is the meaning of His own name, Jesus-that given Him of the angel before His birth. The word which Israel had always received as the Name by which it signified its manifesting God, was here interwoven forever with God's purpose of salvation, and in Jesus (Jehovah, salvation) more of its meaning is revealed; and as the Incarnate Word it is again set forth as His memorial unto all generations. So too in the Lord's Prayer, what is the "Hallowed be Thy Name" but "may the manifested Word-the Name in which the Father is revealed, the only begotten Son by Whom He was declared, Jesus Himself"-may HE be everywhere known and received as the Divine Word made flesh! May He be blest and worshipped as the Salvation of Jehovah! Thus also the Lord's Prayer will be seen to have such a reference to our Lord Himself, as would flow very naturally from the opinions of the Name then common; and in perfect harmony with the constant usage of the Saviour, in identifying Himself with the Name of God. This too will remove a difficulty in the minds of many, why our Lord made no allusion to Himself in the typical prayer intended by Him for His Church in all the after ages. He not only did refer to Himself, but so does it, as to gather up in the form He uses, all the Old Testament conceptions of the medium through which God would reveal Himself to the world, and by which He would form and govern His Messianic Kingdom among There is one other point to which we must here allude, and that is His formula of Baptism "into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and its reconciliation with the form given elsewhere, "To or into the Name of Jesus Christ."" It is evident from all that has been said, that the Name in both formulas is the same, and the Baptism in either case is into the Name, which is the Bible expression for the self-manifested God; that is into Him Who is that Name, into the living Word Who is God's revelation of Himself, and hence is "the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Thus primarily, Baptism is an engrafting into Him who is the medium through Whom alone God is manifest in the flesh to us, and through Whom only can we come into union with the Trinity of God. And He is here represented as we have

men.

Hence our Baptism

so often seen elsewhere as "the Name." into "the Name," is into Jesus; as the Apostle says, "we have put on Christ," and when we are one with Him, we are sons of God by adoption. The mention of the three persons of the Trinity in connection with "the Name," displays to us the inner relations of the Godhead, teaches us all we need to know in germ of this,' and at the same time implies that our being baptized "into the Name," is really being baptized into Him through Whom and in Whom we are placed in living union with the whole Trinity. So strong was the conviction in the early Church that the essential element and effective power in baptism was "the Name," that there is quite a discussion in some of the letters of Cyprian and Firmillianus to Stephen of Rome, whether the grace of baptism was inherent in "the Name" by whomsoever used, or was of no avail except in the church alone to which alone Christ had conceded the power of Heavenly Grace.

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III. It will hardly be necessary here to dwell at any length on the Proem to the Gospel of St. John, or other references in the New Testament to "the Word" when thus independently used. However strangely these expressions may sound to those who know them only as standing thus by themselves in the Christian Scriptures, they could have occasioned no surprise to any one acquainted with the Jewish theology of that day. They are only the expressions of thoughts then everywhere current among the Jews. To say the "word was with God," or was God," or "all things were made by Him," was simply to repeat language which we have shown to be almost universal in that age and which must have been familiar to them all. The point of fatal separation was "the Word made flesh." Hence the aim of St. John, and much of the reasoning of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove that this "Jesus is the Christ;" to give Scriptural grounds for "identifying Him with the Word of the Old Testament and Targums, to show that He was "the Name" which was above every Name. To this class of references belong

IV. The constant use of "the Name" in every part of the New Testament as the rightful attribute of Jesus; applying it to Him in precisely the same way as the Old Testament, and their current exposition of its meaning habitually connected it with "the LORD" or "God." Such are these: "By His Name is this man healed." "None other Name whereby we must be saved." "A Name above every Name." "At the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in heaven and in earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Men might have life through His Name and are made Sons of God by believing on His Name, with many others of like import. All these to a Jewish mind of the time of Christ must have meant that He to whose Name all these Divine qualities could of right be attributed was that Divine Word Who, having by inheritance the Name more excellent than all others, was here and in this Jesus manifested to the world, was the Word that was "with God and was God," thus" dwelling among men, full of Grace and Truth," as God's revealed self and their salvation.

If we had time even to glance at the relations of the early Fathers to this theme, we should find all that we have said as to the importance attached to the Word, and the use that can be made of it in the interpretation of the Scriptures, more than confirmed by the extent and nature of their allusions to it. We can here only say, that the prominence thus given by the Ante Nicene writers to the doctrine of the Word and the Name of Jesus, was not an incidental and disproportionate development of one phase of theology, nor a mere outgrowth of the undue predominance of Alexandrian philosophy, as many think, but was a most essential link in the connection of the Jehovah of the Old Testainent with the Jesus of the New. It is also essential to the apprehension of the Gospel in the full breadth of the sublime conception that it is the self-revelation of the Divine, a thought much needed for a right comprehension of the magnificence and glory of " the truth as it is in Jesus," but one which is well nigh forgotten in the ordinary preaching of a mere deliverance from punishment.

J. F. GARRISON.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE CHURCH TO THE COLORED RACE,

The present condition and future prospects of the colored race deserve the serious consideration of the Statesman, the Philanthropist and the Christian. They are emphatically the "wards of the nation." Left to themselves they must grow up in ignorance, accept as the Gospel what is no Gospel, and finally sink into barbarWho can contemplate without horror the results?

ism.

It is very important that North and South both should realize the importance of giving these "wards of the nation" the blessings that flow from religion, pure and undefiled, and heartily unite in the effort to reveal it to them.

In order to show the importance of this subject we desire to call attention to the religious condition of the colored people. And let it be noted we do not refer to the exceptional cases and most objectionable features; but to that which is truest and best and under the most favorable conditions.

A large proportion of them are members of some Christian body-most of these are connected either with the Methodists or Baptists. This, at first sight, seems very encouraging, but when we come to examine the views they hold and the lives they lead, it is the most alarming feature.

For the white and colored Baptists are entirely separated. They have white and colored conventions without any connection with each other. The Methodists present a spectacle as unsatisfactory. The Methodist Episcopal Church South, which once had a colored membership that could be reckoned by thousands, now has very few. The Methodist Episcopal Church has, on the other hand, gathered into her fold a large number. In other words the white and the colored people of the South belong to bodies confessedly antagonistic. The leaders of the Methodist Church South, to pre

vent the absorption of the colored people by the other body, encouraged the organization of a new and distinct body called "The Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church." This is simply a church organized solely on the basis of color and race, composed of colored bishops, ministers and communicants. So that we have the Methodist Episcopal Church South composed almost entirely of whites; the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose strength lies among the colored race and the Zion African Methodist, composed only of colored people. Thus we have the melancholy spectacle of churches organized on the basis of color and race. When we remember that at the South the basis of the two political parties is race and color, the dangers to State and Church from like divisions become very great. For religion, instead of soothing the asperities of political bitterness, only serves to intensify them.

When the natural character and tendencies of the colored race. are taken into consideration, the separation increases our anxiety for the future. They are very excitable; fond of the emotional element in religion, and averse to the moral restraints. They regard playing the fiddle as worse than lying, and dancing as far worse than adultery. And at the same time they preserve in the country their old African dance, but call it "shouting." This they will keep up the whole night, but on no account will they allow those who are not members of their church to take part. They may be spectators or go off elsewhere and have their own "shoutings." In their opinion the highest type of religion is to gather in crowds, shout, fall on the floor, and scream till in utter exhaustion they have to be borne to their homes by their friends.

With such opinions and tendencies, coupled with their separation from the whites, who otherwise might guide and restrain them, what must be the future of the "wards of the nation?" Gathered into organizations based on politics and race; to what will their religion degenerate? Without any creed or form of worship what must their future be?

The Church has within herself all the elements necessary to meet the wants of the colored man. She knows no North, nor South; no politics, nor race. If white men or women, belonging to the bodies of Christians to which the colored people are at present attached, moved by the love of Christ, come to the South to instruct