it has been attempted to construct the idea of God speculatively from a subordinate and incomplete stand-point, commencing with the extreme abstraction of the Eleatic philosophy, and taking other schemes afterwards in the order of their approximation towards the proper fulness of the idea in its perfect form. This criticism sets aside as unsatisfactory the schemes of Schleiermacher and Hegel, and also the metaphysics of the older Protestant theology, (in which God is defined as mera et simplicissima essentia,) as well as the "absolute substance" of Spinoza. Having brought this task to a close, the author finds the way fairly and fully open for the positive presentation of his own scheme or system, and to that object accordingly the latter part of his work is mainly devoted.

In this we shall not pretend to follow him here, even with the most general sketch; for our limits forbid anything like a satisfactory report of his argument in this form; and it would not be right, in the case of so deep and difficult a subject, to hazard either the credit of the book or the claims of truth, on any merely cursory and fragmentary representation, in which terms and propositions must be continually in danger of being taken either in a wrong sense or it may be in no sense at all. Our chief purpose has been, in connection with the book, to call attention to the deeply significant interest of its subject; and with its help to set forth in a general way the nature of this subject, the character and sense of the christological question or problem, as it now enters particularly into the very life of the Church, practical as well as theoretical, and from all sides loudly claims due audience and response.

There can be no doubt, but that this work of Professor Liebner forms a most valuable addition to modern scientific theology. It is the fruit of most profound and vigorous thought, upheld and replenished throughout by the most comprehensive learning. It is not for the superficial, or for such as take no earnest interest in theology; for whom all severe thinking in this direction is a burden, who will have it that all theology is at an end, and who are ready to cry down for this reason as transcendental mystification whatever goes ever so little beyond the poorest commonplace categories that happen to have become lodged in their own brain; caring not to see, and in their blindness having no power to see, that these same easy categories involve at bottom the very essence of rationalism itself. Liebner's book, we say, is for no such readers; nor are such ever likely to travel far into its pages. But theology, thank God, is not yet given up to the mercy of this lackadaisical school. It is still with many a living

science, as religion also is for them not merely a dead mechani cal tradition, but the most concrete and earnest among the interests of life. Such will be prepared to hail the appearance of this great work, as well as of every other, which seeks under the guidance of a truly evangelical spirit to carry the torch of science into the farthest depths of the kingdom of God. to be regretted at the same time, that the work is by no means as clear in its style and form, as the richness of its contents deserves. It is far enough from being loose or unscientific in its method; it is pervaded with principial unity and rigid logical connection throughout; but still the method is a good deal involved, and such as it costs more effort than the case necessarily required to keep steadily in sight. The style moreover is a good deal cumbersome and hard, abounding in long complicated sentences, with all sorts of parenthetic interruption-making it necessary for the reader to keep his attention continually on the stretch, and often to read backwards as well as forwards, in order to get with safe intelligence at all to the end of the tangled labyrinth of words with which he finds himself surrounded. A better literary form, in the general view now noticed, would serve materially to assist the influence and credit which it so well deserves to carry with it on other grounds.

We find in the August and September numbers of Reuter's Repertorium, published in Berlin, an additional contribution to the literature of this great subject from the pen of Professor Liebner, in reply to some strictures made on his book in another journal by the distinguished Lutheran theologian, Dr. Thomasius; of whose labors in the same department, (for he also has written a special treatise it seems on the constitution of Christ's person,) Liebner in his book speaks with the highest respect, though he calls in question their full success. The difference

and controversy turn on the view taken of the Trinity, on the question concerning the necessity of the Divine Incarnation, and on the way of carrying out the doctrine of the xvwo or Inanition of the Logos.

Liebner takes up first the second point, which he considers of primary account for the present state of theology, and towards which the main stress of objection from the other side would appear to be directed. He complains however, that Thomasius enters but little into the real merits of the question; which indeed is hardly allowed even to come into view clearly in his criticism. "The question relates to the proposition, that Humanity is made with reference to Christ; or in other words that the free act of creation draws after it with necessity the mystery

of the incarnation; that these two facts go to make up one whole self-revelation of God in the world: an idea, whose germ is presented to us in the Bible, particularly by St. Paul, and which has had its patrons in a whole succession of church divines in ancient, middle, and modern times. Thomasius however thinks it enough to bring forward one single formula, employed by me to express the thought, which he finds not to his mind, and then dismisses with the vague charge of pantheismin the style of too many of our otherwise respectable theologians, who are accustomed to dispose summarily of all that squares not with their own habit by some similar dogmatically sweeping note. All the rest of my book bearing on the point, the pains in particular that are taken to show that the idea in question is grounded in the constitution of Christianity, and in full harmony with the christian conceptions of God, of the creation, and of the moral liberty of man forming indeed the key that is necessary to unlock the inmost sense of the whole; all this, I say, he hides from the eyes of his readers as well as from his own. This is a grief to me, I say it honestly, not so much on my own account, as for the sake especially of those Lutheran readers, who look mainly to the excellent journal here in hand for information, but in this case must be led wholly astray-in regard to a book which to them especially would fain not continue unknown."

It may be worth while here to follow the article briefly, in its attempt to show particularly, "that the christian doctrine of sin can not be carried out rightly on all sides, without the idea of the necessity of the incarnation, and so of the original and essential relation of Christ to humanity, even in its first creation, and without regard to sin or its removal."

Two points require to be secured in the christian doctrine of sin, the freedom of man on the one side, and the fact that God is not the author of it on the other. But now the unity of God's plan of the world seems to require, that sin, which opens the way for redemption, the centre of all God's counsels in regard to the world and the end of all his revelations, should for this very reason enter into this plan and be included in the aim and purpose (divine teleology) of the world as a whole. Here arise vast difficulties, from which there can be no full escape without the intervention of some new principle, that may serve to set in

'The fault of some respectable theologians also in our own wise and free America, as well as of some who are not very respectable.

harmony the seemingly discordant views from which they spring. This help is found actually, according to Professor Liebner, in the idea just stated, and nowhere else.

The end of man's creation is full communion with God himself. This is religion in its highest and most absolute form; which thus becomes the end of the whole creation, whose last sense is man. A failure in this object must be taken then as a failure of the whole creation, so far as this world is concerned. To an unconditional realization of such absolute religion however, man's life is conducted only in the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, that is in the central and universal person of the true and real God-man, who just in this way completes the process of God's self-communication, the sense of all his revelations, as the completion of humanity itself; he is the personal absolute religion. The incarnation becomes thus the absolute and unconditional centre of God's free purposes of love towards the world; or which is the same thing, the real centre and hinge of all history. This hinders not the entrance of sin, by the free act of Adam, and its settlement in the general life of the race; but however the billows of that awful curse may triumph in every other quarter, on this rock in the end they must break. The membership of the race might fail, in the necessary exercise of its own freedom; there was security still in the head, that in such contingency the whole ethical idea of the world, as this lay in the mind of God when he called it into being, should not fail, but be carried forward notwithstanding to its triumphant conclusion. The destiny of man stood safe in the coming Second Adam, though all might seem to be lost for a time by the fall of the First; only it became necessary in this case, that his appearance in the world should be that of a suffering, atoning Redeemer; a result that has served however to bring in a more glorious dispensation of grace, according to Rom. v: 15-21, than all that could possibly have been reached in any different way. "Christ, the God-man, the personal absolute religion, is and remains still the essential end and scope of the whole creation, (Coloss. i: 15-16—τὰ πάντα δὲ ἀυτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται,) and so far has his end originally in himself, but in the fulness of his love makes himself at the same time the means of redemption for sinful humanity. Thus have we a perfect theodicy, in which the freedom of man is saved in harmony with the full stability and unity of the Divine world plan."

If on the other hand the incarnation of the eternal Son be not taken into the original scheme of the world, be not thought of as its centre according to Coloss. i: 15-16, but only as a contriv

ance to destroy sin the bad fruit of man's freedom, which being free thus might not have been at all; or if the complete revelation of God and the proper consummation of humanity stand not unconditionally sure in Christ, if the crowning sense of all here be not absolutely predestinated, if the Son of God be not, as eternally in the Trinity, so also in History, the one whole and full object of the Divine complacency, and all besides acceptable only in him and through him, all partaking of his fulness as the Head-if this be not the original and necessary order of the creation itself, but only an after thought brought into it by the tremendous accident of sin, the whole economy both of Nature and of Christianity is indeed thrown into hopeless confusion, as being throughout at the mercy of chance. There remains nothing that is unconditional, necessary, and absolutely eternal, either in God's plan or in his actual work. All becomes a sea of uncertainty, where in fact the end falls out in no harmony whatever with the beginning. The rescue of man's freedom at such cost is too dear.

Two ways have been fallen upon by deep thinkers, pressed with the sense of this difficulty, to uphold the interest of God's sovereignty thus brought into danger-which however soon run into equal difficulty on the opposite side.

The first is that of Calvin. "A great truth undoubtedly enters into his system, to which it owes its power, and in view of which only it is possible to understand or explain its far reaching influence. Here, if anywhere, the proposition holds good, that an error is strong only through the residue of truth it still contains. God's sovereignty must indeed be unconditionally secured. But this can be done truly only in another way. If that be not found, if it be not seen how the Divine idea or decree stands unconditionally sure of its own end in the God-man, whether the Adamitic probation lead the life of the race through sin or not, there can be no possible escape for strict thinking from the Calvinistic consequence, as among others Schleiermacher also has so strikingly shown.

"The second false way, which however only carries out the full meaning of the first, the one view at bottom involving the other, consists in resolving sin into an anthropological neces sity-such as serves at last in truth to throw it back on God. Man is taken to be so made, in the relation of his lower and higher powers, nature and spirit, that with his development sin takes place necessarily, the higher part of his nature being bound by the lower, which rightly it should rule. Sin thus has not come into man, but grows forth from his original constitution, as