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Christ, or both parties, of wilfully and fraudulently tampering with history. The tendency seems to be, to exempt the first Christians from this falseness at the expense of their Master. Strauss, Renan and others distinctly accuse Christ of planning a deception concerning his own nature, works, mission, and of palming this off upon his earliest followers, that they might propagate this delusion among others, and hand it down the ages, which thing they did in ignorant, honest credulity.

This is a plain issue which men are free to make who dare do it; but they should be consistent in their statements of so grave an indictment, which they by no means are. For example: In their accusations and concessions respecting Jesus, we have these violent contradictions. "Jesus," says Strauss in his latest book, "has developed purely and fully all that relates to love to God and to our neighbor." The admission is frequent and ample that, morally and religiously, he distanced all comparison with his contemporaries. Yet, in his account of his own nature, and in the eschatology which he taught, particularly as to his own office of final Judge of men, Christ is charged with an unjustifiable and utterly groundless selfflattery, with exalting himself above all mankind in a way equivalent to claiming divine powers, prerogatives, honors, thus showing himself to be proud, self-ignorant, presumptuous. "So we have," writes Dr. J. A. Dorner, in a recent paper in the Contemporary Review, "that monstrous compound being composed of self-exaltation and the purest love to God and man-a liar and a sacrilegious criminal, who took on himself to build up a kingdom of God, after having overturned the foundations of the kingdom of God within himself:” a miracle this "greater and more unnatural than all the miracles in the New Testament."

A criticism which involves itself in such glaring self-contradictions must be false. It is an excellent sign of hope that the unchristian dogmatism of the age is becoming so undisguisedly anti-christian and self-exploding. As a most natural result, the sceptical writers of Europe are fast losing their hold on minds which wish to retain any honesty and self-respect in dealing with the question of the origin of Christianity. This "last word" of the infidel leaders is not the true philosophy of that event. It can not be, as any sensible person must see. All other explauations of it, then, having been tried and abandoned, what remains but to fall back upon the true doctrine of the historic Christ, as given of God to the fathers, and as held by the church universal in all subsequent time?

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PAGANISM AGAIN. In an article on "Character," in the last number of the North American Review, Mr. Waldo Emerson comes forward with a distinct plea for a return to Paganism as a better guide to salvation than is elsewhere to be found. Arguing that the latent and active forces inhering in individual character are the only reliable renovating power in society, he makes his complimentary bow to "Jesus" as a high type of this-"Jesus has immense claims on the gratitude of mankind"; but immediately takes his disciples. to task for an admiration of him which runs away with their respect for the souls of men, and "hampers us with limitations of person and text." That is, instead of simply telling the story of their leader, they presume to weave into this the claims of a mandatory religion, which "inclines the manly reader to lay down the New Testament to take up the Pagan philosophers." Not that these are intrinsically better, only they spare the pride of the "manly reader"; of course, this must be the "chief end" of a true religious system, for is not man as divine as diety itself, is he not God coming into consciousness? These Pagan ethics "do not invade his freedom; because they are only suggestions, whilst the other adds the inadmissible claim of positive authority-of an external command, where command can not be." Oh no! Man and God are joint partners in this firm, according to the Concord gospel, and why should one undertake to "command the other"? Is not the "manly" as godlike as the divine? So, by reason of this churchly excrescence of a direct religious commandment, the New Testament loses "the claim" which is so attractive in "the Pagan moralists,” namely, "of suggestion, the claim of poetry, of mere truth." Now the world, thinks Mr. Emerson, needs all the "mere truth" which is in and about it; therefore, the Bible must be freed from its authoritative incumbrances so as to bring it up to the level of the heathen sages; "and the office of this age is to put all these writings on the eternal footing of equality of origin in the instincts of the human mind."

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This seems to be the last response of the modern Delphi. principal wonder concerning it is, that it should have found utterance through the pages of a Quarterly, which we have supposed was not intended to be an organ of matters pertaining to re ligion, but rather an exponent of North American literature, in the general and unsectarian meaning of that term. If our venerable contemporary is henceforth to be the propagandist of a revamped Paganism, we have no objections, provided it will issue a new prospectus accordingly. So much of a manifesto of its counter conversion would seem to be demanded even by the morality of a respectable deism.

SPLITTING HAIRS. Gibbon has a characteristic sneer at the Nicene distinction which marked the radical and infinite difference between the Orthodox and the Arians. "The profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single dipthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians." But the change to an iota here robs Christ of his divinity, the world of an atonement and redemption, and Christianity of any valuable peculiarity and vitality. "The difference of a single dipthong" results in the difference between Jonathan Edwards and Theodore Parker, as theologians, and between the evangelical and the liberal system of faith as seen to-day. It was quite a hair to split, and indifferent men, and dull, narrow minds, would naturally deride the struggle over an iota.

It is so yet. The untutored and short sighted make light of great issues because made in small compass. They can not see beyond the narrow strait that Gibraltar covers, or foresee the harvest, shaking like Lebanon, in the handful of corn. They call it a wrangle over words and phrases only, with no real difference. A distinction between depravity of nature and of action is unmeaning and indifferent to them: whether God or man is supposed to make the soul holy, is of little account in their estimation, if only the man be holy.

All delicate, interior, primal distinctions are mere hair-splitting to them, though in these distinctions the student in history and philosophy sees systems toto cœlo apart.

It has been fashionable, and still is, though decreasingly so since it reflects such discredit on one's acumen or sincerity, to call much theological discussion a mere dispute about words. Not being able to go back to the intricate sources where Calvinism and Arminianism diverge and found themselves separately, they turn from the dis-, cussion petulant, or reply to the arguments with a smile and a sneer, as if it were small work for Christian men. It is as if they should laugh at budding the seedlings of a year old, and say that real men would give their strength and grafting to full grown

trees.

It may be very reasonable, at least natural, that men accustomed mostly to cleavers and pit-saws, should call all nice work, as in making microscopes and chronometers, hair-splitting. But scholarly and profound men, giving their strength to the vital interests of Christ's church, and seeing her through the ages of a varied experience, will do their noble work by guarding her creed and life against the iotas of heresy and apostasy.

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BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. VI.-OCTOBER, 1866.-No. 34.

ARTICLE I.

POPULAR EVANGELIZATION.

MANY of the churches have just passed through revivals of wonderful interest and power. God has been teaching us as he does not teach his church once in a century. We have a word to say concerning the preaching and the preachers that God appoints, and the world demands. It seems to us that we have drifted away from the New Testament models, and need to come back, if we would realize the highest results of the Word. Our theme, in general terms, is that God is to convert men through men. If his word is the instrument, sanctified souls, under him, are his chief agents in wielding it. Both are defined and put in their true relation in our Saviour's ascension command to the church: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; he that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned." A living church, in connection with the living word, is God's appointment to save the world.

Our inquiry then is, how is such a church to use such a word to accomplish its destined result? Our Lord's answer must be the true one, namely, preaching.

This is God's appointment, and nothing else can stand in its stead. "By the foolishness of preaching he is pleased to save them that believe." How much is included in this must be determined by the Scriptures themselves. And we can hardly

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suppose that the Saviour used two separate words in relation to this subject without design, the one signifying to herald, the other to disciple. The two combined seem to render legitimate whatever is needful to bring the Gospel in its entireness, and in all the elements of its power, upon the soul. In heralding, the office of the voice is recognized in educating, magnetizing and moving the human mind, while in discipling, we have a broader term, covering all other influences, whether of word or deed, of life or death, which may carry the heart over to Christ. Preaching, then, in its broadest sense, we believe, is a true exhibition of the Gospel, either spoken, or acted. He preaches the Gospel who so presents it, in spoken discourse, that other minds see and feel its power, and he as truly preaches it who so lives it that his life is a living epistle of its truth and glory. The essential idea of preaching is the communication of divine truth to the minds of men; and any channel is legitimate, through which that truth can be introduced to a human soul. Truth is the instrument in the work of conversion and sanctification, and we do not know that the Spirit ever exerts any influence on the mind of man except through the truth. Hence the necessity of preaching. And hence the reason why God has committed this treasure to earthern vessels, that the divinity of it may be more manifest, and its living power be more felt, and decisive. Unless we mistake, our analysis of preaching has been exceptionable. We have distinguished between its human side and its divine side. But the grounds of this distinction are rather apparent than real. Wherein is the voice of the preacher, who speaks as the Spirit gives him utterance, less the voice of God, than the Word itself which he expounds? How then does it result, that preaching, in its true extent and idea, is not wholly a divine procedure? Grant that human organs are employed in its service; if they are chosen of God, and consecrated by heavenly grace, do they not convey divine treasures to a dying world? If God works through men to save men, is the work any the less divine for the instrument which he employs. The course of history, throughout, shows that all God's gracious works, in this world, have been wrought through human agents. Prophet, psalmist, apostle, and saint, have been the agencies through which he has taught and acted.

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