But its leading aesthetic principles may be engrafted upon almost any of the systems of the spiritual philosophy, which prevail in the present century. The effects which the author attributes to the power of an idea, or primal spiritual type of things, others may attribute to the Deity continually reproducing his works after one comprehensive, unchangeable plan. Then the plan of the creation existing in the divine mind, will take the place of ideas, and the power of God ever exerted in producing living things after their kind, will take the place of the energy of a formative idea, or of the power of the species in keeping all the individuals belonging to it within certain limits. We must confess, however, that, while we see much to admire in the theory, we are not quite satisfied with it. Whether the beauty of inorganic forms is sufficiently explained by saying that they bear some analogy to living organic forms, and that their beauty is inferior because the objects themselves are only analogous to the lat ter, may be questioned. In the lowest organizations we are to expect only the lowest order of beauty. The author admits that a poor specimen of a higher class of beings is inferior to a good one of a lower class. On the same principle, he must admit that inorganic beauty is sometimes superior to that of even highly organized forms.

He meets the most obvious objections to which his theory is exposed by saying that beauty is not the direct aim of organic life, and that the idea of utility is almost universally realized, while that of beauty is but rarely realized. Furthermore, utility attends every step of the life of living things, whereas beauty is limited to the brief moment of the flowering period. The facts are undeniable. Do they leave the theory in its full integrity? Or is the alleged limitation possibly a contradictio in adjecto? We cannot resist the conviction that this point needs further discussion. If some great writer should yet appear who should advance upon this author as much as he has advanced upon Plotinus, and in the same direction, the public mind would be satisfied that, if there is not yet a clear and well-established theory of the beautiful, there is a very hopeful movement in that way.

ARTICLE II.

UNION OF THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN IN THE EXTERNALS OF CHRISTIANITY.

BY REV. I. E. DWINELL, SALEM, MASS.

It is the object of this Article to trace and illustrate the mingling of the divine and the human in some of the externals of Christianity.

Christianity does indeed, as a life in the soul, work itself out in external results, in which results and process also there is a certain blending of the divine and the human. But it is not this part of its exterior which we are to consider. In addition to these lodgements of Christianity in the domain of sense, standing between Christians and the world, there are lodgements in it, standing between them and God, channels through which he communicates spiritual good. Among these are the Sacred Scriptures, the Church, and the Sacraments. It is the vital union of the agency of God and the agency of man in the production of this section of our religion, which furnishes the object and scope of this discussion.

It may be readily admitted by all, that there is some connection between these two agencies, in the sphere contemplated; that God furnishes an element, and man an element, in these externals. At the same time, there is no very general definite conception of the way in which these diverse forces work together to secure the desired result; nor in what proportions; nor to what extent; nor where the one leaves off, and the other begins. Some give the superiority to the divine agency, and only a subordinate, mechanical agency to the human. Others reverse the order, magnifying man's part, and depreciating God's. Others conceive of them as acting side by side, conspiring to one result, but disconnected, with an unappreciable but real gulf between them; and others, as consecutive, joining together, or seeming to do

so, for they do not absolutely touch-endwise; the one doing its part, and abruptly terminating, and then the other taking up the work and finishing it.

The true conception, as we shall endeavor to show, is very unlike any of these. According to this, the divine and the human interpenetrate and blend dynamically, in the production of the established outward elements and facts of Christianity between God and man, but in such a way that neither loses its nature or integrity. Neither overlies or crushes the freedom of the other. Each acts, and acts freely, according to its own laws; and yet both act together, interpenetrating but not fusing, one but two, two but one. The divine agency is everywhere present, but it does not extin guish or overshadow or crowd the human; and the human is equally present, but it does no violence to the divine. The divine is in the human, yet is not lost in it; the human is in the divine, yet it is still human. Their union is vital, not mechanical.

Its type is the union of the Son of God and the Son of man in Christ. He is the great fundamental, external ele ment of Christianity between God and man; and in him perfect and complete divinity and perfect and complete humanity, each in its integrity, meet and blend in one person. The divinity does not exclude everything corporeal, and make the life of Christ a continued theophany; that is Docetism. It does not crowd out the rational human soul; that is Apollinarianism. The divinity and the humanity, though side by side and joined by contact, are not separate and independent; that is Nestorianism.3 The divinity does not absorb the humanity, so that the two, though distinct and separate in origin, are in manifestation confounded, having but one nature as well as one person; that is Eustychianism, or the Monophysite doctrine. Nei

1 Neander, Church History, Vol. I. p. 386; Hase, Church History, § 37; Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, § 98.

2 Hase, § 104; Hagenbach, § 99.

3 Neander, Vol. II. p. 450; Hase, § 113; Hagenbach, § 100.

4 Neander, Vol. II. p. 506; Hase, § 114; Hagenbach, § 101.

ther does the humanity expel the divinity, and leave Christ a mere man, however miraculously endowed; that is Socinianism. Nor does it, in any way, emphasize itself at the expense of the divinity, producing a doctrine lying anywhere between the wide extremes of the highest Unitarianism and the lowest Rationalism. All these errors, one after another, has the church thrown off as unscriptural and unsound, as it has steadily but slowly gravitated through the conflicts of opinion towards the true doctrine, under the influence of the Spirit, who is promised to guide into the whole circle of gospel truth; and it rests in the position that both natures interpenetrate and coöperate, each in its integrity, in a living, personal union. The divinity and the humanity are fused into one person, not one nature, in such a way that, without substantial change, in either, of any kind, of addition or abatement, the divinity is divinity still; the humanity, humanity still.

With what propriety, therefore, are the subordinate, impersonal, external elements of Christianity, the institutions between God and men for the delivery of spiritual blessings from the former to the latter, produced in a similar way, by a vital union and coöperation of divine and human forces; each losing nothing of its identity or individuality. They are, in this respect, like their Head-and it is meet. In them, as in Christ, two diverse forces, a divine and a human, coalesce and retain their individuality, by one of those mysterious vital processes by which elements of a different kind are taken up and held together in a living union.

But there is something more than correspondence and propriety, that furnishes the ground for this mingling of the divine and the human in these outward and established elements of the gospel. The ground is deeper, and is substantially the same with the exception of the relation of this latter to an atonement as led to the incarnation of the Son of God. "The fact of God's becoming man," says Neander," 3 is in order to the humanization of the divine, and the

Hase. § 372; Hagenbach, § 234. 3 Church History, Vol. I. p. 507.

2 John 16: 13.

deification of the human;" by which he evidently does not mean a result involving the loss or absorption of the properties of either the divine or the human-his whole theology precludes this supposition - but their most intimate union, under a vital bond. It is the very object of religion itself to bridge over the separation between God and man. It is evident, therefore, that, while one of the piers must be in heaven, and the other on the earth, there must be a mingling of the divine and human agencies by which the material structures are thrown over from the one to the other. There is, thus, in the highway between the parties, along which devout exercises and gracious influences are intended to travel up and down, something belonging to each of them, blended inseparably together; a symbol of the nature of the gospel itself; a prophecy of its results. It would be unnatural and incongruous, a procedure torn away from the analogy and fitness of things in the kingdom of God, if he should cause the organs of communication between him and men to be, either wholly the product of one of the parties, or of the two joining their efforts mechanically and separably; so that, on the one side or the other, the communication should fall bluntly upon a channel, in origin and structure wholly unlike itself; -the influences from God, issuing from the world of pure spirit, and abruptly striking on organs entirely human; or the aspirations and exercises of man, impinging suddenly on media having nothing human about them, nothing to graduate and ease the transition. These externals must be born of God, that the Spirit of God may be at home on them; of man, that he may find in them his own kindred; of God and man, in vital concert, that there may be no difficult and abrupt transition from the part contributed by the one to that by the other, defeating or impairing either of these results.

The ground of this union, therefore, is in the nature and object of religion itself, which is, to unite God and man. There is an additional reason for this union. It lies in the effectiveness of the instrumentalities. There must be a divine element in them to win respect,

confidence, rev