man through the incarnation of the first and deification of the second."* It has however quite as strong an affinity for a much lower form of Rationalism. We are said to have the life of Adam. He lives in us as truly as he ever lived in his own person; we partake of his substance, are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. No particle of his soul or body, indeed, has come down to us. It all resolves itself into an invisible law. This and little more than this, is said of our union with Christ. What then have we to do with Christ, more than we have to do with Adam? or than the present forests of oak have to do with the first acorn? A law is, after all, nothing but a force, a power, and the only Christ we have or need, is an inward principle. And with regard to spirits, such a law is something very ideal indeed. Christ by his excellence makes a certain impression on his disciples, which produced a new life in them. They associate to preserve and transmit that influence. A principle, belonging to the original constitution of our nature, was, by his influence, brought into governing activity, and is perpetuated in and by the church. As it owes its power to Christ, it is always referred back to him, so that it is a Christian consciousness, a consciousness of this union with Christ. We know that Schleiermacher endeavoured to save the importance of an historical personal Christ; but we know also that he failed to prevent his system taking the low rationalist form just indicated. With some it takes the purely pantheistic form; with others a lower form, while others strive hard to give it a Christian form. But its tendency to lapse into one or the other of the two heresies just mentioned, is undeniable.

We feel constrained to make another remark. It is obvious that this system has a strong affinity for Sabellianism. According to the Bible and the creed of the church universal, the Holy Spirit, has a real objective personal existence. There are three distinct persons in the Godhead, the same in substance and equal in power and glory. Being one God, where the Spirit is or dwells, there the Father and the Son, are and dwell. And hence, throughout the New Testament, the current mode of representation is, that the church is the temple of God and body of Christ, because of the presence and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who

* Preliminary Essay. p. 45.

is the source of knowledge, holiness and life. What the scriptures refer to the Holy Spirit, this system refers to the theanthropic nature of Christ, to a nature or life "in all respects human." This supercedes the Holy Spirit. Every reader, therefore, must be struck with the difficulty Dr. Nevin finds from this source. He does not seem to know what to do with the Spirit. His language is constrained, awkward and often unintelligible. He seems indeed sometimes to identify the Spirit with the theanthropic nature of Christ. "The Spirit of Christ," he says, "is not his representative or surrogate simply, as some would seem to think; but Christ himself under a certain mode of subsistence; Christ triumphant over all the limitations of his moral (mortal?) state (wotoindeis πveupati), received up into glory, and thus invested fully and forever with his own proper order of being in the sphere of the Holy Ghost," p. 225. The Spirit of Christ, is then Christ as exalted. On the following page, he says: "The glorification of Christ then, was the full advancement of our human nature itself to the power of a divine life; and the Spirit for whose presence it [the glorification of Christ] made room in the world, was not the Spirit as extraanthropological simply, under such forms of sporadic and transient afflatus as had been known previously; but the Spirit as immanent now, through Jesus Christ, in the human nature itself—the form and power, in one word, of the new supernatural creation he had introduced into the world." Again, "Christ is not sundered from the church by the intervention of the Spirit. No conception can be more unbiblical, than that by which the idea of Spirit (Tvsüμa) in this case, is restrained to the form of mere mind, whether as divine or human, in distinction from body. The whole glorified Christ subsists and acts in the Spirit. Under this form his nature communicates itself to his people." p. 229. But according to this book, the form in which his nature is communicated to his people, is that of "a true human life;" it is a human nature advanced to a divine power, which they receive. The Spirit is, therefore, not the third person of the Trinity, but the theanthropic nature of Christ as it dwells in the church. This seems to us the natural and unavoidable interpretation of these passages and of the general tenor of the book. We do not suppose that Dr. Nevin has consciously discarded the doctrine of the trinity; but we fear that he has adopted a theory which de

stroys that doctrine. The influence of his early convictions and experience, and of his present circumstances, may constrain him to hold fast that article of the faith, in some form to satisfy his conscience. But his system must banish it, just so far as it prevails. Schleiermacher, formed under different circumstances, and less inwardly trammelled, openly rejected the doctrine. He wrote a system of theology, without saying a word about the Trinity. It has no place in his system; he brings it in only at the conclusion of his work, and explains it as God manifested in nature, God as manifested in Christ, and God as manifested in the church. With him the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit which animates the church. It had no existence before the church and has no existence beyond it. His usual expression for it is, "the common spirit" (Gemeingeist) of the church, which may mean either something very mystical, or nothing more than we mean by the spirit of the age, or spirit of a party, just as the reader pleases. It is in point of fact understood both ways. Burke once said, he never knew what the London beggars did with their cast-off clothes, until he went to Ireland. We hope we Americans are not to be arrayed in the cast-off clothes of the German mystics, and then marshalled in bands as the "Church of the Future."

We said at the commencement of this article, that we had never read Dr. Nevin's book on the Mystical Presence, until now. We have from time to time read other of his publications, and looked here and there into the work before us; and have thus been led to fear that he was allowing the German modes of thinking to get the mastery over him, but we had no idea that he had so far given himself up to their influence. If he has any faith in friendship and long continued regard, he must believe that we could not find ourselves separated from him by such serious differences, without deep regret, and will therefore give us credit for sincerity of conviction and purpose.

ART. V.-1. Das Leben Johann Calvin's. Ein Zeugniss für die Wahrheit, von Paul Henry, Dr. der Theologie, Prediger und Seminar-Inspector zu Berlin. Hamburg and Gotha. 1846. 8vo. pp. 498.

2. Das Leben Johann Calvin's des grossen Reformators; u. s. w. von Paul Henry, u. s. w. Dritter Band. Hamburg. 1844. pp. 872.

ELEVEN years ago we called attention to the life of Calvin, by Dr. Henry of Berlin, whose labours had not then attracted much notice in America.* In the two articles which were called forth by the first two volumes, we fully expressed our judgment of the biographer, and moreover presented a copious abstract of his narrative. When at length the third and closing volume made its appearance, there was less reason for reviewing it with so much detail as the others because the public had begun to be familiar with Dr. Henry's labours. An additional reason is now given in the appearance of an abridgment by the author, in a single volume, of which we have given the title above.

A likeness of Calvin serves as the frontispiece to this volume which we should like to see reproduced in America; for it is new, and varies in important respects from those cadaverous cuts of the great reformer, which in successive copies of copies have come to be about as authentic as John Rodgers in the New England Primer. In this one we behold a younger comelier visage, with the characteristic whisker and pointed beard, and cap, but with an upward gaze of pensive devotion. Dr. Henry regards this as the only accurate likeness. The original is one of two ancient paintings, preserved in a church on the Rhine; the other is the only extant portrait of Calvin's wife, Idelette de Bures. The well-known symbol is below; a heart in a hand; the legend, Cor meum velut mactatum Domino in sacrificium offero. The motto on the title is in the reformer's own words: "Shall a dog bark when his master is attacked, and shall I be silent when God's truth is impugned ?"

Mr. Henry tells us in the Preface, that after having completed his large Memoir with documents, he was led to make this shorter one for the use of intelligent private Christians. A strong reason for this was also the zeal of ultramontane papists to stab the reformation in its principal defender, by such false and defamatory books as the lives of Luther and Calvin, by Au

Princeton Review, Jan. 1837. See also a subsequent notice of the second volume, July, 1839. p. 339.

din.* These volumes, which have been sedulously placed in most of the public libraries of our cities, are repositories of all the most inspissated filth and gall which were gendered by monastic hate in the sixteenth century. Erasmus early told us where Luther had touched the monks, and why they were roused. Calvin shot arrow after arrow, at their ignorance, treason and lust, till they entered on a revengeful warfare of calumny which their successors keep up. The reformers told tales on the holy fathers: hinc illae lacrumae. Hence the language of the shaveling might well be-" An accursed creed! it turneth him out of more dormitories than were contained in the palace of Priam, and strippeth from him the supervisorship of more kitchen-stoves than smoked for Elagabalus." Mr. Audin's mixture of romance and lies has been even translated into Germany, and well received by the party there. But here as elsewhere we see the union of Herod and Pilate, of infidelity and superstition. Next to the hatred of popery John Calvin has earned the hatred of neology. Audin the Romanist is not more bitter than some socalled Protestants and Genevese. Mr. Henry gives one of these some credit for earnestness, but boldly rejects his statements. The principal reference however is to Mr. Audin, who is in our day the champion of the crusade against the memory of this fearful and never-to-be-forgiven foe. It is wonderful how freethinkers and no-thinkers of all hues, and libertines and heretics of all degrees, unite in vituperating this particular reformer. One would think he had been the only man of his age to maintain God's sovereign absolute decree. Who but children, do not know that it was equally though not so ably, maintained by all the heroes of the reformation? One would think that Calvin only had sinned in regard to the punishment of blaspheming heretics; and that there had never been an Anglican Cranmer, or an anabaptist victim. But modern heresy could no more forgive Calvin than ancient Rome could forgive Hannibal. Malign Calvin, and you not only carry the populace but hide a multitude of sins. Vamp up an old distortion of the story of Servetus, and your fortune is made, with every Pelagian, Socinian, and Atheist in the land.

Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de Calvin, par M. Audin, auteur de l'histoire de Luther. Paris 1841.