days to the tower of silence (a lofty building erected on a hill or terrace) and placed on a grating near the top of the tower, which is open. The flesh is plucked from the bones by birds of prey and insects, and the bones fall after a time into a receptacle beneath, whence they are taken and placed in a suitable shrine.

A people whose religious traditions approach thus nearly to those of the ancient people of God, and among whom the feeling of the necessity of personal holiness and purity is yet a living principle, cannot be far from the kingdom of God. Their very morality may indeed, like that of the young ruler in the Gospel, for a time prevent their hearty and willing reception of salvation through Christ; but we cannot doubt that God has purposes of mercy toward a race so wonderfully preserved from idolatry, and that ere long the Parsees. will be among the trophies of Immanuel, and, by their intellect, influence, and wealth, prove the most successful propagandists of Christianity among the nations of India. May he hasten the time.

ART. VII.-THE DIVINE-HUMAN PERSON OF CHRIST.

THE scope of our investigation, to harmonize with the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ his true humanity, does not require us to demonstrate the former; we take it for granted. Nor do we consider it necessary to examine in detail the testimony of the New Testament concerning the true humanity of the Son of God. This also is granted on all sides. The impression which the Evangelists make upon us is evidently this, that the birth and life of Jesus was really and truly human. Born of a woman, in the entire helplessness of an ordinary child, he increased both in years and in wisdom. In keeping with the laws of our physical life, he felt hungry, was tired, etc. In the same manner his physical life appears as really human; he feels grief and joy, indignation and pity, etc.

It is evident that the New Testament represents Jesus both as a true man and very God; it must also be conceded that humanity and divinity are not predicated of Christ as existing in him side by side of each other, as if the humanity and the divinity in Jesus were two separable, though closely connected, constituent parts of him, or as if the God-man Jesus Christ was a compound being consisting of a God and a man. The whole New Testament speaks only of one Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the incarnate Logos that was in the beginning with God and that was God, God manifested in

the flesh. For this reason the Christian Church has at all times taught that Jesus, uniting in himself two natures, the divine and the human, was in one person very God and very man, equal to the Father according to his Godhead, like unto us according to his humanity in all things, sin excepted.

But to this union of two opposite natures in one person, such as are the divine and the human, it is objected, that it involves not only a mystery that transcends human reason, but something selfcontradictory and therefore impossible. 'God," it is said, “is eternal and infinite, man is created and finite; the Eternal One cannot be conceived as born in the course of time. Again, God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, while man is impotent and limited, both as to his being and knowledge. God is supremely blessed, absolutely independent, and governing all things; while man is capable of suffering and dependent. How can, then, one and the same person be eternal and created, omnipresent and finite, omnipotent and limited in power, omniscient and lacking in knowledge, uninterruptedly happy and suffering, at the same time?"

In such a juxtaposition these predicates appear indeed irreconcilable. But supposing the matter to be as represented, our inability to reconcile them would be no valid reason why we should doubt their union in Jesus Christ. The proofs of true divinity and true humanity in Christ are not less convincing and irrefutable, if we cannot understand the manner in which God and man are one in him. Our very inability to understand this How forbids us to look upon the fact itself as something self-contradictory. The historical phenomenon of Jesus Christ is rationally inexplicable, except we ascribe to him divinity proper and true humanity. We are therefore not justifiable to deny either of these predicates because we cannot comprehend the manner of their union. Even the science of mathematics must recognize a manifest contradiction in the proposition that two lines may for ever approximate toward each other without ever meeting! To purely immaterial beings, as the angels, the existence of a being that is composed of spirit and matter, that is mortal and at the same time immortal, such as man is, might possibly appear as self-contradictory as does to the skeptic the union of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Even to ourselves the union of body and soul is incomprehensible, and infinitely more incomprehensible is to us the Divine Being; how can we then presume to affirm that the union of divinity and humanity in one person is self-contradictory and impossible? Where is the proof that it was impossible for the eternal Son of God to have, in addition to his eternal divine form of existence, also

the human form of existence in time? where the proof that the Godman Jesus Christ cannot be, at the same time, both in time and eternity? Is it not peculiar to God's dealings to reconcile opposites? Think, for example, of the opposites, divine grace and human liberty. Why should our faith in what God has revealed and abundantly confirmed unto us be shaken, owing to our ignorance of what he has not revealed unto us? He has revealed and confirmed unto us the fact, that in Jesus Christ the Godhead dwells bodily, without explaining unto us how this is the case. Our concern is merely with the question, What is Christ? not with the question, How was God in the man Jesus? The answer to this question is beyond human comprehension. It is too deep for us; we cannot fathom it. There is nothing analogous by which it could be explained; it is an object of faith. The philosophy of the fact we must leave with God.

We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the incarnation of the Son of God might really involve a contradiction that our reason cannot solve. But before we can admit this supposition it is our duty to examine closely whether the teachings of the New Testament on the incarnation of the Son of God really involve the contradiction in question, or, in other words, whether the New Testament places the attributes of divinity and humanity so side by side to each other that this contradiction results therefrom. If we should find after a close examination that this is not the case, but that the teachings of the New Testament on the person of Jesus Christ solve, or rather, do not involve the contradiction as stated above, it is certainly the duty of Christian theology to express the fundamental doctrine of the Gospel in terms which do not involve a seeming contradiction. The evangelical theology of Germany, in the struggle against the remnants of rationalism, which denies the divinity proper of Jesus Christ, has felt herself called upon to endeavor to harmonize with the divinity of the Redeemer his real humanity, or the really human development of his life which is so expressly taught by the evangelists, in order to gain thereby a proper conception of the person of the God-man. Dr. Dorner, the author of the "Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi," "History of the Development of the Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ," says on this point: "In the long conflict between Christianity and philosophy, it is a matter of congratulation that that point is gradually coming to be universally and distinctly understood, which is of the very first importance if the controversy is ever to be decided. All the energies of the two conflicting parties are collecting themselves more and more around the person of Christ, as the central point where the matter must be

determined; and this is a great advance toward an adjustment of the hard strife, for when the question is rightly put the answer is already half found. It is also easy to see that, in this case, everything depends upon the question, whether there need have been, and really has existed, such a Christ as we find in the confession of the Church; that is, a being in whom the personal and perfect union of divinity and humanity is truly consummated and historically made manifest. For if we suppose on the one hand that philosophy could incontrovertibly prove that the person of Christ, in this sense, is a self-contradicting notion, and therefore an impossibility, there would then no longer be any conflict between Christian theology and philosophy. With the overthrow of this doctrine, Christian theology and the Christian Church would cease to have an existence in any legitimate sense of the word Christian, as with the capitulation of the metropolis the whole land falls to the enemy. And, on the other hand, if the idea of a Christ who is both human and divine can be proved on philosophical grounds to be rational and necessary, then it is equally clear that philosophy and theology would be essentially reconciled with each other, and would ever after have a common labor, or rather would have really become one; and philosophy would then not have lost, but strengthened its claims to existence. Hence, in the great battle which is being fought between the greatest powers in the world, Christianity and philosophy, it is well for both parties that the contest should center more and more around the point where alone all is to be won and all is to be lost."

Dr. Liebner, another theologian that has become renowned through his Christological writings, says: "The question: What do you think of Christ, whose son is he? has become again in its full force the cardinal question of theology; theologians become pre-eminently Christologians; the stone which the (theological) builders had rejected has again in reality become the corner. And there arises again for our age, with peculiar adaptedness for apologetical purposes, that grand and majestic train of Christological truths, from the center of which all is seen in true evangelical fullness and in the proper evangelical order up to the doctrine concerning the triune and only true God, and down to every question connected with Christian ethics. And what here comes to light is, to say it in a few words, the system of all systems, that system which is destined by its inalienable birthright to subdue all other systems. The ancient Church has in sanctified and gigantic speculations laid the foundation; the Church of every succeeding period, when alive to her calling, has continued her efforts in the same direction, and its completion will require the efforts of the Church to the end of

days. It It is the system of the eternal divine thoughts that are laid down in the facts of Revelation, and have been actualized most distinctly in Christ, the only begotten Son, and which are reproduced by the believer, who by a living faith has received these facts within himself. We shall grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ as the truth, in whom all riches of wisdom and knowledge are hid, and shall learn to understand, and show more clearly, that only those views of God, of creation, of the world, of man, of sin and grace, that have their roots in the Christological truth, are tenable and victorious; in short, that Christianity embodies all true philosophy as well as all spiritual life."

This much is, at all events, certain, that it is by no means indifferent what conceptions we form of the person of the God-man. It would also be against the fundamental principle of evangelical Protestantism to say that the Church has settled once for all, unalterably and infallibly, the terms concerning the mode of the twofold nature of the God-man, and thus made all further searching of the Scriptures on this mystery useless. When the angels desire to look into this mystery why should not we also desire it, since it concerns us much more than them? Although we can never fathom this mystery, which must forever be an object of faith, it is nevertheless our sacred duty to learn to understand so much of it as the Scriptures enable us to know, and as we can comprehend without affecting our faith in the fact on which the mystery is based. We find accordingly that the Church, in the very first centuries of her existence, turned her attention in this direction, and endeavored, in her confessions of faith, logically to define what she believed with the heart. What difficulties she encountered in these her endeavors, and how she labored to meet them, we shall now briefly state, or, in other words, we shall show how manifold attempts have been made to make the mystery of the incarnation intelligible to human reason and to meet the objection raised by philosophy, namely, that the union of the divine and the human in the person of the Redeemer would be something self-contradictory, and therefore impossible. In pursuing these inquiries, we would however entreat the reader to bear in mind that the fact of the incarnation is no less firmly established, even if all efforts that have been made or may be made to define the mystery in terms satisfactory to philosophy shall prove abortive. The failure of all the efforts that have thus far been made to bring the mystery within the reach of human comprehension, either proves that human reason is absolutely unable to form a proper conception of the manner in which God and man are personally united, or that on this point the Scriptures have not yet