usually continues for many years, and frequently is never abolished. How often it is the case that one who loves God with the whole heart, to whom God is all that is pure, sweet, gracious, and forgiving; who can weep on His heart, and come to Him like a child in the darkest hour of sorrow and sin, will nevertheless describe God in language expressive only of gloom and fear. Faith's Father is Dogma's Dæmon. The grace which the heart welcomes, the understanding declares is unattainable, save to the "elect." The righteousness which the holiest reveres, becomes hideous when explained by the theologian's logic as inexorable and pitiless law. People, and profoundly pious people too, will speak of God as a Being of perfect love, and in the same breath insist upon it that He condemns those whom death finds impenitent, to the horrors of everlasting perdition. We must often deplore such contrasts as these. But they are natural — they are unavoidable ; for experience as well as reflection teaches us that the swift and free spirit easily outstrips the lagging understanding, and in proportion to its elevation and its range, breaks through the boundaries of definition and the limitations of logic, and drags on the blundering intelligence as best it can. After all, the man who suffers through the want of intellectual training alone is an infinitely. nobler person than the man who suffers through the want of spiritual discernment. It is immeasurably better to be able to feel God truly, than to be able to talk about Him exactly; to have an entire faith in Deity, than to have an ingenious theory of Deity. In the former case, God will be revealed to men in spite of stammering tongue and incoherent speech. In the latter case, God will not be revealed at all: only the name of God will glide with glib movement over the frozen surface of the thoughts.

Applying what has now been said, perhaps at needless length, to Jesus, it will be conceded that his highest mission did not require intellectual perfection, and that any defects that may be discovered in his logical understanding do not necessarily detract from his personal dignity or his prophetic wisdom. Jesus was uneducated, according to our standard, and of course was destitute of the advantages which education alone bestows. He had not enjoyed even the teaching of the rabbins, poor as that was. Whence should he learn logic? Whence should he get instruction in regard to the laws of thought? Do dialectics come by intuition? Does the Holy Spirit give lessons in criticism? Jesus

was uneducated. Of course, he was ignorant in some things, in some he was prejudiced, in some he was mistaken. A brief examination of one or two of his speculative views will show him to have been so. Having accepted the first Gospel as containing our only authentic information respecting Jesus, we must, of course, scek his opinions there, taking the book as we find it, and interpreting the language fairly. We may wish that some things we read were omitted, and that some things which are omitted could be supplied. But there is the Book. We must take it as it is, neither adding nor substracting aught. It is not for the student to misinterpret or evade. It is not for the believer persistently or perversely to discover his own sentiments in the New Testament, and then to protest that he believes with Christ, when in fact he makes Christ believe with him. This kind of interpretation, "Whose problem is not simply to gather an author's thought from his words, but from among all true thoughts to find the one that will sit the least uneasily under his words," has too long been the opprobrium of English theology. "No doubt," says a brilliant writer, many good and well-instructed men have persuaded themselves that by such exegetical sleight-of-hand they could save apostolic and other infallibility. We can only say that when piety supplies the motive, and learning the means, for bewildering veracity of apprehension, two rich and noble endowments are spent in corrupting a nobler, which is the life of them both."

Let us first examine the expressed beliefs of Jesus respecting God. To that filial heart God appeared as the sum of all spiritual perfection. Faith in God was remarkably clear and firm; conviction of the Divine reality was as absolute as the truth itself; feeling of the Divine Spirit was deep, trusting, and tender, almost beyond expression. Jesus seems to have thought and purposed, to have lived, moved, and had his being in God. God was to him Law, and Light, and Love. In this elevation of soul what blessed words fall from his lips. God is no awful, jealous Jehovah, but the "Father celestial," who "maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." He is "ready to give good things to them that ask him." He sees the deed that is done in secret, and heeds the unuttered prayer. He reveals himself to the pure in heart; the peace-makers are his

Martineau, Westminster Review for January, 1852, p. 109.

children. But He has compassion, even better than love, for the erring who are penitent, and for the guilty who implore. "Love your enemies," says Jesus; "bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." God is everywhere, extending His care to the smallest thing. "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father." 66 The very hairs of your heads are all numbered." It was a saintly spirit that out of its joyous trustfulness could say, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink, nor for your body what ye shall put on." "If God so clothe the grass of the field which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of little faith?" Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." It was a truly child-like spirit that could discover the Divine glory and graciousness in the lilies and the grass, and could reason from their delicate but guarded beauty to the Providence which oversees human life. The Father's car is perpetually open to His children's cry. Nothing could be more beautiful than words like these: "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." One who could speak thus must have had himself a natural father and mother; for how could he have learned the meaning of those dear words, save in a human frame?

But faith in God is manifested by actions better than by words; and judged by this sign, the faith of Jesus stands unparallelled, as yet, and unapproached. He whose benignant presence was a breathing benediction upon all that met him; he who could speak compassionately to the adulturess,* and could extend his comforting and healing sympathy to all, without distinction of nation, sect, class or condition-through this universal kindness did but express his conviction that the Heavenly Father likewise blessed all His creatures; that He pitied the guilty, and was long suffering towards the sinful; that He, too, knew no distinction of persons, but could love all alike. We can not doubt, therefore, that Christ's

* According to Fabricius, the story of the adulturess, told in the eighth chapter of John, and decided to be ungenuine there, cccurred in the "Gospel of the Ebionites," which is supposed, and not without reason, to have been the original of our Matthew.

feeling towards God was wonderfully pure, and that his faith in God was absolutely perfect. But this beautiful sentiment seems never to have become exact philosophy. And when we take up Christ's intellectual apprehension, or dogmatic theory of God, we feel painfully its inadequacy to convey a feeling so pure and simple. For example, the intelligent belief in an Infinite God, infinite in power, in wisdom, and in goodness, seems inconsistent with such a belief in Satan as was entertained by the Jews; for the admission of a spirit essentially evil into the economies of the universe in a measure qualifies every one of the Divine attributes. The realm allotted to the Devil must be snatched from the dominion of God. That portion of the world, like the castle of an insurgent baron, is not actually in the Lord's possession, and is even fortified against his approach. There is a Power that can maintain itself against the Supreme, which therefore is no longer Supreme. A king, one-half whose empire is in a state of permanent and successful revolt, is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Now Jesus, so far as we can judge, believed in this Evil Spirit. Not only when he may be accommodating himself to popular opinions, but when he must be supposed to enunciate his own, he asserts, or at least never so much as by implication denies the existence of a personal Power of Malignity, a dark and dangerous Being, who disputed with God the empire of the earth. The least ambiguous proofs of this occur in the third Gospel, but in the first Gospel they are not wanting. The Prince of Evil is called Satan, Devil, Beelzebub, the Wicked One, and most of the hellish attributes are ascribed to him. "Then was brought unto Jesus one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb, and he healed him ;" and said, "If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his kingdom stand?"-Matt. xvi. 22-26. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the Wicked One and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart."-xiii. 19. "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the Kingdom; the tares are the children of the Wicked One; the enemy that sowed them is the Devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels."-xiii. 38, 39. If the belief in Satan had not prevailed among the Jews, in the time of Christ, we might say that he merely made use, as a poet, of figurative language. But since the words that are put into his mouth

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express a belief which was commonly entertained, even by the wise and learned and pious of that age, we have no right to say that when Jesus used them, as in the cases cited above, he meant something else, or meant nothing. We have no right to presume that while he employed the popular speech, he discarded the popular prejudice.

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It was during the Persian Captivity that the Jews, as appears from books produced after the Exile, adopted the dæmonology of the East, and found a place for evil spirits in the order of Providence. In the Apocryphal writings the existence of "dæmons" is a fact assumed. They are described as dwelling in desolate and ruinous places. They have intercourse with men, and possess them, and can only by occult agencies be expelled. One of them, a lustful dæmon, occupies the body of a beautiful maid and kills her seven husbands on the marriage-night. These dæmons were not supposed to be the departed spirits of evil men, which were allowed to haunt the earth and disturb the peace of its inhabitants, according to the notion that widely prevails in modern times, and in defence of which the believers in spiritual intercourse have much to say. They were fallen angels, born in heaven and born good, but plunged by their own transgressions into hell. This is the belief that plainly appears in the New Testament, and that is fully stated in the following passage, Matt. xii. 43-46: When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first." The Jews, in common with other nations, ascribed to the influence of evil spirits the more mysterious and uncontrollable maladies, such as epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, dumbness, blindness, more especially madness, lunacy, delirium, idiocy, and melancholy. The Jewish physicians or Magi resorted to various methods of exorcism for the restoration of such as were thus afflicted, using incantations, prescribing charms, talismans, and mystic formulas, which evil spirits could not withstand. When the sufferers in this kind are brought to Jesus, he rebukes the spirits and expels them "by his word," always humoring the patient's whim, but appa rently, too, sharing in his delusion. Did he share in it? This is

my