pleased not the Word or Wisdom of God to take to itself some one person, amongst men, for then should that one have been advanced and no more, but Wisdom, to the end she might save many, built her house of that Nature, which is common unto all; she made not this or that man her habitation, but dwelt in us. The seeds of herbs and plants at the first are not in act, but in possibility, that which they afterwards grow to be. If the Son of God had taken to Himself a man, now made and already perfected, it would of necessity follow there are in Christ two persons, the one assuming and the other assumed; whereas the Son of God did not assume a man's person, unto His own, but a man's nature to His own Person, and therefore took semen (the italics are Hooker's own), the seed of Abraham, the very first original element of our nature, before it was come to have any personal human subsistence. The flesh and the conjunction of the flesh with God, began both at one instant, His making and taking to Himself our flesh was but one act, so that in Christ there is no personal subsistence but one, and that from everlasting. By taking only the nature of man, He still continueth one person, and changeth but the manner of His subsisting, which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God, and is now in the habit of our flesh." (Hooker Eccl. Pol., Bk. 5, Chap. iii. 5.)

As an exquisite specimen of Elizabethan word-architecture, this is charming, in its quaint and massive picturesqueness; its

"Rich windows, that exclude the light, And passages, that lead to nothing." But as an exegetical, scientific and logical tangle, it is most admonitory. Even Hooker's proverbial judiciousness declined to accompany him into such a region as this; for there are speculative heights where the firmest intellects must falter, as there are atmospheric elevations where the stoutest aeronauts find their breathing and their brain most painfully affected. Let us glance first at the exegesis ; "The Word dwelt in us.' The Evangelist useth the plural number, men for manhood, us for the nature whereof we consist." We will not stay to defend

the A. V. "among Hooker's" in us.'

usage of the sacred writers, is it St. John's usage, to express the idea of man, as a universal, by the "plural" of the first personal pronoun ? "God made man upright; ""The Sabbath was made for man; "Unto the angels hath He not subjected this world to come . . . but... what is man;" and St. John, in the very next chapter to that quoted "He knew what was in man." Would not the Evangelist have naturally said, "dwelt in man," if he had meant human nature as an abstraction or logical universal? Again" the Apostle, denying the assumption of Angelical nature, saith likewise in the plural number' He took not Angels, but the seed of Abraham.' But "the seed of Abraham" is not "in the plural number" as it surely ought to have been, according to Hooker's canon, if the antithesis had been "the nature of angels" and the nature of men. The seed of Abraham differentiates and individualizes it. He took upon Him impersonality or prepersonality, it was an individualized and differentiated impersonality or prepersonality, namely, that "of Abraham." "The Hebrews," to whom this was written, could never understand" the seed of Abraham" as a circumlocution for "impersonal human nature." Besides, this is a direct quotation from the Book of Genesis. When God said to Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations," "all the families of the earth be blessed," did He mean, In thy impersonality or in thy prepersonality, “shal! all the nations, etc."?

If

a man's person unto His own, but a man's nature to His own person, and therefore took semen, the seed of Abraham, the very first original element of our nature, before it was come to have any personal human subsistence."-Not before "the very first original element of our nature" had become individualized as "the seed of Abraham." Moreover, "the seeds of herbs and plants" are as individual as the herbs and plants of which they are the seeds. It is true that an acorn is an oak "not in act, but in possibility; " but, for all that, no one individual oak could by "possibility" have grown from any other acorn than that particular acorn from which it" in act" did grow. The acorn from which Deborah's oak, Absalom's oak, the Boscobel oak respectively sprang, was every whit as individual and definite as the oak itself. And so as to all seeds. The grand Pauline physiology luminously assigns "to every seed his own body." Thus personality, in its common of definite individuality, cannot be disposed of by any such analogies; but on the contrary is greatly strengthened by them. Furthermore, the human nature of our Blessed Lord did not stop in an arrested" possibility; " but rose "in act" to the highest and most absolutely perfect development which is to our nature possible. "The root and the offspring of David" sprang up into the strong and stately stem, and His "branch," is "beautiful and glorious," and His "fruit" though, in one most precious sense" of the earth" is "excellent and comely." "The man Christ Jesus," or as Mr. Pope emends, "Jesus Christ," man*

sense

*"Compendium of Christian Theology." P. 274; as also in his " Person of Christ." The acute and learned author does not explain this direct reversal of the order of the words in the Greek.

did not stay in posse, but rose to the most palpable and perfect esse. "The seed of Abraham" was "the Son of Abraham."

When a theological theory can neither hold out nor retreat without trespassing on the region of clondy metaphysics and pseudo-physics, it has manoeuvered itself to a theological Sedan, and must give up its sword as gracefully as it may. Dr. Hodge, however, (" Systematic Theology." Vol. ii. P. 391,) does not scruple to summon up a dead and buried philosophy to help a bewildered theological theory in its sorest straits. Having affirmed "The Son of God did not unite

Himself with a human person, but with a human nature," he perceives that he is talking in a dead philosophical dialect; so he adds: "Realists believe that generic humanity, although intelligent and voluntary, is impersonal, existing personally, only in individual men. Although realism may not be a correct philosophy, the fact of its wide and longcontinued prevalence may be taken as a proof that it does not involve any palpable contradiction. Human nature, therefore, although endowed with intelligence and will, may be, and in fact, is, in the person of Christ impersonal."

"Hear him but reason in divinity!"

"Realism may not be a correct philosophy;"

But Realism "does not involve any palpable contradiction." *

"Human nature, therefore, in fact is, in the person of Christ impersonal"!

This is as if a theorizer in astronomy, finding that his hypothesis will not fit in with the Copernican system, should bring up

*Realism involves nothing palpable, impalpability being its main characteristic.

the Ptolemaic system, not to permanent possession, but to meet a particular emergency and then retire into the shade. But this argumentative necromancy will give neither aid nor comfort to those who resort to it in their extremity. The disquieted philosophy will yield to the perplexed speculation no more encouraging response than "To-morrow shalt thou be with me." But may not even Realism itself complain of a little exaggeration in the statement of its tenets ? Is it quite accurate to say "Realists believe that generic humanity, although intelligent and voluntary, is impersonal" ? Do they not rather say that generic intelligence and generic will are included in generic humanity? But the intelligence and the will of our Blessed Lord were not generic, but particular, as Dr. Hodge, along with all orthodox divines, maintains. The "Realists" as well as the Nominalists would tell you that the moment" generic humanity comes within the conditions of time and space, it ceases to be generic, and becomes personal. A "generic humanity" can scarcely have national, tribal, family distinctions: Be an Israelite "a Jew," as our Blessed Lord was, "of the tribe of Judah," and trace a long genealogy of personal human beings, and own a cousin in the flesh of such palpable personality as John the Baptist. How sad, if the Christ of Theology must present such a glaring contrast to the Christ of History! the Jesus of the Evangelists to the Jesus of the systematic Divines ! And this brings us to another, in our view, fatal objection to the impersonality theory as to the human nature of our Blessed Lord.

IV. Its advocates are obliged to concede in equivalent words what they deny in the particular term, and in like manner to surrender what they

affirm. They all devoutly maintain that nothing was wanting to the human nature of Christ which goes to constitute personality in the human nature of any other human being. The fact is, they are necessitated to treat the Impersonality dogma, as the Romanists treat the Infallibility dogma. Historical facts are very impracticable, but then, it is necessary to their theory. The only writer we have met with, on that side, who gives an, at first sight, forceful anticipatory reply to this objection is Dr. Hodge: "To personality, both rational substance and distinct subsistence are essential." We suppose this means that the human nature of Christ having no separate existence from the Eternal Son of God, His personality is precluded by that very fact. But does not this prove infinitely too much? The Second Person in the Trinity is no more separate or separable from "the man Christ Jesus," than "the man is separate or separable from the Son of God. If then separateness of existence be necessary to personality, the Person of Christ has no personality whatever, either human or divine.

So practically untenable is this theory, that its advocates cannot possibly adjust their language to it, excepting in the act of asserting it. Thus Dr. Hodge immediately after denying to our Lord any other than

66

a generic humanity," quietly proceeds to call Him "a man," just like any simple Christian who reads his New Testament unembarrassed by any of these subtleties.

V. As to the perilousness of the phrase, its hazardous proximity to error, its superior adaptation to many forms of misbelief than to the not very clear conception to which its advocates would affix it, we need not do more than refer our readers to our notice of the first edition of

We

Mr. Pope's noble Lecture.* will only add that a theological term is very inconvenient of which that may with truth be spoken which the Egyptian peasant said of Cleopatra's "pretty worm of Nilus," "Look you," it "is not to be trusted but in the keeping of wise people." We will add with the cautious clown, We "would not be the party that should desire you to touch" it.

VI. This phrase is at once too explicit and too vague. It is historically the result of an attempt to map out the mystery of the Incarnation and to expose the anatomy of the union of the two natures in the One indivisible Person of Christ. The historical objection to the term, seems to us very grave. It is surely impossible to read the details of those medieval and modern speculations which have led on the phrase, as given by Dorner, (Doctrine of the Person of Christ, passim,) without being struck with the endless confusions, oscillations and contradictions into which the acutest dogmaticians have been driven by this unwise attempt to articulate the unspeakable, and to define the inscrutable, the attempt to lay bare the point of connection (the Nisus) between the two natures in the One Person of Christ. But our strongest objection is the absence of any firm Scripture warrant for the phrase. The clear Scripture doctrine is that the personality of the God man is a Divine-human personality. Is it possible to withdraw the personality from nature and confine it to the other, without coming into collision with Christ's own consciousness, as revealed in His own modes of speaking of Himself? Surely where the "I" is the personality cannot be

one

* See this Magazine, for November, 1871.

absent. Christ, speaking out of His own consciousness, says "I the Son of man," as well as "I and My Father are one." The New Testament representation of the Person of Christ is not the personal Son of God-plus an impersonal human nature-whatever that may imaginably be. Christ's own modes of expression should surely outweigh all the expedients, arising out of the exigences, of speculative theology. The object of these able and reverential divines is plain. They are anxious to guard against a dualistic theory of the Person of Christ, and to secure, as Mr. Pope well puts it, "the individuality of the Person Who unites the two natures.” (P. 157.) how indivisibility is guaranteed, by drawing the line of personality round the Divine nature, leaving the human nature outside that line, we cannot conceive.

But

It

What then is Theological science to do when it finds itself at a loss for a word to express a fact revealed in Scripture, but not named ? must content itself with using a short, clear, safe sentence, instead of a long, vague, easily misleading word, which fits error more closely than it fits the truth. Theological science, like all other science, must know its limits and respect them. It must set the physical science of the nineteenth century an example of that modesty and humility of which the latter, in the mouths and pens of some of its most ingenious setters forth, is so deplorably and discreditably deficient. Hooker has given a simple statement of the mysterious verity as taught in Scripture; but unhappily was not content to stop at the point where Scripture stops. He says "His making and taking to Himself our flesh was but one act." That is true; and a quite sufficient barrier against the Nestorian heresy, the recoil from which has made the

theological pendulum swing so startlingly in the misty direction of Scotus Erigena, Schleiermacher, Schelling and Hegel. Hooker had, but two paragraphs before, both described and rebuked his own extravagance. On the very subject of the Person of Christ, he says “Because this Divine mystery is more true than plain, divers, having framed the same to their own conceits and fancies, are found in their expositions thereof, more plain than true."

It must not be supposed that this question is remote from personal experience. One of the strongest consolations of our holy religion is that expressed in the living oracle In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren." The time-honoured reservation has been "sin only excepted." But if the dogma of the impersonality of our Lord's human nature be admitted as true, we must substitute for "only"" and personality:" sin and personality excepted. The tendency of the doctrine to distance Christ from His people is traceable in the best writers who have lent it any countenance. We cannot but think that even Mr. Pope presses too far a solitary incident in the Gospel narrative, when he says" He (Christ) prays; but does not kneel with His disciples, who stand apart." We meet with nothing in the Gospels which could support such a statement as this. And, a priori, what an unlikely supposition! Why should He make such a marked difference between His own intimate disciples

and His unbelieving fellow-townsmen at Nazareth? Or did He Who submitted to baptism, disturb the worship of the synagogue, there and elsewhere, by going in and out to avoid the prayers, which were intermingled with the reading and the expositions? The Epistle to the Hebrews points especially to His free participation in public worship, as well as His fraternal instructions, as amongst the strongest proofs of the reality and completeness of His holy manhood, "Saying, I will declare Thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto Thee."

Against the promulgation of the dogma of a merely "generic," "not definite, individual human nature," our Lord might Himself protest: "I was born of woman, and drew milk As sweet as charity from human breasts;

I think, articulate, I smile and weep, And exercise all functions of a man. Why then should I and any man that lives

Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein,

Take of the crimson stream meandering there,

And catechise it well; apply thy glass, Search it, and prove now if it be not blood,

Congenial with thine own."

We regret that our limits will not admit of reference to other recent writers on the Person of Christ, especially Liddon's superb Bampton Lecture and the very well written, but not so well reasoned, work of our acute old friend the Rev. Nathan Rouse, on The Humanity of Christ.

been made by the finding of an Egyptian Medical Treatise written fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. The papyrus on