CONTENTS. THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND OF SAINT PAUL AGASSIZ'S TOUR TO LAKE SUPERIOR Lake Superior: its Physical Character, Vegetation, and Animals, compared with those of other and similar Regions. By Louis Agassiz. With a Narrative of III. BAKEWELL ON A FUTURE LIFE Natural Evidence of a Future Life, derived from the Properties and Actions of Animate and Inanimate Matter. A Contribution to Natural Theology, de- V. MISS MARTINEAU'S REIGN OF WILLIAM THE FOURTH . 1. Epistolarum D. Erasmi Roterodami Libri XXXI. et P. Melanchthonis Libri IV. Quibus adjiciuntur Th. 2. Pilgrimages to Saint Mary of Walsingham and Saint Thomas of Canterbury. By Desiderius Erasmus. Newly translated, with the Colloquy on Rash Vows, by the same Author, and his Characters of Archbish- NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLIcations. Burnap on the Rectitude of Human Nature, Mann and Chase's Arithmetic practically applied, Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation, Winslow's Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, Lord's Lectures on Modern History, Religious Intelligence. Dudleian Lecture, - The An- niversaries, Unitarian Book and Pamphlet Society, - The Prison Discipline Society, The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity, The Massachusetts Bible Society, The American Peace Society, Society for the Relief of Aged and Indigent Unitarian Ministers, American Unitarian Association, The Collation, - Ministerial Confer- ence at the Chapel of the Church of the Saviour, Sunday School Society, - Convention of Congre- - - 156 THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER AND RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY. JULY, 1850. ART. I.-THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND OF SAINT PAUL. THE writings of the New Testament describe Christ not under one form or type of representation only, but under more than one. It will be perceived that we leave out of view altogether the Christ of the Old Testament. He is presented so vaguely in the prophetic books, and the passages that are supposed to relate to him are for the most part of so doubtful an application, that no distinct image of him is there to be found. No distinct image of him, we say, though in a certain sense he is predicted everywhere, not in the prophetic books only, but in Moses and the Psalms. He pervades, as it were, the Jewish Scriptures, though without form. How should there have been a form, when the time of manifestation lay yet in the darkness of the future? If we were not able to put our finger upon a single clear passage, and say he is literally there, still we could distinguish through the whole the essence of prophecy. The effect, too, of such prophecy was at last satisfactorily displayed. The general current of expectation flowed towards one time and one person. He that was to come appeared, and all was fulfilled. We confine ourselves to the Christian Scriptures. How do these describe him? Not under one form or VOL. XLIX. 4TH. S. VOL. XIV. NO. I. 1 type of representation only, but under more than one. The first three Gospels contain one of these. The Gospel according to John unfolds another. The Epistles of Paul appear to us to exhibit a third. With regard to the first two of these departments, the difference was discerned very early, and the oldest writers of the Church make mention of it. It is perfectly clear, that the first three Gospels-which, for the sake of convenience, and because it has become common so to name them, we shall call the Synoptics - take each of them the same point of view. They tell similar things in the same general manner. The coloring of their language is the same. But the moment we open the Gospel of the fourth Evangelist, every thing is changed. At the very outset, we are carried up from off the solid earth into the region of theologic ideas. And when we come to the ground again, if the scenes are the same that we beheld before, they appear in a different light. A new, uniform strangeness is cast over them all. We breathe another air. We hear the sound of an altered speech. Christ walks before us again, but his method of discoursing is not what it was before. His figure and bearing are more like those of a superior order of beings. His language rises to a certain mystic majesty, and is sustained at that point; which is indeed the style of the writer himself. The obscurity, so far as there was any, of his occasional parables and of his bold prophetic imagery, is now exchanged for the settled obscurity of enigmatical and transcendental forms of discourse. The incidents bear a much smaller proportion than before to the dialogue or monologue, which now occupy the chief place; and both of these are carried on in the same solemn and peculiar phraseology. When we look at this diversity of style between John and the Synoptics with the eye of a mere literary criticism, we perceive at once that they correspond precisely with two great classes or schools of Greek composition; or in stricter accuracy perhaps we ought to say, of Hellenistic composition, for neither the one nor the other is of classical purity. The first is the simple style of Palestine. It is that in which the admirable Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of the Son of Sirac, was written, between one and two hundred years before the |