1847.] Necessity of Faith in Christ. 233 gated them, had been long forgotten? Thus it is possible to imagine that the remembrance of Moses might be lost among his people, while his laws were firmly retained. Or to select a more recent case, the recognition of the great truths which Luther placed in the light of day, and which became the soul of his reformation-work, does not depend essentially on the knowledge of Luther's person and life; it is not impossible that these principles might remain in the consciousness of Protestant Christians, were Luther's name to disappear. "But with the Christian religion the case is wholly different. Here all things depend on the holy, divine, human personality of its founder and on the definite relations to this personality, and not merely on the fact that Christ was the author of this religion, that he announced in his teaching the loftiest truths; but it depends especially ou the great facts of his incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, by which he, suffering and acting, accomplished the salvation of man. Since this is the case, his teachings as they are held up to us in the gospels, include especially his declarations regarding himself and an assertion of his personal claims on his hearers in ever-varying forms. And when the apostles, filled with his Spirit, went out into the world, to make known his kingdom, you see that they were principally employed in repeating and inculcating the lessons of their Master. Examine only the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and you will find that it was the person of their Lord, it was the importance of his advent for the world, which was prominently handled by them; that they declared their preaching itself to be a testimony of Christ crucified and risen again; that the grand theme of their verbal communications and their letters, the roots from which their teaching unfolded itself, was nothing else than the glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became man, the only Sinless one among sinners-the great facts by which he secured the salvation of man. It is absolutely impossible in the Christian religion to separate doctrine from the person, to thrust out Christ and yet retain Christianity. Therefore is Christ so far from being satisfied when only certain general truths are acknowledged and received into the soul, while men possibly forget his name, that he on the contrary, in a long series of his declarations exhibits himself as the object of faith; immediately before his death he established the sacrament of the supper expressly in remembrance of himself; in various ways and in the strongest language he demanded that men should confess him as the indispensable condition of partaking in his salvation; whosoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven." Our closing extracts are taken from a discourse on "the three Stages of the Christian Life," founded on the passage respecting our Saviour's transfiguration. "Lord it is good to be here,' exclaimed Peter, with the expression of the highest rapture and the most childlike simplicity. 'Wilt thou that we make here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses and one for Elias?' Here would they forever linger, build tabernacles for the heavenly forms, and, absorbed in their vision, forget all the strife and all the trouble of earth. What can they desire besides? What attraction can withdraw them from this holy place? Where Jesus Christ makes known to his friends his divine glory, there they partake of the deepest and holiest joy, such as the most costly goods of earth can never furnish. 'Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' "It is the most sacred experience of the Christian life, it is the heights most resplendent, of which this narrative reminds us. was in still retirement, when our soul was absorbed in musings on the wondrous way in which God had led us to his eternal salvation; or when in ardent prayer, we sought consolation and help from the disquiet of our heart and the troubles of life; it was in the circle of very dear friends, when in conversation on the holiest themes, in reciprocal interchange of our views and experiences, our hearts overflowed, and the glowing sparks of faith and love uniting, suddenly burst forth into a clear flame; it was in the public worship of God, when the message of the gospel in the hymn, the prayer, the sermon, powerfully impressed us; or it was when the highest festival of divine worship-the Supper of the Lord-poured over us the fulness of divine mercy; -how any one may have experienced these things, we know not; but this we know, that whoever has experienced one such holy hour, can never forget it again. Was it not as if heaven had been opened to the enraptured gaze; as if a higher, holy world would receive us into its eternal repose. We thought that a hap pier experience could never befal us in eternity, than that this feeling should evermore endure. All the pains and cares of earth were absorbed in the single emotion of the most childlike acquiescence. All sin appeared to us inexpressibly odious, contemptible and pitiful; we could not imagine how it should ever 1847.] Fellowship with Christ. 235 have seduced and fettered us; and it seemed to us impossible that it should hereafter gain power over us. Far below lay the world; we were conscious of being citizens of the heavenly kingdom. On the eye of our mind beamed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who is the image of God; we saw his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What had often seemed dark to us in the connexion of his works, now shone distinct and clear. What our thoughts had been wont to divide and scatter, now arranged itself into the most beautiful whole, as we recognized its soul to be the redeeming love of the Son of God to us poor and sinful men. Yes poor, if we looked only at ourselves, but immeasurably rich in eternal possessions, when we recognized ourselves as the property of our Lord and Saviour, when we knew ourselves to be in fellowship with Him, who is Lord of all heaven; O in such holy knowledge, should we not forget the world with its pleasures and griefs!" "Or does any one think that it was only Christ's peculiar glory on which it was allowed the disciples to cast a longing gaze? Whence have we the right to employ the event so directly for the happy perfecting of the Christian? O how little do such. queries and doubts know of the divine fulness of love in Jesus Christ; love which thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled itself and took the form of a servant and was found in fashion as a man; love which led him to count as nothing his Divine form, but to become wholly and inseparably one with us; love which rent the heavens and brought him down to us, in the deepest abyss of our misery, that he might raise us with himself to the throne of his divine majesty. No, faith, in him and love to him cannot so inquire; for these are assured that all which Christ has, his friends shall share with him. Will he then be solitary in his glory? Was he alone on the mount of transfiguration? When transfigured there appeared as partakers of his glory, in company with his disciples, Moses and Elias, who talked with him. Moses, the lawgiver of Israel, once the most harrassed of men, called to lead to the promised land the people of hardened heart and iron neck, finally gathered weary to his fathers, now enjoying the most enlivening repose in the participation of the glory of the Son of God. Elias, the greatest of the prophets, sent to Israel in a time of trouble and disorder, when Ahab and Jezebel seduced the people to the cruel service of Baal,-whose whole life was a con stant contest with the sins and idolatry of his countrymen, till God translated him to heaven, where his heritage is the happiest peace in communion with the Saviour. No, doubt not, disciples of the Lord; he will not only enjoy his own felicity; his loving heart will long to share it with you; 'because I live, ye shall live also, and where I am, there shall also my servants be.' 'Father, I will,' he prays in the night before his death, 'that where I am, that they whom thou hast given me, may be with me, and I will give unto them the glory that thou hast given me. No! ye dare not doubt; his transfiguration is to you also the type of your own future perfection and glorification. In the world, ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' Here ye contend and are subjected to much toil and labor; but for you a time is coming, and who knows how near it is, when the dark shadows of the earthly life shall yield forever to celestial glory, when every conflict shall be swallowed up in victory, and all pains and toils shall end in the sweetest rest, when nothing more shall disturb your happiness in communion with the Redeemer." ARTICLE II. RELIGION IN GERMANY. Translations from the recent work of Dr. Tholuck," Dialogues upon the principal questions of Faith of the present time, principally for reflecting Laymen who seek instruction." Halle, 1846. By J. B. Lyman, Andover Theol. Seminary, now in Europe. [THE work from which the following extracts have been translated, was written by the author, as the title indicates, to furnish a book suited to afford instruction to inquiring laymen. Hence its style is in many parts colloquial and idiomatic, and thus calculated to bring home his thoughts upon the questions of faith to the hearts of the German people. It consists of six dialogues, with the titles: Reason and Rationalism; Reason and Faith; Faith and the Scriptures; The latest Progress; Progress and Confessions; and the Reawakened Faith. The speakers represent different religious parties of protestant Germany. Emil rep 1847.] The Reliance put in human Reason. 237 resents the friends of evangelical religion; and in him the author has probably intended in a great measure to express his own opinions and feelings. Charles is the representative of rationalism, but of inquiring rationalism; Julius, of modern unbelieving radicalism; and Gerhard, of those who wish to abide by the old confessional standards. The present work is but the first part of the whole, and the author states in his preface, that, if he should perceive a call to it, a second part will appear in answer to the question, Who was Christ? alluding perhaps to an expression of Ulich, the leader of the "protestant friends," or "friends of light" as they are sometimes called, in which he says, "who Jesus properly was, I do not know, to that the answer is wanting to me." This question, What think ye of Christ? the author designates as "the question of all questions" at present in Germany.—TR.] Emil to Charles.-I see that we stand already at the place of contest, and our first pass is to be made. You ask for the rights of our faith, I for the privileges of your reason. For you the highest appeal, in all questions of religion and morality, is to your reason. Hence you can let no one give you a result; not even him whom Christianity calls its own master. Independence of the word of Christ has become the fundamental article that now forms free churches; only it is strange, that they at the same time wish still to be called Christian or evangelical churches, or churches at all. I presuppose, that you know in all its extent the greatness of the office, which has devolved upon your reason. Your reason has the problem to decide, how much, that the master of the Christian world has spoken upon divine things, can still be valid and how much not. Let us make it fully clear to ourselves, what is meant by this. You then, the landholder N. N., born on the confines of two centuries, baptized and brought up in one of the christian States, the Prussian, educated at the gymnasium in B, and at the universities of B. and H, are with full conviction, certain before God, that the judgment which your reason passes upon questions of religion and morality, is more to be relied upon and nearer to the truth, than that of him, who was born in Bethlehem, the founder of that religion, which, for about two thousand years, the Europeans and a great part of the inhabitants of other parts of the world have confessed, after whom they bear the name of Christians, and from whose birth they date their new era? If any irony offends you in this ques |