the Christian as sitting in heavenly places, for he thinks of him as being in the closest union with Christ, and his impatient idealism knows of no delay. But on the other hand, he attacks the forerunners of the Gnostics, who said that the resurrection was past already, and warns Timothy against the reception of their doctrine. For 'embodiment is to him the end of the ways of God,' and in the glorified body which is to rise on the day of the resurrection he sees the complete development of the germ implanted in Baptism and nourished in the Holy Communion.

"If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies because of His Spirit that dwells in you.' Compare with this declaration the passages in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. But some will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come ? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.' It follows from these passages that the germ of the spiritual body is implanted in us now. Our mortal bodies shall be quickened because of the Spirit that dwells in us. the seed sown within us is contained the beginning of a heavenly, glorified body, which shall be revealed in the last day. But how is this process, going on now, though we are unconscious of it- -our life is hid with Christ in God-to be brought to a conclusion? By death, answers the Apostle, and he points to an analogy in the vegetable world. Of the dead

In

plant there remains a germ, which springs up into another plant, which is in one way the same and yet not the same.

The body of the Christian laid in the grave becomes a prey to corruption. This body, under the dominion of sin, which tempted man so frequently, moulders away Laid in its narrow coffin, the re. mains of the 'old man' pass away. But there is a germ which is immortal; it is incorruptible, it is Christ within. Death cannot destroy it; on the contrary, death becomes the means of bringing it to light. Hidden during our life within the inner recesses of the old man, it emerges from its place of concealment when man is laid in the grave. And when the graves shall be opened, when at the sound of the archangel's trump the dead shall rise, they shall stand clothed in a body which is the same as they once had and yet not the same. is the new, spiritual body.2 They are now like Christ inwardly and outwardly. The oap is defeated for ever, sin is done away with, for the veμa triumphs. They cele brate the complete victory of the

It

revμa and with it perfect harmony. The spirit and the body are one, and the conscience proclaims that old things have passed away and that all things have been made new.

We have come to the conclusion of our article. We are painfully aware of its many imperfections. We are afraid that we have made but a clumsy attempt to lift up the veil which hangs over a subject that ever must remain one of the greatestmysteries. Γεγόναμεν ἅπαξ, δὶς δ' οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι. It is the voice of the world. It is the voice, too, of a shallow philosophy, which with all its vaunted powers of criticism has not yet learnt the basis of all criticism, the r

σεαυτόν. Eauróv. It is the voice in fine of that spirit of pride and self-sufficiency which is the characteristic of paganism, but which is diametrically opposed to the Spirit of Him who said that He was 'meek and lowly of heart.'3

Christ says: "You must be born from above.' He declares the necessity of a revolution. We have not attempted to dispute His assertion. We have simply endeavoured to show in what way Scripture proves the necessity of this new birth and in what way it attempts to realise it. In doing so we have dwelt on what may be called the theological side of the question, because in the very idea of a birth from above there seemed implied to us, unless words have lost their meaning, the interference of an agent from without, and that agent could be no other than God Himself. To say that man has within himself in his own spirit, according to a law of his existence, the power of regenerating himself, is an argument which undoubtedly admits of discussion. But we maintain that the word 'regeneration' is in such a theory altogether out of place, and that it is as absurd to speak of a man regenerating himself spiritually as it would be to say that he has brought himself unaided into the world.

We stated, though we touched on it very briefly, that there is a human side to the question. Admitting the idea of a creation, there is an essential distinction between the first and the second. In the new creation the Spirit attaches itself to an individual who has reached a certain stage of moral development. The modus operandi must therefore vary in each case, and the liberty of the subject must ever remain inviolate. The part to be taken by the individual must be

in

determined, and his sphere of action must be pointed out. He has 'to work out his own salvation,' or, modern language, to labour to reach the very highest stage of moral development. The goal set before him is far off, but in marching towards it he has at any rate this consolation, that he is moving in obedience to a great law, which tells him that harmony is the law of life. Not unduly elated by success, not morbidly depressed by defeat, let him press on till in the absolute union with the ideal he has found peace.

of

In an age like ours, when the great question, as we ventured to remind our readers in a former article, is, 'What think you humanity?' when men believe in humanity and then in God, and not, as in the days of St. Paul, first in God and then in humanity; the human side of a question must ever command the greater share of attention. We are impatient of all theology; we look upon the seventeenth century, with its elaborate creeds and minute confessions, as the very embodiment of death. In regard to St. Paul we acknowledge that as in the days of his flesh he found his bitterest enemies among the Jewish Christians, so in later days he met with his greatest antagonists in the Protestants, who owed to him their very existence. And in our indignation we would say to the seventeenth century, 'Loose him and let him go.'

But in attempting to get rid of all theology, we lose much. The solidarity of humanity is such, that when we treat certain periods in the history of humanity as non-existent or with contempt, we ourselves are the chief sufferers. It is wiser and better to try to get at the fundamental thoughts which found an imperfect utterance, and to attempt

to disengage great lasting truths from the temporary, relative form in which they were clothed. Maybe, to our astonishment we shall discover that after all our modern ideas are older than we supposed, and that the old ideas are more modern than we ever imagined.

་

The philosophy of St. Paul was a reaction against the movement which had spread from Alexandria to the cities and plains of Palestine. In the City of Alexander the Great, East and West had met together, and entered into the very closest relations. A marriage, so to speak, had been celebrated between the religion of Judæa and the philosophy of Greece. The fruit of that union had been the Jewish-Alexandrine Religions-Philosophie,' the chief representative of which was Philo Judæus. Moses and Plato, the Hebrew prophets and the Greek philosophers, were made to contribute to the construction of a vast system which aimed at establishing a universal place of refuge where the nations might live together in peace. The attempt was successful, for it was in accordance with the spirit of the age, which was eclectic. And there is no greater evidence of the truth of this assertion than the fact that the new philosophy found numberless adherents within the borders of Palestine. The stronghold of Conservatism commenced to give way.

It was a bold attempt to amalgamate elements so heterogeneous as the monotheism of Judæa and the philosophies of Greece. It required the skill of a magician such as Philo to give to the attempt the appearance of success. But even in his writings there are many traces of a conflict between contending elements which has not been brought to a triumphant issue, and there are labyrinths from which it seems impossible to escape. For the reconciliation between Athens and Jerusalem seems beyond the power of a mere mortal.

The influence of the Greek philosophy is easily seen in the ethical and anthropological views of the day. According to Plato, matter is the source of evil, and there will always remain in the world an evil principle which cannot be destroyed. Man must therefore soar above the present world, doomed to perpetua! disharmony, on the wings of contemplation, of Torun, to that higher and purer world of the ideal where reigns everlasting peace. According to the philosophy of the Stoics, evil is a necessity and in accordance with a law of nature, and therefore to be looked upon with arabia. Philo adopts these philosophical views. He accepts the dualism beween spirit and matter; he looks upon matter as the origin of evil. The body is looked upon as a prison which keeps the soul in a degrading thraldom. The evil in man is the result of the material body with which he enters the world. The holiness of God is a state of entire separation from matter. Philo, therefore, knows of no higher life than one of contempla tion and of asceticism. tory of the patriarchs, explained in accordance with the then usual mode of interpretation, he traces the history of a soul emerging gradually from a state of slavery into one of freedom. Subjugation of the body, independence of the soul, freedom from matter: these are the watchwords of the Philonic philosophy. To find harmony, we must soar beyond the limits of the material. Meanwhile we must attempt to cultivate that ȧzadɛia which is the characteristic of true wisdom.

In the his

Against these theories, which had been promulgated in Palestine, and which, with many additions and modifications, were held and proclaimed by the Grostics at the close of the Apostolic century, St. Paul, the 'Hebrew of the Hebrews,' protested most vehemently. A passionate Jew-the last and greatest

of Jews-he had no sympathy with that mania for everything Greek which had laid hold of his countrymen. To him the wisdom of the Greek was foolishness, and he characterised the much talked of γνῶσις as ψευδώνυμος. One of those 'whole' natures, if I may be allowed the expression, he found no delight in the vacillating eclecticism of Alexandria. An earnest, thoroughly ethical and practical Shemitic nature, he was averse to the one-sided intellectualism of Greece-to those aristocratic systems in which the highest place was given to ἐπιστήμη, and which looked upon evil as a want of knowledge-to that tendency, in fine, to depreciate human activity. His solution of the problems of the spiritual world was, as we have seen, thoroughly moral.

Undoubtedly he studied these theories. He adopted oft the current phraseology; he accommodated himself in the form of his teaching to the age in which he lived; otherwise he would have been unintelligible. But in his teaching he opposed them. He came forward as the representative of an intense ideal materialism such as the world had never seen. The germs of it are to be found in the Jewish writings

preserved in the Old Testament. We have seen its development in the theory of the 'new birth' and of sacramental grace.'

It was a critical moment when St. Paul lifted up his voice. Rome had reached its ideal and found its grave. Greek philosophy had reached its highest point of development in the man who had aroused the slumbering consciousness of the nation, and from that moment dated its decay. There remained nothing else but that great coup de désespoir, the philosophy of the Stoics, with its gloomy ἐξαγωγή. To a humanity, sinking in the abyss of the nothing,' St. Paul came with his great message. He told that old world in ruins that it wanted a new life-a regeneration. He pointed to a Divine life-life must proceed from life-as the source of the regeneration of the individual and of the State, as the foundation of a new life, a new humanity: in one word, the kingdom of God. It was to embrace all humanity, it was to interpenetrate all nature, it was to break in pieces the bonds which had hitherto defied resistance. Herein lies the greatness of St. Paul. Therefore stands next to the incomparable Master the Pharisee of Tarsus. A. S.

5 Omne vivum ex ovo,

A

DISCRIMINATING traveller cares little for the loveliest country unless it possess associations. Even Switzerland would lose much of the interest with which we now regard it, did not a halo gleam over its mountains, flung there by the struggles of patriotism and the poetry of Byron. Without that glow it would have been as devoid of sentiment, save to mere Alpine climbers, as are the huge rocky fortresses of South America. Lincolnshire has become much more tolerable to imaginative folk since Tennyson glorified its marshes and water-courses. When people of cultivated minds, therefore, take a holiday, they should be especially careful to choose some district which possesses historic or romantic memories. Thus, to go no farther afield than Yorkshire, besides its sands and breezy upland walks, Whitby is redolent of St. Hilda, and the penance of Ralph de Percy, and the youth of St. John of Beverley; of King Oswi, and Wilfrid, and Bishop Chad; of Cadmon and the Princess Elfleda, of Scandinavian pirates and Saxon ecclesiastics, of the great Council which settled the Easter controversy, and the celebrated school of learning which shines through the darkness of early English Christianity; while its pretentious northern neighbour, Saltburn, does not possess a single attraction for the antiquary. It consists of a few houses, a big hotel, and a modern church. With some, the ideal temperament so preponderates that all they care for in a place is its associations. Thus when fresh from mental excursions into the fascinating dreamlands of the Odyssey and the Arabian Nights, such minds look with scorn upon the humble efforts of geographers

who would settle exactly where the Lotophagi lived, or in what sea lay the Isles of the Children of Khaledan. We must plead guilty to something of this feeling ourselves. On one occasion when sitting at dinner next a hard-headed, matter-of-fact wrangler, to whom a primrose by a river's brim' was certainly but a yellow primrose,' it received a rude shock. We had eagerly asked him about a celebrated curiosity in the next parish (of which he was incumbent), known as Arthur's Table, and were informed, 'It is but a rude heap of stones spread over a bare hillside; if I had a mason and two or three cartloads of boulders I could put you together a much finer Round Table in an afternoon.'

One autumn when we had been more than usually haunted with memories of the past, and when many an echo of poetry floated round the fancy, 'there came a day as still as heaven,' a day like that on which they found the babe Arthur

Upon the sands

Of wild Dundagil, by the Cornish sea. wander forth like a Troubadour of To take our lute and wallet, and old in quest of beauty, was clearly a necessity at such a time. An unresisting impulse bade us roam

Under groves that look'd a paradise
Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth
That seem'd the heavens upbreaking
through the earth,

And on from hill to hill and every day.

Therefore, we translated the language of romance into the matter-offact realities of the nineteenth century by shouldering a knapsack, and preparing, stoutly shod and with a trusty staff, to walk into fairy-land. It lies all around us, we discover,