impotent, is present in this infant, is perfectly indifferent as to his empirical existence; and, with the sole exception of the total absence of sin in the child Jesus, his development into youth and manhood proceeds strictly according to the laws of humanity."1 Again: "Through the incarnation. of the Son the second personal centre of consciousness and will of the Divine Being has fully disappeared for the space. of thirty-three years; and the Father's stream of life gushes, during this period, immediately into the Holy Ghost, and from him back again into the Father. There are no longer three, but only two personalities in the Godhead. Instead of a trinity we have merely a binity. How this is possible, without affecting his personal absoluteness does not appear."2

Many of these traits and inferences we must reject at once, as unfounded and impertinent. As the suspension of self-consciousness, through a sound sleep, disease, or any other cause, differs radically from a destruction of the same self-consciousness, so the temporary suspension of the Logosconsciousness differs radically from its destruction; being, from its very nature, indestructible; and in the substance of the Trinity no change whatever took place through the incarnation; nor is it more according to truth what is said of the embryo or infant Jesus, viz. that there was no real difference between him and any other embyro, (for the time being). An cagle's egg differs materially from a goose's egg although they may look very much alike; the soul of a Luther or Humboldt presented, during the embryonic state, no perceptible distinction from that of any other human being, and yet how great was the real difference! As to the position of the Son in the divine economy we readily admit a change in and during the state of the incarnation of the Logos; during these thirty-three years the Logos did not uphold all things by the power of his word, as he had done in his ante-mundane state, in fact up to the time of his incarnation and as he has done since his exaltation, but he accomplished during that period another work of greater importance than the 1 Die Dogmatik, pp. 296, 297. 2 Ibid. p. 295.

creation or preservation of the universe, the work for which the universe was created and is preserved, and which only the self-emptied Logos could accomplish. But that by the temporary suspension of the Logos-consciousness no vacuum was created, no disturbance arose or could arise in the government of the world, appears plainly from the relation of the three divine personalities to cach other, it being the Father's life that forms the Son's life, that gushes into the Son and back from the Son and Holy Ghost into the Father, and the same divine life whether going through the Son or not, preserved the world. And this is the very statement which the New Testament gives of providence and the continued existence of the world. It is, according to the New Testament, the Father who governs and sustains all things, the greatest and the smallest, who clothes the flowers of the field, feeds the fowls of the air, and numbers the hairs of the heads of his children: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The activity of the Father is displayed in governing and preserving the works of his hands, perhaps also in new creations; that of the Son in doing the work of redemption. It is certainly a strange phenomenon which certain men, however, seem not to notice, viz. that the Logos or Son or second personality of the Trinity is never mentioned by our Saviour as a being distinct from or reaching beyond his own self; the same I that shared all the wants and frailties of human nature, claims to be one with the Father, to have been with the Father from the foundation of the world, to have had glory with the Father before the world was; for another I that was gradually and partially taken possession of by the Logos and which, consequently, left the Logos in the undisturbed plenitude of his super-mundane power and glory, there is absolutely no room in the New Testament, being not only not intimated, but being unqualifiedly excluded; the whole New Testament knows absolutely nothing of a Logos or Son of God not identical with Jesus.

This fact destroys the whole philosophical objection urged against the reality of the incarnation or kenosis; for grant

ing, for argument's sake, the existence of a local and illocal Logos (are both personal, or is the local Logos merely a power?) which the common view must virtually claim, where do we learn the existence of the illocal Logos and the exercise of his power during the earthly life of Jesus? Is he ever referred to by Jesus? Does Jesus ever intimate his existence? does he put forth any power in upholding the world, or even Jesus in the hours of his sorest trial? No, everything is ascribed by Jesus to the Father; to the Father Jesus prays; of the Father Jesus feels himself once forsaken, which would be absolutely unaccountable, if the Logos had not been Jesus in human form. Of all really divine attributes Jesus claims during his life-time only eternity, and reason discerns the cause of this very readily, viz. because eternity could not be suspended, and Jesus had a clear remembrance of the fact of his ante-mundane glory with the Father, on which knowledge the consciousness of his peculiar relation to the Father rested. "Before Abraham was, I am," not "I was," says Jesus, intimating thereby, that by his incarnation his eternity had not been affected. "I had glory with thee, Father, before the world was," implies that the possession of this glory had been affected by his incarnation. The actual possession of any other really divine attribute, although at times veiled or not exercised, would have prevented the reality of the incarnation, being altogether inconsistent with a strictly human development of the Saviour, on which the scripture lays so great stress. There is, indeed, a mystery in the incarnation which the endless aeons of eternity may not enable a created intelligence to fathom; but this mystery must be located where the scripture locates it; without the scripture we should know nothing of an incarnation, it being none of the truths within the reach of unassisted reason, and on this very ground it must not be approached by human reason without the scriptures; it can be learned only by a posteriori, never by a priori reasoning. Here all the opponents of the doctrine make their fatal mistake, Whedon as well as Mücke, Dorner, and all others.

"Whenever we are told that the Infinite can become finite and annihilate an infinity of power, and so can annihilate itself, we beg to be excused from surrendering all our previous views of the necessary existence of God, and approach the awful confines of atheism. Surrender the doctrine of the necessary existence of God, and you surrender the stronghold of theism"; this is the language of the philosopher, not that of the theologian, who believes in his Bible as a divine revelation. And of what account is this philosophical dictum practically? Of none whatever; since the believer does not need it, and the atheist, materialist scorns it as a miserable begging the question.. In order to draw correct conclusions from the reality of the incarnation, it is necessary to be intimately acquainted with certain premises, which are beyond our grasp, as the inner nature of the Deity, the exact relation of the three I's in the Trinity to each other; but as this is not the case it becomes us to receive in humble faith what the scripture teaches. If no one had ever been soundly asleep or seen a person wrapped in sleep, the philosopher might question the possibility of a suspension of self-consciousness without destroying it; the incarnation like the creation took place only once, and reason can, therefore, form no adequate idea of it, cannot understand it; but the revival of nature in spring and the re-awakening of consciousness after a sound sleep furnish, at least, remote analogies of the two great facts mentioned. If the Logos by an act of his own free-will suffered his eternal self-consciousness to fall asleep, to be temporarily suspended, in order to take it again by a gradual development, and with the full return of this consciousness the resumption and exercise of every divine attribute, what Christian theist can consistently pronounce the thing absurd or impossible? and if the scripture teaches this stupendous fact, what believer can refuse to receive it as the highest truth, upon which all his hopes for time and eternity are based?

ARTICLE IV.

WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR AUGMENTING THE NUMBER OF CHRISTIAN MINISTERS?1

BY PROF. EDWARDS A. PARK, OF ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

EIGHTEEN hundred years ago it was said: "The harvest is plenteous"; for then the field was the world; but the harvest of souls is more plenteous now, for the world is more populous. Then our land was an undiscovered, now it is a fruitful, section of that field; but in this garden the need of laborers now is greater than it was ever. Our old Southern States are decayed plantations, needing improved methods. of spiritual husbandry. Four millions of freedmen; tens of thousands of foreign immigrants arriving every year at our wharves; Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, are swelling the cry which has been resounding from California and Oregon, the wailing cry for more laborers in the harvest. But, as eighteen hundred years ago so now, "the laborers are few." Heathen lands, the countries of papal Europe, our own southern, southwestern, western, northwestern, even our middle states, an unprecedented number of parishes in New England are making such a demand for ministers of the gospel as it is not easy to supply. Our late rebellion, with the events involved in it, has so diminished the number and the resources of our clergymen; and our recent peace, with the events involved in it, has so intensified our need of clergymen, that it has become a grave query for all patriots as well as Christians: What shall we do to enlarge the supply for which there is this quick demand?

As eighteen hundred years ago, so now, the answer is: "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth

1 An Address delivered at Middlebury College, on the day preceding the Annual Commencement in 1866.