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relation to each other; that one may not help some minds more readily to apprehend the other. We are far from intending to deny the possibility of facts which we cannot reduce to any laws at present cognisable by us. We merely affirm, that spiritual and material facts belong to a different order; may be believed apart; and that each rests on its own evidence. We fully admit, then, the Homoüsian doctrine, that all spirit is of one nature or substance, and that the Divine, in its moral relations with humanity, had its fullest conceivable revelation in Christ. This we take to be the spiritual sense of the doctrine of Incarnation. This we acknowledge, with all its consequences and applications, in full faith, as the corner-stone of Christianity. In Christ's word and work we hear and see the presence of the living God on earth. We accept the sublime words of John, ó óyos σáps ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, as an intellectual formula, which in another age might have taken another form, for the expression at once of a historical fact and a spiritual truth. And the evidence for this fact, and the truth which springs out of it, we find in the impression made by the person of Christ on the highest tendencies of our nature; in the manifold indications, through the simple words of Scripture, of his intimate communion with the Father; in the change wrought by his Spirit in every soul which humbly and faithfully admits it; in the new principle, the more spiritual aspect of life and all its relations, which has been introduced into human affairs with an everwidening power and effect, by his transient apparition among men. This is a spiritual fact: it is witnessed by our spiritual consciousness; it rests on spiritual evidence. So long as the human soul retains its present wants and aspirations, and the same words of Scripture are presented to it, we cannot doubt, from our perfect trust in the permanence of the laws on which history and humanity are based, that the same effect will result from their living contact; that the same Spirit which dictated the one, will continue to influence and mould the other; and that men who have the Gospel fully displayed to them, will ever continue to see God in Christ, and to feel the identity of their own highest nature with the Divine in him. In this sense the Incarnation is to us a spiritual fact, carrying its own evidence along with it; and as such, we rejoice to feel it placed beyond the reach of any doubts which the possible results of honest and fearless criticism might raise against evidence of a lower kind.

But is this the sense in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is usually understood? We apprehend not. The creeds teach something more than this. "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," is the language of the Apostles' Creed; "incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary" is that of

the Nicæan. At the close of the second century, we find indications of the same doctrine in Irenæus and Tertullian. The former speaks of Christ as τὸν σαρκωθέντα ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡμετέρας owτηpías; and what is meant by this, he fully explains by adding, that the Holy Spirit had announced through the prophets the chief incidents of his earthly sojourn, among which he specially mentions τὴν ἐκ παρθένου γέννησιν.* To the same effect Tertullian, who cites among the articles of the Regula Fidei, "quæ una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis," the following: "verbum Dei filium ejus appellatum-postremo delatum ex spiritu Patris Dei et virtute in virginem Mariam, carnem factum in utero, et ex ea natum."+ The ancient hymn has embodied in one of its clauses, what it is evident from the foregoing examples, was an early belief of the Catholic Church: "When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb." There can be no doubt, therefore, what is the Church's traditional conception of the Incarnation, as expressed in its creeds and formularies: that the Word or Son of God was miraculously introduced into this planet, with a suspension of the laws on which the transmission of human life ordinarily depends.

The evidence for this wonderful event must be exclusively Scriptural for it will not be contended, that natural reason or our higher spiritual instincts have any thing to allege on its behalf; and if Tradition be allowed to put forth a claim along with Scripture, Scripture, it must be remembered, has preserved the oldest and most authentic tradition extant. What, then, is the Scriptural evidence? We find it in the introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke alone.‡ In no other passages of the New Testament is there any reference to Christ's birth of a virgin.§ The critical relation of the narratives of Matthew and Luke to each other, considering the doctrinal importance which has been attached to them, is certainly remarkable. They not only differ from each other, and are irreconcilable, except on forced suppositions, with the admitted facts of history, but they actually exclude one another; if one is true, the other must be false. The genealogical tables which occur in them, it is impossible to reduce into accordance; and they have no meaning or value, unless Joseph be assumed as the father of Jesus; for it is his descent, and not that of Mary,

De Præscript. Hæret. i. 13.

* Adv. Hæres. i. 10. Matt. i. ii.; Luke i. ii. With regard to the celebrated passage, Isaiah vii. 14, Gesenius's observations on the proper meaning of the original word, rendered "virgin," will show that it has no certain and necessary bearing on the subject (Commentar über den Jesaia, i. p. 297).

§ Galat. iv. 4 is not to the point, as may be seen by comparing Job xiv. 1, xv. 14, xxv. 4; Matt. xi. 11; Luke vii. 28.

which they give. Of the extraordinary events and appearances which accompanied this miraculous conception and birth, not one seems to have been remembered through the ensuing thirty years of the life of Jesus, or to have produced the slightest impression on the feelings and expectations of his relatives and acquaintance respecting him. The members of his own family, among whom there must have been some tradition of these wonderful transactions, thought him beside himself when he engaged in the work of his mission ;* and as, in immediate connection with this statement, we are told that his mother and his brethren came to seek him, the natural inference would appear to be, that they too were as yet unconvinced of his Messianic claims. According to the two oldest gospels, the designation by which he seems to have been familiarly known among the people of Galilee, was the Carpenter and the Carpenter's Son.‡ It was precisely "among his own kin, and in his own house, that he found no honour as a prophet." But could this have been so, had the marvellous events recorded in the introductions of Matthew and Luke been literally true? Even the fourth Evangelist, from whom the prevalent formula of the Incarnation is immediately derived, says not one word of the miraculous conception, and of birth through a virgin. He it is who records the observation of the Jews: "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven' ?"§ It is John also who tells us, that "neither did his brethren believe. in him." When we begin to inquire, it is astonishing to find on how slight a Scriptural basis an immense theological superstructure is often built. The Fall and the Incarnation are regarded, we believe, by most orthodox divines as the two cornerstones of the elaborate fabric of ecclesiastical doctrine. Where do we find the Scriptural evidence for them? For the Fall, in the Jehovistic narrative of creation contained in the third and fourth chapters of Genesis, which is at variance with the other account, distinguished by the name Elohim for God, and to which there is not a single distinct and unequivocal reference in any of the books of canonical Scripture, till it is assumed as a basis for the argumentation of Paul in the doctrinal portions of his epistles. For the Incarnation, in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, which have no perceptible influence on the subsequent history, and which contradict and exclude each other. Under such circumstances, we may be forgiven, if we

Mark iii. 21.

+ Ibid. 31; compare Matt. xii. 46, and Luke viii. 19. Matt. xiii. 35; Mark vi. 3. From the words in Mark, "Is not this the carpenter. the son of Mary?" we must probably conclude that Joseph was already dead. § John vi. 42. Ibid. vii. 5.

think the life and teachings of Christ himself entitled to more weight than the uncertainties of a remote tradition, or the enigmatic symbolism of a myth; if we cannot surrender the plain meaning of these, for the somewhat arbitrary determination of a metaphysical creed; if we prefer finding in the Incarnation a great spiritual fact, witnessed by its own light in the higher consciousness of man, to the imperfectly attested acceptance of a stupendous corporeal miracle.

An apology is perhaps due to the reader for having detained him so long on this subject. But it grew at once out of the principal matter of Dr. Stanley's work, and derives an interest from its immediate bearing on controversies still agitated among us. It has, however, occupied the larger portion of the space allotted us, and will oblige us to review very briefly the remaining contents of his volume.

Dr. Stanley's treatment of Mahometanism is marked by the same breadth of view and geniality of spirit which pervade the rest of his work, and so honourably distinguish him among the theologians of the day. In a religion which he feels to be immeasurably inferior to his own, he can still cordially recognise certain elements of nobleness and truth, and discern the social necessities which gave it birth, and shaped the character and aims of its Prophet. We hold him perfectly justified in embracing the work of the Arabian Reformer within the limits of Christian history. It had its rise in common Hebraic traditions. It found a justification in the deep corruption which had infected the Oriental Churches: and while it took from Christendom the finest provinces of the East, and still holds them under its sway, it exerted an immense effect, at once directly by the cultivation of learning in Spain, and indirectly through the reaction of the Crusades, on the development of the Christian civilisation of the West. Our author does not pretend to go to original sources for this part of his book; but he has used diligently the latest contributions to the subject in the writings of Weil and Caussin de Perceval, of Sprenger and Muir. No section of his narrative is more interesting and suggestive than his comparison of the Koran with the Bible. We can only afford room for one short quotation, which has, with a single exception, our hearty approval.

"The Koran contains the whole religion of Mahomet. It is to the Mussulman, in one sense, far more than the Bible is to the Christian. It is his code of laws, his creed, and (to a great extent) his liturgy. The Bible, on the other hand, demands for its full effect the institutions, the teaching, the art, the society of Christendom. It propagates itself by other means than the mere multiplication of its printed or written copies. Sacred pictures, as is often said, are the bibles of the

unlettered. Good men are living bibles. Creeds are bibles in miniature. (?) Its truths are capable of expansion and progression, far beyond the mere letter of their statement. The lives and deeds, and, above all, the One Life and the One Work which it records, spread their influence almost irrespectively of the written words in which they were originally recorded. It is not in the close limitation of the stream to its parent spring, but in the wide overflow of its waters, that the true fountain of Biblical inspiration proves its divine abundance and vitality."*

We wish that we had left ourselves time to consider as fully as it deserves, the last subject handled by Dr. Stanley-" the Russian Church;" for to most readers it has all the charm of novelty, and it abounds in glimpses of exciting suggestiveness as to the future possibilities of a new development of Christianity. We enter here on a nearly untrodden field, conterminous to Europe and Asia, and having relations of equal vitality with both. The Sclavonic races contain a virgin-soil of population, whose qualities and capacity of productiveness have as yet been very imperfectly drawn forth. It is this consideration which lends such a fascination to the concluding narrative of the Eastern Church; for the author writes with the experience of a traveller, and treats of Russian manners and Russian beliefs from personal study and observation. He passes rapidly over the early history of the Russian Church, which possesses little interest, till the time of the Patriarch Nicon, in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Only three events of much importance preceded his appearance: the repulse of the Mussulman Tartars in the fifteenth, and of the Romanist Poles in the seventeenth, century, both which events had a powerful effect in developing, first a strong Christian, and then a strong antipapal, spirit in the mass of the population;† and the accession of the house of Romanoff, which connected the crown of the Czars with the hierarchy. Nicon was the friend and associate of Alexis, the father of Peter the Great; and, in conjunction with him, prepared the way for the still wider changes in Church and State introduced by the organising genius of his wonderful

Nicon had large sympathy with the learning and refinement of the old Greek Church, and would fain have revived its spirit in Russia. The event of most decisive influence in the

* Eastern Church, p. 323. In another place (p. lxxv.) our author has quoted a fine application of the same image from a charge of Bishop Thirlwall (1857), p. 81: The fullness of the stream is the glory of the fountain; and it is because the Ganges is not lost among its native hills, but deepens and widens until it reaches the Ocean, that so many pilgrimages are made to its springs."

For a long time, Christian was the designation for a Russian peasant. Michael Romanoff, raised to the throne in 1613, at the close of the war with the Poles, was the son of Philaret, once a parish-priest, but afterwards Patriarch of Moscow. Eastern Church, p. 408.

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