conditions of the announcement; and, as a sign of divine deliverance, might receive the name Emmanuel. In fact, however, the child, in the view of Isaiah, seems to have been no other than the King's own son, Hezekiah; and the Virgin Mother to have been, in conformity with a phraseology familiar to every careful reader of the Old Testament, the royal and holy city of Jerusalem. Amos, speaking of the city, says, "The virgin of Israel is fallen."* Jeremiah, lamenting over its desolation, exclaims, "Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken, with a great breach, with a very grievous blow."+ Micah, apostrophising the citadel, bursts out, "O tower,"-" stronghold of the daughter of Zion,"" is there no king in thee? Is thy counsellor perished? For pangs have taken thee, as a woman in traThe fact that Hezekiah was already born, seems to confirm rather than to invalidate this interpretation. A living child to his parents, he was yet the city's embryo king. What sign monarch than this: that, ere his own first-born should reach the years of judgment, his twofold enemy should be cast down? What language, indeed, could be more natural respecting an heir to the throne, of whom great expectations were excited in grievous times? The royal city dreamt of his promised life with gladness; he was the child of Jerusalem, in the hour of her anguish given to her hopes; in after years peace fulfilling them.§ vail." of more fitted to re-assure the terrified and faithless (b.) This prince appears evidently to have been the person described also in another passage, from which, though never cited in the New Testament as applicable to Christ at all, modern theologians are accustomed to infer his Deity. It is as follows:-"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called wonderful; counsellor; the • Amos v. 2. Micah iv. 8, 9. See the whole context. + Jeremiah xiv. 17. mighty God; the everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace."* We have only to look at the terms in which this great one's dominion is described, and the characters that are to mark his reign, in order to assure ourselves that he is some person very different from Christ; the Northern district of Palestine is to be delivered by him from the sufferings of an Assyrian invasion; he is to break the yoke which Tiglath-Pileser had imposed on the land of Gennesareth; to destroy the rod of the oppressor; to make a conflagration of the spoils of the battle-field, and burn the greaves and blood-stained garments of his country's enemies. It seems to me impossible to imagine a more violent distortion of Scripture than the application of this passage to Christ. But, be it even otherwise, there are only two of these titles which can be thought of any avail in this argument. One is, the "everlasting Father;" which, if it proves any thing, establishes that the second person in the Trinity is the first person, or else that the word Father must be given up as a distinctive name,—a concession destructive of the whole doctrine. The other is the phrase, “the mighty God," or by inversion, "God the mighty;" on which I presume no stress would have been laid if, instead of being presented to us in a translation, it had been given in the original, and called GABRIEL. For the word God, Martin Luther substitutes (Held) hero, as the juster rendering. But, in truth, it is sad trifling thus to crumble Hebrew names to pieces, in order to yield a few scarce visible atoms of argument to replenish the precarious pile of church orthodoxy, wasted by the attrition of reason, the healthful dews of nature, and the sunshine and the air of God.§ (c.) Let us turn to the Proem of St. John's Gospel; that most venerable and beautiful of all the delineations which Isaiah ix. 5, 6. Isaiah viii. 23-ix. 4. Compare 2 Kings xv. 29; 1 Chronicles v. 26. Martin Luther's Version, in loc. § See Note D. 1 Scripture furnishes, of the twofold relation of Christ's spirit, to the Father who gave it its illumination, and to the brethren who were blessed by its light. To our cold understandings, indeed, this passage must inevitably be obscure; for it deals with some of the characteristic conceptions of that lofty speculative reason which, blending the refinements of Platonism with the imaginative license of the oriental schools, assumed in early times the intellectual empire of the church, and has kept the world ever since in deliberation on its creations. I do not mean that the Apostle was a Platonist, or a disciple of any philosophical system. But he wrote in Asia Minor, where he was surrounded by the influences, in constant familiarity with the terms, and accustomed to the modes of thought, peculiar to the sects of speculative religionists most prevalent in his time. At all events, it is a fact that language nowhere employed by the other Evangelists Apostles; and that this language is the very same which is the common stock, and technical vocabulary of Philo, the Platonizing Jew, and several Christian writers of the same or a kindred school. Before, however, endeavouring to suggest the idea which the Apostle did mean to convey, let me call your attention to that which he did not. he uses or There cannot be a more misplaced confidence, than that with which the introductory verses of St. John's Gospel are appealed to by the holders of the Athanasian doctrine. What ever this explanation is adopted, which does not throw contempt upon the composition of the Evangelist, is at all events subversive of their system: and I do not hesitate to say, that this is the only thing which I can regard as certain respecting that it never could have been written by an Athanasian. In order to test this assertion, it is not necessary to look beyond the first verse; and before we read it, let us allow the Trinitarian to choose any sense he pleases of the word God, which is its leading term. Let us suppose that he accepts it as meaning here "THE FATHER," and that passage; the Word or Logos means GOD THE SON. With these substitutions the verse reads thus: In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Father; and the Son was the Father. This surely is to "confound the persons." Let us then suppose the meaning different, and the whole Godhead or TRINITY to be denoted by the word God. The verse would then read thus : In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Trinity, and the Son was the Trinity. We are no nearer to consistency than before: and it is evident that before the Trinitarian can find in the passage any distinct enunciation, the term GOD must be conceived to bear two different meanings in this short verse, a verse so symmetrical in its construction as to put the reader altogether off his guard against such a change. He must read it thus: In the beginning was the second person in the Trinity; and the second person was with the first; and the second person was possessed of divine attributes as such. We might surely ask, without unreasonableness, why, when the society or personal affinity of the Son in the Godhead, is mentioned in the middle clause, the companionship of the Father only is noticed, and silence observed respecting the Holy Spirit; who at that moment could not possibly have been absent from the conceptions of any Athanasian writer. But independently of this, the awkwardness of the construction, the violence of the leading transition of meaning, render the interpretation altogether untenable. If it be true, never surely was there a form of speech worse devised for the conveyance of the intended ideas. In order to give the passage its true force, there is no occasion to assign to the word GoD any but its usual signification; as the name of the One infinite Person or Being who created and rules the universe. But it is less easy to em E1 brace and exhibit with any distinctness, the notion implied in the phrase WORD or Logos. The ancient speculative schools, seeing that the Deity had existed from eternity, and therefore in a long solitude before the origin of creation, distinguished between his intrinsic nature,-deep, remote, primeval, unfathomable,*—and that portion of his mind which put itself forth, or expressed itself by works, so as to come into voluntary and intelligible relations to men.† This section of the Divine Mind, to which was attributable the authorship of the divine works, they called the LoGos, or the IMAGE of God; both terms denoting the expression or power which outwardly reveals internal qualities; the one taking its metaphor from the ear, through which we make known our sentiments by speech; the other from the eye, to which is addressed the natural language of feature and lineament. If I might venture on an illustration which may sound strangely to modern hearers, I should say that the Logos was conceived of in relation to God, much as with us Genius is, in relation to the soul of its possessor; to denote that peculiar combination of intellectual and moral attributes, which produces great, original, creative works, works which let you into the spirit and affections, as well as the understanding, of the Author. Any one who can so possess himself with the speculative temper of Christian antiquity, as to use with reverence the phrase genius of God, would find persuaded, a useful English substitute (though I am not a perfect equivalent) for the word Logos. Dwelling within the blank immensity of God, was this illuminated region of Divine ideas; in which, as in the fancy and the studio of an artist, the formative conceptions, the original sketches and designs, the inventive projects of beauty and good, shaped and perfected themselves; and from which they issued forth, to imprint themselves upon matter and life, and pass into executed and visible realities. From the it, I am well aware, * Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος. † Λόγος προφορικός. |
