are exclaiming "Where is the promise of his coming? he is actually filling the heavens with light and renewing the face of the earth. Of him it may be said, as was said of Jesus Christ, "There standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is"!

CHAPTER XIX.

CONTROVERSIAL NOTES ON "ECCE HOMO."

HE most cursory observation cannot fail to notice

TH

the innumerable beauties of this publication. The writer has rendered inexpressible service to the cause of free religious inquiry by his magnificently intellectual discussions of fundamental truth, and has given views of Jesus Christ's Life and Work which must be most useful in many ways. The present writer cannot but thank the author of Ecce Homo for the intellectual stimulus and moral inspiration which he has derived from a repeated perusal of its instructive and stimulating pages. It is in no captious spirit, therefore, that the following Notes are submitted to the respectful consideration of the author and readers of Ecce Homo. The writer is most anxious that the truth should be vindicated, at what risk soever to all minor considerations. The term "Notes" is employed because what follows is little more than an arrangement of mere marginalia; the subjects themselves have been dis

cussed, more or less, in preceding chapters; what remains is a series of running criticisms or suggestive inquiries.

1. "The conception of a kingdom of God was no new one, but was familiar to every Jew." (P. 19.)

True; but Christ came to give that conception a profounder interpretation, and a more intensely spiritual bearing. The Jew had a carnal idea of a spiritual fact.

2. John and Christ "revived the obsolete function of the prophet, and did for their generation what a Samuel and an Elijah had done for theirs." (P. 20.)

This is too narrow an interpretation of the term "prophet," and too limited as applied to Christ. A prophet may teach as well as merely predict.-Samuel and Elijah spoke of another, Christ spoke of himself.— Christ did not work for a "generation," but for all men through all time. Christ did not "revive an obsolete function," he consummated the purpose of a prefigurative office.

3. "Now under which form did Christ propose to revive it (the ancient theocracy)? The vision of universal monarchy which he saw in the desert suggests the answer. He conceived the theocracy restored as it had been in the

time of David, with a visible monarch at its head, and that monarch himself.” (P. 24.)

Was it merely a conception ("he conceived"), or was it the carrying out of an eternal purpose? Did Christ come with a plan or without a plan? If with a plan, when was that plan formed? This brings up the mystery of the incarnation, the non-recognition of which is the cardinal error of the book. Is there not some confusion of terms in the latter part of the sentence just cited? How can a man be at the head of a Godocracy? The word "representatively" may be suggested; but in so far as there is any distinctive value in a theocracy, that value is diminished by any qualifying term whatsoever. The Jewish world had already passed through what may be designated a representative theocracy; and if Christ came merely to reproduce this idea (which the perversity of the Jews caused to be a failure), replacing David's name with his own, wherein was the value of his service? When the author of Ecce Homo speaks of Christ's being the visible head of the theocracy, has he sufficiently considered the meaning of Jesus Christ's declaration to Philip, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"?

4. "He saw that he must lead a life altogether different from that of David, that the pictures drawn by the prophets of an ideal Jewish king were coloured by the manners

of the times in which they had lived; that those pictures bore indeed a certain resemblance to the truth, but that the work before him was far more complicated and more delicate than the wisest prophet had suspected." (Pp. 26, 27.)

From this representation it might be inferred that Christ began his work in a kind of mental vacancy, and waited to observe the current of thoughts and events around him before committing himself to any publicly avowed policy. He came, it would appear, to this conclusion while "meditating upon his mission in the desert." This view of the case is irreconcilably inconsistent with the mystery of the incarnation. It would suit very well the case of a fanatic who had suddenly conceived the insane idea of embodying the features of the predicted "ideal Jewish king," and who was watching an opportunity for self-disclosure in this novel and critical character; but it signally fails to meet the necessary idea of the incarnation,—namely, the idea of anterior purpose and arrangement. Could a man begotten of the Holy Ghost find himself in the dubiety necessitated by the above suggestion? Again it may be asked, did Jesus Christ come with a plan or without a plan?

5. "It is said that when Jesus Christ called himself a King, he was speaking figuratively,