ness and will, and the ceasing of the overflow of the Father's fullness into the Son, as conditioned thereby, constitutes the basis on which Christ's equality with other men rests. A proper attention to these two points makes the development of the life of the incarnate Son intelligible.”

The objection that the spirit being no substance at all, no distinction can be made between its substance and its activity in feeling and knowing itself, in willing, in knowing what is beyond itself and in acting thereon, is met by Gess as follows:

"Our own experience sufficiently proves that the soul of man exists before it feels and knows itself, before it acts, and it is equally well known that the body is subject to diseases in which the soul suspends its activity; but as soon as the health of the body returns, the soul is again as it was before the disease. It has perhaps no remembrance whatever of the time of the disease, which proves that it was unconscious, but now its life breaks forth again. All thorough psychological study teaches likewise that the soul embodies a good deal more, both good and bad, than it is conscious of in every moment. To know and to will without a substance that knows and wills, is indeed an absurdity. For this reason there can be no worse advocate of the doctrine concerning the spirit against materialism than this idealism; for denying, as it does, the independent substance of the spirit, there is nothing left from which the spirit can be derived, as its source, except the life of the body."

But how can such a laying aside of the divine self-consciousness, as Gess assumes, be reconciled with the many declarations of Christ concerning himself as the Son of God, the consciousness of which fact he was not gradually gaining, but had in perfection, as the only begotten of the Father, from whom he went forth as such and came into the world, without the least intimation of an interruption or laying aside of this his dignity? If he had regained his divine selfconsciousness, by means of a gradual development, in a purely human manner, how could he have spoken so positively of his antemundane glory, of his eternal divinity? how could he have said, "Before Abraham was, I am? No one ascends up to heaven except he that has come down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven. Who sees me, sees the Father. As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son, to have life in himself. I am the bread that came down from heaven and that giveth life unto the world."

If he had possessed the consciousness of his eternal equality with the Father only in a human form, and regained it as the result of his divine-human development, how could he have claimed equal honor with the Father? how could he have forgiven sins? Again, if he had unqualifiedly laid aside his omnipotence, those of his miracles could indeed be accounted for which he himself ascribed to the Father, but not those which he performed in his own name. How could the transfiguration of his body upon the holy mountain, which Peter calls the power and appearance of divine glory, be derived from a merely human development of his divine nature?

We conclude from all this, with Liebner and other Christologians, that by the glory which the Son of God laid aside during his sojourn on earth we must not understand his divine self-consciousness, not the fullness of the Deity, as far as it can manifest itself in a human manner. On the contrary it is said of this very glory: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And of his fullness have all we received grace for grace." This divine fullness the Son did not give up at his incarnation, but it followed him as his peculiar property from heaven, from out of the Father's bosom, to legitimate him as the Logos, as the only begotten of the Father, yet so that he turned it into a divine-human glory, acquired in a human manner. Only the form of God, the divine form of existence, consequently the transcendent divine majesty and sovereign power over all things united with uninterrupted glory, he had exchanged at his incarnation, and during the time of his sojourn on earth, for his human form of existence, for the form of the servant. Into this his antemundane glory however he re-entered (John xvii, 5) on his going home to his Father, (John vi, 62,) also in the capacity of the exalted Son of man, (Phil. ii, 9.) But on every stage of his divine-human development the Son's oneness of being and of will with the Father remained; and by this very fact he was in his human teaching and conduct the express image of the invisible God, the personal revealer of him who had sent him, the Son of God, in the form of human existence. According to this view the immanent relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost did not suffer any change by the laying aside of the divine form of existence on the part of the Son, nor during the time of his existence in human form. And only according to this view have the words of the incarnate Son of God their full force: "Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me; if not, believe me for the very works' sake. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." John xiv, 10, 11.

If it is objected that the really human development of Jesus is inconsistent with or excluded by the uninterrupted continuance of the eternal self-consciousness of the Logos in the incarnation, we answer that this inference does not necessarily follow. There is nothing self-contradictory in the assumption that the incarnate Logos had in his one Ego the consciousness of his twofold nature. Even if we cannot explain how the Logos was conscious of himself, as the eternal Son of God, and yet had this self-consciousness only in a human form, yet the consciousness of his twofold nature was necessary for the mediatorial office of the incarnate Logos; he was

to know himself according to his absolute divinity and his human development; and if we suppose that only so much of his divine self-consciousness as was necessary for his mediatorial office, passed over into his human self-consciousness, this twofold self-consciousness is in perfect agreement with his purely human life and with his mediatorial office. As to the divine attributes or powers that are connected with the divine self-consciousness, there is nothing self-contradictory in the supposition that the divine Ego of the Logos acted with the powers of human nature, with human self-consciousness and human will, if we adopt the above mentioned relative self-limitation of the divine knowledge and will as necessary for the mediatorial office. But even if by this view of the personal oneness of the divine and the human in Christ the metaphysical difficulty should not be fully removed, we would prefer confessing the unfathomable depth of this mystery to any philosophical solution of the problem which we could not fully reconcile with the plain teachings of the word of God.

ART. VIII. THE AMERICAN PULPIT.

Annals of the American Pulpit; or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of various Denominations, from the Early Settlement of the Country to the close of the Year eighteen hundred and fifty-five. With Historical Introductions. By WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. Six volumes, 8vo. Volumes I and II, Trinitarian Congregational; III and IV, Presbyterian; V, Episcopalian; VI, Baptist. New-York: Carter & Brothers. 1857-60. THE most important result of the discovery of America was the opening of a new continent to Christianity. Worldly men interested in that discovery, whether navigators or monarchs, thought only of new fields of commerce and dominion. The Church of that period had just vitality enough to be eager for such enlargements of its territory and its revenues as might be won by the easy process of ceremonial occupation. Ambition and avarice worked freely together in the conquest of the New World, and both won bloodstained trophies of triumph in the fair lands upon which they precipitated their hordes of adventurers. Judging from the results of the Christianization which papal countries introduced into Mexico and Central and South America, it is questionable whether, in a religious point of view, those parts of the New World might not as well have been left to their original heathenism. We would not under

rate the good which Romanism has done in abolishing human sacrifices and semi-civilizing sundry tribes of savages; but we must be allowed to deprecate in the severest terms its parody of true Christianity, its compromises with paganism, and its interdict of God's word from the regions over which it has obtained sway in America and elsewhere. Not for such results only was the New World thrown open to the Christian Church. God, in his providence, was beginning to disturb the slumbers of the dark ages. The Bible was about to be exhumed from its conventual grave, and men were about to be raised up who, by their earnest religious life, and their faithful proclamation of divine truth, were to shake the papal throne to its foundation. Room was wanted for the glorious movement-room not preoccupied by decaying nationalities, and the stumbling-blocks of semi-pagan ceremonies and debasing superstitions. At the right time such room was provided, and as years advanced it was occupied, too, in such a manner as to bring the results of a ceremonial Christianity into direct contrast with the earnest spirit and practical zeal of a preached Gospel.

In Spanish and Portuguese America there can scarcely be said to be a pulpit. Preaching desks there are in the larger churches and cathedrals, but they are only occasionally used; rarely, indeed, save on festival occasions, when they are employed more usually for eulogizing the saints than for preaching Christ. Not so in the America of the pilgrims and their descendants. Here, from the first, the pulpit has been an institution of the land and an essentiality of the Church. Ceremonies have been ignored, but the Gospel has been preached. The camp of the emigrant, the cabin of the settler, the log school-house and meeting-house, the chapel and the church, have successively been made to resound with the word of life. By the pulpit the masses of the people have been instructed, and the fruits of righteousness have appeared.

Thus, in two hundred years, has sprung up one of the fairest and most promising branches of the Christian Church. Around her altars has the gathering of the nations been. But not content with instructing the strangers that have come within her gates, the American Church has sent forth her messengers into all the world to preach the Gospel. While many of the more ancient Churches are still slumbering at their ease, and known chiefly in the history of the past, the Church of America is already making her influence powerfully felt in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the islands of the most distant oceans. This, too, is the Church of North America, while that of South America requires itself to be evangelized.

The pulpit, as the living exponent of God's word, is the grand

characteristic of American Christianity; and while it has been doing so much for our land and for the nations of the earth, numerous have become the preachers. "The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it." The clergy of America have never aspired to hierarchal honors; they have never been salaried by a national treasury. They have never been the stipendiaries of ancient foundations, but, trusting to the voluntary support of an intelligent people, they have gone to their work like men of God, and he has graciously sustained them in it. The world has never known a class of men of higher intellectuality, of more generous culture, of larger benevolence, of more consistent piety, or of a more positive personal influence. Living, they make their mark upon every feature of their age; and dead, they yet speak, their works following them.

Such men are the makers of history; and though they do not figure in scenes of strife, and oftentimes their noblest deeds never challenge the public gaze, yet they live for glorious purposes, and they receive" the honor which cometh down from God." It is fitting, too, that men should honor them, and that the pulpit should have its published annals.

Jerome, in the fourth century, saw this, and wrote his celebrated work, "De Illustribus Viris," a book from which we have the best notices of the Christian preachers who succeeded the apostles down to the author's day. The true history of the Church must ever be largely composed of the lives and actions of Christian ministers; and treatises upon ecclesiastical history, whether ancient or modern, are usually interesting in proportion to the power and skill of their authors in displaying the characters who have moulded and influenced successive ages, together with the bearings of their individual and collective action. History, whether sacred or secular, if written without lively portraitures of character, is stiff and stately, like dull frescoes on solid walls. That which throws humanity into the foreground, and gives it life and motion, charms us like a moving panorama.

But even though we see characters moving and acting upon the historic page, it is pleasant and instructive oftentimes to contemplate them in their individual relations. Hence from the best written Grecian and Roman histories we delight to turn to the pages of Plutarch, to gaze as in a gallery upon the well-drawn portraitures of individuals; to see Cicero and Demosthenes, Pericles and Fabius, Cesar and Alexander side by side.

Biography, in whatever form it is written, must ever be the soul of history. Hence the work of Dr. Sprague, to which our attention is now directed, although primarily contemplating another design, is