which, under all the pressure of the external world, continually awaken in the deepest grounds of our being a longing for, an anticipation of, and a struggling after the supermundane life, for which we are designed. He who thus searches in himself, not merely in nature and the world, and takes along with him in his search Him who searches through all,

- he who accepts and cultivates the sense for it, he learns to view divine revelation and Him who is its centre, Jesus Christ, the life of eternity come down from above; learns to believe in, love, and understand him, and so becomes a partaker of his superterrestrial life. Such a person believes in miracles; for he has experienced in himself one of the greatest of miracles, — regeneration from death to life.

Henceforward, as may be said in conclusion, faith and understanding open for the sensuous miracle-signs in the realm of the natural life, with which divine revelation is attended on its passage through the history of the world. What are they, and what do they signify? Certainly, we must not force them up too high. They are not primary in importance, but secondary; not the chief thing, but only the signs following in the train of revelation. We believe not on account of these miracles in Jesus Christ, but the reverse; on account of Jesus Christ we believe the miracles. And only so far as they are related to him, the living heart-centre of revelation, are they a subject of our faith. On the other hand, however, they are no superfluous ornament, no arbitrary embellishment of the history of revelation, no mere display, the object of which is to charm and gratify the senses, but they have a holy purpose to subserve in the interest of revelation; and therein consists their necessity. Jesus himself repels most decidedly the curiosity which desires to see miracles merely for the miracles' sake, wherever it meets him. His miracles always

have in view a moral aim, and indeed the same which is had in view by revelation throughout, the inner renewal of man. This gives his miracles that peculiar mark of holiness by which they are so essentially distinguished from the strange and fantastic wonders described in the Apocryphal Gospels. His miracles are no arbitrary feats of power, but acts of wisdom and love designed to subserve his work as the Saviour of the souls of men. And what does this mean ? In the original language of the New Testament, the miracles are called oŋuzia, signs. A sign, however, exists not for itself, it is not an end; but it exists for the sake of that which is intended to be signified, represented, pictured thereby. Its object is to turn attention to that, not to fix it upon itself. A sign is the visible likeness of something invisible. So also the miracles of the Scriptures are only pictures, by which the spiritual meaning of divine revelation mirrors itself in the world of sense; they are reflections of the spirit in the realm of nature. And so the sensuous miracle speaks to man, who, in consequence of his bodily nature, is most closely connected with the entire world of sense, and is in his natural condition preponderantly set thereto; it speaks to him a grand language of signs, by which the mystery of the regeneration, of the spiritual salvation and redemption at which divine revelation aims, is designed to be symbolized to him. On the basis of these. signs the dim feeling of the supersensuous is to be cleared up to complete understanding, the mysterious yearning for it is to be strengthened and quickened to positive endeavor; and so they become the pioneers which direct from the outward to the inward.

And with this directing inwardly they connect a directing to the future; as they are a symbol of the spiritual renewal which can, and should even now, be taking place,

It

so they are also a prophecy of the bodily perfecting and glorifying which is the end of the ways of God. The Scripture speaks of a future redemption of the body which is designed for the children of God, and in connection therewith of a future glorifying of nature, when the creature also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, from the oppression of evil, and from the ban of death. speaks of a regeneration of the entire world, of a new heaven and a new earth, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor pain, nor crying. And to this it must at some time come. The spirit must yet be invested with corresponding body; the kingdom of heaven, which now is internal and invisible, must yet become also external, and transform even nature into a kingdom of glory. Of this future glory.the miracles of the Bible are individual prefiguring beams. These acts of healing, these resurrections of the dead, these are designed to say to us that the same power and grace of God which now are working salvation in our souls will at some future time work the same also in our mortal bodies; - and as it is now said of the redeemed human heart, it is a temple of God, so it will also be said hereafter of our entire earth, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men ! "

This language of the external miracles, however, man will not understand, unless the Spirit of miracles, the renewing Spirit of God, dwells in him, and he has, in the power of the same, experienced that internal spiritual miracle of which the Scripture says, "God hath quickened us together with Christ, and together with him bath raised us up and made us sit in heavenly places." This internal experimental proof it is which outweighs and makes dispensable all other proofs, and which, in spite of all the contradictions of natural science and of the modern con..

sciousness, puts in the mouth the confident confession which once the heathen king Darius learned to repeat after the prophet Daniel, "He is the living God, who worketh signs and wonders in heaven and on earth."

V.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

BY CHR. E. LUTHARDT, D. D.,

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT LEIPSIC.

HE task has been assigned to me of speaking to you concerning the person of Jesus Christ. This

is the highest theme and likewise the common

object of sacred interest to universal Christendom. For in the name of Jesus Christ all in the world who call themselves Christians bow, or at least should bow, their knees. As the Israelite distinguished himself from the Gentiles by his calling on the name of Jehovah, so Christians distinguish themselves fron non-Christians by their calling on the name of Jesus Christ. However the characteristic feature of Christianity may be designated, however the Christian tenets may be questioned or denied, this is the last and the deciding thing that marks the Christian,that he bows the knee in the name of Jesus Christ. He who discards this may still call himself a Christian; we cannot in truth recognize him as such. He may be a religious man, may perhaps be in his way a pious man, there have been and yet are pious heathen even, - but a Christian in the proper sense of the word he is not. This was the first