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if he had been thrown into intimate relations with evangelical scholars (it is singular how rarely he met such, and how kindly he speaks of them, as of Professors Stuart, Porter, and Woolsey); if a family of children had grown in his house, to draw out the tender and loving elements of a great heart; if he had not come into antagonism with the religious world at an early period of his ministry, and continued a gladiator till strength failed,—his whole life-history might have read quite otherwise.

But it was not so ordered. He was a religious outlaw, and hewed his way through opposition. No one will deny that he was a good fighter, and held the lists bravely against all comers, and wore his harness to the last. He did harm in his generation that a score of good men will not undo; and has gone to the tribunal of an omniscient God, who, understanding his character, his circumstances, and his motives, will award a righteous judgment.

We do not fear that his influence for evil will live. He was not a profound thinker, and his works hold no seeds of immortality. He had not the imagination or spiritual insight truhs which reach into the unknown, and bring forth new for the guidance of the race. He was a man of his generation, with qualities fitting him pre-eminently for leadership. He did a noble work in the social reforms which have given character to the age, and for such service deserves high honor. This, we think, will be his memorial in future time, when his contributions to spiritual thought are forgotten. He aspired to do what greater men have attempted, to overthrow Christianity and establish a new religion. Celsus was as proud and self-confident; and so were Tindal, and Hume, and Voltair. They have gone to the grave, and their works are fast going to oblivion. A similar fate awaits the works of Mr. Parker. He claimed to be wiser than Jesus; but Jesus had a deeper insight into human nature, and provided better for its wants. His words will abide forever, the light and comfort of the race, confirmed by the experience of millions in the future, as they have been by

millions in the past. But with the personal presence of Mr. Parker, the chief element of his power over men has passed away, and in a little time his works may be known only, as the works of Celsus are known, by the few fragments preserved in the writings of the defenders of the faith.

ARTICLE IV.

THE SON OF GOD.

BY REV. W. S. TYLER, D.D., PROFESSOR IN AMHERST COLLEGE.

IT has been well said, that there are only two great subjects of human thought and inquiry. One of these is man, and the other is God. These two subjects meet in Christ, who was both God and man united in one person.

Ellicott has remarked in his Life of Christ, that in the portraiture of our Lord, the first Gospel presents him to us mainly as the Messiah; the second, chiefly as the God-man; the third, as the Redeemer; and the fourth, as the only begotten Son of God. This distinction may, perhaps, be just, if it is not too rigidly applied. Certainly it is very interesting to a curious mind, and not a little encouraging also to the faith of the believer, to remark the different points of view from which the several evangelists observe and contemplate Christ, and yet how manifestly they all describe the same person; how wonderfully some of them diverge from others in the general track which they pursue, and, at the same time, how certainly, whenever they come together, they do not come in collision, but harmonize in their representations.

The express design of the apostle John in writing his Gospel, as stated by himself (xx. 31), is that his readers might believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. And in this Gospel he is called the Son of God more fre

quently than in the others. Indeed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke the Redeemer never calls himself directly by this name, but it is chiefly in the testimony which the dispos sessed demons and the wondering spectators are constrained to bear that he is spoken of as the Son of God; whereas in John he calls himself the Son of God and, in abbreviated but no less definite terms, the Son more frequently than by any other title. But in Mark also he is announced as the Son of God in the very first verse, as if the author meant to have it understood at the outset that this was the theme of his Gospel. And Matthew and Luke both record those words of Jesus touching his intimate knowledge of the Father, so strikingly similar in style1 as well as in sentiment to many passages in John's Gospel, that the hearer can hardly persuade himself that he is not listening to the words of that evangelist: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him " (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22; cf. Isa. i. 18; iii. 35; vi. 46 et pass.) This single passage lends the sanction of the other evangelists to all that the fourth has recorded of Christ's teachings concerning his mysterious relations to the Father.

Jesus Christ is not the only person who is called son of God in the scriptures. Angels (Job i. 6; xxxviii. 7), kings and rulers (2 Sam. vii. 14; Ps. lxxxii. 6), the righteous and their families (Gen. vi. 2, 4), and especially believers in Jesus (1 John iv. 2 et pass.), are all so called to express their high rank or their relation and resemblance to the Most

1 This coincidence is sufficient to prove (what is denied by Renan and others) that John is true to the style in which our Lord spoke of these profound mysteries in the divine nature; while the other evangelists are no less true (as is generally conceded, even by writers of the sceptical school) to the style in which he discourses to other auditors on other themes. A single striking resemblance is admitted by all candid critics to outweigh many points of difference in proving identity of authorship. And why should it be thought incredible that the all-sided and all-comprehensive mind of the great Teacher should discourse in very different styles to suit widely different circumstances.

High. But Christ calls himself, and is called by the sacred writers, not a son of God, but THE Son of God, ỏ Tiòs TOÛ

coû1 (John i. 34; xi. 4 et al.), and what is, if possible, still more distinctive and complete, "THE SON." There is something altogether unique and peculiar in the way in which the title is appropriated to him. In most of the passages in which the title is applied to others, it occurs in the plural number, or, if in the singular number, without the article, as when God says to Solomon: "I will be his father, and he shall be my son (2 Sam. vii. 14). The passages in which magistrates and angels are called sons of God, are not only plural and indefinite, but they are found only in such poetical books as Job and the Psalms, and are manifestly the language of poetry. Moreover these, and also those in which the title is applied to Adam (Luke iii. 38) and Solomon, are solitary passages, not only peculiar to certain writers, but occurring only once or twice in those writers. Christ, on the other hand, calls himself the Son of God, or the Son, habitually in the Gospel of John, and is frequently called by this distinctive name in all the writers, historical, doctrinal, and poetical, of the New Testament. Furthermore, these casual applications of the titles to men and angels in the Old Testament are often alluded to in the New as justifying and foreshadowing the appropriation of the name as the proper prerogative of him who was the King of kings and the Lord of men and angels. The occasional use of the titles "son of man," and "son of God," in a subordinate sense in the Old Testament, therefore, so far from militating against their appropriation in a peculiar and far higher sense in the New, was, in fact, only the prepara

1 The article is sometimes omitted in the Greek (e.g. John x. 36; Rom. i. 4; 2 Cor. i. 19) without any difference of meaning, because (according to the wellknown law of the article) it is sufficiently definite in itself or in its connexion, and so does not require the article. So the article is sometimes omitted in the phrase "the Son of Man," e.g. John v. 27. And so with proper names.

2 With the indefinite article, sometimes, in our version; e.g. 2 Sam. vii. 14, as quoted in Heb. i. 5: "He shall be to me a son."

tion of suitable language1 to express that high peculiarity— only the type and prophecy of the coming of him who was truly and emphatically THE SON OF MAN and THE SON OF GOD, and so was a fit Mediator between God and man, even the God-man Christ Jesus.

THE SON OF GOD. What is the import of this title, expressed in the words themselves, illustrated by the usage of the sacred writers, and sustained by the general teaching of the scriptures ?

1. This name, so emphatically and exclusively appropriated as the distinctive name of our Lord, imports peculiar nearness and dearness to God, a singular mutual affection, union, oneness, between him and the infinite Father. A son naturally has the same views and feelings with his father, the same aims and ends, one and the same interest. A son loves his parents, and is loved by them, beyond any other person. He stands to them in the nearest and most endearing relation, and that more fully and perfectly as he more fully and perfectly sustains the character and realizes the idea of a son. To say of a person he was near and dear to me as my own son, is to express the utmost intimacy and affection. The relation of an only son is especially near and endearing. An only child is the very symbol of affection, of union, of oneness of interests, and almost of life, in all languages and to all hearts. When, therefore, our Lord is habitually distinguished and emphasized in the scriptures as the Son of God, the only-begotten Son, or the Son, thus much at least must be expressed, his singular nearness and dearness to the infinite Father.

Much has been written and printed, and perhaps more preached and argued, of the sonship and the eternal gene

1 This we believe to be the explanation of very much of the Old Testament in its relation to the New, and of most of those passages which the old expositors interpreted in a double sense, and which many modern expositors explain as a mere accommodation. This principle underlies, for example, the argument of our Lord in John x. 34-36, and that of Paul in Heb. i. 5 seq., and in Heb. ii. 6 seq.

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