was God," thus "dwelling among men, full of Grace and Truth," as God's revealed self and their salvation. If we had time even to glance at the relations of the early Fathers to this theme, we should find all that we have said as to the importance attached to the Word, and the use that can be made of it in the interpretation of the Scriptures, more than confirmed by the extent and nature of their allusions to it. We can here only say, that the prominence thus given by the Ante-Nicene writers to the doctrine of the Word and the Name of Jesus was not an incidental and disproportionate development of one phase of theology, nor a mere outgrowth of the undue predominance of Alexandrian philosophy, as many think, but was a most essential link in the connection of the Jehovah of the Old Testament with the Jesus of the New. It is also essential to the apprehension of the Gospel in the full breadth of the sublime conception that it is the self-revelation of the Divine, a thought much needed for a right comprehension of the magnificence and glory of "the truth as it is in Jesus," but one which is well nigh forgotten in the ordinary preaching of a mere deliverance from punish ment. II. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.* BY PROFESSOR GEORGE PRENTICE. WHEN a man sets up for a profound and original thinker, it is natural to inquire what cardinal principles he has accepted and what methods he employs. In Emerson we have found the fundamental conviction to be, that man is himself the source of all truth. But this statement must be taken in a broad and generous spirit. Emerson does not mean to exclude the study of history, nor conversation with living thinkers. He maintains that men should refuse each other the position of masters, and that truth should be accepted, not upon authority, but on an immediate and individual perception of its reality. This maxim is too obviously true and important to be overlooked. But, with what modifications must such a statement be accepted? That we should apply it when possible in all important matters, everybody concedes. What folly to think of enjoying by proxy the splendours of dawn, the fragrance of June roses, or the strains of Beethoven. Yet nobody ever pushes any pursuit far without coming upon the perplexing fact of his own limitations. None are so keenly alive to their own deficiencies as the masters in every province of science, art, and culture. Encyclopedic minds exist only in the dreams of school-boys and visionaries. Our life is so short, the range of our faculties so narrow, and the domain of truth so vast, that none can be an independent thinker in every realm. Men in general have to accept the law of gravitation without any familiarity with the sublime reasonings which are its demonstration. In such matters Emerson confesses and accepts the limitations of our nature. He finds these bounds inexorable and insuperable, and deems it nobler to admit ignorance than to affect superior wisdom. He has studied the past with eager and searching eyes-its history, philosophy, literature, and religion have all been investigated with patient and fearless scrutiny. Meantime, he deems the living soul of the wise inquirer a deeper fountain *This Article was written before Emerson's death. of knowledge than all records of past ages. Reading these records, he does not hesitate to say :— "I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year; Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain." He who owns so much is royal everywhere. "Seek not beyond thyself," is his way of saying, “Man is the measure of all things." In his view, truth is the common but largely undetermined inheritance of mankind. He who has traversed and surveyed more of it than others is entitled to correct their half-truths and errors. He may set aside theories, books, and masters. In some tribes of savages, he assumes the headship, whose prowess none dares to match; so, in the realm of wisdom, he is chief whose vision is broader and more exact than any other. Yet this perilous headship can only be retained at the cost of constant struggles, and must be surrendered to the next more comprehensive brain. By such stern rivalry alone can science retain her vitality and refresh her charms. There is nothing novel in such teachings. What is novel in Emerson's handling of them is the poetic beauty with which he clothes them, and the wider range he gives to their application. By these tests would he try the dogmas of the Church, the Bible, Christ, Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism; in short, every thing that offers itself to examination. This experiment gains interest, in Emerson's hands, from the absolute rigour with which he conducts it. Nothing is so time-honoured, nothing so useful, nothing so venerable and awful, as not to be coolly subjected to his terrific scrutiny. It may prove instructive to follow his proceedings with some care, indicate his conclusions on important subjects, and show the questions which he entirely fails to resolve. Every man who thinks seriously on the great questions of philosophy is forced to choose his position. Is it not curious to hear such a thinker deny the possibility, in any strict sense, of Divine revelations to man? When Emerson haughtily rejects such notions as chimerical, and declares that from the human intellect alone are we to expect all positive and possible knowledge of God, do we not wait in silent wonder for the next step? And is not the next step, strangely enough, the rejection of the possibility of aid or light for man on these subjects from his logical faculties? We perceive at once that a philosopher who says, “I cannot state the arguments on which any doctrine of mine rests," and, "I know not what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought," has wonderfully limited the range of his investigations. On the questions of the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul, his field of vision must be very narrow. If consistent with its loudly-proclaimed principles, his system. will yield the most meagre results on these heads; nay, will present a complete void. If, appalled at so strange and undesirable a conclusion, he strives to give a happier aspect to the business, he can only put an abusive strain upon those faculties whose competence to deal with such questions he still concedes. The student who turns to Rothe's Dogmatik finds the logical proof of the existence of God arrayed in formal order: The Ontological Argument, The Cosmological Argument, The Physico-theological Argument, The Moral Argument, and The Historical Argument. These learned arguments must naturally appear cogent in various degrees to different persons, but in Emerson's eyes they all have the fatal defect of depending upon logical processes for their validity. Hence, nothing of this sort appears in any statement of his views of God. He has, therefore, no alternative; he must ground all our positive and possible knowledge on intuition. In this respect the broadest contrast appears between Spinoza, the father of modern Pantheism, and Emerson, its most conspicuous American disciple and advocate. Spinoza pursues a mathematical and, hence, essentially deductive method. The reader of his works finds at the outset axioms, definitions, propositions, corollaries, and scholia. The entire work, in short, is logical in conception and execution. For such methods Emerson has no taste nor aptitude. He does not present even the Platonic combination of rigorous analysis and poetic splendour. He brings the habits and methods of a poet to the tasks of a philosopher, and tries to find his way among the most perilous questions by the aid of intermittent flashes of intuition. From his carefully devised definition of substance, Spinoza seeks to deduce the universe; while Emerson only hopes to grasp, amid the temporary and vanishing phenomena of the world, some fleeting shadow of the invisible Eternal. The rejection of the aid of the logical faculties in such researches is strictly an Emersonian peculiarity. obviously follows from this rejection that we know God, if at all, through direct intuition. The writings of Emerson constantly reveal the fact that he deems himself flooded and permeated with a perpetual sense of the presence of Deity. But surely we need not read far to find that all men are not endowed with any such wonderful ability for the immediate intuition of God. The evidence that comes to us from the past, near and remote, is unanimous and conclusive on this point. "Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself," is as truly the language of Plato as of Isaiah. Nor need we rely on distant ages for proof of the non-intuitional quality of our cognition of God. The scientist Tyndall has been largely influenced by Emerson's writings and general views of the universe. He quotes no other writer so often, and plainly shows that he finds something congenial in the spirit and tendency of the unscientific speculations of the Sage of Concord. He says that Emerson and Carlyle got him out of bed at five o'clock every morning through three long, dreary German winters. Evidently, then, Tyndall would take kindly to this notion of direct contemplation of God if he could make anything of it. In his "Fragments of Science," page 93, Tyndall speaks out his convictions on this topic: If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the problem of the universe, I must shake my head. in doubt. You remember the first Napoleon's question, when the savans who accompanied him to Egypt discussed, in his presence, the origin of the universe, and solved it to their apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry heavens, and said: "It is all very well, gentlemen, but who made all these?" That question still remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to answer it. As far as I can see there is no quality of the human intellect fit to be applied to the solution of the problem. It entirely transcends us. The mind of a man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will, at all events, push our inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, incapable of solution. James Mill held essentially the same position. Herbert Spencer says: "Only the man of science can truly know how utterly beyond not only human knowledge, but human conception, is the universal power of which nature and life and thought are manifestations." There is some difficulty for most thinkers in making out how men who pursue logical processes so readily, and rest with such entire confidence in their results, can avoid the |