to draw from the full fountain of Christian truth, and to set in contrast with the arid wastes of a false science, the wholesomeness and excellency of this fountain. But as in the different wants and wishes of the hearers either method found its own adaptation and acceptance, so will also the friendly reader be thankful for the various gifts from the same spirit. The Lord add his blessing, that the words, as heard or read, may inspire many a Christian heart more readily to heed the admonition, Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown! BOARD OF INTERNAL MISSIONS IN BREMEN. BREMEN, Germany. THE BREMEN LECTURES. I. THE BIBLICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD. BY THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D. D., T has been justly said, that religion is the greatest ruling power on earth. Any one who attentively. considers the history of the world and its culture, in the light, not merely of surface events, but of the internal motives which determine its development, cannot fail to apprehend this truth. Even Goethe acknowledges, that "the only real and the deepest theme of the world's and of man's history to which all other subjects are subordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief." As long as the religious question remains unsolved, there will be plenty of external "questions" on the Tiber or the Rhine, in Constantinople or in WashingHowever, since the French revolution in the last part of the eighteenth century, the religious question has entered upon a fresh, and, if I am not mistaken, upon the last stage of its development. The issue, taken as a whole, lies no longer in isolated dogmatical differences between ton. 1 In his Abhandlungen zum westöstlichen Divan. the various churches; even the controversy between Protestantism and Romanism has in public life become a secondary question. The question now is, whether the Christian faith in any form shall continue to exist. The battle of centuries between belief and unbelief is in our days tending more and more to the point where the decisive question must be put, whether the Christian religion shall be retained as the basis and rule of our civilization, or whether it must as such be wholly abandoned. “To be, or not to be; that is the question" nowadays with the Christian faith; and this question, if any, must be the last, just as two thousand years ago it was the first. Nothing indicates this so clearly as the present shape of the controversy about the idea of God. And we may remark, that in the conflict between faith and unbelief it is the idea of God that always forms the heart's core of the matter, the vital question, the question which decides as to our view of Christianity in general, and of all particular dogmas. This controversy is not the same now that it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. At that time, if we except a few pantheists, the existence of a personal God was not generally disputed; and hence the only point for contention was God's agency in the world, whether he could work miracles, whether his providence extended to all things, whether Christ was truly divine, and the like. In the present day, however, not only is all this again called in question, but also the whole existence of God, and consequently the existence of the human spirit as a distinct essence. Formerly the issue lay between Biblical Christianity and deism; now it lies between Christianity and nothing; between belief in God as the personal Spirit, who is Love, and the denial of God, which must be the denial of man's spiritual and moral being. |