balism and human sacrifices; we need only appeal to consciousness. For life is sensible of its want and degradation -it feels that it is not what it should be · what it was de

signed to be. "A gloomy pain often shoots across its joylit countenance; in the midst of its loudest jubilee is heard, not seldom, a low but heart-breaking wail of sadness . . . . It is the voice of a noble captive who sighs after freedom, and to whom, day and night, there is present an unsleeping thought-I am more than a beating pulse, a temporary tension of the nerves; I am a being made for life, and effort, and energy, destined to independent existence; but I am a disinherited and wronged heir, a poor fettered slave-to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. Oh, wretched creature that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Thus does life plainly give to be known its wants and its emptiness. It asks for the supply of its needs, and for deliverance from all these evils. Where is deliverance to be found? Who shall be its redeemer? Shall it be nature, art, philosophy, civilization? All these have been tried and found wanting. As a certain writer has expressed it, "Experience has perfected the faculties and increased the powers of man-a thousand inventions and discoveries have added to his natural capabilities-improvements of every kind, the growth of arts, the increase of knowledge, the experience of accumulated ages, all is indicative of progress to the present time; in one thing only there is no progression-man has found no defence, no security from sorrow." But cannot morality be a savior? Surely nothing is wanting to life but adherence to the rules of a pure system of ethics. But, alas! the evil is too deep to be reached by such a remedy. It needs an inward cure, not an outward law. "Morality stands like a dry twig in the midst of green, fresh life, hung with clattering, categori cal imperatives, which certainly scare away some sparrows from the wheat, but make not a stalk to grow. An external harmony between the life and the commandment can morality produce, but no internal; it can only demand obediency, not work it in the heart. Not he who does right, but he who loves it, is the righteous man, and this love morality cannot produce.'

Where, then, shall life find a saviour? If we turn to it,

*An allusion to Kant's system.

once more, and inquire on what side its misery and want are greatest, we shall find it to be on the religious side, that is, in its relations to God. Plainly, then, from that side must come its help; yes, from the living love of God alone can come restoration and redemption for man. In casting our eyes back on history, we discover one being who forms an exception to the rest of men - who seems of them and yet above them-who sheds around him illumination and healing, and yet whose life is, in one sense, a natural development and product of humanity. That being is Jesus Christ. "The world has seen no fresher, fuller, fairer, and purer life. Here, no sense of guilt troubles the clear mirror of consciousness; no impure thought, no bad act disturbs the inner peace. Here, the activity has nothing about it morose, lame, halt, weak; here, no good intention sighs over its nonfulfilment, no significant moment waits in vain for its filling up; here, on the contrary, is perfect fullness, harmony, truth, dignity, earnestness, joy; here is a clearly-stamped being and working-a life throughout true and up-grown to its Idea." It is the spontaneous development of an inner lawa natural product of the hidden life-it is founded in freedom, and not in any thing forced, accidental, or external.

And what it is, that does it likewise produce. From Christ, as from a living centre, have flowed forth streams of heavenly influence over the whole earth. His life is not shut up in himself, it is diffusive, it has gone abroad, thousands have been partakers of it, and thus has been formed a community, bound together as one body. In this living union with the Redeemer the soul finds what it needed, protection from all evils, strength and help to all goodness. It finds healing, well-being, redemption. This is the prerogative of the religion of Jesus; the peculiar and distinguishing element of Christianity is found in its redemptive power. The whole of scripture turns on the idea of redemption as on an axis.

*

* The author constantly employs a word in this part of his work which has no adequate representative in our language. It is heil, which means, literally and primarily, healing. The words restoration, recovery, redemption, are our nearest approximations to it, but none of them expresses it, uniting, as it does, the idea of present well-being, with that of deliverance from ill. The facility with which the German language admits the formation of compound words, gives it a vast advantage over the English, and enables the author to express, in a single word, what we are obliged to convey by a long periphrasis. Thus, when he would say that the Christian religion provides redemption, or healing, for man, that Platonism aims at it, and that Judaism expects it, he does it by the use of the three words, heilskraftige, heilbezweckende, and heilerwartende.

NO. XVIII.-VOL. IX.

45

The Old Testament is the history of loss, ruin-of what constitutes the need of redemption, of departure from God; the New Testament describes the way of return, recovery, restoration. The text of the Old is, "The wages of sin is death;" that of the New, "but the gift of God is eternal life." A reception of the first truth is absolutely necessary as a preparation for the second. Therefore is it that Christianity insists so much on sin, and regards it in so different a light from that in which it is viewed by men, as not consisting in single outward acts, but as vested in the inner nature, and governing the affections and will. This state of subjec tion to sin, and of dominant sense, the scriptures indicate by the word flesh, in speaking of the individual; in relation to the common life of the species they call it world. Between the flesh and the world on one side, and Christianity on the other, there can never exist any other relation than that of irreconcilable hostility. The receptivity for spiritual and redemptive influences on the part of man, is faith; and the result of such influences, in other words, the object of redemption, is to bring the soul into a filial relation to God-to make it a partaker of the divine nature. This could never have been effected but through a personal, incarnate, living Redeemer: "The Word became flesh," says the evangelist. The historical facts relating to the person, miracles, life, death, and resurrection of our Saviour, are an integral, and absolutely essential part of Christianity; they are its very root and ground.

Let us now turn to Platonism, and see what elements can be traced in it congenial to Christianity. And here it may be necessary to caution the reader unacquainted with the subject, against expecting too obvious and distinct a resemblance. When we are told that Plato's writings were held in such high estimation by the early fathers of the church; that they observed so striking a resemblance between many points in his system and the teachings of the Old Testament, as seemed to them to require the supposition of his having borrowed from the Jewish scriptures, while Celsus reverses the allegation, and impiously declares that Christ has bor

* Justin and some others explained the fact in a different way. The more glorious manifestation of the divine logos, they said, was made in Christ, but long before his appearance in the flesh scattered beams of his light were diffused over the earth, enlightening not only the patriarchs of the old covenant, but the wise and pious among the heathen, and thereby fitting them for eternal life.

rowed from Plato-when the names of Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, and Augustin, are found among his admirers, and when Eusebius names him "the only Greek who has penetrated into the ante-chamber of Christian truth"-we are prepared to find numerous and striking points of resemblance between the two systems, and to expect at least an imperfect fore-shadowing of the religion of Jesus in the doctrines of the divine philosopher. But it should be remembered, that the opinions of the fathers, especially those of the eastern church, were influenced by early studies. Educated in the Platonic philosophy, they naturally continued to regard it with indulgence after they had become acquainted with a purer system. Their very surprise at finding any harmony between the doctrines of a heathen sage and those of the founder of Christianity, would lead them unconsciously to exaggerate the resemblance. But the agreement we are to expect, as Ackermann leads us to observe, is one not of particular features, but in the general spirit. And it is not difficult to understand that Platonism, by the subjugation of sense to reason which it required, by the emancipation of the purely spiritual in man from the fetters of the material, and from the gross conceptions of the lower nature, which it demanded, and especially by its lofty requisitions of a pure morality, might have prepared the minds of its disciples for the still more spiritual and exalted requirements of Christianity; and that, notwithstanding, when adhered to with too pertinacious an attachment, and allowed to modify and remould the doctrines of Jesus, it might have interfered with a reception of them in their integrity and simplicity, and might have aided in the introduction of some of those "heresies" which were so liberally charged upon it. Yet it would be well to remember, that most of these errors are chargeable upon the new Platonists, and should by no means be confounded with the genuine doctrines of the original system.

To return now to our author. In his view, the resemblance and the difference between the two systems may be expressed by saying, that Platonism aims at what Christianity accomplishes. Christianity redeems man; Platonism seeks to redeem him. This feature of Platonism points to its teleological character, which is very strongly marked. Its whole aim, tendency and spirit, is teleological. To this it owes its elevated and noble character; for that system must needs be elevated, which, looking out upon the world,

passes over the objects and movements which fill up the foreground, and seeks and finds, in the distant horizon, the point towards which they all tend. It is this which makes the system of Plato so admirable, that it does not become a limit to its author to keep him from going farther; "His knowing and willing surpasses his power of thinking; his God is greater than his philosophy." The universe is one harmonious whole, in which every thing has its place, and this place is regulated by its relation of nearness or distance to God. Thus, in Platonism, too, as in Christianity, the teleological is immediately connected with the theological, and, indeed, passes into it. For the conception of an aim includes that of a will which proposes the aim. And since Plato's inquiring mind was directed, not merely to the knowledge of single ends in nature and human life, but to the one final end, towards which the great whole tends, he was naturally led to the recognition of the will which embraces this whole, and has moulded and guided it to its end. From this teleological view of the world, Plato deduces not only the exist ence, but the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Divine Being.

Here, then, is the point where the inward relationship of the Platonic to the Christian theology becomes apparent. It looks out upon the world with a Christian eye, views the whole system of things as tending towards a divinely preappointed end, and seeks to advance that end. In this feature it stands quite alone; for it is almost the only system of philosophy that unites, with a genuine scientific character, a truly religious idea of its proper calling and aim. If the teleological cast of Platonism has thus introduced us to its theology, it has revealed to us the whole origin and development of its author's theory of redemption, and we can comprehend his ascribing such a regenerating power to the knowledge of the true and the good. For the same union which exists between power and wisdom in the Divine Being, must exist also in its human reflection; since wisdom is one and the same in its essence, whether it appear as an attribute of God, or under the form and conditions of human intelligence. From this point we discover, in their natural order and connection, the resemblances between Platonism and Christianity, in their starting point, their means, and their

end.

1. The point of departure in both is the need of redemp