Philosophy has often been connected with a higher ethic, and furnished the aid toward a higher ethical life, than religion. If its influence in this respect has not in any one period prevailed so widely, it has been more enduring and survived greater crises. The Ethics and the Political Ethics of Aristotle and Plato have had a continuous influence upon the actual life of the race. They have been translated into languages then unspoken, and have shaped the thoughts of a thousand tribes with their advance toward a historic life in lands which were then uninhabited. The cultus and system of the religions that were contemporary with them have utterly perished; there comes to them no revival. But these works still have power in the lives of men. They have, it is true, this advantage in the close relation of philosophy with literature, that the greatest masters in philosophy have also been the greatest masters in literature.1

1 If it was ever given to any one man to express the prophetic hopes and longings of the human soul, to give voice to

-"the prophetic soul of the wide world,

Dreaming on things to come,"

it was given to Plato. There has been in no religion so full an expression of the hopes and desires of men which prefigure the revelation of God. The common thought is given by Van Oosterzee : "It is certain that Plato has more distinctly than any one else expressed the want which has been supplied by the revelation of the light of the world." (Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 113.) The work of Aristotle also has brought the most profound justification to the Christian theology. This was recognized in the greater ages of the theology of the church.

Religion and philosophy both have their fulfillment in the revelation of God in the Christ. The long conflict and the travail through suffering and sacrifice of religion, and the toil through doubt and denial, the sincerity of conviction, the wrestle of thought for the truth, of philosophy; - the effort of religion and philosophy, have their fulfillment in the revelation of God.

They have been formed in the slow and arduous ascent of man. They appear through the dissolution and resolution in the reflective movement of thought and emotion, of the relations of man with the finite and the infinite. They bear the impress of many tribes and many lands, through the ages of the world. It may be given to faith, it may be the ascertainment of reflection, that no step through this evolution of society has been inconsequent, and no effort vain.

Religion and philosophy have both exerted a determinate influence on the development of the Christian faith and doctrine. The hope and aspiration of religion, the desire of the nations, has found its end in the Christian revelation. But this influence has been more potent through philosophy. Thus, in the speculation of Plato and of Aristotle, the Christian doctrine has found its justification, and their influence has determined the course and development of great schools of Christian thought.

The Revelation of and in the Christ is not a religion, and it is not a philosophy.

It cannot be brought within the scope or province of any definition of religion that has a justification in history. It is not the product of any distinctive religious progress; and, further, it has not its origin in any system of speculation, nor in the reflective order of thought. It is not a philosophy, but its relation to philosophy is as clear and distinct as to religion.

It is not within the process of the history of religions. It is not to be brought as one stage into the development, or as one subject in the comparative study of religions. It is not related to them as one individual form to another, nor as the universal to the individual; for when they are embraced as a whole, it is other and more than they. It can no more take the place to which it is invited among the various religions of the world than the figure of the Christ can take its place in the Pantheon of a Julian.

If it be assumed that it is strictly a religion, it is not clear in its relation to philosophy. For philosophy will still maintain its claim to hold it in subjection to its canons, to determine its position in relation to the continuous progress of speculative thought, and will still seek for a real and substantial truth.

The Christ does not come into the world as the

founder of a religion, and this revelation is not set forth as an institute or a system or a cultus of religion.

The Old Testament is not primarily the record of a religion, or of a system or science of religion. It is not the revelation of a religion,' but it is the revelation of God to the world; his revelation to the family which he has formed, and to the nation which he has founded, and thence to the world.

The ritual which it contains is subordinate in this historical, this domestic and political development. There may be traces, in the forms and services, which the scholar may discern, of the influence of the religions of Egypt and Babylon, and the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, but it is primarily a revelation which is other than these. It is throughout in conflict with these religions, through its revelation of God, as One and invisible, who will put away all the idolatries of men, and will establish his righteousness on the earth.

It is a record of the unity and order of the family and the nation, as these endure, in the organic life of humanity.

1 "In other books you have the records of a religion. You are told how a people introduced this worship and that ceremony; how their soothsayers told them of services that they had neglected; how their priests enforced new propitiations. Here you have nothing of the kind. All the religion which the priests or the people introduced

the worship on hills and in groves, the calves, the altars to Baal - is noticed to be denounced; a righteous king proves his righteous. ness by sweeping it away." (Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 507.)

It averts the attention from a further world, without affirmation and without denial in regard to it, and is intent upon the eternal and infinite presence dwelling in the here and now. Thus it is an even question with a scholar whether it recognizes a world on and beyond and the immortality of the soul, in the common use of this term. Thus it differs from the subjects which form the staple of the religious books of the world.

The Commandments, which are given at an early age, and are continuous and formative with the people, have no distinctive religious quality; they are formed in and become themselves the maintenance of institutions of domestic and civil and political order.

It is throughout the revelation of one God, who is invisible, of whom there can be no graven image made by the hands of men, whose name is the Almighty, the I Am, the Eternal, who is with the family and with the nation in the attainment of their life in the life of humanity. It was in this and in the acknowledgment of the Commandments as the ground of freedom, and in the consequent transition from slavery to freedom, and in the actualization of righteousness, that there were the sources of conflict with the religions which the people sought constantly to introduce. This ethical course is brought out with the strongest contrasts. It is the burden of the prophets borne through all the ages of their history. When the