generations and individuals? Does the author tell us: They are only single features of the same image which comes only to exist in full completion in the whole of humanity? Then we answer farther: That this extension of the image of God in the essence of free spirits is already so infinite, that it may still extend through the measureless creation without danger of tautology on the one hand, or of imperfection on the other. But how can it be predicated of God, who calls himself Lord of SABAOTH, that in the Old Testament he sustains a relation to man alone? Are not angels continually spoken of in the Old Testament? The angels are messengers sent from God; thus He, at least, sustains this relation to them that he sends them. We will not waste time in unfolding the rich fulness of the doctrine concerning angels, or to prove that the Bible does not speak of personifications merely, but that it speaks in the plainest manner of the angels of the Lord who excel in strength, of the shining spirits which dwell in heaven and stand before God-this is abundantly known to every unprejudiced person.

Hence, we may well ask with surprise: Why do men seek to enforce upon the Bible an alliance by which it is compelled flatly to contradict itself? The author finally says, in granting the utmost: "Thus God finds himself again in the human spirit, which has surmounted this separation; and in no other way can we represent to ourselves the relations of spirits, differing from God, to God, than by the representation of fall and redemption." So, certainly, the Bible has nowhere spoken; nowhere has it said: God finds himself again in the human spirit, having surmounted the separation. Injustice is done to the Bible when a peculiar philosophy is ascribed to it as the medium through which it views things. The God of the Hindoo Veda may perhaps lose and find himself again; but the God of the Bible, as the true Shepherd, finds again the lost sheep, or, as the faithful Father, permits himself to be found of the lost and erring child. Thus there appears, in the Bible, neither firstly the fall, nor secondly the redemption, of beings differing from God, as a necessity. For the angels of heaven are beings differing from God, and yet they are not fallen; the angels of darkness are represented as fallen, and yet nothing

is made known in regard to their salvation. And it is certain of believers alone, that they were first lost by the fall, and were afterwards brought back again to God by means of redemption. Here then we have opportunity of selecting at pleasure spirits of every class and kind: unfallen spirits that remained pure; fallen spirits redeemed again; and fallen spir its not redeemed. The system of the author, however, can only refer and apply to the second kind of spirits; and it is, therefore, quite too contracted to become the organ of the rich and broad contents of Scripture. Does it fail to reach the length and breadth of Scriptural teachings in this respect, it fails equally in comprehending its depths and heights. This it is easy to show; for there is no depth there, if we consider the horrible fall of man as a fatal necessity in his history; and there is no height, if the free act of divine grace in his salvation is also reduced to a plain necessity, which is at once understood of itself. But what follows from these last mentioned observations, is this: Either the whole universe, including all its stars, must be a desolate and empty waste, at least not inhabited by spirits, (and in this direction this conclusion leans) or on all stars old Adam, with his sorrows, must dwell, on all stars the cross must stand, and Christ must travel his suffering way for the salvation of the spirit-hosts. Thus then, according to this system, if we would not admit the frightful hypothesis of an empty universe, the human race must lose the sad precedence, which is to be to them, through God's mercy, the occasion of a peculiar exaltation and glorification over the unfallen spirits.

We have briefly alluded to these controverted views, as views belonging to the Hegelian system. It is, however, proper to remark, that this system, in different organs, has also different phases, growing out of each other, and sometimes contradicting each other, so that at the same time both Christian and anti-christian tendencies appear in the school of Hegel. Already on this account we do not wish, in a sweeping way, to charge the whole school with holding the above views; and also because we cannot, as yet, see through the system as a

whole, standing before us, as it does, in a state of dark evolution. It cannot be concealed, that this philosophy has enriched itself with the great results of philosophical inquiry, which have already been reached in reference to the human spirit; and that it is, nevertheless, original; that it has done much in the way of mediation between the Christian idea and the intellectual apprehension of it, and that it has not yet completed all its useful and suggestive evolutions. But it is also not to be concealed, that a bold denial of personal immortality, a degrading of the Holy Scriptures to a mine of religious myths, and the consequent denial of the historical Christ himself, stand also in intimate sympathy with the ground principles and premises of this philosophy. Thus it appears to us, it might be compared, in its dark origin, to that mysterious womb, from which at the same time was born the beloved Jacob and the hated Esau; which last sells his birth-right for a mess of pottage, and thus throws himself into the arms of materialism. The above mentioned author certainly belongs, upon the whole, to the better and more Christian tendency of this philosophy, , and hence it is so much the more to be lamented that in such an essential point he should have been ensnared by such contradictory views. This certainly cannot be explained except upon the ground that a current leading in that direction runs through the whole system. In the mind of the honored Goeschel, however, this current takes a modified, ennobling, and purer In his work" HEGEL AND HIS TIMES," we find on the 27th page, the following, which is said by him to the praise of the Hegelian system: "Yes, it appears at times as if we were to be translated back into the dark, when the Copernican system was condemned; for we discover that the sun is still subordinated to the earth, that the sun is only an elementary quality, only an abstract moment of the individual earth, and that the earth is the true concrete, on the contrary, that the sun is only the abstract centre. Here, it is true, the empirical correctness of the heliocentrical phenomena is not denied, but the higher truth of the geocentrical appearance is maintained, and the language which to this day is geocentrical, is adjuged to

course.

have, not only a relative, but an absolute correctness. Externally viewed, this heaven-storming opposition to astronomy seems not only absurd, but also unpoetical; for the sun, which quickens, enraptures, and enlivens all being, is only employed as a servile instrument of the planets, the centre being assigned to it only for conscience' sake, and in this way the most common teleological view is kept in honor. On the other hand, we must also censure the poetical cheat of egotism; for behold! we see bowing before the earth, as in Joseph's dream, sun, moon and stars. Besides, this much is clear, that also in the Holy Scriptures, the earth is the central point, upon which God himself appears and becomes man in the fulness of time, from before whom sun, moon, and stars recede. Luke 23: 45. Acts 2: 20. Josh. 10: 12, 13. Gen, 1: 15-17. In the Calendar the earth is represented as a globe with a cross."

We agree most heartily with the honored author, as to the perfect agreement of Biblical and Christian with astronomical views, according to what is known in astronomy; but from this it does not yet follow, that the astronomer must give the same preponderance to the earth from his stand-point, as the Christian must from his. We will freely permit the earth to retain the honor of that one peculiarity which it enjoys among all the planets, as the theatre of God's glorious revelations in his grace, through the incarnation of his Son. And inasmuch as the mystery of that great salvation, which the faithful have seen and received, is designated as that into which angels desire to look, the earth, as associated with this mystery of salvation, may well be pointed out as a festive BETHLEHEM, before which sun, moon, and stars may rightly bow. We must, however, not forget that the same God, which appears on earth, has his throne in the heavens; and that the same carth, which has been so highly blessed through the dispensation of salvation, is nevertheless, on the other hand, according to her old constitution, the home of sin and mortality-even a dark NAZARETH, over which the rich and royal heaven is extended, with all its homes of light, and the regions of blessedness. The heavens are God's throne, the earth is his footstool. The will

of God is to be done here on earth as it is done in heaven, through the gift of the Father who is in the heavens. Christ has ascended into heaven; there he will receive his own into everlasting mansions; there is the free, the heavenly Jerusalem-and the earth must first be glorified through a fiery metamorphosis before the heavenly city will descend upon her plains. True, we may be asked: What has heaven to do with sun, moon, and stars? We answer: The inward is not without the outward; hence the homes of the blest who shine as the sun, must be illumined habitations-bright and radiant worlds on high. The reverse is also true, that the outward is not without the inward; for this reason we cannot possibly conceive of the starry worlds as profane wastes, forsaken of spirits, and lying outside of heaven. Only then should we err by too much positiveness, if we should say, yonder sun, or that particular star of the first, second, or third magnitude, and so on, these are the homes of our sainted friends. We may locate the city of God where the divine glory unfolds itself in the most refined and radiant spirits, where Christ reigns with his saints blest in the vision of God, as high as we will above the visible stars, and above the reach of the largest telescopes, yet must we ever conceive of the way to it, as a way through the visible world of stars, a way through the heavens (through the regions inhabited by spirits ;) and we cannot represent that highest point to which our faith ascends, either as an entirely inner heaven, nor yet as a place of detention in dark and formless ether. It is not the body, but the spirit, which is the essential of man; not those orbs or worlds are the essentials, but God's indwelling spirit in these worlds; but just as the spirit of man comes to a blooming manifestation in his body, so also heaven, in the upper worlds; yes, even in its first degrees here on earth already is heaven manifested, since the earth itself consecrated in Christ to God, is itself changed again into the heavenly essence.

We turn, finally, to the original fountain of the views which we have just been calling to account. Hegel, in his Encyclopedia, third edition, §. 270, says: "In regard to those bodies,