glory, to which John refers in the exordium to his first Epis tle. 66 That," he says, "which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life." If our Lord not only permitted, but desired, this familiarity of investigation while he dwelt among men, he cannot now look with disapprobation upon any effort we may make to apprehend more perfectly his adorable person. The Scylla and Charybdis of Christology are here; maintaining the Godhood of our Lord we are in danger, by the terms of our argument, of casting suspicion, at least, upon the reality of his manhood; maintaining his true manhood, we are in peril of furnishing proof against his Godhood. Do the holy scriptures indicate a safe course between these extremes? We venture to think that they do. We think that a clue to it is found in a proper recognition of the fact, liable to be overlooked in our discussions of the person and work of Christ, as if it had no decisive bearing upon a proper comprehension of them, that the entire activity of his earthly life is referable to the Holy Spirit as the efficient cause. By this we mean that he was not independent in his action, but that in the unfolding of his career among men he was inspired, guided, controlled in thought and word and deed by the Spirit of God. The meaning and proof of this proposition will appear as we proceed. We must first recollect distinctly who he is of whose life the Spirit is the efficient cause. He is the God-man. We believe that he united in his one unique personality the divine and human natures, that these were bound together in him "by the vinculum of a single consciousness." But it must not be forgotten that the two factors of our Lord's complex person were not in him each in its own proper and entire activity. The humanity, rather, was the apparent, and, as to modes of expression, the controlling factor. He appeared among men as a man, and acted as a man. "God was manifested in the flesh." "The Word became flesh."2 By these declarations we are taught, we suppose, not a deceptive, Docetic manifestation of Deity under the veil of the flesh, the body, but a manifestation of Deity in human nature; and that as we are men, not so much by the structure of our bodies as by the constitution of our souls, so Christ was a man, not so much because he was among men in bodily form, as because he acted among them through, as the vehicle of all his action, a true human soul. In order to this, the second person of the adorable Trinity emptied himself, taking upon him the form of a servant. He laid aside the glory which he had with the Father before the world was. The precise effect and limit of this humiliation we may perhaps never know. But we think that it is not presumption to say that 2 John i. 14. 11 Tim. iii. 16. 8 Phil. ii. 7. 78 4 John xvii. 5. |