WHEN we speak of the Son of God and the Creation in a single breath, we express no less an opposition than between the Eternal and the Finite, the Unchangeable and the Ever-changing. For the Son of God was from all eternity partaker of the Divine Nature of the Father; He existed before all things; He would have continued to exist, even though nothing beyond the Godhead had been called into being. However difficult it may be for philosophic thinking to any extent rationally to conceive of a creation in and with time, yet we at once feel that the thought of an eternal creation would lead to an absurdity, and that all that exists beyond God must have a beginning in time. Precisely this last, however, is denied in the Gospel with regard to the Logos;¹ and at first sight there is thus seen between the Creation and Him an overwhelming, we had almost said an unfathomable gulf.

But would not, even if the Gospel had been entirely silent on this point, Christian reason itself rise to the supposition that this impassable gulf exists only in appearance; and that, on the contrary, a very essential relation must subsist between the partaker of the nature and majesty of God and the work of His hands? Or what?—to possess Divine omnipotence and wisdom and knowledge, and then to remain eternally inactive; to be light and life, no less than the Father, and yet without outward manifestation of Himself; to be the Word, and yet to remain unintelligible to those who listen to the voice of the visible creation—one feels that this thought is self-contradictory. No wonder that already a Philo the Jew most intimately connected the thoughts Logos and Creator of the world. That some kind of relation must subsist between the Son of God and the Creation is à priori to be expected. What kind of a relation, however, it is, is a question to which only God’s written word can give a satisfactory answer. There are, it is true, but few disclosures here given us on so important a question. But this cannot surprise us; as the question is certainly more of a speculative than of a practical nature, and the Gospel is not designed, in the first place, satisfactorily to enlighten us as respects the mysteries in the world, but rather as respects the plan of redemption. Yet these comparatively few hints are of too remarkable a character to be passed over in silence. When we have collected and elucidated them, it will at the same time become clear to us that we have here to do with something more than a question of idle curiosity.

He who would perhaps expect to meet with an unequivocal declaration, in the Lord’s own teaching, as to the relation in which He originally stood to all created things, would find himself mistaken. So far as we know, the Son of God has nowhere distinctly declared that even before His Incarnation He was the Head of that Creation, in which during the days of His flesh He occupied so entirely unique a place. This indication would have been for His contemporaries superfluous, for His apostles before the Day of Pentecost unintelligible, and might also have given occasion to injurious misunderstanding; as would have been the case, for example, with the public announcement of the mystery of His supernatural birth. It is known indeed that He never characterises Himself as the Logos, but always as the Son; He does not say, “I and the Logos,” but, “I and the Father are one.” The I, which here speaks, is the Logos Himself, in union with the humanity which He has assumed, and is not called to testify of that which He had once done, but of that which He would do for the salvation of sinners. That He existed and had glory before the Creation the Lord has repeatedly given assurance; but of His activity in connection with and in relation to this Creation He does not for a moment speak, and in this silence also there lies—pardon the expression—in our opinion, a Divine decorum, which must be felt rather than described. Here it was meet, not that the Word should testify of Himself, but that those should testify of Him who from the beginning had been eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word. Only after His ascension, when He had returned where He was before, could a part of the veil be raised which concealed his pre-mundane life.

Those to whom we owe some further light on this point are especially Paul, the Writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and John. The first of these not merely declares in passing that God created all things by Jesus Christ;² but also elsewhere exclaims, in a tone of sacred exaltation, “In Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him.”³ The second, who elsewhere asserts in general terms that the world was framed by the word of God, i.e., by the command of His omnipotence, declares, even in the beginning of his epistle, with regard to the Son, “Whom God hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.”⁴ And the last rises above time and space in the flight of his conception of the Logos, who was with God and was God; but of whom He at the same time proclaims, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made (geworden ist, came into existence).”⁵

Attempts have not been wanting to explain such utterances in a sense which no longer proves anything in favour of a relation properly speaking between the Son of God and the natural Creation. Frequently, for instance, that new Creation, which the Lord called into being, has been thought of in connection with the place in the Epistle to the Colossians; that which is spoken of by John in his prologue has been limited to the spiritual kingdom of God, which certainly would never have been founded without Him; and in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews has been seen merely the declaration that by His power the different Mosaic and Christian cons, or world periods, have arisen. It can, however, be made evident, even for the simple reader of the Gospel, that such limitations are equally in conflict with the letter as with the spirit of the sacred utterances, and have proceeded from the manifest endeavour after an apparently more reasonable sense than that which seemed to come naturally out of the words as they stand. Here, too, reason has shown itself but a very untrustworthy guide in the way of truth, and the conception by which the difficulties were most easily avoided was manifested to be the poorest and weakest. No, it cannot possibly be denied that the Apostolic writers never for a moment thought of limiting the activity and power of the Lord exclusively to the spiritual domain. Not merely after, but also before His incarnation, does the Lord present Himself before their eye as acting and calling forth life in the wide realm of Creation; and the deeper truth, already concealed under the personification of antiquity,⁶ comes in the New Testament undisguisedly and-convincingly to light. How would the first witnesses of the Lord have arrived at conceptions like that already mentioned, if the Holy Spirit had not continually taught them? and what would ever have moved them to arise with the proclamation of ideas, which were for the wisdom of their age partly incomprehensible, partly offensive, unless they had been firmly assured of their truth? He who in the spiritual domain follows the guidance of the Apostles, but in the, metaphysical despises this guidance, acts with but little self-consistency. Even if the expressions they make use of were not strange to their contemporaries, yet were the thoughts they utter something very different from unripe fruits of the age. If we seek to penetrate these thoughts as deeply as possible, there are three truths, especially, which they most distinctly proclaim to us.

The Creation is, first, the immediate work of the Son of God. “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made.” Whatever may be indicated in this tone of triumph of the ancient poet, for Christians it is literally true in relation to Him who was from the beginning. No, not absolutely immediately by the will of the Father alone was all that exists called into being out of nothing. — It is true it was the Father Himself who was the First Cause of all that is created. “Thou hast created all things, and because of Thy will they are, and were created:” thus resounds in heaven the song of praise to the honour of Him who liveth for ever and ever.⁷ But the Father created all things by the Son, thus not apart from Him, not also merely acting beside and with Him; but in such wise that the Son, even in the work of creation, was carrying out the Father’s will and counsel. Thus no inactivity of the Father in favour of the Son; but also no passive repose of the Son, whilst the Father alone was carrying out the work of creation, does the Gospel teach us. But just as little do we render justice to the Apostolic conception, if—with reverence be it spoken—we conceive of the Son as a mere instrument in carrying out the Father’s will in the-work of creation. Rather was He the great Architect, by whom—ever in accordance with the counsel and will of the Father—was carried out that which here must be carried out.⁸ Even on the morning of the Creation, we may thus say, the pleasure of the Father was prospering in His hand. So little is He placed in a mere external and accidental relation to this creative work, that, on the contrary, according to the deeply significant word of the Apostle, “In Him were all things created;”⁹ as in the centre ordained by the Father, from whom henceforth the quickening rays proceed in all directions. And how wide is that domain which here opens,—shall we say, for our thinking, or for our imagination ¢ The whole material world, in its most gigantic phenomena, and in its minutest elements, is thus the realisation of the creative thought, not merely of the Father, but also of the Son of His love. The whole spirit world, with its various ranks and orders, was at His word called into existence around the throne of light; and in whatever respects the archangel may differ from the lesser ministering spirits, what they severally are they owe to Him, who calleth the things that are not as though they were. Not merely this world, not merely this solar system, but all that extends before our eye in boundless space; all that lives and moves in the most remote regions of Creation, whither the most powerful astronomical instrument has not yet penetrated, solar systems and stellar nebule, pre-existing worlds which have long since passed away, and new celestial bodies which as yet exist only in the thoughts of the Godhead, He it is by whom they exist, or will be called forth into being out of the boundless night of nothingness. Nothing indeed of all these did He create without knowing the will of the Father; but also the Father was not satisfied with having the Son merely as a Counseller. He constituted Him the actual Fulfiller of His wondrous plans. Or is such a conception, clearly grounded as it is in the Gospel, in itself unacceptable, yea, unworthy of the supreme Godhead 2 We confess the impossibility we feel so to unfold it that no single difficulty more shall remain for thoughtful faith, Yet, if it is not unworthy of God to have a Son, it must be just as little inconceivable that in and by this Son He called the Universe into being; and the absolute impossibility of presenting to ourselves, in a manner to any extent satisfactory, the How, is still no reason, for one who has learnt to be modest, to reject as absurd the That.

And thus also is the Creation. in the second place the clear and glorious revelation of the Son. With the highest right has the Creation at all times been termed a glorious revelation of the infinite Godhead. Poets and prophets of the Old Testament, apostles and apologists of the New, have in earlier and later times exalted the significance of this revelation. Yea, “the whole world is for our eyes like a very beautiful book, in which all creatures, from the least unto the greatest, are like letters, which display to us the invisible things of God, even His eternal power and Godhead;”¹⁰ “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His. handiwork.” Without hesitation do we agree with all this, but the question remains, Is it sufficiently considered to what an extent the glory definitely of the Son, the eternal Logos, shines forth to us in the wonders of Creation? The Word was made flesh, and as Man has dwelt among men; yet though He had never appeared in human form upon this lowly earth, we still could not say that the majesty of the Logos had remained entirely unknown to us. Man and lower animals are, as it were, His incarnate thoughts: “from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,” do we find the realisation of the plans of His infinite understanding. Yea, to the question, Who is He that from the beginning was in the form of God? every blade of grass gives us an answer; for, yet once more, “without Him was not anything made that was made.” Divine omnipotence, wisdom, and love do we thus, on glancing around us, ascribe not less to the Son than to the Father of lights, and our religious contemplation of nature can only then bear the honourable title of a truly Christian one, when often in spirit we rise from all created things, not merely to the Father, but also definitely to the Son, by whom are all things. The earth, which His feet have trodden, was a point of His own creation; the world, which rejected Him, would have had no existence, unless, in obedience to the will of the Father, He had called it into being. And yet higher may we rise, guided by the hand of the sacred writers. As He is the Mediate Cause, so also is He the Final Cause, the Find of Creation: all was not merely by Him called into existence, but also is for Him destined, whom the Father without any limitation has appointed heir of all things. Paul teaches us not simply that all things were made by Him and in Him, but also for Him—εἰς αὐτόν. “The world, in the, diversity of its forms of existence and periods of development, was created by means of the Son, and on that account destined to be subjected to Him.”¹¹ It is not merely His work, but also so constituted as to be His crown and to augment His praise. Unless we are deceived, the Creation becomes, with the greater clearness of this consciousness, yet dearer and more full of meaning for the heart of the Christian, and we discover at the same time the deep-lying reason for the preference, displayed by our Lord in the days of His flesh, for the visible kingdom of nature.. No prophet or teacher in Israel ever, so far as we know, to the same extent availed himself in his teaching of the phenomena of Creation around him; but neither did any one ever stand in such close relationship to nature, or could penetrate with so infallible a glance its hieroglyphs, as the Son of God and Son of Man. For He was not merely a part, but the Head of Creation; not simply one of its phenomena, but, what is much more, the cause of all created things. It was consequently no arbitrary act, no play of His own imagination, no wise adaptation, merely, to the capacity of His contemporaries for receiving instruction, when He made seed and harvest-field, tares and wheat, leaven and mustard seed, the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, types and heralds of the mysteries of His kingdom. The figurative language of the Lord is no arbitrary application, but the direct interpretation of that which is to be read in the open book of Creation. Yea, what is more, if nature has no lower design than to be subservient to the highest revelation in the domain of spirit, it may be said that the eternal Word has revealed Himself in the wide domain of Creation with the definite object of making even the material and transitory creation the mirror of a spiritual and intransitory kingdom of God.¹²

No wonder, finally, that the Creation, in the third place, is, according to the express teaching of Holy Scripture, the object of the continual care of the Son. We set great store by our Christian confession, that the Providence of God is in the fullest sense of the word a Fatherly Providence; yet we must not on that account overlook the significant hint given us by a divinely enlightened witness of the Christian truth, that He, who is the effulgence of the glory of God and the express image of His nature, at the same time upholds all things by the word of His power.¹³ What are we to suppose is indicated by this expression? Are merely all those things to be thought of which definitely in the spiritual domain are preserved by the Son of God? But the things intended in verse 3 can surely be no other than those worlds (æones) with regard to which we read in verse 2 that they were made by the Son; we must. think of the all things of which the Father has appointed Him heir. Without any exception whatever, all this is upheld by Him, i.e., not merely governed—although this idea also need not be excluded—but in such wise preserved in existence and order, that without doubt it would sink again into nothingness, unless it were unceasingly sustained by His mighty hand, and preserved from falling.¹⁴ And this the Son of God did not merely once for all; that He has not merely begun to do, after He has Himself made expiation for our sins, and has now ascended the throne of heaven: no, as in an eternal present, He ever continues to uphold all created things, because and so long as He is the Son. He did so even before His incarnation; He did not cease to do so—the mystery of Godliness is great—when He went about here on earth in the form of a servant; He continues to exert this sustaining power since He has been exalted as King over the Kingdom of God. How could He forsake the work of His own hands, and withdraw the care of His Providence from that which has in Him alike the reason as the object of its existence? Yea, once more, “He is not only before all things, but in Him all things consist—subsist in one organised whole.”¹⁵ He is the centre, from which in one organised whole. life and power are communicated to all the spheres of Creation, even as He Himself has received them from the Father: in Him, not less than in the Almighty Father, do they live and move, and have their being; He upholds them (and this also must not be overlooked) by the word of His power. So little are we justified in thinking of the Son of God before His incarnation as something impersonal, that, on the contrary, there is ascribed to Him, as a thinking and acting personality, a mighty word of command, which alone is perfectly able to perform that which the act of all others is not able to accomplish, namely, to preserve that which is created from an otherwise certain fall. By His Son, once more, in a word, is God the Preserver of all things. If the complaint has sometimes been made, not without reason, that the conception of Providence formed by many is rather Deistic than Evangelical, rather Heathen than Christian; yet, on the other hand it is self-evident how, from this standpoint, the Christian’s belief as regards the preservation of the world is most intimately bound up with his belief in Christ as the Son of God. To Him we may with the utmost boldness present the homage, which Israel’s poet renders to Jehovah in the undivided fulness of His nature: “Lord, Thy word abideth for ever, in the heavens. Thy faithfulness endureth unto all generations; Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. According to Thy word it abideth unto this day; for all things are servants unto Thee.”¹⁶

We believe that in determining the relationship which exists between the Son of God and the Creation, we have not proceeded a single step farther than is warranted by the Gospel, without which we should know nothing at all about it. Yet we think we hear the question raised: “If this is really the case, and the Creation is the very work, the clear revelation, and the object of constant care of the Son of God’s love, then what remains over in this vast undertaking for Him, of whom the Saviour testified, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I also work’?”¹⁷ What can we answer, without meriting the reproach of meddling with things that are too wonderful and too high for us? The solution of the problem can first be —we do not say satisfactorily attained —but dimly apprehended, when we not only unconditionally accept the personal distinction between the Father and the Son, and the essential unity of the two, but also acknowledge the subordination of the Son to the Father, as having its foundation in the natural relation of the one to the other. The Father creates all things, but only by means of the Son; the Son creates all things, but only according to the Father’s will and counsel; and yet there is here only one Creator, as one creative act of God. If we might employ an analogy taken from human things, to shed at least some light upon our conception of things Divine, we should instinctively think of Moses, who himself reared the tabernacle, but—after the pattern of all that which God had showed him on the mount.¹⁸ But rather do we lay our hand upon our mouth, and cease from the hopeless attempt, in this childhood-state, entirely to comprehend that which on the ground of God’s word we reverently believe. The rays of light which we see arise awaken in us the expectation of fresh mysteries,¹⁹ yet we do not turn away our eye. The little which we properly know by faith concerning the relation between the Son of God and the Creation, has a practical interest, to which we cannot here neglect somewhat more particularly to direct the attention.

The relation pointed out between the Son of God and the Creation sheds new light upon the Logos Himself, upon the Cosmos, and upon the Incarnation of the Son of God in the fulness of the time.

If the Logos from the beginning stood in such relation to the whole Creation, then it becomes afresh clear that He in turn can be nothing less than very God, blessed for ever. Upon this height, more than anywhere, where all that exists extends as His work before our eyes, does the poverty of the Arian Christology become thoroughly apparent. Mediate cause of all things which have existed from the beginning, and—Himself at one time non-existent! By the highest orders of spirits worshipped as their Creator, and—Himself nothing but a created spirit, who thus on His part must say to the Infinite: “I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!²⁰ Doing all things which are elsewhere ascribed to the Father Himself, and yet nothing but a cloudy middle-person between God and man! Final aim of the Creation, which thus was ordained and carried out with reference to Him, and—the whole Creation consequently designed for the glorification of the most eminent creature of God! Truly we could wish for words wherein duly to set forth the absurdity of this conception. Confidently do we ask every one who has still eyes to see, whether He, who literally upholds all things by the word of His power, can Himself form a part of the Creation, to whatever extent the most excellent part? Of two things one must be true: either the Son of God certainly does not stand to the Creation in the relation above described, or, if He does, Arianism is nonsense. Only from our standpoint have we, as well in the Son as in the Creation, a real direct personal revelation of God.21

The Cosmos also, alike the natural and the moral world, after what has been said, presents itself in enhanced lustre before our eye. Without doubt the Creation also is an enigma, which displays so much the greater depths the longer we attentively observe it. Scarcely do we seek in our imagination to rise to that which preceded the beginning of time and of the world, when we learn to comprehend the assurance of the ancient sage, that “we are of yesterday, and know nothing.” And to the question, “What, then, was God doing before He created all things?” we cannot return a much better answer than that of Luther, that “God was in a birch plantation, to cut rods for untimely questioners.” Yet we no longer feel ourselves compelled in our thinking to fall back upon the idea of an everlasting Cosmos, since we have learned to know an eternal Logos in His pre-mundane activity. Behind God’s finite works we see His eternal counsels, as it were arising out of the unfathomable depth; and instead of conceiving of the Father as sunk in a joyless void and solitude, we behold Him with infinite blessedness contemplating Himself in the Son, and by the Son forming all things, when and as He will. This Son we see begin, maintain, and complete the work of Creation, even as He later appeared to accomplish the work of Redemption, “not that He might do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.” Thus the Creation becomes to us at the same time a continual revelation, embracing all ages, of the Father and the Son in the communion of the Holy Ghost. To the Logos, not as yet incarnate, may now — regarded à posteriorti—be fully applied that which the wise king in poetic personification represents Wisdom as saying: “The Lord possessed me (in) the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was anointed from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth; while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass upon the face of the depth, when He established the clouds above, when He strengthened the foundations of the deep: when He gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment, when He appointed the foundations of the earth; then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.”²² Yes, these inimitable delightings of the Word and Wisdom of the Father the whole Creation presents to us at every step. And while sages have often disputed whether and to what extent this world which we inhabit deserves to be called the best possible world, for what Christian is there need, even in this respect, of a more satisfactory answer; since in the work of Creation, not less than in the work of Redemption, he sees the very hand of Him who out of boundless love presented the highest sacrifice for our Salvation?

And this leads us on yet to a final reflection. Even the Incarnation of the Son of God, of which we shall have to speak hereafter, is never better understood than when we contemplate His relation to all created things. On the one hand, we are now first in the way to perceive all the amazing character of that incarnation. Once we know who He was who became partaker of our flesh and blood, and remember the vast extent of all that which at His mere beck came into life, we sink down under the feeling of our absolute nothingness, and easily understand that this astonishing fact should appear to many incredible, and that even in astronomy an ally has been sought against the Gospel.²³ What was this earth, this little island in the ocean of boundless space, that God’s own Son should descend upon it to dwell, to suffer, and to die. Truly Luther's hymn, “He whom the whole universe never contained, rests in the bosom of Mary; in our poor flesh and blood, clothes itself the highest good”—embraces a subject which no finite intellect can ever fathom, and which affords an eternally inexhaustible material for reflection and thanksgiving.

On the other hand, however, the incarnation of the Son of God becomes to us, after what has been said, at least to a certain extent comprehensible. For it is no strange earth to which in His. love He condescends, but a part of His own Creation. It was no entirely new relationship, but simply an altered one, which arose between the Creator and the creature on the incarnation of the Logos. When through sin the order in the Creation was destroyed, the Logos comes, who becomes flesh, only to restore again that which He had Himself originally formed, but which man had corrupted. Assuredly, even thus looked at, there remains here for us a depth of grace, but by no means. a chaos of confusion. Unfathomable may we call such a conception, but not unreasonable. Creation renders redemption intelligible to us, redemption restores the harmony of Creation; and in. both is. reflected the glory of the same Logos.

And such a Gospel is to be regarded as nothing but a, cunningly devised fable!

1) Compare the argument in the previous chapter. Consequently one hardly needs to show what slight importance is to be attached to utterances like the following, “At first God existed alone; then He brought forth the Word, which is called the Son of God, and even on one occasion God, but ever second to the Father and less than He.” And further, “A pre-existence from an eternity without beginning we must not ascribe to Him, for neither the Lord nor His Apostles do so. They content themselves with the historic statement, that He existed before Abraham, and before the creation of the world, without determining how much earlier He had existed. And we hold fast to them, especially to their own words, without inferring, from any reasonings of our own, that He must therefore have existed from all eternity.”—So Professor Hofstede De Groot, ‘ The Groningen Theology in its Peculiarity,” pp. 163 and 170.

2) Ephes. iii, 9.

3) Col. i. 16:

4) Heb. i. 2.

5) John i. 3.

6) Prov. viii. 22, sqq.

7) Rev. iv. 11.

8) Not the Causa prima, not’ the Causa instrumentalis, but the Causa efficiens.

9) Col. i. 16.

10) Netherlands Confession, Art. ii. Comp. Rom. i. 20.

11) Compare Chantepie de la Saussaye, Bijbelstudiën, on Heb. i. 1-4.

12) He who is able to take a step farther in connection with this subject will certainly not be averse to the consideration of the profound words of Lange: “The world appears to us the necessary, though free, act of love of God the Father, in the formation of which—wherein a thousand interpenetrating symbols and images come forth, at first in the obscurity of night, then ever more and more clearly—He presents, on an ever wider scale, the image of the eternal beloved Son, as the love of His nature, until at last He sets forth the eternal Son Himself, in the beauty of His appearing, as the Archetype in whom all those types and shadows meet; and thereby in fact fulfils the great word of His love, ‘ Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”—Positive Dogmatik, p. 221.

13) Heb. i. 3.

14) In like manner does Calvin also interpret this place: “To bear here means to preserve, or to continue all that is created in its own state; for he intimates that all things would instantly come to nothing, were they not sustained by His power.” Comp. Numb. xi. 14.

15) Col. i. 17.

16) Ps, cxix. 89-91. Dutch version.

17) John v. 17.

18) Acts vii, 44.

19) The reader may here be fitly reminded of a saying from the Theodicée of Leibnitz: “Il suffit que nous ayons quelque intelligence analogique des mystéres, afin qu’en les recevant nous ne prononcions pas des paroles déstituées de sens: mais il n’est point nécessaire que l’explication aille aussi loin quwil serait & souhaiter, c’est & dire, qu’elle aille jusqu’à la comprehension et au comment des choses. Les esprits modérés trouvent toujours dans nos mysttres une explication suffisante pour croire, et jamais autant qwil en faut pour comprendre. Il nous suffit d’un certain ce que cest (τί ἑστὶν), mais le comment (πῶς) nous passe. On peut dire des explications des mysteres qui se débitent parci parlà, ce que la reine de Suéde disait dans une médaille”sur la couronne quelle avait quittée: non mi bisogna, e non mi basta. Nous n’avous pas besoin non plus, comme j’ai déj&i remarqué, de prouver les mystéres a& priori ou den rendre raison; il nous suffit que la chose est ainsi, sans savoir le comment, que Dieu s’est réservé.” Thinkers, like the great Leibnitz, were still simple enough to bow the philosophic head before mysteries; but thinkers like—the reader may himself fill in the names, of which an abundance will present themselves—assure us that in the religious and Christian domain there neither are nor can be any mysteries, or they must have recognised them. Pre-Christian heathendom supposed that there was at least an intimate connection between the religious feeling in man and the mysteries. Later, it is true, men have become more shrewd. But have they also become better and more happy?

20) Ps, cxxxix. 14,

21) Very justly and admirably does Martensen express himself with regard to Arianism (Dogmatik i, p. 124): “In opposition to such a doctrine the Church maintains that the Father did not indeed come into the world; but that God would not be love, if the Son did not come forth from the Father, if the God who, as Father, is above the world had not from the beginning been in the world as Son, as God of God, who is the life and light of the world, and in the fulness of time was made flesh in Christ. If Christ is only a demi-god, or only a man, who has soared to such equality with the highest as is possible to men; if He is only an angel, or if He is only the greatest of all Prophets, thus, in any case only a creature, then is Christianity not the highest revelation; for no creature, no man, no angel, but only God Himself, can reveal God as He is; only the God-man, who unites in Himself the created and the uncreated nature, can fill up the gulf between Creator and Creation, can be the perfect Mediator of love between the two.” Compare what we have already remarked in the previous chapter; and see Christian Dogmatics, p. 276, sqq

22) Prov. viii. 22-31; Cf. Christol. O.V. pp. 196, 197.

23) We recommend any one who feels himself too much perplexed by objections drawn from this source, once more to, read and ponder what has been said on this subject by Chalmers, in his well-known masterly Lectures.