known. Towards this ultimate point however the whole process of condescension constantly tended, as its necessary consummation. The meaning of the entire system lay in its reference to Christianity. Not only did it contain particular types and particular prophecies of the incarnation; it was all one vast type, and throughout one continuous prophecy, in this direction. We may say of the Old Testament as a whole, what is said of its last and greatest representative in particular. It was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God! It might be said in some sense to carry the Gospel in its womb. All the great truths which were afterwards brought to light by Christ, lay more or less undisclosed in its revelations, growing and ripening gradually for the full birth towards which they struggled, and to which they attained finally in his person. Without Christianity, Judaism would have no meaning, no proper reality. It becomes real, only by losing itself, and finding itself at the same time, in the new dispensation. The law, as such, made nothing perfect. All served only to harbinger the advent of the Messiah, and to proclaim his presence when he came. All foreshadowed and foretokened the mystery of the incarnation.

Here then, as before said, we reach the central FACT, at once ultimate and primal, in the constitution of the world. All nature and all history flow towards it, as their true and proper end, or spring from it as their principle and ground. The incarnation, by which divinity and humanity are joined together, and made one, in a real, inward and abiding way, is found to be the scope of all God's counsels and dispensations in the world. The mystery of the universe is interpreted in the person of Jesus Christ.

SECTION II.

THE NEW CREATION.

Christianity stands, as we have seen, in close connection with the order of the world as it existed before. Some of the early heresies pretended to magnify it, by denying all connection of this sort. They would have it, that the whole state of the world as it stood previously had been bad, and bad only; and that it was derogatory to the glory of the Gospel, to suppose any affinity whatever between it and any older form of life. It must be viewed as an entirely new order of existence, suddenly introduced from heaven, in broad, plump opposition, not only to nature, but also to the whole previous course of history. Even Judaism must be disowned, not simply as a lower dispensation, but as a false system unworthy of the true God as revealed by Jesus Christ, and at war with the great object of Christ's mission into the world. This was in fact to overthrow the incarnation itself, and to reduce it in the end to a mere phantasm, that involved no real union whatever between the divine nature and the human. To be real and true, and to solve at all in this way the great problem of life, the mystery must connect itself with the constitution and course of the world in its previous state. This we have seen to be the case in fact. Christianity forms no violent rupture, either with nature or history. It fulfils, and in doing so interprets, the inmost sense of both. Neither could be complete without its presence. Both flow over into it naturally, as their own true consummation and end.

But the Gnostic error just referred to, like all error, included also its truth; in this case a great truth. There was another error of the same period; one to which the Jewish-mind especially always showed a strong tendency in the early Church. It saw in the person of Jesus only a continuation of the old creation; in the high form particularly which it was made to carry in the religion of the Old Testament. Thus, on the other side, the mystery fell to the ground. The old chasm between the divine and human was left to yawn as before. Christ sunk into a mere man. Against this Ebionitic heresy, the heresy of the Gnostic had its right; though maintained in a false way. Christ is not only the end of the old creation, its necessary complement and completion; he is the principle also of a new creation, in which the old is required to pass away.

"The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us— -full of grace and truth." This is more a great deal than the simple continuation of the old order of the world, in the way of regular historical development. Here is a fact, which differs from all ordinary facts and events, not simply as transcending them in importance, but as being of another order altogether. It stands before us, not as the result or product strictly speaking of any powers or tendencies, that were comprehended in the constitution of the world before its manifestation; but as the introduction of a new power entirely, which was to form from that time onward the central force in the progress of the world's history. This deserves to be well considered. Let the case be compared with some other fact of true world-historical moment; the rise, for instance, of Aristotle and his philosophy. How much hung on the mind of that single man! It gave birth to an empire, which for extent and duration may be said to have thrown the magnificence of all the Cæsars into the shade. But here was no new creation, in the strict sense of the term. Aristotle was in all respects the product of previous history. The philosophy that revealed itself through his person, was nothing more at last than the development of powers that lay involved in the life of the world as it stood before, and that waited only for the proper time to show themselves in this form. Aristotle added nothing to humanity as such; he was the medium only, by which it found itself advanced to the position secured for it in his person. But Jesus Christ was no such product of the past. It prophesied of his coming, and threw open the way for his approach. To the mystery of the incarnation itself, however, it had no power to rise. Here was a fact, for the evolution of which all its capabilities must have remained forever inadequate. Here was a fact, which even the religion of the Old Testament itself had no sufficiency to generate, and to which all its theophanies and miracles could furnish no proper parallel. For the revelation of the supernatural under the Old Testament, as already remarked, was always in an outward and comparatively unreal way. It never came to a true inward union, between the human and the divine. The supernatural appeared above nature and beyond nature only. It never entered into it, and became incorporated with it, as the same life. However it might be made to influence the process of history, the development of humanity, in the way of instruction, or occasion, or motive, it could not be said to bring a new element into the process itself. But in the person of Christ, all is different. The supernatural is brought not only near to nature, but into its very heart; not as a transient wonder, but to remain in union with it forever. The everlasting Word, in a way wholly unknown before, descends

into the actual process of human history, and becomes within it the principle and law of a second creation immeasurably more glorious than the first. It is by no mere figure of speech, that Christ is represented to be the author of a new creation. Nor may we say of this creation, that it is moral simply, consisting in a new order of thought and character on the part of men. It is no revolution of the old, no historical advance upon the past merely, that is here brought into view; but the introduction, literally and strictly, of a new element, a new divine force, into the very organism of the world itself. The incarnation, in this view, is fully parallel with the work, by which in the beginning" the worlds were framed by the word of God;" and in the case of which, we are told " things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." As the formation of man on the sixth day, was necessary to perfect in a higher sphere, the organization already called into being in a lower; of which at the same time it could not be said to be, in any sense, the product or result; so in the end, to crown all with a still higher perfection, the Word itself, by which the heavens and the earth were created before, became permanently joined with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, as the principle of a new earth and new heavens-the continuation and necessary complement of the previous organization, but in no sense again its historical product or birth.

On the ground of the general fact here affirmed, we ascribe to Christianity, as compared with the world in any other view, the character of absolute reality and truth. Nature itself is only relatively true and real. It finds its actual sense, as we have seen, only in the idea of humanity; and in this idea at last, only as actualized in the mystery of the incarnation. It is all a shadow and type of the real; but for this very reason, not the real itself. All flesh is grass; only the word of the Lord is enduring. The fashion of the world is ever passing away, like a scenic show; only Jesus Christ is "the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever." There is no other principle of reality or stability in God's creation. So all history becomes true at last only in Christ. This is exemplified, most instructively, in the religion of the Old Testament. It was altogether of God. To it pertained "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." Of it were the fathers, and from it as concerning the flesh, Christ sprang, who is over all, God blessed forever. But still, we are expressly taught, that it stood related to the gospel throughout, only as a shadow to the substance it represents. And this is to be understood, not simply of its types and ceremonies as such. It holds in full force of its whole constitution,

moral as well as ceremonial. Its truth was not in itself, but in a different system altogether to which it pointed. Its reality was in no respect absolute, but in all respects relative only. It made nothing perfect. It was the picture merely of good things to come. The Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle to the Hebrews, each in its own way, are full of this thought. We have no right to say, that the New Testament is a mere extension or enlargement of the Old, under the same form. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John i. 17). Among all the prophets of the old dispensation, there had not risen one greater than John the Baptist; and yet we are assured, (Luke vii. 28.) that the "least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." All previous revelations were but an approach to the truth, as manifested in Christ. "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son-the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person" (Heb. i. 1-3). All before was relative only; here we have God absolutely "manifest in the flesh." Christ is the only absolute Prophet, (Deut. xviii. 18, 19. Acts iii. 22, 23.) as he is the only absolute Priest (Heb. viii. 4, 5). The relation of God to the patriarchs and saints generally of the Old Testament, was something that came short wholly of the relation in which he now stands to his people, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Their spiritual life, their union with God, their covenant privileges, all had an unreal, unsubstantial character, as compared with the parallel grace of the gospel, and constituted at best but an approximation to this grace, rather than the actual presence of it in any sense itself.* That which forms the full reality of religion, the union of the divine nature with the human, the revelation of God in man and not simply to him, was wanting to the Old Testament altogether. Of course all its doctrines and institutions, all its prerogatives and powers, had a shadowy, simply prophetic nature, to the same extent. Its sacraments were types only, not counterparts of the sacraments of the New Testament. Its salvation was in the form of promise, more than present fact. It became real ultimately, only in Christ; for before his appearance, we are told the patriarchs of the law could not be made perfect (Heb. xi. 13, 39, 40). The dispensation of the Spirit has its origin wholly in the person of Christ, (Luke i. 35, iii. 22. John iii. 34,) and could not reveal itself in the world till he was glorified (John vii. 39).

The great argument for the truth of Christianity, is the person of Jesus himself, as exhibited to us in the faith of the Church.

"Christianity is nothing, if it be not the actualization and substantiation of a union, which was before, to a great extent, prophetical and ideal." F. D. Maurice.