of an incarnation of the Most High. And though some faint traces of the expectation of a Messiah may be found in his pages, yet they are with him only a traditional reminiscence, for they are inconsistent with the whole spirit of his system. His whole philosophy, while it is employed in discussing the great problems which the revelation in Christ was intended to solve, and while it has many phrases which sound almost like Christianity itself, is yet in its fundamental principles and inferences wholly alien from the Christian faith. It is only a fata morgana hovering uncertainly over the horizon where Christianity was to arise. Yet being employed speculatively about the same problems which Christ was in reality to solve, his philosophy may not only, in God's providence, have prepared the way for the Gospel, but also had an influence afterwards in giving shape and color to the Alexandrian speculations about the person and the work of Christ.

Thus we have seen that the Old Testament religion, neither in its earlier Hebrew nor in its later Jewish form, and this last neither in Palestine nor in Alexandria, had such a view of the relation of God to man, that from it anything like the doctrine of the Incarnation could be directly derived. But if they could not conceive of God as taking human form, did they not, going from the other extreme, have the idea of a man who had divine attributes? The divinely illuminated Hebrew prophets, in the Servant of God, (i) give the ideal of a man; he it is who is to be a perfect example of righteousness; he is not merely a servant, but is in the closest fellowship with God; but it is difficult to prove, even from Ps. 2: 7, that he is represented as being in his essential nature the Son of God, in the sense in which this phrase is used in the New Testament. He is, indeed, not merely the representative of Israel, but the servant; and the threefold theocratic office, of king, priest, and prophet, is laid upon him, as it could be upon no common mortal. The powers and attributes as

doctrine of the God-man in the Christian system would not be at all affected, even if the Logos of Philo and the Wisdom of the Proverbs were admitted to be distinct hypostases. That does not touch the question of the union of the human and divine natures in one person. Nitzsch in the Studien und Kritiken, for 1840, takes and ably maintains the ground, that in the "Wisdom," and also in the "Angel," of the Old Testament, we have at least the beginning of a distinction immanent in the Godhead. His argument upon this point, against Lücke, is one of great thoroughness and philosophical accuracy.

In the fantastic and mystical Adam Cadmon, (or primitive man,) and in the Memza, (Word,) the Shekinah and the Metatron, we have either no real hypostasis, but only transient or symbolic manifestations of God; or if it be personal, like the Metatron, it is still a creature. To the idea of an incarnation of what is truly divine none of these representations have attained.

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signed to him reach forward to a higher sphere; and what Isaiah prophecies of his effectual and vicarious priesthood surpasses all the power of any one man. In Daniel's vision we have the highest majesty ascribed to the Son of Man, but he is rather to be taken as a representative of Israel (9: 27) than as a man. Thus, though there are traces and indications that are in harmony with the full reality,1 it is not so far anticipated, that one who knew only the Old Testament could say a man is God, or the Son of God, in a proper and metaphysical sense.

In the Hebrew religion, then, while we find those elements which when carried fully out and brought together would give us the idea of the God-man, we do not find them so carried out and united. Unite the Wisdom or the Logos, which expresses the idea of God revealing himself, with that ideal of the Servant of God, which is the highest view of man that the Jews possessed, and we have the basis of the Person of Christ. But this the Hebrew religion did not do, and, therefore, though it was seeking after the great reality, it did not find it until Christ himself appeared.

In this review, now, of the religions which preceded the coming of Christ, we find, that they are indeed, in the grandest sense, a Praeparatio evangelica; and they prove that Christianity clearly announces the great truth which all religions are seeking after; but they also prove that the idea of the God-man first arose in all its fulness, not outside of Christianity, but within it; and that it is therefore one of its peculiar characteristics. This idea is original and essential to Christianity. It began with a fact, and it was the fact which gave the knowledge.

A new principle was introduced into the world when Christ appeared. The origin of this can only be ascribed to Christ himself, to what he declares respecting himself, and to the declarations which his inspired apostles made respecting him. He who was in the be-ginning with God, and was God, assumed human nature. Faith in him was the life of the new church. The church believed in him and trusted in him implicitly. They had the truth respecting him in its totality, but not in its fully developed form. It were unnatural to suppose, that from the very first, in all parts and parties of the church, the whole of what belongs to the fully unfolded idea of the God-man was expressly, and with a full sense of its import, ascribed to Christ. To add the more strictly definite terms, to bring out the whole idea

1 Dr. Dorner here seems to have sacrificed something of accuracy to the purposes of his argument.

in all its relations, was reserved for other times. What was first presented in the simple form of faith was to be unfolded so as to meet the wants of the intellect, and to satify the demands of reason. And this process is one of the highest importance; it is that which constitutes the proper historical development of the doctrine. In it the church, especially of the first centuries, was always guided by a sure tact, which was supplied by the vitality and energy of its faith; and this it was which gave it that clearness and firmness in its final doctrinal decisions upon this subject, which have caused them to be freely received by the great body of the church, in all its branches, through so many centuries. In framing these decisions, then, it is not strange that they should even maintain, that they were adding nothing new, but only expressing the same ancient truth in a competent form, to meet new questions and controversies. Thus, while it would be incorrect to say, that the doctrine of the Incarnation was held by the body of the church in the same form in the fourth century as in the second; yet he who would on this account infer that the later form was wholly of human origin or untrue, would only prove his ignorance of the organizing and plastic power of a new principle, and his want of a historical sense. But this position needs to be more definitely applied to our doctrine.

That universal tendency to ascribe to Christ an exalted majesty, which was found in the lowest form of ancient Christianity as well as in the highest, and which could not rest until it had declared the consubstantiality of the Son and the Father, has its ground in the very essence of Christianity. That such a Hebrew as Paul, in the face of his strict Jewish monotheism, could ascribe to Christ divine attributes, is inexplicable, unless we suppose there had been a mighty and total change in his religious conceptions. And all the early Christians were of one heart and mind, such was the power of their new-wrought faith, in putting the Person of Christ into the closest and most living relation to the Father. In the Son they had found the Father. But there was in them, even in the earliest, so far as we can infer from Scripture and history, a difference in the degree of knowledge which they possessed as to the exact relation between God and Christ. Some of them, whose culture was more universal and whose susceptibility for the loftiest views was more intense, express this relation more perfectly than others.

In the canonical Scriptures we do indeed find all the elements fully given. And it is the peculiar office of the history of the doctrine to show how the different elements which are there laid down, and which are the norm for all times, were successively and fully unfolded in the

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progress of the church. No generation of the church, and least of all the first, has had in a developed form the full wealth of the apostolic revelation; over all the generations the word of Christ and the apostles extends as a sufficient norm to the end of days. Scriptures are a part of the process of development, is

To say that the to put them in

a false position. They contain the germs of the whole process; they give it its impulse.

In the received canon of Scripture, there is a difference in the different books and writers as to the mode in which this doctrine is announced; combined with an essential unity. The grand, fundamental position is in them all; but there is what may be called a higher and a lower type of the same doctrine. The former is given us in the writings of Paul and John. Of these two, Paul presents us with the new Christian element more in its relation to and distinction from the Old Testament views; while John, though he has the Old Testament also before him, brings out the doctrine in its adaptation to, and distinction from the Hellenistic conception (1 John 5: 20, 21). In respect to them there can be no doubt that both in their earlier and later writings, they ascribe divinity to the Son not merely in a moral but in an essential sense, and that they view the relation of the Son to the Father not only as "economic," but also as ontological or metaphysical; so that Christ, with the Father and the Holy Ghost constitutes a sacred triad. The real humanity of Christ is no less clearly presented in their epistles. The new idea of the God-man is thus fully recognized by them, and their writings give it to us in its highest type.

The second type of the doctrine, contained in our canonical Scriptures, is found in the first three evangelists, and in the writings of James, Peter and Jude. But in this type also we find the essential elements, which are necessary to the doctrine of the person of Christ. The synoptical evangelists may be considered as of special importance, since the proclamation of the gospel did not begin with doctrine so much as with history, in which doctrine was enveloped. We find now, in these Gospels, that Christ is usually designated as the Son of God and as the Son of Man. The former is used in three senses: in a physical sense, to designate his nature; in a moral sense, to declare his perfection; and in an official sense (in which both the others are comprised), to show his work, as Messiah. He calls himself, also, the Son of Man; and this expression is without force, unless we consider him as employing it in contrast with the consciousness he had of a higher nature; while it also refers to his peculiar and special relation to the race he is the Son of Man, not of a man. As both Son of God and of Man, he is called Son in an eminent sense; the only Son

of God, so that even when his disciples were present, he could say my Father, and not our Father. He forgives sins; in the form of baptism he puts his name with that of the Father; he has power to send the Holy Spirit; he alone knows the Father, all other men know the Father through him; all power is given to him; in all space and time he is present; his coming is to be the end of the world; he is the judge of the world; for all eternity, the Son of God and Man is to be the centre of the Christian's blessedness. Such is the Person of Christ, in the first three Gospels. The boldest passages of John have their entire parallel in the other evangelists; and some of their strongest passages have no parallel in John (Matt. 9: 2-6. 28:18-20). And though the preexistence of Christ is not as distinctly declared in them as in the other parts of the New Testament; yet their full faith could not be expressed in any other form, nor are there wanting indications of their belief in this point. (Luke 7: 35. Matt. 12: 19. comp. Prov. 8: 11:27. Luke 11: 49 compared with Matt. 23: 34. Matt. 13: 17. Luke 10: 23, 24 compared with John 8: 36 seq.

The author next proceeds to an examination of the epistles of James and Peter, on which special reliance is placed by those who claim that the early church was Ebionistic, and shows that these apostles held a form of the doctrine wholly inconsistent with such views; that they too, like the first three evangelists, possessed the essential elements in the doctrine of the person of Christ. Our space forbids us to follow him in this course; and it has also prevented us from giving more than the briefest summary of his full and able exposition of the Christology of the synoptical evangelists. It is a cheering contribution to the Biblical argument upon the subject.

Thus far we have been considering the two propositions which it was proposed to maintain: that is, that in none of the ancient religions did the elements of the idea of the God-man exist in such form, that they detract from the exclusive claim of Christianity to its possession, although it is the very idea after which these religions are seeking; and, in the second place, that in the earliest records of the Christian church, we find this idea described as realized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is original with Christianity, and essential to it.

Being given in the Scriptures as a norm, containing such diverse elements, ushered into a world where there were so many conflicting views and tendencies, and where men were busied with the very problems which it was the purpose of this new revelation to solve; it becomes an inquiry of the greatest interest, how this new doctrine would be received and judged. And here is where the historical process of the doctrine commences. What then, we proceed to ask, was the