the Son of Man, and therein at first represents only the possibility of God becoming Man: secondly, that in this Man, Jesus Christ, God is manifest, as in none other: this manifest Man is the manifest God; but the manifest God is the Son of God; and in this relation, Christ is God's Son; and this is the actual fulfilment of the possibility or promise; it is the reality of God becoming Man." (28) that But this kind of halting between two opinions, which endeavors to combine the historical fact with the philosophical theory, was not of a nature to satisfy the bolder and more logical minds of the same school. In the theory of Strauss, we find the direct antagonism between the historical and the philosophical Christ fairly acknowledged; and the former is accordingly set aside entirely, to make way for the latter. And here we have at least the advantage, that the trumpet gives no uncertain sound; we are no longer deluded by a phantom of Christian doctrine enveloped in a mist of metaphysical obscurity; but the two systems stand out sharply and clearly defined, in their utter contrariety to each other. "In an individual, a God-Man," he tells us, "the properties and functions which the church ascribes to Christ contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures - God become Man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite Spirit remembering its infinitude: it is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father, Nature and Spirit: it is the worker of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history the spirit more and more completely subjugates nature, both within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert matter on which he exercises his active power: it is the sinless one, for the course of its development is a blameless one; pollution cleaves to the individ ual only, but in the race and its history it is taken away. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven; for from the negation of its natural state there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life; from the suppression of its finite character as a personal, national, and terrestrial Spirit, arises its union with the infinite Spirit of the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, man is justified before God: that is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man participates in the divinely human life of the species. Now the main element of that idea is, that the negation of the merely natural and sensual life, which is itself the negation of the spirit (the negation of negation, therefore), is the sole way to true spiritual life." (29) These be thy gods, O Philosophy: these are the Metaphysics of Salvation. (30) This is that knowledge of things divine and human, which we are called upon to substitute for the revealed doctrine of the Incarnation of the eternal Son in the fulness of time. It is for this philosophical idea, so superior to all history and fact, this necessary process of the unconscious and impersonal Infinite, that we are to sacrifice that blessed miracle of Divine Love and Mercy, by which the Son of God, of His own free act and will, took man's nature upon Him for man's redemption. It is for this that we are to obliterate from our faith that touching picture of the pure and holy Jesus, to which mankind for eighteen centuries has ever turned, with the devotion of man to God rendered only more heartfelt by the sympathy of love between man and man: which from generation to generation has nurtured the first seeds of religion in the opening mind of childhood, by the image of that Divine Child who was cradled in the manger of Bethlehem, and was subject to His parents at Nazareth: which has checked the fiery temptations of youth, by the thought of Him who "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin: "1 which has consoled the man struggling with poverty and sorrow, by the pathetic remembrance of Him who on earth had not where to lay his head: 2 which has blended into one brotherhood the rich and the poor, the mighty and the mean among mankind, by the example of Him who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor; though He was equal with God, yet took upon Him the form of a servant:* which has given to the highest and purest precepts of morality an additional weight and sanction, by the records of that life in which the marvellous and the familiar are so strangely yet so perfectly united; that life so natural in its human virtue, so supernatural in its divine power: which has robbed death of its sting, and the grave of its victory, by faith in Him who "was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification: "5 which has ennobled and sanctified even the wants and weaknesses of our mortal nature, by the memory of Him who was an hungered in the wilderness and athirst upon the cross; who mourned over the destruction of Jerusalem, and wept at the grave of Lazarus. Let Philosophy say what she will, the fact remains unshaken. It is the consciousness of the deep wants of our human nature, that first awakens God's presence in the soul; it is by adapting His Revelation to those wants that God graciously condescends to satisfy them. The time may indeed come, though not in this life, when these various manifestations of God, "at sundry times and in divers manners," may be seen to be but different sides and partial 1 Hebrews iv. 15. 2 St. Luke ix. 58. 32 Corinthians viii. 9. 5 Romans iv. 25. 6 Hebrews i. 1. representations of one and the same Divine Reality;-when the light which now gleams in restless flashes from the ruffled waters of the human soul, will settle into the steadfast image of God's face shining on its unbroken surface. But ere this shall be, that which is perfect must come, and that which is in part must be done away. But as regards the human wisdom which would lead us to this consummation now, there is but one lesson which it can teach us; and that it teaches in spite of itself. It teaches the lesson which the wise king of Israel learned from his own experience: “I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: I have seen all the works that are done under the sun: and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit."2 And if ever the time should come to any of us, when, in the bitter conviction of that vanity and vexation, we, who would be as gods in knowledge, wake up only to the consciousness of our own nakedness, happy shall we be, if then we may still hear, ringing in our ears and piercing to our hearts, an echo from that personal life of Jesus which our philosophy has striven in vain to pervert or to destroy: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life: and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” 1 1 Corinthians xiii. 10. 2 Ecclesiastes i. 13, 14, 17. 3 St. John vi. 68, 69. LECTURE VI. FOR WHAT MAN KNOWETH THE THINGS OF A MAN, SAVE THE SPIRIT OF MAN WHICH IS IN HIM? EVEN SO THE THINGS OF GOD KNOWETH NO MAN, BUT THE SPIRIT OF GOD. — 1 CORINTHIANS II. 11. THE Conclusion to be drawn from our previous inquiries is, that the doctrines of Revealed Religion, like all other objects of human thought, have a relation to the constitution of the thinker to whom they are addressed; within which relation their practical application and significance is confined. At the same time, this very relation indicates the existence of a higher form of the same truths, beyond the range of human intelligence, and therefore not capable of representation in any positive mode of thought. Religious ideas, in short, like all other objects of man's consciousness, are composed of two distinct elements, a Matter, furnished from without, and a Form, imposed from within by the laws of the mind itself. The latter element is common to all objects of thought as such: the former is the peculiar and distinguishing feature, by which the doctrines of Revelation are distinguished from other religious representations, derived from natural sources; or by which, in more remote comparison, religious ideas in gen |