mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things; she maketh all things new and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets."

Hence it is this Wisdom, the Son of God, by whom men come to God, for not only by wisdom do "kings reign and princes decree justice," but as "there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding," so the Son, therefore, is that light that lighteth every man coming into the world.*

Our inheritor of Paul's Christology, then, feeding on the ideas above expressed, and revolving them in his mind, finds that he firmly holds as truth revealed from God that the Christ is divine in essence, and not human merely, for before he appeared on earth, yea, even in the very beginning of things, before the earth was, he proceeded forth and came from God.

And whether or not our "Christian Philosopher was acquainted with the works of Philo, and read there that the "Word" is "a second God," who "may be called God of us imperfect beings," he will probably, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, acknowledge that the “ God ” who in the forty-fifth Psalm is spoken of as, for his love of righteousness, exalted above his fellows, is no other than the Christ, and that, therefore, the title "God" may, though of course in a subordinate sense, be applied to him.

* John i. 9.

For if even the Scripture, "which cannot be broken," calls them gods to whom the Word of God came, how much more worthy of the name is he whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world? *

And so, with or without the works of Philo, from the Hebrew Scriptures and the apostolic writings, our Pauline Christian, even by the close of the first quarter of the second century of our era, might well have attained to a Christology which he could tersely express thus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that hath been made. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”

For some others, who held a similar opinion of the identity of the Christ with the Logos, held also that the manifestation in the flesh was not real, that the Christ became incarnate only in appearance, consequently that the death of Jesus on the cross was only a semblance; and we may presume they deemed themselves followers of Paul notwithstanding, as they could still reckon themselves crucified with Christ, buried with him (in baptism) and risen again in spirit to newness of life; and the identification of the believer with Christ might seem to these persons (the Docetists)

* See John x. 34-36, quoting Ps. lxxxii. 6, "I have said, Ye are gods," etc.

not less but more complete, if the sufferings of Christ were only semblable.

But the author of the fourth Gospel has not so learned Christ. He believes in a High Priest that was "made perfect through suffering," and who was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," and believing in the nearness of the "only-begotten Son" to the Father, he has learned from Paul to see in the sacrifice of that Son-in the giving him to die for the world while it was yet sinful-a wondrous manifestation of the love of God.* If the suffering was not real the sacrifice was not great, either on the part of the Father or of the Son.

So, then, the Docetic heresy is a departure from the Pauline doctrine, while the "Johannine " teaching is but another phase of Paulinism.

In one respect it is a development of Paulinism, especially in the denunciation of unbelievers. Paul, while preaching salvation by faith, being yet obliged to confront the fact that Israel, as a whole, is in unbelief, cannot admit that they are lost, but only that their salvation is deferred.†

But one who has been educated in the belief of the necessity of faith in Christ in order to salvation, and who has been taught that this faith is a necessary preliminary to righteousness, is apt to take the further step of imputing special unrighteousness to those who do not believe. Hence it is easy for such a one to slide into denouncing unbelief and unbelievers.

*Rom. v. 8; viii. 32.

Rom. xi. I, II, 25, 26, etc.

That the ideas put forth in the fourth Gospel should have been held, and that they should have dominated many minds in certain sections (say) of Eastern Christianity, is no marvel; but how, it may be asked, can we account for their having been thrown into the form of a biography of Jesus, and thus made to utter themselves through him—that is to say, How could a Christian, in the first half of the second century, write a fallacious history, a pretended history of the sayings and doings of Jesus, in order to persuade the Church that her doctrines respecting his person and work were, at the first, distinctly taught by himself?

As we do not believe the author of the fourth Gospel was guilty of conscious deception, the question resolves itself into the following:-How could the author have believed that Jesus uttered the speeches which he puts into his mouth, when he must have known that they were purely his own compositions? How could he? that, then, is the question.

It must be remembered that the ideas were not the author's own, in the sense of his having originated them. He was reared in an atmosphere of Paulinism, and what he afterwards obtained from other sources was found so congenial as freely to be assimilated by him. Each new view confirmed every other, so that he felt himself in possession of a compact and homogeneous mass of revealed truth. He did not imagine that these doctrines of the Incarnate Logos, etc., were discoveries of his own, but that they were truths of divine revelation, the heritage of the Church—truths

which must have been distinctly uttered by the Incarnate Wisdom himself, when, having been made flesh, he dwelt among us. The truths of the great salvation must have had their beginning in having been "spoken by the Lord," and so were confirmed unto us by them that heard him.*

It is true, he finds many Christians who are, like the epistolary James, silent respecting the ascriptions which are so prominent in his own mind. Doubtless it often seemed strange to him that so many should persistently ignore them. But he hears of certain books which profess to record the life and teachings of the Master himself, written, perhaps, twenty or even forty years before he wrote, and possibly some twenty years before he saw them; these he obtains and reads, and it is easy to imagine how astonished and disappointed he must have felt at the perusal of the Synoptic and other Gospels, as one by one he gets them for the purpose.

He does not anywhere find what to him is alone the Gospel-that all men, Gentiles as well as Jews, may be justified by faith in the Messiahship and resurrection of Jesus, because of his atonement; nothing of the love of God in giving His Son to die for the world; nothing of the Christ having been the only begotten Son of God before the worlds were framed.

But what does he find? Simply a prophet, who is to become the Christ at his reappearance. Merely a

*Heb. ii. 3.