· an

The extracts we have made in this section, as to the profound piety of Jesus and his constant obedience to the divine will, seem, with but few exceptions, to be quite in unison with the simple and interesting narratives of the New Testament. They represent the character of our Lord, not as that of a person absolutely perfect, the primary Possessor and the infinite Source of all excellence, but as the best of God's children, the highest model of human virtue, the rarest, the only type of a future and a godlike humanity. They speak of him as drawing all his moral and spiritual life from a greater Being than himself, from the bosom of the supreme and universal Father; as referring all his possessions, his instructions, and his works, not to himself, the original and uncontrolled Proprietor, Teacher, and Agent, infinite and eternal hypostasis in a Triune Deity, which became united to a finite and, mortal nature, but to the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of his Father and his God. They exhibit him neither as the blessed and only Potentate, nor as one of three Almighty Persons, who left the throne of his co-equals to dwell in a world, and live with and on behalf of men, the products of his own creative skill; and who, conscious of powers belonging only to an absolute and independent Being, never bent his knee, or prostrated his soul, before any God in heaven or on earth; but as a man, who, bearing a relation to the Supreme and Paternal Spirit higher and more intimate than that vouchsafed to any other holy personage or divine messenger, consecrated himself. all that he had and said and did to the service and glory of God; devoting the affections of his childhood, the growing strength of his youth, the maturity of his powers, the excellence of his gifts, the inspirations of his Heaven-taught mind, and the throbbings of his human heart, all his thoughts and words and works, his trials and his sufferings, 'his life and his death, to the worship and praise, not of three co-equal and co-eternal persons, of whom he was the second, but of the One Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible, the true and the only God, who sent him into the world to be the Teacher, the Exemplar, and the Saviour of the human race.

Some Trinitarians speak of the sinlessness of Jesus as a proof that he was truly and essentially divine. We, on the contrary, regard it as affording the strongest evidence for his unqualified subordination to God, and are confirmed in our opinion by the mode in which it is presented by the orthodox writers whom we have quoted. It seems, indeed, amazing that any one can read with care the records of the evangelists, or the discourses and letters of the apostles, and at the same time believe that the moral perfections of their Master, which they represent as transcendent only because he was a more faithful follower of God than others, and was more obedient and resigned to his will, were the perfections of the ever-blessed and absolute Being. The argument, as Dr. POND (in his Review of BUSHNELL'S "God in Christ," p. 17) well observes, "is obviously defective. An incarnate angel might be sinless; nor is there any thing impossible in the supposition of a perfectly sinless man;" for "man once was sinless," and "ought to be sinless now."

See p. 411 for Dr. BLOOMFIELD's note on Matt. xix. 17.

SECT. VIII. CHRIST NOT GOD, BUT THE REPRESENTATIVE, THE MANIFESTATION, THE MORAL IMAGE, OF GOD.

Whatever of the falsely or the superstitiously fearful imagination conjures up, because of God being at a distance, can only be dispelled by God brought nigh unto us. The spiritual must become sensible : the veil which hides the unseen God from the eye of mortals must be somehow withdrawn. Now, all this has been done once, and done only, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ; he being the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person. The Godhead became palpable to human senses; and man could behold, as in a picture or in distinct personification, the very characteristics of the Being who made him. Then truly did men hold converse with Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us. They saw his glory in the face of Jesus Christ; and the very characteristics of the Divinity himself may be said to have appeared in authentic representation before them, when God manifest in the flesh descended on Judea, and sojourned among its earthly tabernacles. By this mysterious movement from heaven to earth, the dark, the untrodden interval, which separates the corporeal from the spiritual, was at length overcome. The King eternal and invisible was then placed within the ken of mortals. They saw the Son, and in him saw the Father also; so that, while contemplating the person and the history of a man, they could make a study of the Godhead. . . . In no way could a more palpable exhibition have been made, than when the eternal Son, shrined in humanity, stepped forth on the platform of visible things, and on the proclaimed errand to seek and to save us. We can now read the character of God in the human looks and in the human language of him who is the very image and visible representation of the Deity. We see it in the tears of sympathy which he shed. We hear it in the accents of tenderness which fell from him. Even his very remonstrances were those of a meek and gentle nature; for they are remonstrances of deepest pathos, the complaints of a longing and affectionate spirit, against the sad perversity of men bent

on their own undoing. When visited with the fear that God looks hardly and adversely towards us, let us think of him who had compassion on the famishing multitudes; of him who mourned with the sisters of Lazarus; of him who, when he approached the city of Jerusalem, wept over it at the thought of its coming desolation. And, knowing that the Son is like unto the Father, let. us re-assure our hopes with the certainty, that God is love. DR. T. CHALMERS :

Select Works, vol. iii. pp. 161–2.

If we do not misunderstand the import of this extract, Dr. CHALMERS, though he uses some expressions which are of an unscriptural character, means to affirm that Jesus was the image of the Father, and the manifestation of God in the flesh, not because he was or represented God the Son (who, according to this divine, was the Jehovah who appeared visibly to the patriarchs and others), but because he imaged forth the moral character of the Deity, of the Invisible One, the Father, who became visible in the person, the offices, and the life of the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus. Such a sentiment is surely more in unison with the teachings of the New Testament than with the dicta of human creeds or the dogmas of a metaphysical orthodoxy.

Let us observe again, and be thankful for, the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God in Christ, that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can understand and fear and love; and without those which throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds and baffling all our conceptions, even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus is one less perfect than we shall be permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right hand of the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all his kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he, inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence of God must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak, be a coming down to a lower point from the very and unmixed Divinity. . . . It was very necessary, especially at a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form of men, that, whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith and fear and love, and teaching that all power was given to him in heaven and in earth, it should also guard us against supposing that it meant to represent God as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of our infirmities; and

therefore it always speaks of there being something in God higher and more perfect than could possibly be revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite and inconceivable Being it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts, or rather it commands us to believe that they who shall hereafter see God face to face shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now revealed to us, even in Him who is the express image of God, and the brightness of his glory. - DR. THOMAS ARNOLD: Sermons on the Christian Life, pp. 238-40.

Whatever opinion may be entertained of some of the views presented in this extract, we think it unquestionable that the eternal and infinite Being who was pleased to manifest himself to the world in and through Christ, and who was the Source of all the kingdom, power, and glory, of which Christ was and is in possession, is greater than the recipient of his bounty; and that, however worthy his holy Son, Messenger, Representative, and Image may be of receiving our reverential regards and heartfelt obedience, God claims for himself our highest thoughts and profoundest veneration. This is the uniform lesson of the New Testament, and seems to be inculcated here by Dr. ARNOLD.

No doubt, the benevolence of the Creator had awakened grateful feelings, and kindled the most exquisite poetry of expression, in the hearts and from the lips of many before the coming of Christ; no doubt, general humanity had been impressed upon mankind in the most vivid and earnest language. But the gospel first placed these two great principles as the main pillars of the new moral structure: God the universal Father, mankind one brotherhood; God made known through the mediation of his Son, the image and humanized type and exemplar of his goodness; mankind of one kindred, and therefore of equal rank in the sight of the Creator, and to be united in one spiritual commonwealth. HENRY H. MILMAN: History of

Christianity, vol. i. p. 207.

Here Christ is beautifully and scripturally spoken of, not as God the Son, but as the Son of God, "the image and humanized type of God's goodness; one who, through his mediation, makes God known to mankind, not as a Triune Being, but as the universal Father.

Almighty God has revealed himself as the proper object of religion, as the one only Power on whom we are to feel ourselves continually dependent for all things, and the one only Being whose favor we are continually to seek; and, lest we should complain that an infinite Being is an object too remote and incomprehensible for our minds to dwell upon, he has manifested himself in his Son, the man Jesus

Christ, whose history and character are largely described to us in the Gospels; so that to love, fear, honor, and serve Jesus Christ, is to love, fear, honor, and serve Almighty God; Jesus Christ being "one with the Father," and "all the fulness of the Godhead" dwelling in him. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Cautions to the Times, p. 71.

Whatever shade of meaning the Archbishop of Dublin may attach to the scriptural expressions with which this paragraph closes, the main sentiment he inculcates is unequivocally Unitarian; namely, that "the only Being whose favor we are continually to seek," the Infinite and Incomprehensible One, "manifested himself in his Son, the man Jesus Christ." This sentiment is, we think, in perfect unison with the teachings of the New Testament, and in total opposition to the notion, either that three infinite persons manifested themselves, or that the second of these infinite persons manifested himself, in what is termed the human nature of our Lord.

We accept the fact of the incarnation, because we feel that it is impossible to know the absolute and invisible God, as man needs to know him and craves to know him, without an incarnation. . . . . . . You cannot believe the words ["We beheld his glory as of the onlybegotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," John i. 14], however habitual and familiar they may be to you, if there is that in them which contradicts the spirit of a man that is in you; which does not address that with demonstration and power. What we say is, that these words have not contradicted that spirit, but have entered it with the demonstration of the spirit and of power. Men have declared, "The actual creatures of our race do tell us of something which must belong to us, must be most needful for us. A gentle human being does give us the hint of a higher gentleness: a brave man makes us think of a courage far greater than he can exhibit. Friendships, sadly and continually interrupted, suggest the belief of an unalterable friendship. Every brother awakens the hope of a love stronger than any affinity in nature, and disappoints it. Every father demands a love and reverence and obedience which we know is his due, and which something in him, as well as in us, hinders us from paying. Every man who suffers and dies, rather than lie, bears witness of a truth beyond his life and death, of which he has a glimpse." Men have asked, "Are all these delusions? Is this goodness we have dreamed of, all a dream? — this truth a fiction of ours? Is there no Brother, no Father, beneath those who have taught us to believe there must be such? Who will tell us?" What St. John answers is this: “No, they are not delusions. It has pleased the Father to