The Spirit of Truth.

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of inwardness more deeply and thoroughly, not having him to go to, then they would find, he said, a new power come to their help; a power of insight such as they had never had before, and which was none of their making, but came from God as Jesus did, and said nothing of itself, but only what God said or Jesus said; a 'Paraclete,' or reinforcement working in aid of God and Jesus : even the Spirit of Truth. While Jesus was with them, the disciples had lived in contact with aletheia, or reality; and they were promised now an intuition of reality within themselves.

Now, will it be believed, that the Athanasian Creed, and our bishops, and the clergymen who write to the 'Guardian,' and dogmatic theology in general, should have imagined that Jesus Christ here meant to convey to us the 'blessed doctrine' that this Spirit of truth, too, 'is a PERSON'? The force of metaphysical talent out-running literary experience could really, we say, no farther go! The Muse, who visited Hesiod when he was tending his sheep on the side of Helicon, and 'breathed into him a divine voice, and taught him the things to come and the former things,' might every bit as well be made, with much display of metaphysical apparatus, a PERSON.' The influence which visited Hesiod was a real one,—that is as much metaphysics as we can without error, in a case of this sort, apply. Whoever applies more, falls into absurdity.

T

The spiritual visitant, indeed, which rejoiced the wise poet of Ascra, was not the Paraclete of Jesus. No, it was the Muse of art and science, the Muse of the gifted few, the Muse who brings to the ingenious and learned among mankind a forgetfulness,' as Hesiod sings, of evils and a truce from cares.' The Paraclete that Jesus promised, on the other hand, was the Muse of righteousness; the Muse of the work-day, care-crossed, toil-stained millions of men, the Muse of humanity. To all who live, for all that concerns three-fourths of life, this divine Muse offers a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares.' That is why this Muse is far more real, and far greater, than the Muse of Hesiod; not from any metaphysical personality.-Literature and Dogma.

ST. PAUL AND THE 'NOT OURSELVES,

THE element in which we live and move and have our being, which stretches around and beyond the strictly moral element in us, around and beyond the finite sphere of what is originated, measured, and controlled by our own understanding and will,-this infinite element is very present to Paul's thoughts, and makes a profound impression on them. By this element we are receptive and influenced, not originative and influencing; now, we all of us receive far more than we originate. Our pleasure from a spring day we do not make; our pleasure, even, from an approving conscience we do not make.

St. Paul and the Not Ourselves.' 275

And yet we feel that both the one pleasure and the other can, and often do, work with us in a wonderful way for our good. So we get the thought of an impulsion outside ourselves which is at once awful and beneficent. 'No man,' as the Hebrew psalm says, 'hath quickened his own soul.' 'I know,' says Jeremiah, 'that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Most true and natural is this feeling; and the greater men are, the more natural is this feeling to them. Great men like Sylla and Napoleon have loved to attribute their success to their fortune, their star; religious great men have loved to say that their sufficiency was of God. But through every great spirit runs a train of feeling of this sort; and the power and depth, which there undoubtedly is in Calvinism, comes from Calvinism's being overwhelmed by it. Paul is not, like Calvinism, overwhelmed by it; but it is always before his mind and strongly agitates his thoughts. The voluntary, rational, and human world, of righteousness, moral choice, effort, filled a large place in his spirit. But the necessary, mystical, and divine world, of influence, sympathy, emotion, filled an even larger; and he could pass naturally from the one world to the other. The presence in Paul of this twofold feeling acted irresistibly upon his doctrine. What he calls 'the power that worketh in us,' and that produces results transcending all our expectations and calculations, he instinctively sought to

combine with our personal agencies of reason and conscience.-St. Paul and Protestantism.

THE PAULINE NECROSIS.

It is impossible to be in presence of the Pauline conception of faith, without remarking on the incomparable power of edification which it contains. It is at once mystical and rational; and it enlists in its service the best forces of both worlds,-the world of reason and morals, and the world of sympathy and emotion. The world of reason and duty has an excellent clue to action, but wants motive-power; the world of sympathy and influence has an irresistible force of motive-power, but wants a clue for directing its exertion. The danger of the one world is weariness in well-doing; the danger of the other is sterile raptures and immoral fanaticism. Paul takes from both worlds what can help him, and leaves what cannot. The elemental power of sympathy and emotion in us, a power which extends beyond the limits of our own will and conscious activity, which we cannot measure and control, and which in each of us differs immensely in force, volume, and mode of manifestation, he calls into full play, and sets it to work with all its strength and in all its variety. But one unalterable object is assigned by him to this power; to die with Christ to the law of the flesh, to live with Christ to the law of the mind.

The Pauline' Necrosis.'

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This is the doctrine of the necrosis,'—Paul's central doctrine, and the doctrine which makes his profoundness and originality.-St. Paul and Protestantism.

PREDESTINATION.

We have seen how strong was Paul's consciousness of that power, not ourselves, in which we live and move and have our being. The sense of life, peace, and joy, which comes through identification with Christ, brings with it a deep and grateful consciousness that this sense is none of our own getting and making. No, it is grace, it is the free gift of God, who gives abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, and calls things that are not as though they were. 'It is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' As moral agents, for whom alone exist all the predicaments of merit and demerit, praise and blame, effort and failure, vice and virtue, we are impotent and lost ;—we are saved through that in us which is passive and involuntary; we are saved through our affections; it is by an influence, and the emotion from it, that we are saved! Well might Paul cry out, as this . mystical but profound and beneficent conception filled his soul: 'All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.' Well might he say, in the gratitude which cannot find words enough to express its sense of bound

1 II Cor., iv., 10.