of error, and which is destined finally to triumph over all attempts to enthrall its glorious career?

The above condensed sketch may serve to show something of the topics and course of argument in M. Coquerel's remarkable work; but it can give no adequate idea of the harmony, consistency, and earnestness with which the subject is developed. It is to be hoped that this little book will be extensively circulated; for no more attractive and persuasive antidote to superstition and ignorance in religious matters has ever been offered to the public.

ART. VII.-THE INCARNATION.

Ecce Deus. Essays on the Life and Doctrine of Jesus Christ, with Controversial Notes on "Ecce Homo." Boston: Roberts Brothers. WE have not seen the English edition of this interesting book, and, from reading the American reprint, should have concluded that it was really written in this country, by some person in our Unitarian ranks with a Swedenborgian philosophy, and with a studious desire to conceal his ecclesiastical connec-tions. It has too many Americanisms in it to be English in origin. The word " transpire" is commonly used for “occur," a purely American colloquialism. "Collide" is another instance of steamboat English. We think, too, we notice an awkwardness in wearing the English dress, which a native would not have exhibited.. Would an Englishman quote Macaulay as "Baron Macaulay?" Would he say, "from Britain to Africa"?-meaning from England. But these are mere sur

mises.

The book which we do not propose to review, but merely incidentally to use as an introduction to our present themeis worthy of careful reading. Its origin and purport will be at least as great a puzzle as "Ecce Homo" proved. It is not a whit more Orthodox in its general direction; and we see no

reason why it might not have been written by the same author, except that it lacks his ease and polish and simplicity of style. In variety, earnestness, and freedom of thought, it is equally rich and full. There is as much in it to shock popular prejudices. But, happily, its edge is towards errors on both sides. It cuts into what is superficial or worthless in Liberal Christianity and in so-called Orthodox Christianity, and is written out of a deep and genuine and large Christian experience. We hope to do it full justice in our next number.

It is very interesting to see how the mind of the age is returning to that insoluble mystery of Christ's person. Christian unbelief has spoken its last word; criticism has done its worst. There is no unexplored field left in Christian evidences or exegetical studies. Doubt and denial have exhausted themselves, and, for want of materials, will now have to turn from discrediting Christ, to disproving a personal God (a much easier achievement), as the only road of progress. The next thing will be a revival of faith in Christianity; and the thing to be guarded against is, that this revival shall not waste its force and freshness upon what is not vital and precious, shall not prove a renaissance of ecclesiastical frippery and theological extravagance.

The Incarnation, which is the central idea of "Ecce Deus," is, doubtless, the most fruitful and permanent and central idea of Christianity. The proem of John's Gospel is the axis of all future debate among theologians, because it sets forth this Incarnation; and the authenticity and genuineness of John's Gospel is now the question of all questions, because it contains this proem. In our present discussion, however, we must assume what the last and best authorities allow, - that the fourth Gospel is the work of John. The fourth Gospel was not written until about sixty-five years after our Lord's ascension; while the other Gospels are supposed to have been written within eight and fifteen years of that event.

During that period, of course, there had been time for the facts in our Saviour's life and death to become subjects of speculation, theory, and debate; and for opinions to develop themselves in the minds and hearts of his followers, out of

and beyond those which were held by those who more directly and immediately reported his sayings and history.

This will account for the marked, and not otherwise explainable, difference between the fourth and the three synoptical Gospels. It is explained either by the fact, that John gives us the Gospel as meditation and experience; or, living in and from it had opened its depths to his soul; or that he endeavored to supply what was lacking in the other evangelists, or to correct errors which he had had time to see growing up in the Church.

In the first seventeen chapters, we have almost entirely new matter; and the whole Gospel is manifestly in a more mystic, spiritual, and devotional vein than either of the others.

Jesus, from that definite, human, and thoroughly historical personage which he appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, becomes, in John, more vague, enigmatic, and mythical in his • position and character. His person is shrouded in a more sacred mystery: his words have a more unearthly quality. It would be rash to conclude, that this was the mere exaggerating effect of distance and time, or that those who first gave our Lord's history understood him better than John. Some persons are never understood by their contemporaries: their words and their conduct require to ripen into full significance and intelligibility in the heat of meditation and the light of experience; and no devout and spiritual mind would be content to think, that the heavenly-mild and holy John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, had a less complete and correct idea of our Master than the other evangelists. Clearness is often due to inapprehension and contraction of vision. The near-sighted have often great strength of eye, with a limited range of view; and the undeveloped in intellect, imagination, and heart, because they see little in the objects they describe, describe them with a more positive and definite outline.

There can be no doubt, that John's idea of Christ was different from—not opposed to, or inconsistent with, but only larger and loftier than the idea of the other evangelists; nor can an honest and candid mind deny, that the main difficulties in settling Christ's place would be vastly diminished if

we had only to deal with the accounts of him given by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

This is sufficiently obvious from the inspection of the proem, or first eighteen verses of John's Gospel. Nobody in the world knows certainly what John was aiming at in that mystic introduction: whether it was controversial, and designed to correct existing errors of opinion; or whether, without reference to errors, it was declarative of John's own independent notions. The passage is very obscure.

It is well known from the Epistles, that disputes and speculations existed at that early day about Christ; not modern disputes, but others, -as for instance, whether Jesus Christ were a mere appearance, a disembodied, visionary shape, or an actual being in flesh and blood (2 John i. 7); and it probably was to combat notions which he thought heretical and dangerous, that John laid down the now vague, but then doubtless very intelligible, doctrine of his proem. We know that, in the philosophical schools of the time, the divine attributes were all personified, that light and life and wisdom and truth and love were each and all spoken off as cons, or distinct entities, capable of separating themselves from the original spirit of the universe; and it would seem as if Jesus had been represented by some as being possessed by one or other of these divine attributes, inferior to the highest, and so somehow brought down in his dignity. John appears to adopt the general idea of these attributes, but represents one of them, the Logos or word or wisdom, as the chief of them, and as having light and life under its control; and this attribute, by which he represents the world as having been made, and which he also sets forth as having always been in the world and recognized by a few whom it at once adopted as sons of God, he now declares was the animating soul of Jesus. which was with God, and was so made his wisdom and light and life that it was God, he now says was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

This word,

The real pith and marrow of this passage is very obvious, even amid the obscurity which involves its details, and even its intention. John distinctly teaches the identity of the spirit

of God in the creation, in the past government of the world, and in the new revelation. It is the same Being, and the whole of the same Being, which first made the world, which has always been in the world, though neglected and unknown by his own children, and which is now manifested in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, he would have his hearers learn, is not new in the sense of being disconnected with the oldest purpose and manifestation of God. He is not different from God, in having any plan and purpose less than the original one by which the worlds were made. He is not here to represent himself; but he is God manifest in the flesh, as God has hitherto been manifest in the things he has made, and was originally manifested in speaking the universe into being. That no arithmetical or metaphysical definition of Christ or of God, or of Christ as God, in the literal sense of that phrase, is here thought of by John, is sufficiently obvious from all his other writings. If he had designed to make that statement, so astonishing, and so important if true, how easy had he found explicit and unmistakable terms to do it in! If he had said, "Jesus Christ, who looked like a man, was in truth very God himself, the Maker of heaven and earth, who took a human body and a human soul, and came down into the world, and allowed himself to be crucified, though he was all the time the Almighty Creator," there would be no further difference of opinion in regard to John's doctrine. But when he simply says that, as the universe reveals God, and as the soul in man reveals God, so at length he was more fully revealed in Jesus Christ, - we can only understand him to mean, not that God imparts his personality to him, or in any literal sense occupies him, but that he manifests himself to the world in the completest manner in which he has done it, or can do it, in Christ.

The incarnation of God in Christ has, more than any other doctrine, been conceded by theologians to be the central article of Christian faith.

In ecclesiastical history, the theology of Christendom has turned upon two separate axes, the Catholic theology on the incarnation, the Protestant theology on the sacrificial death