"Who sank thy sunless pillars in the earth? Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded and the silence came, Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Utter; the ice-plain bursts, and answers, God!" Thus are we led by all the objects around us and by every faculty within us, up to the Creator and Author of all things, "in whom we live and move and have our being," and with whom the soul through all its higher instincts is continually struggling for communion and sympathy. To this it makes all the manifestations of the Divine power and wisdom-all the revelations of the Divine will and char-. acter, plans and purposes immediately tributary. In this alone can its burning aspirations and ever-restless desires find permanent satisfaction and repose. Even in the profoundest emotions of human love and sympathy, in the most exstatic moments of terrene bliss, there is a want of that full and perfect fruition for which the soul was made and of which it feels itself capable. It seeks for a still nearer intercourse, a yet closer union, in which no material barrier, no veil of flesh, "no obstacle of membrane, joint or limb" shall intervene to prevent perfect commingling and interfusion of spirit. Such communion it can hold in the present state only with its Maker. It must be sought, not in the outward forms of ceremonial pomp and splendor,. not in the solemn temple, "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the notes of praise,” but in the silent worshipping of a meek and humble spirit, in the exercise of true penitence, of sincere and devout gratitude and of sublime faith 1850.] Goodness of God. 695 and love. When thus sought, it will not be denied. When thus approached by a believing and contrite soul, the Almighty Creator of the universe, He who filleth immensity by his presence and inhabiteth eternity, condescends to reveal himself in a fulness of peace and joy, which shedding its light on all around, not only gilds with new glory each inferior blessing, but makes even the sorrows of life bright with a more than earthly beauty. Besides the other proofs of his benevolence in addition to the rich provisions made for the supply of our material wants and the still richer inheritance conferred upon us as spiritual beings, the great Author of all things, the giver of every good and perfect gift, vouchsafes himself. Not limiting his favor to the bestowment of every external blessing, he opens within the soul a source of perennial happiness - a fountain of living waters of which they who drink thirst not any more, but, whose stream, as the shallow rills of earthly joy, one after another dry up and disappear, only grows broader and deeper, and as all the higher endowments of our nature bid us hope and as we are expressly taught in the revealed word of God, is destined to flow on forever. Such are the proofs of the Divine goodness. So varied and so abundant are the provisions which a beneficent Creator has made for the welfare of his creatures. Everything, whether in their own constitution organic and spiritual, or in the circumstances under which they are placed, is so designed as either directly or indirectly to minister to it. Even the destruction of life and of the means of enjoyment occasionally produced by the warring elements - by fire, wind and water, by the earthquake and the volcano as well as the suffering attendant upon disease and injury, instead of being so many proofs of the Divine wrath, as they have too often been regarded, or of indicating on the part of the Supreme Being a disregard to the welfare of his creatures, when seen in their proper connections, reveal agencies and provisions, in their ordinary and legitimate operation purely beneficent. Nor are we able to conceive of any modification of the general scheme or system of things whereby these incidental evils might be avoided, and at the same time the proposed ends secured. So far as we can see, they grow necessarily out of the conditions under which all organized beings have their existence. The happiness enjoyed by these beings, on the other hand is the object of special design — the direct result of innumerable contrivances, all looking towards it, and the greater part accomplishing their sole purpose in ministering to it. The most extended survey of the Creator's works, therefore, only serves to verify and confirm the ideas of his character derived from the immediate and instinctive suggestions of our moral nature. The light - which shines so clearly from within, is met, whichever way we turn, by an answering beam of equal brightness. The Divine benevolence is as visibly written on each and every part of the universe lying within the sphere of our observation as the Divine wisdom. Nay, it is only through the subordination of the mighty assemblage of means and instrumentalities included in it, to beneficent and worthy ends, that the Divine wisdom is manifested. ARTICLE VI. DOCTRINE RESPECTING THE PERSON OF CHRIST. Translated from the German of Dr. and Prof. J. A. Dorner, with remarks, by M. Stuart, lately Prof. of Sac. Lit. in the Theol. Sem. at Andover. [IN my exegetical and theological inquiries respecting John 1: 1-18, published in the January and April Nos. of this Review, I gave promise of an appendix, in which the great question respecting the derivation or source of the New Testament Logos is discussed by Prof. Dorner, the latest and by far the ablest of recent critical writers on the history of the doctrine respecting the person of Christ, or of the human and divine nature of Christ. In the introduction to his book, his object is to show, that John derived his ideas of the Logos incarnate, i. e of the truly divine and human nature united in one person, neither from the Old Testament, nor from the apocryphal books, nor from the Logos-doctrine of Philo. The importance of this inquiry will be quite plain to every well-informed and discerning theologian. For a long time, even from early ages, it has been customary among many writers to compare the Logos of John with Wisdom in Prov, VIII.; with the same, in the apocryphal books of Jesus Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon; and above all, with the Logos of Philo Judæus, as exhibited in his philosophical works. Now if it can be shown that none of these writings assign to Wisdom or Logos a proper and real personality, (for such is the view of Dorner, to which I yield my full and hearty assent), so it would follow, that John, who beyond a question makes his Logos a real person, did not derive his views of the nature and being of the Logos, as to his personality, from any or all of said writings. If this can be satisfactorily shown, then does it follow, that, if the adversaries of the doctrine of God-man in the person of Christ, can prove that Prov. VIII., or the apocryphal writings, or Philo, have exhibited a Logos which is really impersonal, i. e. have spoken of Wisdom and the Logos only in the way of personification, (and undoubtedly they may prove so much), still all this does not bear directly upon the assertions or developments of John in his gospel, because he has exhibited a personal Logos. The opponents in question maintain, that John's views must be conformed to the sources whence, as they assert, he drew. Dorner has shown, that as personification merely of Wisdom or Logos belongs to all the writings named above as sources of John's views, (according to the affirmation of these 1850.] The Logos of John. 697 opponents), and as John has, beyond all question, united the idea of proper personality with the designation Logos, so it is not and cannot be made out, that John does not mean something more by his Logos, than those writers meant by theirs. If the Logos of John be the same as theirs, then his proper personality and divinity are out of question. They cannot be maintained, so far as his views are concerned with theirs, or dependent on them. If it is not the same, then of course we may attribute to John a meaning of Logos different from theirs, and accordant with other declarations of the New Testament. To any one who has become conversant with the never-ending disputes of the two past centuries, respecting the person of Christ, and specially in regard to the meaning of Logos, and the sources from which the appellation was derived, the work of Dorner will appear in a very striking light. The hand of a master is everywhere visible. What has been discussed in quartos and folios and thick octavos, he has compressed into a few pages, and has sat in judgment on the controversy, summing up in his own comprehensive manner all its essential points, and passing such a sentence on them as, in my apprehension, is not likely to be reversed. The grand question is: Whether the Logos of John is a proper and real person, or only a personification, i. e. a philosophical, speculative, or poetical abstraction, amounting to nothing more than a poetico-rhetorical method of describing either divine attributes or divine operations or energies. It is time this dispute was ended. Dorner seems to have brought the matter to a fair, and I would hope a final, consummation. The old idea of so many of the Christian fathers, which in modern times has been defended by Souverain (La Platonisme Devoileé) and his followers, viz. that John borrowed Plato's views of the Logos, and transferred them to his pages, is, as I believe, now generally abandoned by all intelligent, fair-minded critics. To suppose John to have been a diligent reader of Plato, and to have pursued the study of his philosophical speculations, is a thing so utterly irreconcilable with all that we know of Hebrew taste and pursuits in Palestine, in the days of John, that the bare statement of the thing is its own refutation. John a diligent reader of Plato! What is there in all his writings - Gospel, Epistles, and Apocalypse -that gives the least ground for any such suspicion? Nothing, except the single word Logos, and some of the powers attributed to the personage which this word designates. But even here is nothing but a sandy foundation. Tennemann, that great master of Platonic philosophy, has shown to general if not universal satisfaction, in an Essay devoted to the discussion of this topic, that the Logos of Plato is no more than an abstraction or a personification of divine power, intelligence, and wisdom. The discussion, an able one and highly satisfactory to most persons, may be found in Paulus Memorabilien St. I. s. 34-64. One word, before I close this introduction to Dorner's discussion, in respect to the course which I have pursued with regard to the Logos, in the Bibliotheca Sacra of January last. I have there labored to show how and why John came to adopt such a name as Logos. I have endeavored to render it probable, that it resulted from the manner in which the Old Testament speaks of the word of the Lord, and from the usage in the Chaldee translations in respect to the same phrase. All this stands on ground entirely different from that of the present discussion. The question now before us is, not why John employed the designation Logos, or what led him to do this, but: Whether the Logos as introduced and described by him, is the same as Wisdom in Proverbs and in the Apocrypha, and the Logos in Philo? On this question we are now to give Dorner a hearing. He enters upon it, by a VOL. VII. No. 28. 59 brief preface respecting the difference, in regard to the revelation of the God-man, that exists between the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament, or, in other words, by showing that the main peculiarities of the New Testament descriptions of the Logos, are not to be found in the Old Testament, and consequently that John did not acquire his views from the Old Testament. I must say a word, in relation to the translation which I have made. I have endeavored everywhere to give the exact sense of the original. But I have not slavishly translated the original by endeavoring in all cases to render verbum verbo. This would be, to make the piece unreadable and unintelligible. I have broken up many of the long and cumbrous sentences of the original, merely supplying some connecting links between the parts thus separated. What is common practice in the German construction of sentences, would be unendurable in English, and often unintelligible to the common reader. I have in no case purposely made Dorner to say in English, what he has not said in German. But whether I have always attained to his real meaning, or not, is a question of some difficulty. He is intimately acquainted with all the recent philosophy of Germany, and has, insensibly perhaps, been not a little affected by its style and diction. His language is often of a transcendental tenor, and in order to be rightly understood it requires some good knowledge of this kind of diction. About the meaning of a few sentences, I have not been able to decide, with full conviction, whether I have made a correct representation, or not. In such cases, I have aimed at translating literally; but inasmuch as I did not feel assured of their real meaning, although I had examined them of course in the original German, I can hardly expect the English reader will find them quite intelligible; in a very few cases, probably my version will have to be unintelligible. I will not say this is not my fault. I can only say, that I have done the best I could, and have after all been obliged to leave the matter in the predicament just described. In general, I would hope that the piece is readable and intelligible. It demands, however, some considerable acquaintance with psychology and with ancient philosophy, in order to make it easily intelligible, and specially to make the discussion a matter of interest to the reader. In some cases, I have been forced upon the use of technical words, which are not properly English, but for the appropriate expression of which our mother-tongue furnishes no adequate diction. Generally, however, these words are intelligible to the readers of Latin and Greek. Any one who knows the modern course of German criticism on John's Gospel, will easily perceive the high importance of the matter discussed. Prof. Lücke of Göttingen, a quasi orthodox writer, in his very valuable Commentary on John, has suspended his opinion about the meaning of the apostle in respect to the Logos, on the assumption that John has followed in the track of Philo; and consequently, that Philo's Logos will show us what John means by his Logos. It is this position that Dorner has overturned to its very basis, and thus left the apostle to be interpreted by himself and by other New Testament writers. Prof. Lücke is a writer so learned, so able, and apparently so cool, so candid, and so impartial, that recent commentators, De Wette and Meyer, have done little else on the Gospel of John, than re-produce, sometimes in another form, what he has advanced. Lücke's work is the modern thesaurus for John's Gospel and Epistles. Hence the importance of Dorner's disquisition. The latter part of it, where he as it were sums up the whole matter, will show, in the light of noon-day, how immeasurably discrepant are the views of John and of Philo, with respect to the Godhead and the Logos. If John read Philo, and could make out any definite and consistent view of his Logos from his works, he did what no |