very nature, there is no room to speak of his becoming one with God. And then, it comes to no true reality in the case. The reality is claimed for the race; but this is made up of individuals, or as they prefer to term it copies, in every one of which the unity in question is troubled at best and incomplete; yea, it is against the nature of the idea, we are told, to exhaust itself in one individual. How then shall it come in this way to a full, clear manifestation? Thus speculation seeks to extinguish the sun, that is actually shining pure and bright in the moral firmament, and offers in its room earthly tapers, which multiplied to any extent must ever fall immeasurably short of the same glory. We say on the contrary, if this idea of union between the divine and human be true, and the actualization of it necessary to satisfy the deepest want of the human spirit; and if every idea that is to be acknowledged as true and divine, requires to become actual; then what the race fails to furnish here, we must seek in an individual. All that the case demands, has been clearly reached in Christ. In his person then the absolute consummation of the religious life is brought to view, not in thought merely, but also in reality. All that remains, is that the theanthropic life thus constituted in the Redeemer himself, should be unfolded and carried out more and more in the human world. On this ground Christianity is the absolute religion in which all other religions may be said to culminate and become complete. Religion and Humanity here are one, equally universal and equally permanent.

11.

Finally, it is from this point that all which is comprised in Christianity may be best arranged and understood. It serves to set each part in its true light and proper position.

So in the case of Doctrine. This, as we have seen, is not an original or principal interest in Christianity, existing for itself or by itself. Its office is simply to represent and exhibit life. Like the statue of Mercury with which the Alcibiades of Plato compares Socrates, it is only as it were the hull, in which the real image of the deity, the person of the God-man, is enshrined.

Self-representation and self-testimony, as before said, formed the main object in Christ's work. This included doctrine, it is true; but always only in the one great relation now affirmed. Only as significant of the very life and being of Christ himself, could it have any value or force. Doctrine gives us Christianity in an outward way; but the life of Christ is Christianity.

Here also the idea of Revelation, which is more full than that of Doctrine though closely connected with it, comes to stand in its true light. Revelation is not simply an extension of the knowledge of God theoretically considered; as it can have place, for a sinful world, only hand in hand with the removal of sin or redemption, it must unfold an actual economy of grace and power for this purpose, a real manifestation of God, as actively employed in the work of educating, enlightening, redeeming and sanctifying the human race. In this case again, the bare word is not enough. Revelation in this form stands higher indeed than the dumb, unclear revelation of mere nature; but it falls itself again far short of revelation in the form of an act. Only in this last form by a sum of salvation acts, unfolding his mind and will, can the living God become fully revealed. In the Old Testament we find a preparatory, shadowy approximation towards this end. But the case required at last the personal manifestation of grace and truth, as they have been made to dwell among us by Jesus Christ. In this sense alone is Christianity a revelation, as the whole person of Christ, including his words and works, his life and death, his resurrection and exaltation, serves to bring into actual view the will of God as concerned in the salvation of men. This required on the part of the Redeemer a full identification of mind and nature with God. But for this very reason, he himself, his person and not his doctrine, constitutes the revelation presented in Christianity; and so, as being in him rather than through him, it must be regarded as holding, not in any separate function of his life, but in the undivided whole of his personality and history, his being and working, doctrine, life, death, resurrection and glorification at the right hand of God, all that he was and is, as well as all that he

has done and is doing still, as Head over all things to the Church to the end of time.

Christianity is also Moral Law. If however it were law only or law essentially even, it would not have transcended the order of the Jewish religion; it would be at best a reformed, generalized Judaism only, bringing with it no freedom or life, but leaving men still under the curse of sin and guilt. Law, however refined, always remains law, something over against the man, an outward shall, whose nature it is to exact, accuse, condemn, and kill. Spirit only and love can animate, and both spring only from personal life. By the all prevailing principle of love the law was fulfilled in Christ's life; and now with the communication of Christ's spirit, the spirit and power of the same active obedience are received at the same time. Thus the law comes to be written in the heart, and loses its character of mere outward authority in that of a spontaneous impulse belonging to the inmost life of its subject. Christianity has by fulfilling it taken it out of the way. To look upon Christianity itself then as being of the same nature, is not indeed wholly wrong, since it has its legal, judicial side, as related to the impenitent sinner; but it is to come short of the true depth of what is comprehended in the gospel. Freedom, redemption from the law, is the main thing.

Again, Christianity is Redemption and Atonement; but in this view also, it has its last and deepest root in the unity of Christ with God. Judaism had no power to set men free in this way. Its salvation stood mainly in symbolical provisions, that could not take away sin itself or reach to the creation of a new spiritual life. This required the medium of an actual personality, entering freely into a communion of life with the subjects of redemption; and could be reached, in an absolute perfect way, only where all that was to be abolished by this redemption on the one hand, and all that was to be produced from it positively on the other, might be found originally and completely abolished and actualized in this personality itself. Only one who is himself morally free can impart freedom to others; and he that is to set all free, must necessarily be sinlessly perfect and fully

united with God. Such a life however, overflowing with blessedness and love, would include in its very nature, by its relation to humanity, the power of a universal redemption; for it must communicate itself with necessity to others, whose sense of want would at the same time urge them to lay hold of it as their own, while its divine constitution rendered it impossible that its fulness could ever be in this way exhausted or impaired. But redemption, to be complete, demands atonement, pardon of sin and peace with God. Such reconciliation again can be effected only by one, in whose soul the love and grace of God are identical with the consciousness of life itself, and whose life appears in such palpable unity of blessedness with God, as to exert a sort of moral violence on men in drawing them into the same communion. The original unity of Christ with the Father then, the being of God in his person, is the basis on which rests the atonement or restoration of union between man and God; and it is with good heed to the order of his words no doubt that the great apostle says: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," plainly intimating that the existence of God in Christ was and still is that which holds the first place as a cause, while the atonement flows from it as an effect.

And so all besides in Christianity receives from this ground thought, or ground fact rather, its proper light and position. Here the Christian Theology and Anthropology come to their true termination and living conjunction; they are not left to devour each other, but find their completion in Christology. God appears in the fulness of his condescension and self-communicating love; man in his highest form of dignity and grandeur. On both sides the revelation satisfies the deepest religious want of our nature, restores to the spiritual world its inward harmony, and solves the riddle of the universe. The miraculous also, with which the manifestation of the God-man is attended, becomes natural and intelligible; since such an actual entrance of the divine into the life of the world, must necessarily involve the presence of higher powers and laws. The resurrection of Christ in particular, which has been from the first the grand prop of Christianity in its historical aspect, appears but as the

natural and necessary consequence of the divine life which filled the constitution of his person; while it forms besides, in virtue of the life bond that unites him with his people, the ground of the whole Christian Eschatology, as connected with the resurrection of believers.

12.

In the way of brief recapitulation, our view of the whole subject may be expressed as follows.

That which forms the specific, distinctive character of Christianity is not its doctrine nor its morality, nor even its power of redemption; but the peculiar constitution and religious significance of its Founder, as uniting divinity and humanity, truly and perfectly, in his person. Doctrine, law and redemption rest

on this as their basis.

As doctrine Christianity addresses itself to the understanding of man, as law to his will; in both cases, as something outward and mechanical, rather than as having power to produce a living piety. In the character of redemption, it reaches to the heart, and unfolds in much higher degree its true life-giving, dynamic nature; but viewed only in this light it is still but imperfectly apprehended, as an inward state or mere matter of feeling. Its complete sense and full objective value are reached, only when all is referred to the person of Christ, in which God appears united with humanity, and which by its very constitution.accordingly carries in it a reconciling, redeeming, quickening and enlightening efficacy. Thus apprehended, Christianity is in the fullest sense organic, in its nature. It reveals itself as a peculiar order of life in Christ, and from him as a personal centre it reaches forth towards man as a whole, in the way of true historical self-evolution, seeking to form the entire race into a glorious kingdom of God. From this centre all takes its full significance; doctrine becomes power; law is turned into life; redemption and reconciliation find a solid objective basis, on which to rest.

The natural and the human, sanctified by union