of an influence, or power, or exercise, detached from the person from whom it proceeds.

It should not, therefore, surprise or confuse us that the pronouns for a person are variously applied to the Holy Spirit, as, "he may abide with you forever," he shall teach you all things," "I will send him unto you,' "when he is come he will. guide, reprove, teach," etc. We cannot assume that these pronouns, designating a person in their common use, would be applied thus to any attribute, power or influence, even though it were divine. Moreover, in applying thus uniformly the masculine pronouns to the Holy Spirit there is a violent departure from the rules of grammar. In the original the term Holy Spirit is neuter, and should be represented by neuter pronouns. Yet they are invariably masculine, as if pointing to a person. This violation of a law of the Greek language is significant. It is as violent a departure from the idiom and laws of the language as if we should say of republicanism: "he promotes the highest good of his subjects," or of the President of the United States; it will be ready to deliver its annual message to the Congress this week."

Blasphemy is evil speaking of sacred persons and things, and may be forgiven unless it be against the Holy Ghost. Now if the Holy Ghost be but the manifestation of some attribute, power, or influence of God, as they say who deny his personality, how can sin against any and all other parts of God's nature, character and work be pardonable, while the sin against one attribute or exercise is unpardonable? Some say that the Holy Ghost is but a divine, influencing power," "a divine emanation of influences and energies." Noble's Appeal for the New Jerusalem Church, pp. 396, 397. Others speak of the Holy Ghost as "the sanctifying influence which comes from God," the holy influence of Deity on the minds of his servants, with accompanying gifts and powers." Dr. Eliot, ut supra. But why should a very special sacredness attach to the power of God, and evil speaking of it be unpardonable, while abuse of God's holiness, goodness, mercy, or truth, or any and all other qualities, may be forgiven?

Ananias is said to have lied to the Holy Ghost. But a lie can be uttered only to a person. We cannot lie to a brute,

inanimate object, or to any attribute or quality of a person. There must be an entireness, a wholeness in the person lied unto. Else a lie is impossible. It implies perception in him lied unto. Yet power, love, justice, truth, or any quality of a person, cannot perceive. Perception is the act of an individual and whole mind. It is the act of an agent, a person; and so Ananias must have lied unto a person when he lied to the Holy Ghost.

Thus gleaning here and there from our only authoritative source in answering the question under discussion, we find the Holy Spirit introduced in the Scriptures in all the various states, actions, feelings, and forms of expression by which we introduce a person in any narrative. There runs through the Bible, and particularly the New Testament, a series of epithets, attributes, offices and works, associated with the Spirit, that compel us to regard him as a character, an agent. He is introduced with two persons, the Father and the Son, as if he were another. He is introduced with the Father alone, and with the Son alone, and by himself alone. He comes, he goes, he abides. He shows the various activities of a thinking, intelligent being. He shows perhaps as great diversity of action as the Father himself. Why, then, should we not call him a person? How can we avoid it?

It is common usage with the inspired writers, to represent inanimate objects, and the separate qualities of the divine person as if they were living and separate beings; and so the attributes and actions of persons are ascribed to them. And so some, objecting to the conclusion in our argument, say that the power or influence of God is thus personified and introduced variously as a person under the name of the Holy Ghost. This figure of speech, called personification, is of common use in the Bible. But it is not usual in narrative and epistolary discourse. It is confined almost entirely to the poetic, prophetic, and highly figurative portions of the Scriptures. It is very rare in plain prose.

Then, though an attribute of the Father be sometime personified, as his power in the address: "Put on strength, O arm of the Lord," there is no one attribute or quality broad enough to cover all these manifestations of the Holy Spirit. For a char

acter of many and wide-reaching attributes and qualities is given to the Spirit. No one element in the character of God can be expanded to cover them all, not even by the expansive liberty of poetic personification. It is to be considered, too, that personification is usually abrupt and brief, while this personal representation of the Holy Spirit is so protracted and varied and used by different authors in the Bible, as to constitute him a historical character and prominent actor through the book. In the simple narratives of the Gospels, in the mingled history, biography and incident of the book of Acts, in the didactic and logical Epistles, and in the impassioned and visionary Revelation of Saint John, this mysterious person maintains his position and acts his part. No figure of speech in several writers, or even one, could so personify an attribute of God, and then sustain it as a character through a volume or volumes, and they of mixed styles of composition.

Doubtless many now objecting would admit the personality of the Holy Spirit, if they had not serious difficulties in determining his relations to the Father and the Son. Those difficulties are not here to be considered, but only the suggestion made that God in his nature and mode of being is incomprehensible. It is not for us to understand the constitution of his being. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing," and if he condescend to make to us some revelation of himself we must expect it to be partial, and incomplete in its parts, though not contradictory. In such a revelation an obvious and persistent endeavor to state a truth should not be repelled because we can see no way to dispose of it. If God offer, it is ours to receive, and if we receive humbly, God is wont to give grace and a place for the proper bestowal of the divine truths. Perhaps we should succeed better in receiving and disposing of the fractional parts given of the mystery of godliness," if we were less ambitious to show our vain philosophy in completing a system setting forth to human understanding God's nature and mode of being. It would better become us, remembering who we are and who God is, to receive the portions of truth as God imparts them, not attempting by force of human wit to make a part equal the whole, or stimulate human ingenuity to supply, between the parts, what is of design a divinely intended incompleteness

among them. It were well to consider that "touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out." On such a topic, therefore, God's fractions are worth more than man's integers.

ARTICLE II.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HEINRICH STEFFENS.

With personal reminSchleiermacher, Fichte, By HEINRICH STEF

The Story of my Career, as Student at Freiburg and Jena, and as Professor at Halle, Breslau and Berlin. iscences of Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Novalis, Schlegel, Neander, and others. FENS. Translated by WILLIAM LEONHARD GAGE. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

1863.

THIS is a tempting title. To redeem its promise the translator renders into fluent English, in this modest volume, the substance of ten volumes of four thousand pages through which the autobiographer"in all the garrulousness of old age," tells the story of his octogenarian life. Steffens was a Norwegian, born in 1773. His present editor, with great good sense, passes the first three volumes of his original with only such notices as serve intelligently to introduce his subject to the reader, and begins the narrative at the point where, at the age of twenty-five, the young philosopher sets forth for Germany to mature his studies and seek his scholarly fortunes, under patronage of the minister of finances at Copenhagen. His specialty was physical science, which he pursued however rather upon speculative than empirical grounds. Starting as a Spinozist, he ripened into a disciple of Schelling. His mind was transcendentally metaphysical, and vaguely enwrapped with religious idealisms, yet playful and active to an unusual degree. "He was known (says his translator) as the genial Steffens,' and always wore an air of benignity, mingled with nobleness." We shall approach him on his common-sense side, accepting at the

outset his own dictum respecting the inability of the AngloSaxon intellect

...

"to know what German philosophy is, and what it proposes to solve. . . . It was not comprehensible to them. They, caring for no evidence but that of the senses, and valuing no results but those which are gained by experiment and observation, satisfied with a religion which has a determinate and absolute value, and which lets the seen world and the unseen world touch each other, without being in unity, were not the men to comprehend our philosophy.”— p. 88.

We receive the verdict rendered on "the Englishmen" without criticism. It is near enough true for present purpose; and letting the "excess of light" remain without an effort to penetrate it, will use this pleasant book merely as a gallery from which to take down and set on our pages a few of the pictures which it contains of men whose names are famous and honored in the republic of letters, whatever strong differences of opinion there may be as to their soundness of judgment or correctness of beliefs.

Steffens was a young aspirant for professional distinction just at the date when Europe was shaken to its centre by the ambition and triumphs of Napoleon. He was occupying a chair in the University of Halle when the French Emperor bombarded and captured that city. He fully shared in the fever and the ferment which agitated all minds amid those stormy days, and as an anti-Gallican of the directest type, was not exempt from serious personal dangers. The taking of Halle suspended the course of University studies, and set the professor with his friends adrift in the most sorry plight. Schleiermacher was one of these. It is curious to read this bit of biography concerning the personal embarrassments of men so noted.

"After adjusting all my accounts I found that I had seven dollars left. Schleiermacher had no more than I. It was impossible to receive any from distant friends. An army was between them and us, and all communication was cut off.

"We resolved to unite the little capital which was at our command, and to keep house in common. Schleiermacher removed into my little tenement. My wife and child and Schleiermacher's sister