incarnate, then must the Father and Spirit have become incarnate also. But we learn from the Bible that neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit became incarnate. The argument, if it proves anything, would, therefore, prove that the incarnation of the blessed Son was but a fiction. Thus the corner-stone of our faith would be removed from its place. Samson pulled down the temple of the Philistines. The learned and pious prelate would unwittingly demolish, if his lever was indeed the resistless lever of truth, that holy temple "not made with hands," whose glorious walls are founded on the incarnation of the Son of God, and cemented by his most precious blood.

The second ground of argument adopted by Bishop Pearson is, that the imputation of passibility to the divine nature would imply its "imperfection" and "infirmity." This would indeed be true, if it sought to expose the divine nature to involuntary or coerced suffering. But the supposition that one of the persons of the Trinity can suffer voluntarily, and for an adequate cause, argues no "imperfection" or "infirmity" in the divine nature; on the contrary, it relieves the divine nature from the "imperfection" and "infirmity" which the hypothesis of our opponents would cast upon it. Their hypothesis says that neither of the persons of the Trinity can in any case suffer. He cannot

suffer even from his own spontaneous choice and free volition. He cannot suffer, however strongly infinite wisdom and infinite love might urge his suffering. If the universe was threatened with ruin, he could not suffer to save it, for his suffering would be interdicted by the fixed and unbending laws of his being. And would not such an incapacity to suffer imply " imperfection” and “infirmity" in the divine nature? It is our opponents, then, and not we, who would attach to the divine nature this "imperfection" and "infirmity." It is they, and not we, who would thus hamper Omnipotence by fetters made in the forges of earth.

CHAPTER III.

Hypothesis of God's Impassibility continued-Not a Self-evident Proposition-Incarnation itself implies Suffering-Prevalent Hypothesis Traced to its Source in early Antiquity-Argument of Athanasius examined.

THE hypothesis of God's impassibility to voluntary sufferings is not a self-evident proposition. It carries not demonstration on its face; it proves not itself; it requires extraneous confirmation. From whence is such confirmation to be derived? It is yielded neither by the Bible nor by the deliberative process of sound reasoning. The prevalent hypothesis, then, rests on opinion alone. But unsupported opinion, though emanating from the wisest and the best, is incompetent, however long continued or widely diffused, to sustain a dogma claiming the place of a corner-stone in the structure of Christian faith. The opinion of one man, or of millions, of one age, or of successive ages, is not the test of theological truth. Christianity should be the last to recognise such test. She repudiated it by her own example. Her first achievement on earth was her unsparing invasion of the empire of ancient and almost unanimous opinion. Should she admit that the force of opinion can impart to religious belief the stamp of

truth, she must, to be consistent, spare the deepseated, and wide-spread, and time-consecrated superstitions of Africa and of India. An insulated opinion on theological tenets, without support, is but a cipher. Such unsupported opinion, however multiplied, cannot form a unit.

The incarnation itself is a death-blow to the hypothesis of God's impassibility. If the Godhead is of necessity impassible, one of its august persons could not have become incarnate. The mighty Being who, in the fifth verse of the seventeenth chapter of John, uttered the prayer," And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world. was," could have been none other than the second person of the Trinity, clothed, indeed, in flesh. The prayer itself demonstrates that the Supplicant was not of earth, that he had come down from heaven, that he had existed there, and enjoyed the intimate fellowship of the Father before the world was created. It contains intrinsic evidence that, at the time of the prayer, the divine Supplicant was sustaining the temporary privation of his glorious fellowship with the infinite Father, and that he longed to have it restored. His prayer breathed forth his deep consciousness of the severity of the bereavement. It evinced a bereavement which had marred for a time his infinite beatitude. His

eclipsed beatitude was not, for the moment, like the ineffable beatitude which he had enjoyed before his incarnation. This very bereavement is but another name for suffering.

There is a passage in the epistles german to that upon which we have been commenting: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."-Philippians, ii., 6, 7, 8. The words in this passage translated "made himself of no reputation," should, in justice, have been rendered, "emptied himself." That is their literal meaning. By the substitution of their own language, the translators may have gained something in elegance; they have lost much in strength. Our argument prefers the plain Doric of Paul to the more fastidious style of his translators.

The illustrious personage who had "emptied himself" was he "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." He was, beyond peradventure, the second person of the Trinity. Of what had he "emptied himself?" He had "emptied himself" of the "form of God"