between his representation of him as the world's Saviour. Luke proves the divinity of Christ more from his power over satan and the demons. In this he represents him as the great Overcomer of Evil. The demons first announce him as the Son of God. In the display of this might over the supernatural powers of darkness, he proved his own supernatural endowments "what Word is this," exclaimed the Jews, "for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits and they come out?" This, with Luke, is the great sign of Christ's Divinity. In verse 41 we are told, "And the devils came out of many crying out and saying, thou art Christ, the Son of God, for they knew that he was Christ." Still more pointedly in cap. vi. 18, 19, And they that were vexed with unclean spirits, who were brought out from Judea, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Sidon were healed;" and so great was the impression of this power upon the minds of the spectators that" whole multitudes sought to touch him, for there went a virtue out of him which healed them all." So the Twelve are specially invested with this power (ix. 1); and its possession was the boast of the Seventy (x. 17); from verse 19, where he speaks of giving them the conquest over the power of the enemy, we learn that through him, Satan, the prince of evil, had been conquered.

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In Luke, therefore, we have Christ as the revealer of God to man (x. 22), by virtue of this his power over all things; as the divinely endowed Saviour, who, by his conquest over Satan and his minions, has released man from external and internal evil, and by his teaching, which is emphatically declared to be the "Word of God" (vi.), "o Xoyos TOU Oεov," in which he revealed the long-concealed knowledge of God. This higher significance of Christ in Luke, is in keeping with the sign which he quoted from the Psalms to prove that he was the Lord of David (xx. 41–44).

That this diminution of the Messianic significance of Christ in Luke arises from the Pauline stand-point, from which he contemplates the life of Christ cannot be mistaken. The representation of Christ in his relation to sin, which is the turningpoint of Pauline theology is clearly reflected in the relation of him to

the devil and his kingdom, according to Luke, who represents Christ as the possessor of divine might, and that his chief work was to overcome and annihilate both Satan and his deeds.

In pointing out these peculiarities of the Gospel of Luke we are far from wishing to attribute them to what the Saxon Anonymous calls Pauline dogmatism. At that time there was no such thing as dogma or creeds, in the strict sense of the words, for there were no great heresies: false teachers there were, but not to that extent as to create a necessity for the public annunciation of any settled and ecclesiastically authorised form of belief. Dogma and creed arose later, not from the nature of Christianity, but from the necessity of opposing its enemies.

To speak of such a thing as the Logos theory, or dogma of the Logos, at this early period is absurd, for that really only entered as a dogma into the Christian theology at the later period when the incipient Gnosticism which was in vogue at the time of Christ, and also at the death of John, was in the middle of the second century promulgated as a systematised form of religious philosophy.

But we do maintain that in Luke's representation we have, as in all the other Gospels, an emphatic declaration of the divinity of our Lordthat he possessed supernatural power over evil, over sin, and the consequences of sin, sickness, and death.

Nor was this certainty of the divine nature, of his perfect unity with the Father, a gradually developed intuition, increasing as the distance increased between the believers and the events. It was an absolute certainty of that real and positive demonstration which the disciples and others had of the risen Saviour-that absolute certainty of which Luke speaks, which changed the natural despondency of the Apostles upon the death of their master into the enthusiasm of complete conviction, arising out of actual demonstration: their great hope and belief had become a fact, and, as Luke declares in his introduction, those who at first were eye-witnesses, becoming afterwards servants of the Word, "preached the gospel' of a risen Saviour, and established in a world of heathenism and corrupt Judaism the Church of Christ.

In the Epistles of Paul this same conviction of the divinity of the Christ appears in language which anticipates John. In the Epistle to the Philippians Paul declares that Christ being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God;" and that Christ had positively declared this himself we know (John, v. 18) from his enemies-"therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him because he said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God," and again (x. 30), when Our Lord said, "I and my father are one," the Jews took up stones to stone him "because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God"-no longer equal to God," ioov ry O, but "because thou makest,' σεαυτον θεον, "thyself (absolutely) God." We might cite many other passages, but the crux of all rationalistic interpretation is that passage (1 Cor., xv. 20) where the Apostle applies all the attributes of the Deity to Christ, "who is the image of the invisible God: the first-born of every creature, for by him were all things created that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist, for it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell."

This is the passage upon which Schleiermacher wrote a celebrated elaborate paper in the Studien und Kritiken (1832, 3 Heft), by which he endeavoured in every possible manner to pervert the plain meaning of this passage, but in many points has indirectly supported it; which essay also met its thorough and complete refutation in the same periodical in the second number after, and has been continually refuted since.

Luke, therefore, in his representation of the divine nature of Christ, revealed by his supernatural power

over sin and death, though he, as an Evangelist, stands in the middle of the New Testament writings, is connected in this way with Matthew at the commencement and the Apocalypse at the termination. Both Matthew, in his gospel, and John, in the Apocalypse, represent Jesus just like Luke, as endowed with divine power and glory. "All power is given to Me in heaven and earth," says Christ, in Matthew, xviii. 18, and by the declaration of Peter, which, according to the words of Christ himself, was the expression of a divine revelation, and not a conception by the senses (Matt. xvi. 16), he is "the Christ, the Son of the living God." So, also, John, in the Apocalypse, vii. 12 and 13, beheld Christ worshipped with honour equal with the Father, and receiving the attribute of equal power. "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts, and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying, with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them heard I, saying blessing and honour and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne (the Father, see iv. 8, &c.) and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

In this equality of the divine Saviour with the Father, Matthew, Luke, and John, the beginning, middle, and end of the New Testament agree.

So that this representation is no dogma, created as a bar against heresy, but a solemn conviction produced in the minds of those who witnessed the marvellous works of the Messiah, whose godhead had been foretold in prophecy,† and therefore we must come to the conclusion that the

assertion of Rationalism and modern illuminism, or rather self-shamed Atheism, that the divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Christ was developed out of the blending of Christianity with paganism and pagan philosophy is not an historical fact concerning the second century, but a fabulous falsehood of the eighteenth and nineteenth, by sceptics who fulfil in themselves the declaration of the Apostle that "in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim. iv. 1).

The result of our investigation, then, is to confirm the statement of Irenæus that Luke set down in a book the Gospel as preached by Paul: that is, we find upon examination the historical material is so arranged in Luke as to correspond with the teaching of Paul. Christ appears as a divinely inspired and a divinely endowed person, as a divine person who became a man that he might reveal God to man, in which work, as a revealer of God and executor of the salvation which God had provided in him, he does not confine himself to the Jewish people, but, as a saviour of all, he turns towards the heathen as well as the Jew. The proof that this does not arise from dogmatic necessity may be elicited from several apparent contradictions to it in the Gospel itself; for although the general tenor of it is to show that the power of the law terminated with the Baptist who announced the new dispensation as the approach of the kingdom of God," still there are passages which are not in strict accordance with this, but which refer more to the purely Messianic dignity of Christ. In Luke v. 14, we have an instance where Christ himself commands the observance of the ceremonial law in his admonition to the leper-"to go and show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded for a testimony unto them;" so also in xvii. 14. He also commands the observance of the moral law in x. 28, where he confirms the commandment to love the "Lord thy God, and thy neighbour as thyself;" and xviii. 20,

where he confirms other commandments. The commendation of the humble acceptation of grace is in the Sermon on the Mount, yet works are enjoined as a proof of faith in the following verses,-vi. 35, and also in xviii. 29, 30.

Peter, too, as regards his position is the speaker and head of the Twelve disciples, and although Jesus is represented as the Saviour of the world, yet his Messianic title and character are not overlooked (xxii. 67-70, xxiii. 3). Therefore this Gospel is not a mere tendency document, as it has been called, but a genuine life of Christ, containing a rich store of historical material from the birth of John the Baptist to the ascension of Our Lord in the presence of the Apostles and others (xxiv. 33), who afterwards returned to Jerusalem, and this history is continued by its author through the founding, planting, and establishing of the Church by the Apostles in all parts of the then known world.

A careful and unprejudiced study of the Gospel will convince any reader that this is no work written for a party or an expression of a tendency; and we shall conclude this investigation by giving the opinion of one of the latest and most distinguished advocates of such a fallacy, Dr. Schenkel, now well known even in England as the editor of a popular Biblical dictionary, as well as from his high position in the Church. In Strauss' work,-"Die Halben und die Ganzen" ("the Half and the Whole") he claims Schenkel as advocating the same principles as himself, though managing to retain his position in the Church. That his views are very closely allied with mine; that his Character-Portrait of Jesus and my 'Life of Jesus' being of the same tendency that was and is still a widely spread opinion.*

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Strauss justifies himself in attacking Schenkel, who believes no more in the miracles and resurrection of Jesus than he himself, and reproaches him with these words :"When the Pharisee thanks God that he is not like other people, especially not like that Publican; he

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must not be offended if the Publican congratulates himself that he is not like that holy man opposite."

In this work already mentioned, "Charakterbild Jesu," Schenkel has written a masterly account of Christ's life,† characterized by a vast amount of skill and power of description; but still he starts from, and the beauty of the work is spoilt, being permeated with the foregone conclusion that Christ is to be nothing more than a man richly endowed with talent and energy, but still a man. His opinion of the Gospels in general is, in his own words :

"We can well understand how the traditional facts of the evangelical history after passing from mouth to mouth during the space of fifty years, would soon contract a fabulous mixture as the impression of the personality of the Saviour in the phantasy of the apostolical community, found vent in the representations which despised the limits of nature and the order of the

world."

Consequently we do not withhold our admiration for this work of Schenkel, though he eliminates all the miracles from the Gospel history by destroying their essential character, sneering at the same time at men like Strauss and Renan, who arrive at the same conclusions as himself; though his resurrection is no resurrection, save in the exalted phantasies of the Apostles, and yet he sneers at the rationalism of those men who prefer believing that Christ did really rise, but not from a real death, only out of a swoon!

But his version of the Resurrection is no better. He says the earliest account that is in Mark (?) simply records that the grave was empty, but of a real appearance of Christ," this oldest source of the tradition records nothing." He then goes on to delineate that the only way in which the matter is to be reasonably understood is, that Christ arose in the minds of the community as an eternal spirit elevated above the letter-loving materialism of the

then Judaism; and he concludes by asking the question worthy of Strauss or any of that school, "And if he really did appear in his earthly form after the crucifixion and returned amongst men, why did he not then show himself to his Jewish judges and to the Roman procurator? Why did he not show himself in the streets of Jerusalem to the people?

So much for Schenkel and modern illuminism. We hear a great deal about the progress of the intellect in modern times, and that Christianity has to undergo a much more thorough investigation yet than it has ever undergone; but if this is a specimen of modern illumination, and we find no other better, we can only say, as we have often maintained, that there is nothing new in infidelity, for Celsus, in the second century, used almost the same words, and certainly enunciated the same objections as this Germau theologian, and Church counsellor in the nineteenth century. Let Celsus speak for himself, as he does in his own work :

"By what argument are you persuaded that he rose from the dead? Come let us grant that this was predicted; but how many have been deceived by such predictions? Is there not Zamolxis amongst the Scythians? did not Pythagoras appear in Italy and Rampsinitus in Egypt, who they say played at dice in Hades with Ceres; so also Orpheus, Protesilaus in Thessalia, Hercules

and Theseus? But let us consider did any one who had been really dead ever rise again to life? And when this is told you of others you declare it to be fables, but your fables you believe, and believe that he who when alive could not help himself, after he was dead rose again in the body and showed the marks of the nails in his hands. who saw these things? A woman whom you yourselves call a fanatic."

And

So that we are not surprised to find Schenkel saying of Luke's Gospel-"The third Gospel bears unmistakable traces of a certain method of representation, which we may call a tendency character. It forms the heathen-Christian antithesis to the Jewish-Christian thesis in the