life, possessing a divine vitality.' Therefore, the symbol, "eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ," relates to the process of imbuing the whole nature of every one who is received by faith into his communion, with the divine principle of life, which, through him, has become a human principle in all who stand in communion with him; the constant humanizing of the divine in which continued appropriation and imbuing, the whole development of the Christian life consists. As regeneration, the commencing point in the Christian life, is represented by baptism, so is this, the sequel of regeneration, the continual regeneration (as it were) of man, the continued incorporation of mankind into the body of Christ, represented by the Supper. Thus John and Paul agree, and on this subject complete each other's views.

The essence of Christianity, according to John, is comprised in this, that the Father is known only in the Son, and only through the Son can man come into communion with the Father; 1 John ii. 23; 2 John 9. But no one can be in communion with the Son without partaking of the Holy Spirit which he promised in order to renew human nature in his own image; 1 John iii. 24. Both John and Paul place the essence of Christian theism in worshipping God as the Father through the Son, in the communion of the divine life which he has established, or in the communion of the Holy Spirit, the Father through the Son dwelling in mankind, animated by his Spirit, agreeably to the triad of the Pauline benediction, the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, (2 Cor. xiii. 13;) and this is the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity in the connexion of Christian experience. It has an essentially practical and historical significance and foundation; it is the doctrine of God revealed in humanity, which teaches men to recognise in God not only the original source of existence, but also of salvation and sanctification. From this trinity of revelation, as far as the divine causality images itself in the same, the

1 We cannot agree with those who think that Christ has here given the interpretation of his own words, and that he wished to say that, by his flesh and blood, nothing more was to be understood than his doctrine in reference to divine life-giving power. By oap and alμa, he certainly meant more than his huara. These words of Christ contain only the canon of correct interpretation, and leave the application to his hearers.

reflective mind, according to the analogy of its own being, pursuing this track, seeks to elevate itself to the idea of an original triad in God, availing itself of the intimations which are contained in John's doctrine of the Logos, and the cognate elements of the Pauline theology.

As, accordingly, James and Peter mark the gradual transition from spiritualized Judaism to the independent development of Christianity, and as Paul represents the independent development of Christianity in opposition to the Jewish stand-point, so the reconciling contemplative element of John forms the closing-point in the training of the apostolic church, and now from the classical era of original Christianity, we must trace a new tedious development of the Church, striving towards its destined goal through manifold trials, oppositions, and conflicts. Perhaps this greater process of development is destined to proceed according to the same laws which we find prefigured in the fundamental forms of the apostolic church in their relation to one another, and in the order of their development.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

MADE BY THE AUTHOR TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

P. 6, note 2, add, "It is stated, in Luke xxiv. 53, that the disciples were continually in the temple,' and hence it might be plausibly inferred, that this was the case on the morning of this High Feast; yet possibly, when Luke wrote his Gospel, he had not obtained precise information respecting the particulars of this event, or only gave here a short summary of it."

P. 10, 1. 22, after " interpretation" add, "But we shall be led to a different conclusion, after reading the description of the occurrences in the church at Corinth, which we find in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, or the account in the Acts of the Apostles of the wonders on the day of Pentecost. An unprejudiced examination, as we shall show more fully in the sequel, can leave no doubt that the extraordinary appearances in the Corinthian church are to be attributed not to speaking in foreign languages, but to speaking in an ecstatic and highly elevated state of mind. The account in the Acts would certainly, on a superficial view, lead us only to the notion of foreign languages, and several passages might without violence be explained to mean nothing else than that the author of the account referred to the use of such foreign languages. But should our supposition be correct, that the same notion of the gift of tongues is applicable to all the appearances of this kind in the Apostolic age; and if we must set out from one principal passage for determining this notion; then we should make use of the passage in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, in order to explain all the rest, as a record which gives dire evidence on the subject, and, on account of its greater clearness and distinctness, with far more propriety than the account in the Acts, which is defective in clearness and distinctness, and in its existing form could not

have proceeded immediately from an eye-witness. But the assumption that the fact denoted by 'speaking in other or new tongues' must have been the same from the beginning, we cannot consider so certain as to be applied to every single passage in spite of all the difficulties that present themselves. Not unless the exposition of all the passages taken separately lead to the same fundamental fact, can we regard such an assumption as sufficiently justified. Now although, as follows from what has been said above, the ancient opinion that the apostles were furnished in a supernatural manner with a knowledge of languages for the publication of the Gospel, cannot be maintained; yet, by the account in the Acts, as long as we explain it by itself alone, we might be led to that same view, only a little modified. And we do not venture to decide à priori, that the communication of such a supernatural gift of tongues was an impossibility. It must be our special business, first of all, to harmonize the facts as they are reported in the historical records, for not till then can we examine how they are related to the known laws of the world and of human nature; those laws according to which we see the Divine Spirit and Christianity operate on all other occasions. If we compare all that is known to us in this last respect, we shall never find that the immediate illumination of the Holy Spirit takes the place of the intellectual faculty, or infuses in an immediate manner that knowledge which might be attained by the natural application of the understanding and the memory. According to the same law by which that is not communicated by the light of the Holy Spirit which can be discovered by the intelligent use of the art of interpretation, it was not the office of this Spirit to communicate a complete knowledge of languages. The apostles learnt languages when they needed them, in the same manner and according to the same laws as any other persons, under the guidance of that Spirit who endowed them for their vocation in general. We may indeed find examples of immediate intuition, or tact, or feeling, which, in certain moments, allows that to be known which otherwise it would take a longer time to acquire by a continued effort of the understanding In other cases it happens that one person by a cerin intuitive power or immediate feeling knows what another must acquire in a more tedious way. But although the apostles were obliged to learn languages in

the common way, yet we do not venture to assert that, at the time when the new creation called into being by Christ first became consciously known to the disciples, something very different from the ordinary course of things might not happen. We could imagine that the great divine event by which a higher spiritual life would be communicated to all, and all the contrarieties proceeding from Sin, or connected with it, among the nations of the earth, were to be removed, would also be outwardly manifested by breaking down the limits of national peculiarities and languages: by virtue of the connexion-which as yet we are far from perfectly comprehending-between the inward and outward life of the Spirit,-between the inward view or thought, and its outward expression, language, such a sudden elevation might result. A symbolical prophetic wonder, to shadow forth, how the new divine life which here first of all manifested itself would claim all the tongues of mankind as its own,-how by means of Christianity the separation of nations would be overcome. In one brief interval there would be a representation of what is grounded in the essence of the redemption accomplished by Christ, which it would require a course of ages to develop in the use of ordinary means.

"This view we should certainly be compelled to adopt, if we could venture to make use of the account in the Acts as the report of an eye-witness, and a narrative derived from one source. Without doing violence to the words, we cannot fail to perceive, according to Acts ii. 6, 11, that the person from whom the account, as there given, proceeded, regarded the disciples as speaking in various foreign languages which had been hitherto unknown to them. But we have here hardly an account from the first hand, and we find means, indeed, to distinguish the original account of the transaction from the modification given to it in the later composed narrative. those who came from distant parts heard the Galileans speak in foreign languages, which must have been unknown to them, this must have appeared to every one, even to such as were wholly unsusceptible of the divine in the event, as something striking, although such an one had felt too little interest for the deeper meaning of the transaction, and had been too thoughtless, to reflect on what formed the groundwork and cause of so inexplicable a phenomenon. But now, though,

If