before we assert that there can be but one single thread of consciousness, and to suggest that there may be mysterious depths beneath the common surface of thought which can only be revealed in ordinary people by abnormal conditions.

The writer in the Church Quarterly Review ventures further, and suggests a theory to account for the separation of our Lord's knowledge as man from his Divine knowledge. Jesus Christ lives in two spheres-the Divine and the human. These are so different in their scope and capacity that the kind of knowledge which is possible in the one cannot be entertained by the other. The reviewer describes three features of difference. Human knowledge is derived through the senses; it is discursive; it is of phenomena. But Divine knowledge is "an intuition or look that embraces the universe," and sees by immediate perception; it is "complete and perfect from beginning to end," there is no passing from one thing to another in attaining it, no discourse, no reasoning; it is a knowledge of things in themselves, penetrating to the inmost essence, while our knowledge takes in only the outside of things. On these distinctions the reviewer bases his theory. "Human knowledge," he says, "is identical with Divine knowledge in so far as it is knowledge; for in respect of knowledge man's mind is constituted in the image of God. Yet in respect of form it may turn out that the two are different. It may turn out that Divine knowledge not only exceeds human imperfection and reach, but that it differs from it in form and make. If this should turn out to be the case, it would follow that our Lord's Divine knowledge would not be available in the human sphere, except in so far as it was translated into human form. No doubt His Divine knowledge would encompass, penetrate, and influence His human knowledge in every part, communicating to it a perfection, a certainty, and an infallibility unspeakable; but still, what He knew as God would not be intelligible or usable in the human sphere, except in so far as it was divested of its Divine and clad in a human form." This theory is ingenious and striking, and worthy of consideration, and yet I must confess that it does not appear to me to be wholly satisfactory. It is not in accordance with the apparent naturalness of our Lord's human life on earth as that is recorded in the Gospels, for it seems to represent Him as a person almost apart from His two natures, dealing with both at will, taking stores from the richer nature and transferring them to the humbler nature from time to time as occasion arises. At Bethany He asks for direction to the tomb of Lazarus. In one sphere of His being He knows the locality of the tomb; in the other He does not. He is speaking from the human sphere. Therefore His words truly express ignorance on the subject; but He knows that in the higher sphere of His Being the answer to His question lies at hand. Yet for some good reason He does not translate it into the lower sphere. Is not this a a complicated and non-natural position? See how the theory is to be applied to our Lord's confession of ignorance as to the date of His second Advent. In one sphere He knows the date; in the other sphere He is really

ignorant of it; and as He is speaking in this second sphere, His confession of ignorance is perfectly true. Yet He has the knowledge, and though it is locked up, He has the key to it. Therefore, at any moment He can get it. He has but to translate it. Is this consistent with His plain, simple language? Let us suppose we ask a man a question; he has the reply, but this is in a letter written in cipher; he has the key to the cipher; yet for some reason he will not refer to that key, and he meets our question by saying he does not know the answer. Is not this perilously near the historic incident of Nelson holding the telescope to his blind eye in order that he might not see the Admiral's order to cease firing-an incident that does more credit to his heroism than to his honesty? When we think of Him Whom we revere

as The Truth, it is not altogether helpful to call up such associations; it comes nearer to what we most revere in Him to suppose that for the time being, and under the circumstances of His self-imposed humility, the knowledge of that concerning which He confessed ignorance was beyond His range.

We are brought back then to the thought of some limitation—not a limitation in one sphere only, while our Lord was ranging at large in another sphere, even though living in the guise of manhood. There are ways of representing the Kenosis which the reviewer justly repudiates. In St. John's Gospel and in the Epistle to the Colossians the Divine Word, the Son of God, is represented as discharging certain functions throughout the whole universe. Can we for a moment suppose that these were suspended during the thirty years of earthly humiliation? The shock that would be thus sent through the whole universe, the frightful dislocation of its order, the loss of a blessed influence by all worlds, these things are inconceivable. If we had to believe them, we should see in the advent of Christ not only a gift of God and a condescension on the part of our Lord Himself, we should also have to recognize an immense privation inflicted on the whole universe, a vast sacrifice made by all other worlds for the sake of our earth. But of that horror we have not a hint, and the idea is absurd. We cannot believe, then, that the Divine Word abandoned His universal life, and was in all respects reduced to the level of humanity. But this does not mean that as far as He lived on earth in human form He was unlimited in power and knowledge and all other capacities. On its Divine side the whole subject is too mysterious to allow of our comprehending it. But as far as the human life is concerned -and that is all we can see-it need not be so perplexing. We must leave out of account the eternal and infinite functions of the Word, for we cannot see their relation to a limited experience; but viewing that experience by itself, we need not shrink from admitting that it is limited. The reviewer demurs at Mr. Swayne's position in following the Greek Fathers, who look for the essence of Divinity in the moral nature rather than in omnipotence and omniscience, &c., so that those infinite attributes might be temporarily laid aside while the essential Divine nature remains. We may be led into confusion if we attempt to make such a distinction, and yet it is much to see

that the greatest thing in God is the Love that sacrifices itself, not the Majesty that asserts itself. All along there is a fear to ascribe any limitation to our Lord's knowledge, as though this would be to lower our conception of Him and to do Him some dishonour. Now, if He had begun to exist at His advent, and if He held all He possessed only by attainment, only as a new acquisition, then any limit to His acquirements would seem to discredit His greatness. But if we believe in His pre-existence and eternal glory, it is only a question of how much faculty He chooses to retain in becoming incarnate, and of how much He gives up by free and voluntary abandonment. He retains what is necessary for His redeeming work. But what we praise Him for is not the possession of this which to us is miraculous, but rather His great condescension, His marvellous generosity in giving up so much for our sakes. If He gave up infinite knowledge, the sacrifice made at the bidding of Love is all the more glorious. The opposite way of regarding the matter is only parallel to the foolish Jewish prejudice that could not believe in a humble Messiah. We might as well say it was dishonouring for Christ to appear as a provincial peasant; He ought to have been a prince born in a palace. But it is only a kind of theological conceit that would stumble over the lowly status of our Lord's earthly life, and the objection to His mental humiliation has something of the same character. According to St. Paul, the very reason why Jesus was exalted by God is that He had humbled Himself, and taken on Him the form of a servant, &c.1 If we can look at Him with the eyes of the great Apostle, we shall not shrink from admitting that He showed signs of human limitation; we shall rather praise Him the more that He condescended to humble Himself so greatly.

But, it is urged, a voluntary limitation of knowledge is no real limitation. This is true enough when we think of the limitation objectively—as excluding particular items of knowledge. But I would rather regard the limitation as subjective. It is not that Christ wills not to know certain things; it is that He voluntarily places Himself in a condition which of itself imposes a limit upon the range of knowledge. If this be correct, it is not too much to say, that in the human life which our Lord assumed, He could not be omniscient; that if He wished to resume omniscience, He must abandon that particular form of life; because infinity in any respect is not consistent with the self-imposed limitations of a human life.

It may help us to remember that we can speak of knowledge in three senses. First, there is the knowledge that is present in consciousness at a given moment; this can be of but a single group of ideas. Second, there is the knowledge which is stored in the memory, but always ready to handthe available knowledge which is vastly more than that of which we can be conscious at any moment. Third, there is the buried knowledge which we cannot command, but which may be unearthed by some means beyond our control-as in the sensation of drowning when, it is said, the whole of his past life flashes before a man, or in the delirium of a fever, or even in the

1 Phil. ii. 5-11.

sudden recollection that is brought back to mind by some association of ideas. It is difficult to retain our conception of the perfect human life of our Lord if He could know and not know with regard to nearly the same set of circumstances," as Mr. Swayne suggests. But it is not inconsistent to believe that the knowledge which belonged to Him in His pre-existent, eternal state was buried by the very act of His incarnation, and that the burial of it in sub-conscious depths of being was part of His great condescension, undertaken that He might be a brother man, not in appearance only, but in reality. Still, it may be thought that this conception will tend to shake our faith in our Lord's infallible guidance. But is the infinite range of knowledge wanted for that guidance? What perplexity would have been introduced if Jesus Christ had anticipated the results of modern criticism and science! These results would have been simply unintelligible to a generation totally unfitted to appreciate them; the healthy pursuit of knowledge by patient investigation would have been checked; and, what is far worse, the great work of Christ would have been frustrated in the distraction occasioned by the needless introduction of a whole realm of alien ideas. As a matter of fact, our Lord was silent on all these questions. There is no reason to believe that His mind was ever occupied with them. To all appearance, in such matters He dealt with the current ideas of His age and country, just as a traveller deals with the coin of the land he is visiting; and it was not needed for our salvation, any more than it was needed to save His own dignity, that Jesus Christ should burden His human mind with a cyclopædia of science and history from which He never found occasion to quote a sentence during the whole course of His public ministry.

The case is quite different in regard to His knowledge of the spiritual. But even here it is not safe to assert à priori that He must have known everything. He knew all that was necessary for His mission; He was never at a loss when He wanted to enlighten His hearers; no criticism and no experience have been able to upset a single idea of His teaching. On the contrary, the result of the attacks of foes, as well of the anxious inquiry of disciples, and of eighteen centuries of Christian experience, is that these truths shine forth with greater splendour than ever. Here is the teaching He came to give, and in this teaching no man can show us a flaw. What more do we need for our faith than the infallibility of Christ in the truths that concern our faith?

SCIENTIFIC

THOUGHT.

BY REV. FRANK BALLARD, M.A., B.Sc., F.G.S., F.R.M.S.

DR. STALKER ON GENESIS AND GEOLOGY.-In The Modern Church—a journal of Scottish religious life-full reports are given of an effort by Dr. Stalker, of Glasgow, once more to take in hand the well-worn theme of Genesis and Geology. He manifests the candour and culture which all

who know him would expect, but scarcely contributes anything towards a permanent Eirenicon-or even towards showing that no Eirenicon is called for. The instructive merit of his discourses, as a correspondent points out, is in his method of stating the case. His synopsis of "the history of our globe" is undoubtedly "something very different from what any Churchman would have given half a century ago." It is, however, that which probably every Christian teacher to-day who makes any pretence to education would largely echo. Whether we have a preference for the view of Dr. Chalmers, or Prof. Drummond, or Mr. Gladstone, or share with Dr. Stalker that of Hugh Miller, he will not insist as some, not long departed, did, that if the world and all that therein is were not made in six days of twenty-four hours, the Bible is a fraud and the Gospel a delusion. This change is decidedly less of a triumph to science than a gain to religion. We have as Christians assuredly lost nothing by being compelled to own that God's ways are not exactly as our ways, nor His methods in building a universe precisely the same as our own in raising a house. Whether we can as yet make the Scripture account of our world's origin square comfortably with that of science, we have at least got rid of what was as fairly as perhaps irreverently called the "big carpenter" theory. And that transition is scarcely less than an escape from the dead arms of an idol into the hands of the living God.

Dr. Stalker's inclination "to think that Hugh Miller was on the right track" is quite harmless and entirely valid-for him. No one else is bound to accept it, especially if he can think out for himself and outline for others something at once more in harmony with the facts of science and the genius of Scripture. "At all events, it will be well for believing men to watch closely the developments of science, to see whether they do not cast fresh light on Bible teaching. A certain rivalry between theology and science, if it be respectful and good-tempered, may not be bad for either of them. It compels both to be sure of their facts. Theology has often needed this lesson, and science may sometimes be the better for it too." This is unquestionably the right vein of thought and speech. Why should not teachers of science and of religion be mutually respectful and goodtempered? The pride that lurks in dogmatism, the contempt that is born of conceit, these are the only reasons. It is certain that they are as unworthy of true science as they are false to Christ's religion. Mr. Huxley's recent fashion of sneering does as little credit to an eminent biologist as does the Romish bigotry that burnt Bruno to the Spirit of Christianity.

Taking as a fair type the animus of a letter criticizing some points in Dr. Stalker's addresses, it would, perhaps, be not untrue to say that on the whole, and during the last half century, theologians have, with very few exceptions, been more swift and apt to learn lessons of humility and courtesy than scientists. The irritability and manifest unfairness of Dr. Draper's book not only failed to do justice to modern Christians, but set a

NO. II.-VOL. I.-THE THINKER.

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