"the Prince of the kings of the earth." He who commences and completes the destruction of the majestic empires of the world can be nothing inferior to the "chief of the whole creation of God,"- "the first and the last." He whose Gospel appoints the doom of myriads, who can he be, but the impersonated "Word of God"? His name must be above every name.

To sum up now the results of our inquiry. We have discovered four Christologies, or forms of doctrine concerning Christ, in the writings we have noticed.

1. The primitive Jewish form, which teaches that Christ is the Messiah; - the son of David foretold by the prophets, born of human parents, raised up and inspired to be the redeemer of Israel. He is called Jesus of Nazareth. His nature is purely a human nature.

2. The form exhibited in Matthew and Luke; which is substantially the same as the foregoing, with two or three additions. Christ is born of a single human parent, being the son of Mary and the Holy Spirit; he is transfigured; is raised from the dead; and is to come again with might and glory. He imparts miraculous gifts; is present with his Church; follows his disciples to the end of the world; and is intrusted with all power in heaven and earth.

3. The form contained in the second Gospel. This is distinguished by its want of peculiarity. It is neither specifically Jewish nor Gentile. It seems to mark a transition period. This indistinctness would alone entitle it to be considered by itself, even if the dim intimations of a Docetic tendency, and the remark of Irenæus before quoted, will not justify us in regarding it as a separate type.

4. The decidedly novel form in the First Epistle of Peter, and the Apocalypse. In these books Christ is the chief of the creation of God, the first-born of the dead; he is called by the name of Jehovah; he was preordained before the foundation of the world; his spirit existed in the Old Testament prophets; he redeems men by his blood; bears their sins in his own body on the cross; dies, the just for the unjust; preaches in hell to the departed spirits; is exalted at the right hand of God, above angels, authorities, and powers.

The critics whose opinions we are unfolding take

especial pains to say that these diverse Christologies are by no means to be regarded as different aspects of the same historical person. It is not one identical character who is thus presented in several lights, according to the spectator's temperament and level of vision. Each writer describes a personage of his own; a distinct ideal man; peculiar in his origin, his nature, and his function. The original Christians would object to the Christ of Matthew; the Christ of Matthew would not satisfy Mark; the Christ of Mark would be too unsubstantial for Peter; the difference of view depending not upon the writer's posture toward Christ, but upon the figure of Christ himself, as viewed from the speculations of one or another age.

But how shall we account for such remarkable phases of doctrine concerning the Christ? Whence came the impulse which drove the Jewish thought through such transformations? It came from two sources; one inward and one outward. It came first from the actual character and life of Jesus.* If these transcended the common Hebrew ideal of the Christ, if his interior qualities were finer, broader, deeper, more spiritual, than the Jews understood, such a fact must have materially affected the speculations about him. He could not long have been regarded merely as the Jewish Messiah. He would soon be invested with superior attributes. Men would not be content with saying that the Spirit descended upon him at his baptism; they would rather have it woven into the texture of his being and connected with his very origin. They would call him by more exalted names; would surround him in their thoughts with an atmosphere of mysterious grandeur; would see something superhuman in his destiny, something supersensual in his relation to mankind. Framing a theory of him and his mission to accord with the impression he produced upon their minds, they would fill up many a blank in his history with hypotheses, and inferences that passed with them for facts. It is exceedingly difficult, indeed it is wholly impossible, to say what influence of this kind the actual character of Jesus exerted upon after-speculation;

*On this point, see a dissertation by Dr. Planck, entitled "Judenthum und Urchristenthum," in the Theol. Jahrbücher, 1847, Nos. 2, 3, and 4.

for all we know of that character is found in the writings which contain the speculation also. We have no narrative of the bare historical facts concerning Jesus. The several biographers record different incidents, which awaken different trains of thought, and suggest different views of Christ, even if they were not brought together in accordance with such views at first. But notwithstanding this difficulty, it is easy to conceive in general how the spiritual life of Jesus should have been instrumental in enlarging men's ideas of his nature and destiny.

Again, the Jewish mind had been softened and beguiled of its old, unbending stiffness by graceful speculations from the East. The impassable gulf between the finite and the infinite had been filled up with angelic beings. Hosts of angels, rank above rank, in endless gradation, reached all the way from man to God. This belief in intermediate spirits, as it became more and more familiar to the Jew, could not fail to connect itself with his Messianic hope. He would have no scruple about attaching some angelic attributes to the Christ, thus blending strangely the human and the superhuman in his nature. There can be no doubt that this was actually done. For the Jews were no metaphysicians, and were not exact in discriminating philosophically between the congruous and the incongruous elements of a spiritual being.

But the impulse to speculation upon the nature of Christ came chiefly from without. The outward circumstances of the Church developed the ideal conception of the Church's founder. While Christianity was mere Judaism, and the office of the Christ was simply the restoration of the Jews, a purely national and exclusive work, he needed no higher faculties or endowments than belonged to the popular Messiah. He might be intrinsically no greater than David or Samuel or Moses, and yet accomplish the mission whereunto he was sent. But when the sphere of Christianity was widened, so as to include the Gentile as well as the Jew, and the influence of Christ, no longer national, was extended to the pagan nations also, it became necessary to exalt his character in proportion to the breadth of his dominion. The greatness of the king must be commensurate with the greatness of his kingdom. Jesus must be placed at

an elevation sufficiently high to command the entire circumference of his sway. Moreover, the essential character of the Christ's errand was changed by the admit tance of the heathen world into his empire. As Messiah of the Jews, he had a civil and political, as well as a religious, work to do. He was to restore that people at once to their national supremacy, and to their original posture of faith and acceptance. As Messiah of the Gentiles, his task must have been very different in all respects from this. But as the Christ both of the Jews and of the Gentiles, it became necessary that his office should touch something which all these people had in common; his Messianic power must have been directed to a point which was peculiar to neither, which was the same in both. This could not be political or social restoration; nor could it be the fulfilment of theocratic promises and privileges; it must be spiritual regeneration, redemption from sin, the saving of that immortal principle which was the same thing in all mankind, the common possession of Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. But if this were the Messiah's office, if he were sent to bring all men back to God by delivering them from evil, his nature must be made to correspond with his function. And this explains the fact that Jesus is invested with certain peculiar attributes, or that a new significance is attached to his common Messianic attributes as the Redeemer of mankind. More stress is laid upon the spiritual side of his being; speculation turns upon the interior structure of his soul; his nature partakes of the angelic, and an efficacy altogether incomprehensible and miraculous is attached to his death.

Finally, the expectation of a second coming of Christ, an expectation early prevalent, and fostered by the many and sharp trials that afflicted the young Church, contributed greatly to his speculative elevation. Christians were persuaded that this second advent was close at hand. Stupendous events were on the eve of fulfilment. In a short time the empire of Satan was to be destroyed; of course, the agent in so mighty a work must be mighty, and the Christ of the Apocalypse is born naturally out of the heated imaginations and frenzied hopes of persecuted and outcast men. We are not, therefore, surprised at the various Christologies we have found even in these

few books of the New Testament. The external circumstances of Christendom if we may speak of a Christendom as existing in the first century- forbade that Christ should be stationary in men's thoughts. That the field of his operations was gradually enlarged from the narrow borders of Judea to the wide boundaries of the world, from the political affairs of an insignificant state to the spiritual interests of all human souls, is an established historical fact, apparent in the Gospels, and described in the Acts. We should expect his own nature to expand in like degree. We should look to see the Jewish Messiah growing in men's thoughts to be "Prince of all the kings of the earth," and the plain Jesus of Nazareth rising to a super-earthly dignity as "chief of all the creation of God."

O. B. F.

ART. II. - SELF-CULTURE OF WOMEN.*

FEW subjects have attracted more attention of late than the question of woman's true social position. But much of the discussion has been conducted in a manner to exasperate prejudice and bring ridicule on those engaged in it. For while a great deal has been said of her natural and inalienable rights, little has been said of her duties and obligations; and still less, we fear, has been said, or even thought, of those means of self-culture by the improvement of which the mere question of social position becomes of small importance. Yet it is only by candid and dispassionate argument that whatever is wrong or injurious in her present relations can be rectified. Conventions and mass-meetings and resolutions, and the various apparatus of party warfare, will effect no good result, even if they do not alienate those who feel a deep interest in the subject, but distrust all extravagant action and inflammatory appeals. That the social

*Thoughts on Self-Culture, addressed to Women. By MARIA G. GREY, and her Sister, EMILY SHIRREFF, Authors of "Passion and Principle," and "Letters from Spain and Barbary." Boston: Wm. Crosby and H. P Nichols. 1851. 12mo. pp. xv. and 464.

VOL. LI. - 4TH S. VOL. XVI. NO. II.

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