which is based merely upon subjective views of religion, or upon partial and limited views of its tendencies and effects, it only remains for us to consider whether there be any objective truth which realises in its form and its subjective operation upon the mind of the faithful recipient, what was akin to truth in the speculations of Gentile philosophy, and in the corrupt systems of heathen mythology, as well as the inspired predictions and anticipations of patriarchs and prophets?

The results of the speculations of heathen philosophy show that pride and sensuality are the two extreme forms of evil between which the nature of man, when left to itself, oscillates continually; that man, when he ceases to be the slave of his passions, becomes too readily a god to himself; and the distinctive teaching of the opposite schools of Gentilism proceeded accordingly upon the principle of indulging one of these tendencies and thereby counteracting the effects of the other. This is the explanation of the opposite conceptions of the highest good by which men were actuated either to aspire to equality with the Deity, or, with Epicurus, to view Him as indifferent to the acts of His creatures, who were thus left to the unrestrained indulgence of the natural propensities in the other direction. Between these extreme views the better heathen moralists, as Aristotle and Plato, were guided by the light of natural religion into that via media view of subjective truth which enabled them to adjust the balance of these conflicting tendencies; and at the same time that they recognised the contemplation of an eternal object as the highest good of man (the highest that could be presented to the understanding), to connect with this, as tending towards its ultimate attainment, the practice of moral virtue, according to the voice of natural conscience suggesting the probability of a future state of rewards and punishments; according also to the appreciable tendency of God's natural providence towards the reward of the good and the punishment of the bad.f

When, again, we turn to the traditional notices of objective truth which heathen mythology embodied, it is easy to discern in the practice of demonolatry, which constituted the basis of Gentile worship, a distinct and universal recognition, amid whatever perversions, of the fundamental idea of the union of God and man in the persons of the dæmons (corresponding to the avatars of Hindoo mythology), to whom was assigned the office of mediation between the Supreme Deity and His reasonable creatures. Such was

f Cf. Butler's Analogy, part i. ch. iii.

8 The well-known passages, Hesiod. Op. et Dier., i. 120, and Plato, Sympos. $ 27 (vol. v., Bekk. 1826), may be referred to. The recognition by St. Paul of the idea of mediation in connexion with dæmon-worship, appears from his juxtaposition

the universal, however obscure, prefiguration which Gentilism exhibited of the idea of God incarnate for the deliverance of man, through the process of mediation, from the opposed forms of evil to which he is exposed; and thus might the virtuous heathen, who used the measure of light afforded him and responded to the law of God written in his heart, find expression in such language as St. Paul puts into the mouth of the unregenerate man seeking deliverance from the tyranny of the carnal will," and be justified by implicit faith in an object which, though not externally revealed, he was taught dimly to apprehend as the 'desire of all nations.'

In the greater light which revelation affords, the convergence of the whole and every part of the Old Testament dispensation towards one great objective reality, consummated in the mystery of the incarnation, is obvious to every well-instructed Christian. When from our survey of the gradual development of this idea under the patriarchal and Mosaic economies, in the continuous train of types and prophecies growing in clearness and minuteness of detail until in the 'fulness of time' they meet and centre in the person and mediatorial offices of Jesus Christ, we turn to the list of worthies who, in the Epistles to the Hebrews, are commended as memorable examples of the genuine operation of that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen-we find that it was not to transitory promises that their implicit faith had reference. When, for instance, Abel offered unto God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, it was because by it, he being dead,' would leave on record, in the blood of his accepted sacrifice, the expressed testimony of his faith in the promise that the divine seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, should by death destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. Thus was Abraham justified by implicit faith in the same substantial 'promise' which, as St. Paul declares, was to him the Gospel in germ; his faith being directed to a divine object which he rejoiced to see' afar off, the death and resurrection of the future victim (and his consequent office of mediation) being prefigured in the mystical sacrifice, and the return again 'as in a figure to life, of the Beloved Son of the promise; whilst the site of the prospective sacrifice and the materials carried by the mystical victim, joined in completing the correspondence of the type and antitype. The same essential idea may be traced, whilst

of the Lord's Supper with the things which the Gentiles sacrificed to dæmons (1 Cor. x. 14. 20, 21). In both cases there was the idea of a sacrifice, and a feast upon a sacrifice; in the former, communion with Christ through the sacramental elements which represented His one sacrifice upon the cross; in the latter, a corresponding communion with the dæmon, who was thereby supposed to be propitiated. h Rom. vii. 22, 23. i Chap. xi.

* Gal. iii. 8. ἡ γραφὴ - προευηγγελίσατο τῷ ̓Αβραάμ.

it was yet undeveloped, in all the various types and details of the ancient economy, in Moses, Joshua, David, and their successors. These holy men of old typified in their deeds and persons the several functions of his mediation, the full revelation of the will of God, which, as a prophet in the highest and most eminent sense, He should convey to the future people of God; their conquests, for instance, typifying those by which, as the anointed 'Son of David,' He should acquire the throne which a spiritual seed should also inherit in its proper seat, the heavenly Canaan, into which, as the Holy of Holies, He has also entered as an eternal High Priest; dispensing through His meritorious intercession the blessings of pardon and grace, and repeating the several functions of His threefold mediatorial offices through the 'ministration of the Spirit'm which He has sent to inhabit and to organise His mystical body until it shall have arrived at the measure of the stature of the fulness of CHRIST.'

It is thus that in the Christian dispensation we see the divine purposes towards man fully developed in the great fact of the Incarnation, the centre of the manifold cycles of types and prophecies, of miracles and parables in connexion with which it is there presented to us. Explicit faith in this objective truth (comprising necessarily in the same view the reception of the doctrine of Christ's mediation) now holds the place of that implicit belief by which the faithful of old were justified, who, without us, could not be perfected." And since it is in the Gospels that this idea is exhibited under the final form in which it is there historically presented to us, it follows from the catholicity which is the attribute of Christianity, that this form must not merely be adapted to the Jewish and Gentile minds, according to the various phases and attitudes in which those minds presented themselves to view at the first publication of Christianity, and of these its historical records. That adaptation must, from the nature of the case, be extended throughout the whole interval of time between the first and second advents, so as to comprehend, in its ever-widening cycle of manifold applicability, generation after generation, until at the second visible coming of Christ (of which the Incarnation is the germ, and with which accordingly it is closely associated in the teaching of Scripture and of the Church) the divine purpose in the Gospels shall have been fulfilled.

m 2 Cor. iii. 8.

n That the Teλelwois of Christians arises from their faith being directed to the incarnation and mediation of Christ, of which the Promise was the germ and the Law the shadow, is one of the grand points of the Epistle to the Hebrews. See ch, vii. 11. 19; ix. 9; x. 1. 14; and xi. 40.

• As in the Collects, &c., and proper Lessons appointed for the Season of Advent, in the service of the Church of England. Cf. Mal. iii. 1-5; and iv. 1, 2, 4, 5.

The course which we have pursued in opening this subject has now conducted us to the desired point of view for determining those points of analogy between the framework of the evangelical history and the constitution and course of nature and of providence, and of the general scheme of natural and revealed religion, on which depends the strength of the presumption in which the argument results. The subject now resolves itself into an analogical examination of the relative bearing of the whole and every part of these writings, on the development of the essential idea of religion in the fact of the Incarnation as there revealed, and of the form in which that truth is proposed to the acceptance of the different classes and characters of which mankind is composed, viewed in different stages of moral and intellectual development, and under the various circumstances of education, association, natural temperament, &c., which contribute, in the course of God's natural providence, to mould and fashion the human mind, and to prepare it for the full and explicit reception of revealed truth.

In the preceding remarks, the leading feature implied in the development of the divine purposes towards man in the divine economies, is the progressive character of that development by slow, successive steps towards the final result, the human mind being so constituted as to be unable to apprehend the import of facts of Christianity without requisite moral preparation and preliminary training; so that four thousand years had to elapse before the minds even of the faithful among Jews and Gentiles had been sufficiently prepared, by the combined effects of natural and revealed religion, for the full manifestation of the divinity in the person of Him who is at the same time the light of the world (reproving its darkness, as such) and the glory of the Church in which He mystically dwells. The correspondency of this feature to what we observe in nature and in providence is obvious. The law of God herein is, that the perfection of any design should be the final result only of a slow and gradual process. This law holds, e. g. in the changes of day and night and of the seasons, in the ripening of the fruits of the earth, in the growth of a plant and the training of a flower, in the development of the bodily and mental faculties. The recognition of this feature is of course implied throughout this investigation, and will be noticed both in the analytical portion of the inquiry, in which we shall endeavour to exhibit the connection of each separate part of the evangelical history with the main design, and in the synthetical portion, when the result of the former may enable us to infer, to some extent, the perfection of that design in the combined representation of the great fact of revelation which the Gospels, as a whole, present. The bearing of the logical difficulties and discrepancies in the

VOL. V. NO. IX.

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Gospels on the main design will also be considered, and their analogy to what we observe in nature and in providence, and in the general scheme of religion, pointed out in such a way as may best tend to illustrate the subject. Nothing more can, from the nature of the case, be attempted than to sketch the outline of such a view of the Gospels as may tend in some measure to elucidate that design of God, in the gift of inspiration to the Evangelists, which our preliminary discussion now leads us to infer to be as follows:-The manifestation to mankind as represented in the various classes of men to whom the Gospels were first addressed, of God incarnate, as perfect man, in the person of Jesus Christ, for the discharge of the office of a mediator, the Evangelists, in delineating His person and offices, being supposed to proceed, under the plenary inspiration of the Holy Spirit, upon the recognition in Him of the ideal type of humanity, the xaganтng or stamped copy of God, restored in a higher order of perfection than its original one; and to have exhibited Him under such aspects as might best serve to win men of every variety of character and constitution, and under all conceivable circumstances of life, to the full recognition and saving reception of the great fact of the incarnation, and herein of the doctrine of Christ's mediation.

Let us now apply the analytical method, already alluded to, to a consideration of the genealogy of Christ and the circumstances of the nativity as recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel.

Viewing this portion of the evangelical history in its adaptation primarily to the faithful Israelite, and secondarily to the Christians of every succeeding age versed in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, to which the first Gospel has a special relation, we have to point out the adaptation of the peculiar form and structure of the narrative to the natural, moral, and spiritual requirements of such minds, and its consequent tendency to develop the internal principle of faith (supposed to exist either initially or in progress) and concentrate it on its proper object.

Now when we consider the associations connected in the mind of an Israelite versed in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, (1) with Abraham, the head and representative of Israel, in whose 'loins' was contained the seed to which the Abrahamic promise had a special reference, and which was to 'grow' out of Judah, who with his brethren' represented the nation as subsequently settled in the land of their inheritance; (2) with David the King' (ver. 6), who, as such, is assimilated and even identified, in the language of the Scriptures, with the Messiah; and when we re

8

P Heb. i. 3.

9 Cf. Heb. vii. 10.

So St. Paul reasons, Gal. iii. 16, and ch. iv.

1 Sam. ii. 10; 2 Sam. xxiii. 1; Ps. ii. 2: xviii. 50, &c.