NOVEMBER, 1879.

GOD REVEALING HIMSELF IN THE FURNACE OF FIRE.

BY THE REV. W. T. ROSEVEAR.

IV.-The Two Beings, or, The "Fourth Man."

WE now come to the truth in which the facts illustrated in the former papers may be fairly said to culminate.

IV. The inseparable union of two Beings in one Personality. The miracle in the furnace of fire gives us a glimpse as of two worlds, the natural and the supernatural, linked together in one vast empire; so also and specially of two Beings, the creature and the Creator, mysteriously but really united in one wondrous Person-the "Fourth Man." This was a foreshadowing of the Incarnation.

The Incarnation would seem to have been, from the very beginning, the lofty goal upon which the eyes of the Divine purpose were steadily fixed. All things moved towards it: pre-Adamite ages terminating in man made in the image of God, and the subsequent ages of human history terminating in God made in the image of man. Delitzsch, after speaking of the Old Testament in relation to the New Testament as Night, has truthfully said that "in this Night there rise, in opposite directions, two stars of promise. The one describes its path from above downwards: it is the promise of Jehovah, who is about to come. The other describes its path from below upwards: it is the hope which rests on the seed of David, the prophecy of the Son of David, which at first ran a course wholly human, and only earthly. These two stars meet at last; they mingle. so as to form but one, the Night vanishes and it is Day. This one Star is Jesus Christ, Jehovah and David's Son in one person, the King of Israel, and at the same time the Redeemer of the world; in a word, the .God-Man, blessed be He!" The Incarnation was the point at which one whole order of things passed away and another came. From that point the world made an entirely new start.

The three facts which have already come under our consideration— the intrinsic greatness of man, the reign of Divine Love over material law, and the inseparable union of the worlds natural and supernatural-find their highest and clearest embodiment in the Incarnation. For the intrinsic greatness of man can nowhere be more clearly seen than in Him in whom God Himself became Man "and dwelt among us." Nor can the reign of Divine Love be seen at a higher point, or in brighter manifestation, than in Him in whom God Himself was, in the form of a servant," living, thinking, working, and suffering for our salvation. And certainly we cannot possibly have a clearer view of the truth that the natural and the supernatural

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worlds constitute one empire than in Him-the Monarch of both-in whom the Creator and the creature constitute one wondrous Person, bringing life and immortality to light. Thus these three great facts run up into the truth of the Incarnation-the two Beings in one wondrous Person-" God manifest in the flesh." In that truth they find their highest completion and crown.

At this point the Incarnation presents itself to our mind in various forms, one only of which we shall now single out for consideration. It is God's answer to the soul's cry for a larger and clearer revelation of Himself than she can discover in the works of nature, or the reasonings of man, or the earlier pages of Scripture.

The soul's cry is a fact. It is as real and, in some of its tones, as undeniable a fact as that of gravitation. It is a deep and exceeding bitter cry, a cry of unrest, a cry of pain as if from the dark cell of a prison-house, a cry for deliverance and light and freedom, a cry for God. And this cry is innate. The human soul can no more live, in the true sense of that word, without God, than the human eye can see without the sun. The eye is made for light, man for God. And this cry for God, rising spontaneously in one form or another out of the depths of his soul, cannot be silenced. Philosophic arguments, ancient and modern, with whatever skill they may have been advanced to silence it, have all been in vain. It still rises from all lands. Instead of dying away, it waxes louder and louder from generation to generation. At one time it is heard at the foot of heathen altars, a strangely wild and confused cry, all but inarticulate to every ear, except the ear of God, who knows how to interpret and answer its meaning. At another time it is clear, simple, and direct, as the voice of cottage children looking up, when times are hard, into their mother's face and asking for bread. In every instance it goes ringing through the world with a force which nothing can arrest. It shatters to atoms the philosophies and theological systems which are built upon the assumption of man's all-sufficiency to reach the true end of his being without the aid of a direct revelation from heaven. It proceeds from a conviction within a man, which he cannot suppress, that he is himself unable to answer questions which he cannot but ask, and to satisfy cravings which he cannot but feel. And when from himself he turns to the collective wisdom of the race and to nature, he finds that these are also insufficient. They teach him much, but he wants to know more. The yearning which God has put within the human heart makes demands which these cannot answer. Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be supposed to describe man apart from the Revelation of the New Testament as altogether blind to the glory of the material universe; for he is not so. There are moods in which that glory fills him with rapture. He lifts up a great psalm of adoration as he looks abroad upon the surrounding creations moving on in perfect order, teeming from end to end with beauty and goodness. But he is not always in these moods. The stern hard fact forces itself in

upon his consciousness that those creations are moving on with all their perfect order, and beauty, and goodness within cycles of endless change. They are transient; they are passing away from around him; but his soul remains with its thirst unslaked. And then, in those moments, no language could more truthfully express the inner thought of his heart on their utter insufficiency to satisfy his needs than those words of Hamlet

"Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you this brave o'erhanging-this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

Nor when turning from nature to the earlier pages of the Bible does he find an answer to his deepest want. Here he is in the company of men who, though inspired, are dissatisfied; they are conscious that their whole being is but a fragment, a broken, incomplete life at best, apart from God, who alone could give rest to their souls. In studying the writings of Moses, Job, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel-men in whom a restless want kindled their whole inner life into a passionate longing after a fuller and brighter manifestation of God than they had yet known-his soul enters into their experience, and joins in their cry for further light: "I beseech thee show me thy glory."

In this cry of the soul there are two undertones. The first seems to say, If we could only know God, if He would only respond to our appeal, and reveal Himself more fully within the sphere of our knowledge as our Father and Friend, then our quest would end. We should find in Him an all-sufficiency for mind and heart. Mysteries one by one would be cleared up; problems the most intricate would be solved; errors would melt away; sins would be pardoned; wants would be supplied; endless progress would be ensured; and perfection of character-the eternal crown itself-would be within reach of actual attainment. The second of these undertones is a whisper of hope passing into a firm assurance that God will actually interpose that as it is the nature of the soul to cry to Him for a clearer and fuller manifestation of Himself, so it is His nature to respond to that cry. Would it not be strange if it were otherwise? Strange indeed it would be if God could remain on His throne of love and perfection unmoved, untouched by the cry rising night and day to heaven from the bleeding heart of the world. For there are wonderful instincts planted by His own hands in ourselves, and in the creatures around us, for the express purpose of answering the cry of distress. Out there in the wild moorland the mother-bird answers the cry of her helpless brood; she has been even known to place herself between her young and the danger that threatened them, and in defending their life to imperil her own.* And the love of the human mother is strong enough to The stork perishes by fire rather than desert her young."the Lower Animals." By W. Lander Lindsay, M.D. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co, 1879. Vol. ii. p. 132.

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carry her through a thousand deaths, if such a thing were possible, to rescue the least obedient of her children from destruction. If, then, the instinct of creatures thus leads them to answer the cry of distress by flying to the spot whence the cry proceeds, and in some instances even to die in the effort to rescue their offspring from death, surely the God who is the Author of that instinct could not but respond to the cry of the human soul,-could not but rescue it from destruction. The tendency of the Being of God, who planted in our nature those wondrous instincts which compel us at whatever cost or sacrifice to become, as far as may be, the saviours of our children, must surely have been to move downwards and to take His stand at the very "hole of the pit," into which mankind, His offspring, had fallen, in order that He might deliver them, and lift them up into the light of true knowledge and life.

He did thus descend. But how? By assuming the nature of the race that had fallen. Their humanity, though crushed and stained by their sins, was still infinitely precious in His sight; His heart yearned for its salvation. Hence the Incarnation. It originated in sympathy. The Incarnation was the outcome of the fellow-feeling of the Creator with the humanity which He had created. Who does not

know that there is in the heart of a human father a sympathy, a fellow-feeling with his children, so deep, and pure, and strong, that by yielding to it his whole nature is moved towards theirs? He not only enters into their thoughts and emotions, their joys and sorrows, but, in some measure, he lives their life, and incarnates himself in their very personality. This, however, is only a faint shadowing forth of that tenderness of God towards the children of men, by which He entered into their inmost life, and became actually Incarnate in their nature. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." Thus clothed in our humanity He stood forth upon our world as the Creator, as the source of light, as the manifestation of God. The fellow-feeling of His heart with mankind, in which the Incarnation originated, may be traced throughout His entire history on earth, in words, and deeds, and sufferings, which at length culminated in the atoning death of the cross.

"All the souls that were were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy."

Moved by intense sympathy with men, His life of omnipotence became the life of sacrifice. "He was wounded for their transgressions." He suffered-could not but suffer-with them and for them. So deep and broad and mighty was His sympathy with the whole fallen race of man that, reaching out over all the regions of earth and ages of time, it gathered in upon His own shoulders the great burden

which was crushing the human heart. He bore that burden "in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness."

Thus in responding to the cry of the soul's utter need God has revealed Himself in a form which is altogether new. And with what an entire absence of outer grandeur, how gently, and almost before any one was aware, this new revelation of God, this new epoch of light and life, opened upon the world! One day a lone traveller came and rested on Jacob's well. Weary, dust-stained, and athirst with his long journey in the hot sun, he stretched out his hand and asked " a woman of Samaria," who came to draw water, to let him drink out of her pitcher. He entered into conversation with her, and there was in his words a marvellous power. They at first revealed herself to herself, her "five husbands" and all; and afterwards they went inwards through her sin and shame, and became in her heart "a well of water springing up into everlasting life." At length, in reply to a statement in which, unconsciously to herself, she expressed the yearning of the best life of the world for the coming of One who, "when he is come, will tell us all things," He declared that He himself was that expected One. "Jesus said unto her, I that speak unto thee am He." He that lone, dust-stained traveller along life's common roads-He, who, as He went, cast light upon the sinner's heart and opened in it a fountain of eternal life-He was and is in Himself God's response to the innate cry of our soul for a fuller and clearer revelation of His character than can be found in our own reasonings, or the collective wisdom of the race, or the works of nature, or the pages of the Old Testament.

This new revelation of God through Christ is a marked advance upon all His former revelations in at least three respects; but our present space being filled, this part of the subject must be reserved for the next paper.

THE CONDEMNED SENTINEL.

FROM THE FRENCH.

A COLD, stormy night in the | on the part of the sentinels, for a month of March, 1807, Marshal desperate sortie from the garrison, Lefebre, with twenty thousand made unawares, might prove calaFrench troops, had invested Dant- mitous. zic. The city was garrisoned by seventeen thousand Russian and Prussian soldiers, and these, together with twenty or thirty thousand well-armed citizens, presented nearly double the force which could be brought to the assault. So there was need of the utmost vigilance

At midnight Jerome Dubois was placed upon one of the most important posts in the advance line of pickets, it being upon a narrow strip of land raised above the marshy flat, called the Peninsula of Nehrung. For more than an hour he paced his lonesome beat without