ness of Jesus was so set forth therein as to induce all Christians to believe in God, not in the form of a solitary monad, but as one who from eternity contained in his own being the relations of Father and Son, and whose unity of essence is itself as personal as is the Father or the Son.

To bring together the whole teaching that emerges from the "Word made flesh," from the God-inan as the center of the life of a renewed humanity, we are led to posit distinctions in that Deity which stood in such close relations with human nature. "The Spirit" is none other than the Spirit of the Christ energizing in the hearts of believers. The Spirit of the Christ which unites the Logos and the flesh is none other than the Spirit of the Logos, the Spirit of God's Son; and the Spirit of the Son is the Spirit of the Father, for the Father and the Son are ONE. The doctrine of the immanent Trinity seems an inevitable consequence of any admission that the fourth gospel sets forth historically the veritable consciousness of the Lord Christ. The argument moves on from incident to incident, from word to word, from synonym to synonym of the all-blessed One, until he who is hailed as Messiah and sacrificial Lainb and theocratic King appears to be the opener of heaven, endowed with creative power, the Lord of the temple, the Reader of human hearts, the Source of life and healing, the Bridegroom of the true theocracy, greater than He who was the greatest of the sons of men. We follow on in the narrative to find that though the flesh of the Christ provokes endless antagonism, and so moves the "darkness" that it becomes a fearful and felt oppression, yet the idea of the divine humanity becomes more and more intense in each department of this mighty synthesis. The humanity admits the need of water from Jacob's well, but flashes forth there such spiritual truth that he is hailed as the Messiah, Prophet, and Saviour of the world. The bestowment of life on the impotent man, leads Jesus to declare the power that he wields to confer life on dead souls and bodies; and the authority he has received to judge the quick and dead. Chap. v. He assumes to be the life of the world by two great signs on land and sea (chap. vi), and by conferring upon mankind "Himself" as the veritable "bread of God which had come down from heaven." In great variety of form he claims to be not only life, but light.

He calls himself the Shepherd of souls (chap. x), able to give to those who submit to him eternal life, because he and the Father are One. He wrestles with death, and snatches one whom he specially loves from the grave. Chap. xi. At that grave his mysterious personality is displayed as intensely human and unmistakably divine. Throughout the closing scenes he becomes more and more consciously divine, as the heart breaks with human tenderness. He loves to the uttermost when he is most of all alive to the fact that all things are intrusted to him. Chap. xiii, 1-5. So complete is his revelation of the divine love that he dares to say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (xiv, 9). He promises to bestow the divine gift of "the Spirit," and with the Father to come and dwell in human hearts. He takes the whole future into his, glance, and offers prayer for those who shall believe on him to the end of time (xvii). He goes forth to meet his doom, to drink the cup of trembling and humiliation to the dregs. He is condemned and submits. He triumphs over death, and receives the unrebuked exclamation, "My Lord and my God!" If this be an historical setting forth of one indubitable series of his highest revelations, then we recognize the consciousness of Jesus as having cast a gleam of surpassing light into "the thick darkness" and profoundest mysteries of the Divine Being. The record of his words and life, as set forth by his most loving and intimate friend, furnishes the largest proportion of those facts which the Christian consciousness has endeavored to bring together, in what is called the doctrine of the Trinity.

Even if it should be ultimately proved [which is an entirely inadmissible hypothesis] that the fourth gospel was the product of the second century, and the biographical romance of a theologian who grasped the conception of "the Word made flesh," and developed it in harmony with his ideas of the Christ, and his knowledge of the then existing Alexandrine Synoptic and Pauline literature, the attempt to measure its actual teaching on the grandest and most august of all themes is not unnecessary.

ART. VI.-CHRISTIANITY AND OUR NATIONAL INSTI TUTIONS.

THE institutions of a people may be described as the concrete expressions of its fundamental ideas. As the leading characteristics of a nation's thought become permanent and marked, they express themselves in certain observances, habits, and systems of action, which are then typical and representative. So the games of Greece, the social orders of Rome, the type of honor in England, each case indicates the central ideas of the life of these nations. They are the products of thought directed for centuries along uniform courses. Their growths were slow, because the national character began with a minimum definiteness of purpose, and they were neither foreshadowed by the first events of the national life, nor did they at the start prophesy the nation's future. But in a nation like ours, that was built rather than developed, and whose destination was determined from the beginning by the character of its constituent elements, its institutions, instead of coming into form as a growth from first principles, appear at once fully determined in kind, so as to determine what will be the national policy. American institutions are determined by their limitations.

Whether, indeed, there are any specifically American institutions is sometimes questioned. It may be said that every nation's history reveals certain factors more or less constant, but the doubt in our case rests on the relation of the things regarded with us as fundamental to the most vital considerations of national welfare and development. It is not so much a question whether or not we have such institutions. The real question is: Are they so interwoven with our growth as a nation's life that its character depends vitally upon them? To the Christian view this dependence is manifest; Christian ideas and practices, the Sabbath, the Church, individual freedom of thought, a system of education essentially republican, a popular sovereignty, and a theory of jurisprudence based upon common-law principles, all molded by Christian sentiments, constitute in that view the foundation work of the republic. But the influx of foreign populations, and the growth of ideas 6-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III.

that are expressed in the claims of a so-called personal liberty, together with marked tendencies of modern thought along scientific lines, have somewhat obscured the great ideas that gave birth to our earlier national policy. Thus our later history shows a deflection from the original direction. Is this, then,

essentially an evidence of degeneration? The question must be answered in the affirmative unless we assume that the origin of the nation was itself fundamentally wrong, which no one is yet in a position to do.

The early history of our country is peculiar and unique. The Puritans were the representatives of certain beliefs and habits of thought not common elsewhere. So, also, were our citizens of Holland stock; but the Puritan force became, and for a long period remained, dominant in our early history. England gave the northern portion of the New World much more than settlers and governors. The records of the mother country are replete with the struggles of a determined people toward both civil and religious liberty. The course of English civilization had always been influenced by Christianity, and the spirit which had insured its course came to the New World in the Mayflower. Thus the immediate influences which went out to fashion our customs, beliefs, and legislation were the same that had checked King John, beheaded Charles the First, and made a Cromwell. A sturdy spirit of liberty, a devout if hard religious sentiment, and a sense of individuality necessitating vigorous independence, were forces at work in the beginning, and they were logical outgrowths of our English origin. They continued and prevailed every-where. They combined to make the genius of a new civilization. They were the productive sources of a successful experiment before universally believed to be impossible. English Christianity alone affords an adequate explanation of the first hundred years of our national life.

Among the founders of the government religious independence preceded civil liberty. That emphasis upon certain doctrines which produced an attitude of intolerance toward differences led to the declaration of independence. It was profoundly logical. The principles underlying the demand for freedom of worship carried over to civil affairs a faith, a reliance on the right, and an unyielding resolution which already indicated

ultimate success, and in a large measure became the means and methods by which success was achieved. In both the religious and civil spheres, personal responsibility and the requirements of a union of individual thoughts and purposes operated in a uniform direction. Here arises an explanation of much that follows in theology and government. As in the fields of the ology and worship individuality attained a growth that led to Emerson, so in those of government it gained an impetus which led to the political doctrines of Jefferson. And there were great values in all this. In the long run both tendencies would meet with the check of a central authority, yet without them central authority would never have become accurately defined and delineated. Individualism in the one case came to acknowledge its superior authority, voiced by a creed made and accepted by the worshipers themselves; in the other case what was at first but a confederation of states naturally crystallized into "a more perfect union." It was individualism realizing its limits.

The structure of society reveals a similar condition. Habits, customs, and police regulations indicate the idea of the person subordinated to the community. At the outset it was conceded that society draws to itself certain rights which cannot be enforced as personal privileges. This is the law of all social development, but in this instance the law had assumed color and significance peculiar to a Christian civilization. It carried with it a reference to principles unknown to Greek or Roman, or, indeed, to any but a Christian state. The surrender had its reasons essentially in religious views; it necessitated concessions which would not have been possible had those religious views not exerted a determining influence. The laws concerning the observance of a seventh-day rest, the marriage relation, the position of children and of women, the maintenance of schools and the studies there pursued, afford striking illustrations of the influence of Christianity upon the law of personal subordination to the general welfare. This influence is visible in the whole superstructure of our common life.

The general laws of the land reveal the same forces constantly at work. The fountain-head of this system was the English Common Law, and during the entire period of its splendid growth is seen the eye of reason illumined with the light, not