was obliged to drink some magic draught. In accordance with the whole mode of viewing things in natural religion, the solvent of the difficulty must be an external participation in something by means of which the divine individual would obtain immortality, unchangeableness, and intensified power of life. We find that such a means was used in all the IndoGermanic mythologies, and generally it took the form of drinking some draught. In India the draught was of soma and amrita; in Persia, of yellow and white haoma; in Greece, of ambrosia and nectar. The Greeks used, also, for this representation, the apple of the Hesperides and Dionysos, who was a personification of the drink of immortality, as is the Indian Soma. Finally, the Germanic peoples had the odhrörir and the apple of Idun. This drink was always regarded as intimately connected with the divine person, and without it the gods could not fully occupy their respective spheres. Natural religion flourished so long as this childlike connection of ideas lasted. But with the dissolution of this union, and the comprehension which had to follow that these divine persons, as such, were finite, begins decay.

The fourth and last section of the book describes this decay of natural religion, and exhibits the various stages thereof in their correspondence with modern phenomena in theology and philosophy.

The Indo-Germanic gods were indeed absolute; and yet this absoluteness showed itself in the individuals in their shading into one another, and thus making it evident that the fundamental, essential principle in them all was one and the same. Each individual deity possessed both the moments which the religious relation requires-absoluteness and definiteness; and each should have exhibited the unity of these, but, in reality, did not do so. For the relation of these two moments to one another could be viewed only quantitatively in natural religion, where the spiritual idea of personality had not yet become known. Therefore the unity of finiteness and absoluteness could no more be grasped under that system than could the unity of the whole and the part. The decay of natural religion begins at the point where that contradiction which the natural gods actually carry about in themselves becomes practically evident. It appears most plainly in the relation of that drink of the gods to the gods themselves. For this drink of the gods, which represents the element belonging to the whole class of gods, was regarded as belonging to the very self of the divine person when the system was at the height of its flourishing. Herein lay the childlike identification of class and person. But gradually this drink came to be regarded as something separable from the divine person. In consequence of this, the unity of the divine person and the absolute class-element (water, fire), which had been brought about by the draught, became dissolved. With this dissolution, as it became manifest in practical results, began the decay of natural religion. In the consideration of this separation of the divine drink from the divine person,

an important question is, whether the drink was originally regarded as a provision for life which the gods had with themselves, or whether it had to be given them by men in their offerings. The latter is chiefly the case among the Indians and Persians, whilst among the Greeks and the Germanic peoples it is not supplied by human hands. The consequence of this difference is, that among the Indians and Persians the discovery of the finiteness of divine persons was connected with the soma-offering; for it was observed that the gods were dependent on the will of the sacrificer. Among the Greeks and the Germanic peoples other influences brought to light the finiteness of the gods, and thus brought about the decay of natural religion.

Having thus shown, in general outlines, what is the course of the book, let us make a very few closing remarks.

The treatment of the religious mythology of the Indo-Germans indicates a thorough acquaintance with the literature on that subject, and contains a rich store of combinations, which will be specially welcome to the mythologist. But a discussion of religious mythology has been given, instead of the promised history of religion. This complaint can hardly be removed by pointing to the reference to the soma-offering, which is merely incidental. The system of religious representations which a people have is not identical with their religion. Our author has not given clearly his definition of religion; and whatever that definition be, it evidently does not give due regard to religious observances, worship, etc., nor to the religious influence on the domain of the will. For the author has found no occasion for reference to religious observances in his discussions. We cannot say whether this fault is a consequence of the author's fundamental views of the philosophy of religion, until his second volume appears. Still, a thoughtful discussion of the religious mythology of the IndoGermans is, of course, a valuable contribution; and this treatment of it which lies before us does excite a strong desire to see the second volume, and justifies us in commending the book to wide perusal.

ARTICLE X.

JOHN THE BAPTIST.1

THE work referred to in the note at the bottom of the page is one of much value. It is evidently the result of careful study and thorough research. Its style, however, is faulty in certain very important respects. The matter which it contains might easily, we think, have been presented in a form much more compact, and the author's drift and meaning been made much clearer. The subject of the book is one of unusual interest one on which not a great deal has been written, at least in our language, and in regard to which, if we mistake not, the ideas commonly entertained are somewhat vague, not to say incorrect. We shall dwell for a brief space on a few of the topics treated of in this book; begging the reader to bear in mind that we present not our own views, but such as we understand to be those of Dr. Reynolds.

John is exhibited to us in the New Testament as a priest, a Nazarite, a prophet, and more than a prophet. John was a priest; he belonged to that particular line of the descendants of Levi to which by divine ordination priestly functions were restricted. We do not hear, indeed, of John's ever taking any part in the temple service; yet the conjecture is not an altogether unlikely one, that the mere fact of his belonging to the priestly class gave him a peculiarly strong hold on the minds of the people; that his words of warning and denunciation were, on this account, listened to with the more reverent spirit; that in this way they were the utterance of one who spake with authority. The office of religious instructor had been committed by divine appointment to the priests. It had not been altogether unusual, in previous periods of Jewish history, for prophets to be chosen from among the priests. This we know to have been the case with Jeremiah and Ezekiel. These men spake with the more effective energy, because they felt that they had a prescriptive right to speak, and a corresponding claim to be heard. There was something in the very nature of their office to cause them to speak with the most emphatic energy, whenever the interests of religion and morality were at stake. We might reasonably presume that, conversant as they were obliged to be with moral and religious themes, their minds would be impressed beyond others with the untold importance of these themes, and that their language, while

1 John the Baptist. The Congregational Union Lecture for 1874. By Henry Robert Reynolds, D.D. 8vo. pp. 525. London: Hodder and Stoughton; New York: A. S. Barnes and Co. 1874.

adverting to these themes, would have an energy which could not easily be resisted. Sometimes even a selfish motive might be mingled with these more elevated considerations. They might feel that as morality and religion decayed, so would the honor in which the priestly class was held be lessened; and on this account they might be prompted to speak on topics of a religious nature with an earnestness which otherwise they would not exhibit.

There was that in the functions appertaining to the priestly office which, in proportion as they were performed in honesty of heart and in a spirit fully in sympathy with their deep significance, or, on the other hand, with only a faint consciousness of this significance, could have had none other than the most ennobling and purifying influence, or else an influence the most hardening and debasing. The solemn ideas which the priestly functions were fitted to suggest relative to the immaculate holiness of God, to the infinite evil attached to all sin, to the limitless compassion of Jehovah, which could prompt him to pardon sin thus characterized by extreme turpitude such ideas must either have been actually taken into the mind, and been made matter of earnest thought, and been allowed their proper effect upon the soul, or else, by a positive act of the will, been denied access to the mind - an act which none other than a will most depraved and corrupt could have put forth, and whose only result could be to extend and deepen the very corruption in which it had its source. One need not wonder at the vehement language in which the Psalmists and the old prophets were wont to denounce the temple services, when performed, as no doubt they too often were, as mere ritualistic observances, without any proper consciousness, on the part of the priests, of their moral import. This language of condemnation is none too pungent, whether one thinks of the offence which such affecting rites gone through with thoughtlessly and formally must have been to a pure Divinity, or of their degrading and hardening effect on the character of the worshipper. On the contrary, how benign that effect when these rites were discharged in a fitting mode, with a mind fully penetrated with the sentiment of humiliation, of penitence, of thorough devotion to Jehovah, which these rites were intended to represent. Are we not at liberty, then, to speak of John as emphatically a priest, even though no priestly functions were visibly and outwardly performed by him, because his was pre-eminently that character which corresponded exactly to the nature of the office-a character into which was incorporated that profound view of sin, that conviction of the need of thorough penitence and moral renewal, that earnest love of pure righteousness by which that character ought ever to be marked? There was in John well nigh a perfect embodiment of what a priest should be.

The priest, under the Jewish dispensation, was a representative of the people. He entered in their name into the tabernacle; he sacrificed, he burned incense, he prayed, he acted out the proper symbol of repentance for

his own sins and those of the people. There are now certain moral perils ever attending the existence among a people of such an order of representative priests. The conviction not unnaturally comes to be entertained that the priests, in taking upon themselves this representative character, assume at the same time the moral responsibilities of those in whose name they act, and that the people are by this means relieved of them — that, if the priests perform with comparative faithfulness these delegated functions, the whole work is accomplished; the people who stand without are nothing but spectators. Perhaps not altogether consciously, but yet really, the feeling would exist that the priests alone were under obligation to pray, to repent, to devote themselves to Jehovah. Such a feeling is too much in harmony with a depraved mind not to be awakened. May we not conceive it, then, to have come within the proper scope of the priestly office, especially in the case of John, who was both prophet and priest, to rebuke in the most impassioned terms such a destructive moral perversion?

This perversion, if it were worth while to demonstrate its illogical and unscriptural character, was at variance with the scriptural idea of the priesthood. The priesthood was, indeed, in an important sense, of a representative character; but in assuming this character, the priests did not free those for whom they acted from the most solemn moral responsibilities. What the priest did each worshipper was also bound substantially to do. The priests audibly uttered words, they visibly acted out symbols, that were meant to represent feelings supposed as a matter of course to be active in the breast of every worshipper-feelings that ought to exist in the mind of each one, just as distinctly, and to be just as really the offspring of reflection gone through with by every one on his personal relations to the Divinity, and on his own transgressions, as could be the case if no mediating priest came between God and himself. Unless the spirit of the Jew corresponded fully to the outward act of the priest, the priest, for that Jew, might as well not have existed. Such a Jew did not, in any proper sense, worship, nor burn incense, nor sacrifice, nor repent.

It was, certainly, a very fitting element in the preparation for the advent of Christ, that a forerunner like John should appear, himself one of the priestly class, and adorned well-nigh perfectly with all the substantial excellences of the priestly character, — to warn the people, both by words and by act, that no mere formal sacerdotal mediations could secure either to the priest or the people a participation in the kingdom of God; to imprint it on their minds that, although they were outwardly the people of God, and even a royal priesthood, and the very children of Abraham, yet, without personal repentance and personal faith in him that was to a faith that would demonstrate its genuineness by the strictest obedience to every moral law, they must inevitably all likewise perish. In no one did the elements of the priestly character of the true child of

come,