appreciate its influence upon the world in all its ages, when he says in a manner as beautiful as it is true: The Gods sank down from their heavenly throne, And born at last was the Virgin's Son, To heal every human repining. The senses vain pleasures were banished apart, But notwithstanding this essential apostacy from the truth and the holiness of the primæval revelation, heathenism was still religion, a dark presentiment and longing, a kind of uncertain groping about after the "Unknown God," to whom the Athenians had built an altar. Acts 17: 27, 28. Under the shell of superstition it concealed the necessity of faith; behind polytheism it had a presentiment of a monotheistical background, in that it subordinated the gods to Jupiter, and Jupiter himself to mysterious Fate. It was based upon the feeling of dependance upon higher powers; of reverence for divine things. It preserved the remembrance of a golden age, and of the fall. It had the voice of conscience, and of the thoughts accusing or else excusing one another; -Rom. 2: 15-and a consciousness of the guilt of sin, however indistinct it may have been. It felt the need of reconciliation to the deity, and sought to effect this, although unsuccessfully, by prayers, penitential exercises and countless bloody and bloodless offerings. In many pious traditions and customs, it referred back, like a soft echo, to primeval religion, and at the same time, in its meaningless mythological dreams, concerning the union of the gods with men, of heroes and demi-gods, of the redemption by Hercules of Prometheus, chained to the rock, and tried by sore afflictions-points, like an unconscious prophecy and carnal anticipation, to the truths of Christianity. For God has never left himself "without witness" among the heathen. The Logos shone into the darkness before his incarnation, lighting every man that cometh into the world; and he also scattered abroad the seeds of beauty, truth and virtue, even in Hellas and Rome. Thus we are able to explain the many elements of truth which we find in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, etc., and also the susceptibility of the heathen for the preaching of the Gospel. Therefore heathenism also, especially the classic, or Greco-Roman, was a preparative for Christianity; but, of course, one more negative and indirect. Here the process was not from above, from a special revelation; but from below, from the necessities of man. Here the divine contents of true religion was not prepared for mankind, but mankind for the reception of true religion. Heathenism was the prodigal son, which did not remain in the paternal mansion, like its elder brother Judaism, but carelessly forsook it, spent its patrimony, and sank to the most abject servitude, to the eating of husks; but yet, with a sense of shame and misery, penitently arose, and fell into the arms of the Father of mercy who went forth to meet it. The character of Heathenism, as preparatory to, and tending towards Christianity, is exhibited in the Greek language, which was to preserve the golden apple of the Gospel, like a basket of silver; and in the entire compass of Greek literature, which, by investigating the fundamental principles of all science, especially of philosophy, and by an artistic representation of the ideal of beauty, in a manner became a theoretical school-master unto the Gospel, and presented to the latter those forms into which its divine mass of truth should be poured. This classical literature and culture became the inheritance of the church, and in her became the natural basis of a holy science and christian civilization. We furthermore, also trace the hand of Providence in the political movements and appearances of the heathen world, previous to the birth of Christ. Alexander the Great, the enthusiastic admirer of Homer, the imitator of Achilles, the deeply-thoughtful pupil of the philosophical world-conqueror, Aristotle, was not, it is true, able to execute his bold idea to rule the world from Babylon, and to convert that world into a Greece; for he died while still a young man, and his empire was divided immediately after his death; but his ambition to conquer was made subservient to higher purposes, viz.: the diffusion of the Greek language and culture to the borders of India; the union of the Orient and Occident; and by these very means, the rapid expansion of the Gospel, and the establishment of a universal empire of truth and love. That which he was able to accomplish but imperfectly, the Romans realized upon a grander scale. They cast down the frowning walls of separation of ancient nations and religions, although but in an outward manner; and combined all the civilized portions of the then known world into one well-ordered empire, which extended from the Euphrates to the pillars of Hercules, from the Lybian desert to the banks of the German Rhine; and every where paved the way for the apostles of Christ to proclaim a universal religion. Thus also the political laws and institutions, and the great wisdom of government possessed by Rome, greatly assisted the Christian church in the development of its outward organization and discipline, and rendered excellent practical service, as classical literature had rendered theoretical service. It cannot be denied that the ancient Greek church rests altogether upon the Greek language and nationality; and that the Latin church has its national basis and historical precedent in the Roman nationality, and, in a higher degree, reproduced its virtues, but also its vices. In addition to this, Christ is likewise the end of the human longing after redemption, that breathes throughout ancient history, as it does to this day in every human heart. For man has been created for Christ, and "his heart is restless until it rests in him." Within his heart of hearts he bears a recollection of a lost age of innocence, and a desire after an inalienable paradise of salvation. He feels himself a stranger in the midst of the joys and pleasures of nature, and feels a home-sickness after God, the living God. It is known that Tertullian speaks of the testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae, i. e., of the testimonies of the human soul which is predestinated for Christianity, and longs after it, consciously or unconsciously. They sparkle like stars in midnight darkness, in the firmament of heathenism; like moonlight and the dawn in Judaism; and point to the sun-like radiance of the gospel. In Christ, and in Christ alone, all these conflicts, presentiments, wishes, and need of the human heart after light and life, are pacified and gratified. Lenau, who alas! fell in the midst of madness and animal obtuseness, has gloriously expressed this thought, in the Christmas sermon of Savonarola: 1 The heart of mankind ever yearning That longing, which from heaven did listen That longing-which so long went straying As tear, and hymn, complaint, or praying— Christ is therefore the end of the whole history of the world before himself, as well as of every individual human heart. And why? Be cause he, and he alone, is the God-man and Saviour of the world. According to his divine nature, as the Logos, the eternal reason and eternal Word; he is of the same essence as God, and the medium of the creation and preservation of the world, as well as of all preparatory revelation; according to his human nature, as Jesus of Nazareth, he is a product of history, the ripest blossom and fruit of the religious development of mankind; and has an earthly genealogy, which the jewishchristian, St. Matthew, traces back to Abraham, and the gentile-christian evangelist Luke, to Adam, the progenitor of all men. In him the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily; and in him, at the same time, the ideal of human virtue and piety is realized. He himself is eternal truth and life, in personal union with our own nature; our Lord and our God, and yet at the same time, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone. In him the great problem of all religion, reconciliation and communion of man with God, has not merely been attempted, but solved; and we must not expect a higher revelation of God, nor a greater moral, religious perfection of man, than that which is already given and guaranteed in his person. But as Christ thus represents the final result of the history of the development of ante-christian humanity, extending through four thous and years; so also, on the other hand, he is the starting point of an endless future, the cause of a new creation, the second Adam, the progenitor of a regenerated humanity, the head of the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him, in whom all fullness dwells. He is the pure and inexhaustible fountain of those streams of light and life, which have since then uninterruptedly flowed through nations and ages, and which will continue to flow, until the whole earth shall be filled with his glory, and all tongues shall confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The universal diffusion and unconditional supremacy of the spirit and the life of Christ, will, also at the same time, be the consummation of the human race, the end of temporal history, and the beginning of a glorious eternity. Jesus Christ was born during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, of the Virgin Mary, the bride of the Holy Ghost, who belonged to the fallen royal house of David, in Bethlehem of Judea, at least four years prior to the beginning of our Dionysian mode of reckoning; for Herod the Great did not die so late as 754, but as early as 750 after the foun dation of Rome. Angels of heaven announced the glad tidings with hymns of praise, and the Jewish shepherds from the fields, and heathen wise men from the East, full of believing adoration, first greeted the new-born King in the manger. Quietly and unobservedly he grew up in Nazareth, the despised little city of Galilee, under the eyes of his poor but godly parents, without enjoying any other means of cultivation than the secret communion of the soul with God, and the religion of the Old Covenant. He began his public ministry in the thirtieth year of his life, and from the midst of uneducated Galilean fishermen selected twelve apostles for Israel, and seventy evangelists for the Gentiles. Three years he went about Palestine doing good, uttering words of spirit and life, and performing miracles of merciful love. He had no earthly possessions, not even a place of his own where he might lay his head; a few pious women from time to time filled his purse, which was carried by a thief and traitor; he never sought the society or the favor of the great, but was hated and persecuted by them; he never flattered the prejudices of the aged, but rebuked vice and sin in all classes of society. He was neither a learned man nor an artist, nor an orator in the usual sense of the word; and yet he was wiser than all philosophers, spoke with greater authority than any orator, and made an impression upon his age, and upon all after ages, so deep and ineffaceable, such as has never been, nor ever can be, made by any man. He overcame the power of sin and death upon their own territory, and thus redeemed and sanctified human nature. In his private life and public conduct he exhibited the purest and deepest love of God and man, an unclouded harmony of all the powers of the soul, and of all virtues, an unexampled combination of dignity and humility, of self-control and self-sacrifice, of greatness and simplicity, in short, the ideal of moral perfection without the least admixture of sin and error. Finally he completed his active spirit by suffering obedience, in unrivalled patience and resignation to the holy will of God, and before he had reached the prime of life-the Saviour of the world a young man!-he died, condemned by the Jewish authorities, forsaken by the people, denied by Peter, betrayed by Judas, but surrrounded by his sorrowing mother, and his faithful disciples-male and female-by the shameful death upon the cross: he the just for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a voluntary self-sacrifice of eternal love for the redemption of the world. the third day he rose from the dead, a victor over the grave and hell, a prince of life and of the resurrection; he appeared to his disciples; he took possession of the heavenly throne, and, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he formed the church, which he has protected, nourished, strengthened, and comforted since that time, and with which he has promised to be always, until he shall come again in his glory, to judge the quick and the dead. On This is a feeble outline of the life of the God-man upon earth, to which a human pen is as little able to do full justice as, to use the language of Lavater, one is able to paint the sun with a lead pencil and the dawn with a piece of charcoal. The entire history of the church, with its innumerable blossoms of the divine life, is but an incomplete commentary upon that delineation, which the evangelists have given us, in childlike simplicity, and yet also with unfathomable depth. No cata logue of virtues, however perfect it might be, would be able to give us a correct conception of the intense peculiarity of the character of Christ, of the beautiful symmetry of all the moral powers, and of the wonderful harmony of a soul which was never darkened by a single cloud of passion and selfishness, and which never, even for a moment, permitted itself to be separated from the most intimate communion with the Father in heaven, and an unconditional surrender to the eternal welfare of mankind. Here we truly find the fountain of life; here is the highest union of piety and virtue, of the purest love to God, and the purest love to man that ever appeared upon the earth; here is the holy of holies of mankind, in whose presence even infidelity entertains some reverence and awe. For even a Rousseau was compelled to exclaim: "Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, but Christ lived and died like a God." HUMBUG AGAIN. BY THE EDITOR. We have neither time nor space to expose one-half of the humbugs that come to our notice. Nor is this necessary. It is sufficient if we give our readers a specimen now and then. One of a class will always answer to set a whole host naked and in the light. If our young readers will closely examine these examples, they will soon be able to catch humbugs as easily as the Editor. It is only necessary to study their habits, notice carefully their colorings, and watch their movements, to know them afterwards at first sight. It must be confessed, however, that we have a little the advantage of our readers; for humbugs find it necessary to swarm around Editors. Indeed, they can only live when the periodicals bless them, and help them to warm into life. Thus they cozy up to the editors, as naturally as a torpid snake crawls to the fire. Or, to use another illustration, they come to the Editor's chair like a moth to the candle-sometimes to be singed! The other day there was one came buzzing up to us, in the shape of a letter, swollen with credentials-the document itself, a letter of commendation, and two cards, that by the mouth of these two witnesses every word might be established. Let us open the precious budget, and we shall see him as he is. Here is the letter: NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 1856. GENTLEMEN: Please insert the enclosed advertisement in your paper for three months Send me the full amount of the bill immediately, and at the termination of the first mouth I will forward you one-half the amount of the bill, and at the termination of the second month I will forward the remainder. Please insert the first three words in quite large type I trust you will charge me a moderate price. Allow me to say that Mr. Monroe has got something which is new, and is needed in every family in the United States, and it is everything that he advertises. I am good for the advertisement. I remain yours truly, A. L. BALDWIN. Now for the Advertisement. The reader will please notice that the advertiser is not Mr. Baldwin, but another man. It must be true charity |