IN the far-extending Creation, which the voice of the one Logos called into being, and of which the starry heavens present to us every evening a small streak, our eye discovers an almost imperceptible point. We call it, in our children’s language, world, although we know that with God it is esteemed only as a particle of dust on the balance. For the student of nature, however, this little point is of an importance beyond all others; because he knows more of it than of all worlds and suns together. And the Christian, who considers whose manger and whose cross has stood on it, calls this earth, not indeed the centre of the vast universe, but yet the chosen. theatre of the revelation of Him “who dwelleth on high, who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in. heaven and in the earth.” In what a surprising manner these last words have been fulfilled in connection with the appearing of the Son of God in the flesh is generally known, and can be only later developed by us. For the present there arises another question, which is certainly worthy of our special consideration. The relation which the Son of God assumed to the human race would have been absolutely incomprehensible, unless there had already existed an earlier, original relation between the Son of God and humanity. Thus we are naturally carried back in thought from the fulness of time to the pre-Christian period, from the plan of redemption to the work of creation and the later guidance of our fallen race. The question arises, Has the Son of God, even before the fall, stood in any relation to humanity? And secondly, In what relationship did He continue to stand to humanity after sin and death were come into the world? Even to these questions we seek the answer there, where we have never yet sought it in vain.

Did the Son of God stand in any relation to humanity even before the fall? This question transports us into the morning of Creation, when the youthful earth had but recently proceeded from the hand of its Maker, and the Deity, about to set the crown on the work of His hands, is introduced as musing in Himself, and saying, “Let us make man, in our image, after our likeness.” “Let us make man.” We have no wish to renew the controversy waged by interpreters in earlier and later times upon this text. He who would find in these words, considered only in themselves, a clear and sufficient proof for the Church’s doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must wholly and entirely overlook the distinction of times and testaments. In the glimmer of the dawn we cannot expect that degree of light which is destined to shine only at clear noonday. On the other hand, however, we readily acknowledge that those expositions which would deny to this passage any evidential value whatever, just as little commend themselves to us. That there is to be found here only a so-called plural of majesty,¹ appears to us something like an escape out of a perplexity, and is also in direct contradiction with the simplicity and dignity of the primeval record. That we must here conceive of Jehovah as addressing his celestial council of angels, is an opinion which would lead to the unscriptural supposition that the angels were in some way or other co-workers with God in the creation of man. We can thus only suppose that the Deity is here taking counsel with Himself, as with another Divine I; and, to whatever extent it may here remain undecided, in what relation this other I stands to the Speaker Himself, we can by no means feel surprised that, when this utterance has been contemplated in the light of the New Testament, certainly a very remarkable indication of a personal distinction in the Divine Nature has been seen in it.² Be this as it may, the Creator takes counsel with Himself; He, the living, speaking, operating God, declares that He will make man exclusively after His image. Whether one distinguishes between image and likeness, or, with others, supposes the same idea to be expressed by both words, the design of the sacred writer is clear. Man can display God’s likeness, only inasmuch as he has been created in God’s image. On this account the full stress is laid upon this last, in that calmly majestic account, “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.”³ If we ask, however, what that image was, after which God created man, we can, in accordance with what has been said, only answer, God created man after the likeness of the Logos, who was Himself the express image of His person. Understand us aright; we do not assert that Moses, in the use of the expression under review, designed to convey this thought, but only that we are necessarily led to this conception of the case when we regard it in the light of the New Testament. Or what? if the Son of God was in reality, as we know, the object of His perfect love, the bearer of His perfections, the confidant of His lofty plans, how could He be excluded when it was a question of forming the earth and man? If the Son is the highest being whom the Father knows, could He be anything less than the Divine Ideal, after whom that masterpiece of the fingers of God, the king of the earthly creation, should be formed? Precisely because the new-created man reflected in unsullied lustre the image of the Logos could he also be perfectly good in the sight of the spotlessly Holy One, and—to use the language of one of the Fathers of the Church⁴—“a heavenly plant, the fairest hymn to the honour of the Godhead.” His reason was a ray of that light which existed in the Logos, the highest reason; his language as it were an echo of that eternal Word, which was in the beginning with God and was God. In short, as the Logos was the image of the invisible God, so was man again the image of the all-animating Logos!

Let not any one reproach us, if this thought—which was already hinted at by the Church Fathers Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen⁵—possesses for us special interest, with having ventured on the domain of utterly fruitless speculation. Thus much we at once gain by it: that the relation between the Logos and humanity is seen not to have first begun, as is ordinarily asserted, at Bethlehem, but already to have existed in Paradise; and that, consequently—pardon the defective expression—an original relationship existed between Him and our race. Man was, according to the Scriptural presentation, created not simply by, but also after (κατά), and for the Logos (εἰς); inasmuch as man was from the beginning destined to bear on earth His heavenly image. Far indeed from the Logos being merely a creation of the human thought, humanity, on the contrary, is a creation, the work and image of the Logos. On that very account also is man compelled to conceive of the Divine under human forms, and God, when He reveals Himself, can speak to His human children only in a human way. Because God created man after His own image, man cannot otherwise conceive of God than after his own (human) image. And again, because the Logos stood in direct relation to God’s vicegerent on earth, on that account He could not and would not abandon man after the fall to his wretched condition. He, who was Himself God’s original image, had compassion on His own dishonoured image here below. Creator of our highly privileged race, in which He recognised His own likeness,, He laid aside His glory as Creator to become the Redeemer of men.

That which has been said naturally leads us to a question, which at first hearing perhaps sounds more or less strange, and which yet has not without reason during the course of the ages greatly occupied the noblest spirits— the question, whether the Eternal Word would have become incarnate, even in case sin had not entered into the world. We cannot feel surprise that a negative answer is returned to this question by those who regard Christ as exclusively the Lamb of propitiation, by whose spotless offering the wrath of God was averted from Adam’s fallen descendants. Certainly, if no sin had been present, there had been no need for the presentation of a sacrifice; if the sacrifice were not necessary, it is evident that He who presented it would not have needed to appear in the likeness of sinful flesh. But however true it is that the Son of God appeared as the Mediator of the Atonement, it is not less true that He was at the same time the highest Revelation of the invisible Godhead, and that man was originally destined to be like God. The question now arises whether man, apart from sin, would have been able to attain to this high destiny, had not the Logos Himself, the image of the Father and the ideal of Humanity, appeared in human flesh. And to this question the Apostle Paul seems, to us at least, to return a negative answer, when he writes: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.”⁶ The body of man did not first become a natural body by means of sin, but it was so from the beginning; a spiritual body it could become only through the instrumentality of the heavenly Man, the Lord from heaven. Even though man had not fallen, he must have been gradually trained and led up to a higher perfection. And why should we not suppose that, among the means which the highest love would have used to this end, even the sending of His Son in human flesh would have had its place? So wondrous a fact as the incarnation of the Son of God in Christ Jesus the Lord can surely scarcely be merely the consequence of a not absolutely necessary phenomenon, sin. God’s world-plan, “to gather together again under one Head all things,” in His Son,⁷ and to lead them to the highest possible perfection, does not date from. the hour of the first sin, but was formed before the ages; although no doubt—humanly speaking—it was modified by the entrance of sin. As sin produced a fatal disturbance in the order of the world appointed by God, so does it also in this case cause that. He who from before all ages was destined to be the highest revelation of the Godhead, must very definitely appear in the character of the one who makes expiation for guilt, the Redeemer, in our stead to suffer, to atone, to die. But even though others had continued to stand, and the pure humanity had risen from virtue to virtue, from blessedness to blessedness, it would not, as it seems to us, have been able to reach its destined goal, in any other way than as led by the hand of the Logos; and, unless everything deceives us, a personal revelation of God in the Son of His love would still have been the last and highest step in the Divine plan of education, and the chosen means for making man partaker of God’s holiness, through the contemplation of the Divine in a human form. It is true he would net have needed a redemption, if the trial command had never been transgressed; but a leading on of creation to consummation, the attaining of the final object contemplated in man, seems not conceivable without the appearing of Him who, according to the words of Paul, is “the head of the body, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.”⁸ With the most perfect right could thus one of the most acute Doctors of the Church in the Middle Ages give the following answer to the question he propounds, “Whether, if man had net sinned, God would still have appeared in the flesh.” “It seems that, even in this case, the Godhead would have come in the flesh. For if the cause remains, the effect also remains. In the incarnation of Christ, as Augustine says, many other things are to be taken into account besides the deliverance from sin. It belongs indeed to God’s almighty perfection, that He should complete His works and reveal Himself in an infinite operation; but no creature, who is not at the same time more than a creature, can produce an infinite effect, since according to his nature he is finite. In the work of the incarnation, however, an infinite operation of the almighty power of God is seen to be manifest, for by it those things which are infinitely removed the one from the other are united, inasmuch as by it God became man; by it also the universe is brought to completion, since the last-formed of the creatures, man, is united to God, the first beginning. Besides, human nature has not become more receptive by reason of sin, that it should receive into itself the gifts of God’s grace. But now, even after sin, it has still a capacity for receiving the greatest grace, namely, for becoming one with God. Thus would it also have possessed a receptivity9 for the same grace, even if man had not sinned, and God would have withheld from him no blessing of salvation, for which he had the receptivity.”⁹ Or to speak with one of the most distinguished theologians of any century, John Wessel Gansfort:¹⁰ “The Kingdom of God, as made up of angels and men, could not be without Christ the Head, even as Christ could not be without this His body. The all-wise God, the Keeper of the Holy City Jerusalem, had before ordained a yet more living unity and perfection for the citizens of the Kingdom of God than that unity which exists between the head and the members of the same body.” Who could dare to conceive how brightly and gloriously God’s highest revelation in Christ would have shone forth in a sinless world, when even now, in conflict with sin and death, it displays so incomparable a lustre?¹¹

Why longer, however, tarry over the investigation of an abstract possibility or impossibility? Sin has come into the world, and with it a corruption and misery which can only be stemmed by the intervention and self-surrender of the Son of God, for the deliverance of our lost race. How, to this end, the Word has appeared in human flesh in the fulness of time, we shall later hear. For the present, however, another question engages us. We are wont to regard the four thousand years which preceded the birth of the Lord as a period of long-continued preparation for the day of the New Covenant, and we know what a high destiny was assigned to Israel, as being the bearer and guardian of the special revelation of God. In what relation the Son of God before his incarnation stood to Israel in particular will be examined in the following chapter. For the present, however, our glance is directed to fallen humanity in general, especially to the pre-Christian Heathendom; and the question can no longer be repressed: In what relation did the Logos continue to stand to Humanity, after sin and death had once entered into the world?

The answer to this question is to be found in the significant utterances of John concerning the Logos, even before His incarnation. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.¹² We have earlier reminded the reader how superficial and arbitrary a proceeding it would be to limit this saying in its application to that short period during which the Son of God as man went about amongst us men. No, whatever of life, of natural, moral, spiritual life, has ever flowed through the Creation, proceeded from Him. Whatever light also has been seen in the material and moral world in the course of the ages, of this was He the source and centre. This light has not indeed been able, in the ages before Christ, wholly to expel the darkness of error and sin—a long night of forty centuries descended upon the fallen humanity—but yet the light ceased not to shine in this darkness, and ever anew to break forth through it. The darkness comprehended not, did not recognise this light; but just as little was the darkness able in all points to hinder the spread of this light or to quench its rays in mist. On the contrary, it has experienced the operation of this light in sufficient measure to become manifest precisely as darkness, and the whole history of the pre-Christian world may be spoken of as one continuous field of unceasing, ever deepening conflict between light and darkness. It was thus, to mention particular instances, owing to the light- and life-bringing energy of the Logos, that a Seth, an Enoch, a Noah, ever towered higher and higher in the knowledge of God and in true’ Godliness above their constantly more degenerate contemporaries; that a Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High God, formed an exception to Canaan’s idolatrous inhabitants; that a Jethro, a Job, with his friends, and others, although they belonged not to the chosen nation, yet walked in the light and knowledge of the One True God. Yea, why confine ourselves to the comparatively few chosen, ones of our race whose names we read in the Bible history? All that we discover that was great and glorious in the domain of the Gentile world, in the domain of art, of philosophy, of religion, was the fruit of a secret operation of the Logos upon man, who even in his deeply sunken condition did not cease to be the Divine offspring; an operation which cannot possibly be explained on every side, and traced _ _ out in its minutest details, but much less—if at least we hold to the words of John—can be contested or denied. As the rays of the sun pierce through the mist, not bright and clear, but clouded and weak, whilst the mists wage an unceasing warfare against the sunlight; thus also did the Logos before His incarnation operate in and upon the sinful world, but in such wise, that He often experienced opposition in the power of sin, without, however, being entirely arrested and excluded by it. The history of heathendom, too, displays a continual activity of God, gradually to lead man to higher light and life, returned on the part of man, too, usually by unbelief, aversion, and hatred.

It were a glorious task to describe, expressly from this point of view, the history of the heathen world before Christ. The limits of our undertaking do. not admit even of our giving a sketch thereof in rough outline; yet, we cannot bid farewell to so fruitful a thought without at least pointing out a few consequences, which follow naturally from this position.

By the relation observed between the Logos and our fallen race is, first of all, sufficiently explained the relative truth and beauty of so much in Heathendom. There was a time—it is not yet entirely past—when nothing else was seen in the heathen world but a complex mass of iniquity; in the heathen religions, nothing but a tissue of mean priestly deception, an accumulation of all kinds of errors and abominations. And who could be blind to such deep wretchedness as here displays itself on all sides? who would not tremble at the power of darkness which here exerted an influence almost without limits? Yes, every glance which we direct to the world of the heathen confirms the Apostolic description: “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, having no hope, and without God in the world. Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.¹³ What is more, there lies a profound meaning in the thought of the same Apostle, which we meet with also in illustrious Church Fathers, that the heathen world was nothing else than the gloomy kingdom of the Demons, who effectually wrought and reigned in the children of disobedience. He who with us believes in the existence and influence of personal evil spirits, regards the supposition as intrinsically probable, that they were by no means without their part in the abominations which at all times have been associated with idolatry and the worship of images. But all this admitted, nay, placed in the foreground, it can yet be just as little denied that heathendom has also another and better side. Or do we not see, as opposed to a haughty Tarquin, a gentle Numa; as opposed to the mean Sophists, a noble Socrates; as opposed to the luxurious Epicurus, a profound, unique Plato? Have no deeds been wrought by heroes of antiquity which are worthy of being immortalised in gold and marble? no words been spoken by sages of antiquity worthy of being proclaimed from the pulpits, nay, from the housetops, of Christendom? no laws enacted by legislators of antiquity which not seldom cause us to blush when we look at a so-called Christian civilisation? And can we indeed. feel surprise, while recognising all this, that the one-sided under-rating of heathendom in earlier ages has been followed by a one-sided appreciation and glorification of heathendom, as though the age of the heroes in Rome, and of the arts in Greece, were in many respects better than later times?¹⁴ We, at least, cannot admit the justice of this last view any more than of the former. Truly, the heathen world had no light of its own, which could in any respect render superfluous the light of the Gospel; but the heathen world was, on the other hand, no palpable darkness of an everywhere equally gloomy and cheerless night. A night, deed, but a night irradiated by brilliant stars, some of them even of the first magnitude—that is its image and likeness. These numerous stars do not, it is true, by any means make amends for the want of the one sun, but yet they soften the most dread darkness, and—prophesy of a fairer day. And whence now this glimmering broken light in the heathen world? In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. No, not to man in and of himself do we ascribe that relatively better state; such an assertion is contradicted by history, even by the voice of many an enlightened heathen.¹⁵ But the Logos here enkindled a ray of higher light than that of the darkened reason (νοῦς), called forth there a movement of higher life than that of flesh and blood, caused—pardon the inadequacy of the expression—caused His life-awakening breath to breathe over the spiritual field of the dead of Hellas and Latium. All that we meet with in the heathen world, that is true and fair and good, was brought about under the hidden influence of Him, in whom we see combined the highest ideal of truth, beauty, and purity, because He is Himself the image of the invisible God. Yea, every presentiment of. higher truth, which expresses itself so often and in so striking a manner in the Greek philosophy, was awakened by the Logos, as. already expressed by one of the Church Fathers, Clemens Alexandrinus: “Philosophy must serve to the Greeks as a schoolmaster, as the law did to the Jews.” And elsewhere: “The philosophy of the Barbarians also, as well as that of the Greeks, contains single disconnected parts of the eternal Truth, born not out of the mythology of Dionysius, but out of the theology of the ever-present Logos.”¹⁶

It is now accordingly permitted us to go a step further. By the relation observed between the Logos and our fallen race, is fully explained, in the second place, the remarkable agreement which exists between so many a heathen and so many a Christian conception. In reality there is a deep significance in the word of the prophet, when he speaks of the promised King of Israel as at the same time “the Desire of all nations.¹⁷ Unconsciously the nations of antiquity waited for His appearing, and through the most diverse traditions and aspirations of the heathen world runs, to use a bold metaphor, a strong Christologic trait.¹⁸ Who has ever paused to think the least deeply in connection with so many a mythological account, so many a mysterious oracle, so many a touching symbol of the heathen religions, without its seeming to him as though he heard already single notes, confused indeed as yet and broken, of the song which sounds forth to him in its full glory in the Gospel? It seems at times as though heathendom stood watching in a dream for that blissful reality which has appeared in Christ; as though humanity, even in its childish state, lisped at times of things which, having come to maturity, it should in the fulness of time behold with its own eye. There would scarcely be an end of enumeration if we would recount only the principal instances which here present themselves to our mind. Yet we mention at least a few examples, which at the same time explain and confirm our meaning. Think of the deep significance of the fable of Prometheus, who, as a punishment chained to an immovable rock, could, according to the oracle, be delivered only by a Divine sacrifice, “presented by a beloved son of a hostile father;” think of the expectation expressed by Socrates in Plato, that some one must come “who should drive the cloud from before our eye, as, according to Homer's song, Athena did for Diomede;”—of the conception in the Persian religious doctrine of a Mediator, Mithra, who is placed between the powers of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, to fight for the former against the latter, and to render happy the men over whose destiny he presides;—of the expectation of the Hindoos, that Vishnu or Brahma would appear in the flesh, to heal the misery wrought among men by Kali or Kaliga, the great Serpent;—of the solemn assurance of Confucius, six centuries before Christ, “that a Holy One should come from heaven, who should know all things and should receive all power in heaven and upon earth;”—of the account from the northern Edda, of Thor, the firstborn of the sons of Odin and the bravest of all the heavenly gods, who should fight against the great Serpent, but only at the price of his life should overcome it;—of the drawings of the ancient Mexicans, discovered by Alex. von Humboldt, of a woman representing the mother of all living, with a serpent, regarded as the symbol of moral evil, which is vanquished by a mighty. God;—of the ancient and mysterious oracle of Delphi, in which, according to Plutarch, a prediction was preserved, to the effect that one day a son of Apollo should be born, who should found on earth a kingdom of peace;—of the significant fable concerning Hercules, who has first to slay the dragon ere he can become possessor of the golden apple from the garden of the Hesperides;—of the remarkable prediction of Plato; as to the lot which the righteous man would have to expect, if he should at length appear upon earth;—of—but to what end continue an enumeration, which, after all, cannot possibly lay claim to completeness?¹⁹ We are silent also with regard to the traces of the Old Testament histories, or of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and of the Atonement, which are to be found so plentifully among heathen nations. We ask only, Whence so many a conception which, without being the truth itself, yet approximates to the truth, reminds us of the truth, is by the word of truth not contradicted, but rather completed? and again we answer: In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The Spirit of God, as we know, brooded with preparing and fructifying energy over the impure waters of the heathen world. The Logos centuries before prepared the way in which Christ should hold His triumphal entry as King into Gentile hearts. Hitherto—we may boldly assert—the advocates and apologetes of the Gospel have called much too little attention to these ideas of heathendom which are so closely allied to the Gospel. Theology, with many, yet remains at a standpoint in this respect, like that of Natural Science in former times, when it regarded the antediluvian fossils and skeletons as isolated, accidental phenomena, instead of reducing them to a compact system, and therein discovering the traces of an order of creation which has now perished. What is needed is to observe the harmony of Christologic thoughts and expectations among the most diverse nations in the different centuries, and as it were to listen to the voice of the Divine Logos, who centuries before His incarnation proclaimed Himself in the aspirations of the Gentile world. That which even unbelief in its mockery has been compelled to acknowledge, namely, that almost all nations have expressed, in the most different forms, the longing for a future Redeemer, a highest Revealer of the Godhead,²⁰ is in itself for the Christian one of the most remarkable proofs for the Divine origin and character of the Gospel, by which alone this need is perfectly satisfied. In a just sense can we thus speak of a Christianity before Christ, which is as old as the world.²¹ We should certainly err, if we would derive all the heathen conceptions and expectations above referred to from an ancient original revelation, of which a faint echo had reached their ears, but the true contents of which are made known to us by the Bible. What we have adduced are indeed thoughts which have risen in and from the heart of humanity itself, which in its condition of misery did not cease to pine for redemption, but—have risen ever under the influence of the Logos, who, if He is really life and light, could not but ever afresh pierce by His beams the thick mists. Heathendom could not possibly of its own strength rise to the realisation of its fairest ideals.²² Yet who would dare assert that these ideals themselves would ever have been cherished and expressed, if the Logos had wholly withdrawn Himself from the fallen humanity which was once created after His image? “No true Logic apart from the Logos,” wrote a Christian philosopher with good reason.²³

And this leads us to a last observation. By the relation observed between the Logos and our fallen race is, finally, an otherwise mysterious dispensation of Providence most beautifully justified. Or is there not at first sight something mysterious in the fact that God chose only one nation as the depository of His special revelation, and, as far as the Gentiles were concerned, allowed them to walk in their own ways? Has the question never risen within our heart, why—if the appearing of the Son of God was absolutely necessary for the deliverance of the lost—must no fewer than four milleniums pass away, before the sun of salvation showed itself on the horizon? We do not for a moment pretend to be able to solve this question in such wise that no single shade of obscurity shall remain upon it, but yet we believe that by what has been said an otherwise incomprehensible Providence of God is in part. explained, and a natural source of difficulty removed. Yes, Israel was and remained the people of Revelation, in all the significance of the word; but God has not on that account left the Heathen entirely without witness. Yet once more, In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. If man, even in his deepest fall, has never wholly and finally severed the last link which bound him to his Creator, this of a truth was not owing to his own wisdom and strength, but to the continued operation of the Logos. Those among the Heathen who, in their own way, feared God and wrought righteousness, were —without themselves knowing it—led by Him in the way of truth and life. Without therefore our expressing ourselves so definitely, as e.g. the Reformer Zwingli, as to the salvation of such wise and Godfearing Heathen,²⁴ the supposition will at least be allowed, that those who were already, here below, thus prepared for the knowledge of the truth, are perhaps after death translated into a higher school of training. Yea, who can determine what rays of light the Logos has shed in former ages for the eye of so many a truth-loving Heathen, the brightness of which has disappeared for a later generation? Who can say in what way He is at this moment occupied in preparing for His day in far-off Heathen lands, which have not yet heard the sound of His approaching footsteps? Who must not admit, that while the Heathen have indeed been without the historic Christ they have not on that account been without the eternal Logos, and that it was He Himself who in every possible way has taught them to ask after and desire Him? The more nearly the centuries before Christ approach their end, the more does it seem to us as though we see Him coming to the deeply sunken Heathen world, ever nearer, and closer, and more swiftly, until at last, while they sit there in an almost hopeless state, He puts an end to all their uncertain seeking, and divining, and striving, and graciously exclaims, “Behold, I am here.” For, once more, as the world and humanity were originally created for the Son, so also the Son was originally destined for the world and humanity. They are, so to speak, two “opposite points, which unceasingly approach each other, until at last they blend in the ever-memorable scene of Bethlehem; but not until the Logos has manifested Himself (in a very different manner from that in which He did so in the Heathen world) among the descendants of Abraham, in the midst of whom He was later to appear. The Son of God before His incarnation, and the people of Israel, is the subject of our special contemplation in what immediately follows.

1) As kings and other distinguished persons are in the habit of speaking of themselves in the plural (“We, William,” etc.).

2) Compare, especially, Calvin on this place; and see Christian Dogmaties, p. 374, sqq

3) Gen. i, 27.

4) Tatian,

5) Compare the place, cited, among others, by Hagenbach, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Christlichen Kirche.

6) 1 Cor. xv. 46,47, (According to the shorter and better reading.)

7) Ephes, i. 10,

8) “That in all things He may become the One holding the first place.”—Col. i. 18 (Fausset).

9) Thomas Aquinas, Swmma III., quœst. 1. Art. 3.

10) Comp. Ullmann’s Joh. Wessel, p. 254.

11) Our limits forbid our entering more deeply upon a question which, in our time, in an increasing degree fixes the attention of the scientific writers on Christology. The first traces of the thought here touched upon will be found even in the Church Fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, etc. Their most important utterances will be found collected in Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ (pp. 57—68 of the original work), and must here especially be consulted. Among the later advocates of the same view he mentions, among others, Thomas Aquinas, Rupert of Duytz, Duns Scotus. The Lutheran theologian, Osiander, too, gave expression to this view in a separate treatise, which has now become very scarce, under the title, “An filius Dei fuerit incarnandus, si peccatum non introivisset in mundum.”—Kénigsb. 1550. It would in all probability have received more general recognition had it not been specially commended and advocated among theologians of Pelagian and Socinian leanings, with whose fatal errors it nevertheless stands in no inseparable connection. Among the Dutch orthodox theologians J. J. le Roij, in his Goddelijke Openbaring des Bijbels, Pt. 11., pp. 574, 575, comes to the following conclusion:—“The advent of Christ in the world, taken altogether, did not become first necessary for the restoration of fallen man, although it has received a peculiar character from the fall; but, even though sin had never intervened, it would have been necessary, in order to lead up man to true immortality and to his higher destiny; but then the death of Christ would not have been necessary, and still less His suffering, since this belongs only to the atonement for sin. This being taken in connection with what we have elsewhere seen of the Divine plan, we learn to conceive of the matter thus, that God—without regard to man’s sinful condition—made man, above all His moral creatures, an object of His special favour and of His eternal decree, and that in union with His Son, who must to this end become man, since without this union no creature could be led up to that high communion with God for which God hath fitted man, and by which alone also the natural body could first become a spiritual body; but that now, sin having intervened, God has not only not abandoned His plan, but has even overruled this intervention for the more glorious and fairer execution of it.” Of the later theologians it will suffice to mention Liebner, who, in his Christologie, I., pp. 12—15, acknowledges, “The full self-manifestation, self-communication of God to humanity is only completed and perfectly satisfied in the central and universal Person of the God-man, who is consequently also the completion of humanity itself. The merely hamartologic-soteriologic mode of explanation in Christology, ‘only because man sinned, was the Eternal Son of God incarnate,’ no longer suftices. It must be admitted that through sin only the modification (in itself a very great one) has been brought about, that now Christ appears also as Redeemer and Reconciler. . . . and that Christ, even apart from sin, is the all-completing principle in the true development of humanity.” We direct attention further to the treatise of Julius Müller in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenschaft und’ Christliches Leben, 1850, Nos. 40—42, under the title, “Untersuchung der Frage: ob ‘der Sohn Gottes Mensch geworden sein wiirde, wenn das menschliche Geschlecht ohne Siinde geblieben wire;” where, however, serious objections are raised against the view of Liebner and others. See further Christian Dogmatics, pp. 297, 298.

12) John i. 4, 5. (Cf. Christol. d. N. V. p. 391.)

13) Ephes. ii. 12; iv. 18; Rom. i. 28.

14) Think, among other illustrations, of the well-known poem of Schiller: “die Götter Griechenlands.

15) As, e.g., in the well-known words of Cicero: “Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.” [N.D. ii. 66.]

16) Clemens Alex., Stromata, I. p. 282.

17) Haggai ii. 7: “The desirableness of all nations,” abstract for concrete. [For an explanation of its Messianic bearing, see an admirable note of Fausset on this place.]

18) Liebner, as above, I. p. 63 (after P. Lange): “Every people brings forth in its heathen night, under the pressure of longing after the life of Christ, a glimmer of Christological truth. From the dreamy impulse after the appearing of the day of Christ arise the oracles, priests, legislators, founders of religions. More immediately and definitely Christologic are the high offices of the nations, the prophets, high priests, and kings. One office, however, in order really to be fulfilled, demands the other; their perfection first appears in their highest and innermost inter-penetration in one office; that is to say, the office of Christ is, in absolute unity, that which humanity produces in a divided form— was die Menschheit in der Getheiltheit producirt.”

19) A number of important examples is found collected in Aug. Nicolas, Etudes Philos. sur le Christianisme. Tom. II., p. 89, sqq. Especially is the great work of J. N. Sepp to be consulted: Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung fiir das Christenthum, in three parts—Regensburg, 1853—of which the leading thought (Part I., p. 14) is summed up in the following words: “Christ is the highest and real expression for the underlying thought of all mythologies. It is He who speaks to us, not only in the mirror of nature and of the (human) spirit, but also in the course of history, and whose form is everywhere reflected,’ without His delineation being exhausted in any of these regions.” Not without reason does he observe that the present age “has claimed Christ for the province of mythology, as a sort of retribution for our previous neglect scientifically to conquer mythology for Christ.”

20) Voltaire, in the additions à ľhistoire generale, p. 15, edit. de 1763, writes in a bantering tone, but nevertheless truly: O’etait de temps immémorial une maxime chez les Indiens et les Chinois, que le Sage viendrait de l’Occident. ĽEurope au contraire disait que le Sage viendrait de ’Orient. Toutes les nations ont toujours eu besoin d’un Sage.

21) “He who lives with the Logos is a Christian, even though he be reputed as an Atheist,” says Justin Martyr, Apol. Maj., cap. 46.

22) Compare the beautiful Introduction to the History of the Christian Church in the first three centuries, by HE. de Pressensé. [Translated under the title: {‘ The Religions before Christ.”’]

23) Friedr. v. Meyer.

24) Among the Reformers it was especially Zwingli who taught a pre-Christian activity of the Logos even in the Gentile world; who applied the name of Divine to many a remarkable phenomenon in the Gentile domain, and acknowledged the salvation, e.g., of a Hercules, a Theseus, a Socrates, an Aristides, an Antigonus, a Numa, a Camillus, the Catos and Scipios; not because he believed their salvation possible out of Christ, but because he believed in a saving operation of the λόγος ἄσαρκος.” “Quid enim scimus,” he asked, quid fidet quisque in corde suo Dei manu scriptium teneat? The principal places bearing on this subject will be found collected and criticised, among others, by Alex. Schweitzer, Glawbenslehre der ev, ref. Kirch:, II., pp. 9-12.