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the notice of those who have ransacked the classics for fragmentary and erroneous allusions to economic science. In the picture of the origin of society found in the book of Genesis man is first represented in the primitive paradisaical state, conscious of no artificial wants and supplying his few natural wants from the gratuitous productious of tropical nature. He eats of the tree of knowledge, and, by this means, becomes conscious of his simplest artificial want and of the necessity of supplying it by making nature serviceable. He passes to the state of actual development, with the primitive paradise behind him and a restored paradise, as the ever receding goal of his progress, in the indefinite future before him, and it is here that the injunction is laid upon him, or the law is written within him, the fulfillment of which involves his whole economic development, the command, namely, to "replenish the earth and subdue it,"

ARTICLE X-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST.*-The purpose of these lectures is to employ the teachings of Scripture concerning the humiliation of the Son of God, as an aid in the formation of just views respecting Christ's person, experience, and work, and in the criticism of Christological and Soteriological theories. In the first lecture the doctrine of the New Testament respecting the humiliation is ascertained, especially from Philippians ii, 5-9, and from the epistle to the Hebrews. He educes the following:

1. The pre-existence of a divine personality, capable of freely performing the act of "kenosis." (Phil. ii, 7.)

2. This act involves a change of state: an exchange, relative or absolute, of the form of God for the form of a servant.

3. This does not mean self-extinction, or the metamorphosis of a Divine Being into a man; the personality remains the same.

4. The humiliation (Phil. ii, 8) is a perseverance in the mind which led to the "kenosis," and implies the identity and continued self-consciousness of the subject.

5. Christ's life on earth was a life of service.

6. In the "kenosis" and the humiliation Christ was a free agent; he did not merely experience them, he emptied himself, he hum

bled himself.

7. The service which Christ came to render involved likeness tó men in all possible respects, both in nature and experience.

8. Christ's whole state of exinanition was not only worthy to be rewarded by a subsequent state of exaltation, but was itself invested with moral sublimity and dignity.

Guided by these principles, he proceeds to consider what the whole state of humiliation is in three aspects: the physical, the ethical, and the soteriological.

To the discussion of the physical aspect three lectures are

*The Humiliation of Christ, in its physical, ethical, and official aspects. The Sixth Series of the Cunningham Lectures. By ALEX. B. BRUCE, D.D., Professor of Divinity, Free Church College, Glasgow. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, George street. 1876. New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, 743 and 745 Broadway. 8vo, pp. xii, and 502. Price $6.00.

devoted. The method of the author is the statement and criticism of the doctrines and controversies on the subject from the time of the Council of Chalcedon, when the Christology of the ancient church took final shape, until now. These three lectures treat successively the Patristic Christology; the Lutheran Christology, and the Reformed; the modern Kenotic theories, especially those of Thomasius, Gess, Ebrand, and Martensen.

In the fifth lecture the ethical aspect of the humiliation is discussed in the same method. The discussion has special reference to the possibility of temptation and of moral development.

In the last lecture the Soteriological aspect is discussed in the same method. In this lecture the author considers chiefly the more recent theories of atonement.

The mass of learning in these lectures overlays the author's own thought, and we rise from the perusal with a confused and feeble impression of the points which he himself would make. Our readers are aware, from their studies in ecclesiastical history, that at different periods the discussion of the constitution of the Godman has degenerated into a bewildering tenuity and maziness. Here in five lectures we are led through the successive eras of this discussion from Hilary to Edward Irving. The most vivid impression left on our mind is that our wisdom consists in accepting the fact of the Incarnation and its sublime practical significance as set forth in the Scriptures, and in not attempting to answer the question of Nicodemus: "How can these things be?" by an exact psychological and physiological definition of the "Word made flesh." It emphasizes the caution given by theologians of different periods. Says Prof. Hill, formerly of St. Andrews: "When men began to speculate concerning the manner of that union which the Scriptures teach us to believe, they soon went far beyond the measure of information which the Scriptures afford. They multiplied words without having clear ideas; their meaning, being never perfectly apprehended by themselves, was readily misunderstood by others; and the controversies on this point, which at the beginning involved a fundamental article of the Christian faith, degenerated at last into a verbal dispute, conducted with much acrimony in the mere jargon of metaphysics." Says Richard Hooker: "Howbeit 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." Says Doderlein, as he opens this

topic: "We have reached a field, which we have long been dreading, ample for crops, yet sown and tangled with briers and difficulties, the seeds of which have been sown broadcast by the fruitful ingenuity of theologians and nourished by the heats of councils and synods, mingled with the tempests of anathemascrops which many good men seem to think ought to be cut down, or, if the sacred thicket must be spared, that it should be abandoned to theologians to cultivate and disentangle it."

MESSIANIC PROPHECY.*-This work consists of three articles on Messianic Prophecy, written by the author for Studien und Kritiken, in 1865 and 1869, with modifications here and there, giving clearer and more complete expression to his views. He includes in Messianic prophecy all predictions of the growth and final completion of God's kingdom on earth, as well as Messianic prophecy in its narrower sense; predictions of an ideal king of God's people, springing from the house of David, with whose advent the new dispensation begins. While he acknowledges supernatural revelation as the origin of the expectation of the Messiah, he also recognizes a genetic connection of the prophecy with the fundamental ideas of the Old Testament religion. "Messianic hopes might and did necessarily spring from the inmost life of the divinely revealed religion of the Old Testament dispensation. . . This ground lies in the ideas of the Old Testament religion; that is, by divine revelation ideas were planted in the minds of the people of Israel, so lofty, and rich, and deep, that in the existing religious condition they could never see their perfect realization; ideas which, with every step in the development of the religious life and knowledge, only more fully disclosed their own depth and fulness, and which therefore necessarily led them to look to the future for their fulfillment. The more vividly pious Israelites realized the contrast between the idea and the reality .... the more their faith, and hopes, and desires looked to the future abolition of this contrast, and the complete realization of the idea." He discusses, as the most influential, these three: the

....

* Messianic Prophecy: Its Origin, Historical Character, and relation to New Testament Fulfillment.-By Dr. EDWARD RIEHM, Professor of Theology in Halle. Translated from the German, with the approbation of the author, by Rev. JOHN JEFFERSON. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street. 1876. New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong: 743 and 745 Broadway. and 266. Price $2.50.

Crown 8vo. pp. xii,

idea of God's covenant with his chosen people, the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, and the idea of the theocracy. Thus the very existence of God's covenant people and his theocratic kingdom carries in it the prophecy and promise of the universal extension of that kingdom, and becomes the basis of Messianic expectation and prophecy. Specific prophecies of the Messiah are seen to be the legitimate outgrowth of this conception of God's chosen covenant people and his theocratic reign. Hence "Messianic prophecy forms an essential part of the utterances of the prophets. . . . No prophet neglected to point to the ultimate design of Jehovah . . . . We find generally, even in the shortest prophetic writings, a portion of Messianic prediction."

The author recognizes a great variety both in the contents and forms of the predictions. No one prophecy presents the Messianic conception in its wholeness; one aspect is prominent here and another there; and the forms in which the Messianic conception is set forth are as varied. This variety is partly due to the peculiarities of the prophet; but much more to the limiting influence of the historical conditions of the time on the contents of the predic tions of each prophet. The latter influence the author exemplifies at considerable length.

The third section traces the relation of Messianic prophecy to New Testament fulfillment.

Perhaps the author gives too much prominence to the "human element" in his explanations. But the work is of great value as showing a reasonable basis for the interpretation of the Old Testament, as pervaded with Messianic prophecy. To those who have been taught to study Messianic prophecy by selecting a few passages here and there, declared to be Messianic solely because specifically quoted as such in the New Testament, the course of thought suggested by the author will give liberation, enlargement of view, and great relief.

PRIESTHOOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.*-This work consists of eight lectures, being the Congregational Union Lectures for 1876. They are designed to prove that in the gospel dispensation there is no official human priesthood analogous to that of Judaism, and to vindicate the inalienable spiritual priest

* Priesthood in the light of the New Testament. The Congregational Union Lec. ture for 1876. By E. MELLOR, D.D. A. S. Barnes & Co. New York, Chicago and New Orleans. 1876. 8vo, pp. 423. Price $4.00. Sent by mail postpaid.

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