Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

the whole, understood the whole, and had a part in the whole? There is a remarkable correspondence between this and the following words of our Lord: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth." And finally, is Wisdom's delight with the sons of men, and has she been constantly laboring to recall them to the paths of holiness and happiness? The heart of Christ has been set on the salvation of men from the beginning. They are in a peculiar and emphatic sense the objects of his divine love, and from the fall of Adam to the present hour he has spoken in every communication from God to man, calling sinners to repentance and salvation.

2

The name itself, Wisdom, has a near relation to the term ¿ Aoyos, employed by the apostle John. However we may explain the origin of this term, it carries the idea that in Christ dwells the fulness of divine Wisdom, according to the declaration of the apostle Paul: "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." It is remarked by Robinson that "later Jewish writers identify, or at least connect this σοφία [wisdom personified] with ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ 3 As the divinely constituted Revealer of God's truth to man, the term "Wisdom" is peculiarly appropriate to Christ.

We can hardly conceive that any one should seriously object to the interpretation of this passage as an adumbration of the hypostatic person of the Logos, on the ground that Wisdom is represented as having been produced by God before all things, and cannot, therefore, be self-existent and underived. That she is not said to have been created, we have shown at large on strictly philological grounds. But she is said to have been born, and must she not, then, it is asked, have had a beginning? Undoubtedly, if we under

1 John 5: 19, 20.

2 Col. 2: 3.

8 Lex. of New Test., under the word λóyos, where see his references to apocryphal writers.

stand this term in the literal and human sense.

But the

term is applied to Christ also. He is not only "the only begotten of the Father," but "the first-born of the whole creation." He must be a very bold critic who ventures to restrict these epithets to the human nature of our Lord. The Church has rightly understood, in all ages, that it is the divine Logos himself who dwells in the bosom of the Father, and is the Revealer of the Father to men, as well before as since his incarnation; and that none but a divine person can be called "the first-born of the whole creation." By interpreting these epithets according to the literal human idea, Arius arrived logically at the conclusion that the Дoyos, though existing before all other beings, had yet a beginning — ĥν öтe оỷк ĥv, there was when he was not· and then the distinction between yevrηrós and Tonτós became one of mere words. We have already indicated the true principle by which such expressions are to be explained. We must divest them of everything temporal, sensuous, and human, thus arriving at an eternal relation, which transcends all human relations, and can therefore be only shadowed forth to men by earthly analogies.

As to the feminine gender, that is only a matter of grammatical form, which applies equally to the Word of the New Testament. In Latin, verbum is neuter. Hence the Vulgate speaks of the Word in the neuter form: "Hoc erat in principio apud Deum." So also the German: "Dasselbige [Wort] war im Anfang bey Gott." The French Parole, on the contrary, is feminine; and hence the Word is spoken of in the feminine form: "Elle étoit au commencement avec Dieu."

The conclusion, then, to which we are brought is this: that the divine Wisdom which addresses men in the passages now under consideration, is not the Son of David, "according to the flesh;" but David's Lord," according to the spirit of holiness:" not the Messiah in his simple personal pres

See Neander's Church History, translated by Prof. Torrey, Vol. II. p. 362.

ence as "the word made flesh," but the eternal Word himself, whose being and activity are not limited by time; who, both before and since his incarnation, is always present with his Church, as the centre and source of her spiritual light and life; who spake first by "Moses and the prophets," and afterwards in his own person as "the man Christ Jesus; and who, having returned to the Father's bosom whence he came, continued to speak by the lips of his apostles, and now speaks by his word and ministry "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven;" who is with his church always, from Abel to the trump of the archangel, and is always calling the children of men to himself.

This view comprehends all that is valuable of the views named in the beginning of this Article, and much more which they, in their narrowness, exclude; and by this comprehensiveness it commends itself as the true view.

ARTICLE VII.

THE FUTURE STATE.'

BY REV. JAMES M. HOPPIN, SALEM, MASS.

THE revelation of a future state is given us in such a form as to be purely practical. It is to quell the sin and establish the faith of the soul. The 15th chapter of the 1st of Corinthians, that rich and wonderful leaf of inspiration concerning a future existence, is simply for this, that we may continue "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." The whole is a divinely urged argument for the faithful service of God in this life. Its business

A View of the Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State. By Richard Whately, D. D., late Archbishop of Dublin. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. 1855.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

There is no theory

is not to show heaven, but to bring to heaven. Like a glass that gathers the rays of heaven into one focus, it points and pours "the "the powers of the world to come on the conscience and heart. They are powers, because they influence and hold us even in the world that now is. in the word of God. Man theorizes, but God furnishes original truth. Man has a free and in one sense prophetic spirit. He has in him a basis of command over worlds that he does not see. From materials which he has, he throws out bridges and structures of thought over into that invisible region which he does not possess. He is not shut up in what he knows, but is allowed to go on into what he may know. He must philosophize, or deny his reason. From the nature of the mind, he is inly urged to complete the utmost circle of his knowledge, to follow truth back to its absolute cause, and out to its possible result. He may thus reverently theorize upon what is revealed of the future state, just as he does upon the nature of God and the principles of his moral government. But theory cannot add to revealed truth itself; even as science cannot add to the revelation of God's truth in nature. We may have "physical theories of a future life," but not new truths of a future life The doctrine of the resurrection of the body may be philosophically studied, and the sublime fact may be relatively harmonized with all physical and psychological truth; but no new truth can be ingrafted upon the fact itself, or its circumstances, or the state of the raised body, or the reasons of its resurrection. Here is the falseness of Swedenborg's manifestation of a future state. It gives new facts. It is not a philosophy, but a revelation. It paints the architecture of heaven and hell, and lets us gaze into and scrutinize the apartments of glory and shame. The revelator says: "I can sacredly and solemnly declare, that the Lord Himself has been seen of me, and that He has sent me to do what I do, and for such purpose has opened the interior part of my soul, which is my spirit, so that I can see what is in the spiritual world, and those that are therein." Phi

1 Quoted from Bush's Memorabilia.

1

losophy may indeed carry its rationalizing process in relation to revealed truth too far, while Cant cleaves off too much of liberty. There is sometimes an air of dictation in religious philosophizing, to which a simple believer of the Scriptures will not submit. After all its analysis of causes and development of laws, he says, "leave me to the honest Word of God." There has been much of this species of refined speculation in respect to the future life. Men are treated as unintelligent who will not assent to certain philosophical views of the next world, and to a kind of metaphysical immortality, and who even prefer the holy silence of inspiration.

Archbishop Whately's recent work on the Future State consists of lectures delivered to "a mixed congregation," 1 and was intended to be "plain and popular; "2 and it certainly is so in its transparent style and admirable arrangement of topics. There is not a word or sentence in it which a plain man could not comprehend. It has many of the unequalled qualities of Whately's writings, his precision in the use of language, robust reasoning, and sound common sense. The design of the book is distinctly said to be, "to clear and settle" the scriptural doctrine of a future state. It is to bring out the mind of the Spirit on this important theme. To give the theories and assertions of men is not the purpose of the work. The Christian world needs such a book; for, as the writer hints, even the familiar views of the pulpit on a future life are generally vague, contradictory, and unimpressive. Yet, instead of " clearing and settling" all things, has not the author left many wholly theoretical and conjectural views standing bald and unsettled, very troublesome rocks for his common-sense hearer to break the ploughshare of his thought and faith upon?

The opening chapter is upon the Immortality of the Soul. We stand as it were on the coast, and look on the dim ocean of eternity, before embarking upon it. The truth of immortality was revealed, the writer thinks, to the Jew, but not in

1 Page 1, Preface.

2 Ibid.

3 Page 29.

« AnteriorContinuar »