ossessed in a high degree that administrative faculty which displays itself in the distribution of tasks, in the classification of labours, in order, carried into the most minute details of daily life in large establishments. It was as thus gifted that he constituted the central Jesuit establishment at Rome; in which he secured economy in all things, time especially, and the appointment of offices according to the individual ability of each member. It was here that he realized, in the highest perfection, the mechanism in which living agents are at once the means and the material. At the same time, and while himself extensively employed as a spiritual adviser, or physician of souls, and as a popular preacher also, the general originated and controlled various missions to the several European states, as well as to heathen lands. So it was, that, within a few years from the date of the papal bull, the Society had established itself in almost every country in Europe, as well as in many places throughout the Old World and the New. Everywhere the Jesuit had come to be in request as the man who, beyond any others, was perfectly accomplished for whatever task it was which he undertook; and it was he who never failed to do his work well, whether it were as professor of the sciences or as a schoolmaster, or as the guide of souls, or as confessor, or as the adviser of princes and statesmen, or even as the superintendent of affairs purely secular and commercial. Houses of the "Order of Jesus" in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Sicily, India, had become the centres of an influence toward which the eyes and thoughts, the fears and the desires of minds, high and low, cultured and rude, were incessantly directed. Each of these potent establishments, with their "provincials," maintained submissive dependence upon the home of the order at Rome. Thus it was that the general held in his sole hand the reins of a spiritual government which was rapidly spreading itself over, and beyond the limits of the Christianized world.

With that prudence which belonged to Loyola as having once been a man of the world, he, with inexorable firmness, held his Society exempt from the cure of the souls of women, though this had been importunately urged upon him; those instances alone excepted in which ladies of the highest rank, by placing themselves under the guidance of a Jesuit father, might be usefully employed at the courts of princes in silently promoting the designs, or in protecting the interests, of the Society. With a like firmness, and at the dictate of the same sagacious perception of the remoter consequences of any course of action, he maintained that rule of the order which forbids a Jesuit to accept ecclesiastical dignities of any sort. Princes would gladly have welcomed Jesuit bishops in their dominions; but the general inexorably refused to give way to this desire, the issue of which, had he allowed it, must have been to open, in the view of ambitious members of the Society, a prospect of honour and of case which would never consist with their devotion to its proper purposes, or with their perfect submission to the will of him to whose control they had surrendered everything.

But while the mitre and the hat were interdicted to the Jesuit fathers, the office of confessor to kings and queens and emperors was eagerly accepted by them whenever proffered. The reality of power, not its semblance or its pomps, was thus secured for the purposes of the Society; and it was thus that the general, while strictly abstinent as to the honours, and as to the revenues of the church, held in his hand, available for uses of whatever kind, the consciences of potentates, the revenues of kingdoms, and, in a word, all things earthly that might be employed for extending and confirming a universal ghastly domination.

There were moments when this spiritual empire seemed to be threatened from within; and when a mind, a will, an intelligence, springing up in some quarter, and as one might say, not drawing its sap from the root of the Society, brought the sovereignty of the one mind into question. The most noted of these instances was that which occurred in Portugal, where the provincial Rodriguez had acquired at court, as well as in the college over which he presided, a very great personal influence—an influence too great to consist with that submissiveness which was the rule of the Society. Loyola overcame, at length, yet not without much difficulty, this rising opposition; but the extreme peril through which he had carried his institute on this occasion, impelled him to preclude, if possible, a recurrence of the like danger, by embodying in a letter those principles upon a thorough understanding of which the Society might repose. The Letter on the Virtue of Obedience, addressed to the Portuguese fathers, sets forth, in terms beyond the possibility of mistake, those axioms of the Jesuit institute which constitute its very life, and which may be regarded as peculiarly characteristic of it.

Loyola had governed the Company of Jesus sixteen years; these had been years of incessant toil, and often of urgent and deep anxiety. In sustaining this burden his constitutional energy had been quite expended; and thus, as worn out, he tranquilly expired at Rome, in his sixty-fifth year, July 1556.

Minds which, on the scale of intellectual power, occupy extreme positions, the highest and the lowest, have often this feature in common, that through their course they are possessed by one idea, one form of thought, one purport and end of existence. The difference between those of the lofty and those of the low position is this, that while the latter are habitually ruled by their single idea, the former always rule it. A mind of the lower sort, when it is of the religious order, becomes, according to its temperament, the enthusiast, the fanatic, the zealot, the devotee, or the mystic transcendentalist. A mind of the higher sort, whose element also is religion, shapes an orbit for itself athwart the social system, draws a train of satellites in its track, gives a new direction to human affairs, takes a place in history, and, in a word, is such an one that Ignatius Loyola might fitly be pointed out as among the most illustrious samples of the class.

Loyola's one idea, if it be allowable to think of him as the founder of a religious order, was that of ruling the world in respect of its now present and its palpable interests, not by the universal diffusion of religious motives, not by fixing the eyes of mortal men upon the invisible and the eternal as their aim; but by using the invisible and the eternal as the fulcrum of his lever of government. It was, we must assume, his sincere belief—and his sincerity we should not question—that all things would go well in the world, in a world-wise sense, if only it were brought into a state of absolute, unreasoning, ungainsaying submissiveness to a single hand, ruling it for its good. But inasmuch as no immovable prop for any such universal domination can be found within, or upon the world itself, it must be sought for and found in the world overhead, and in the world underneath of this. This then is Jesuitism, as imagined and originated by its founder.

Loyola's individual religious sentiment, and his benevolence also, impelled him, at the same time, to labour for Jesuitism, the purely religious welfare of the masses of the people, wherever he might have access to them. He was a zealous and effective street preacher and teacher, as well as from the pulpit, and in the house, and the closet. This was his occupation, in season and out of season.

But when we look into the Jesuit system, considered as an institute framed for exerting a lasting influence in the world, we find it adapted to purposes of a very different order. To ascertain what those purposes are, we may either appeal to the notorious facts of its history, through a track of two centuries, or we may examine the constitutional documents of the Society, such as they were framed and left in the hands of Loyola's immediate successors. In fact, both these courses of inquiry should be pursued, and we now proceed to indicate, very briefly, in what manner, as we think, they should be carried forward.

**DOCUMENTARY JESUITISM.**

By the constitutional documents of Jesuitism, we mean those writings, tracts, digests of laws, or expositions, which the Company has from the first recognised as authentic, and to which it appeals as embodying the mind, the principles, and the practices of the order. These are—1st, The book alleged and believed to be Loyola's own composition—viz., the Spiritual Exercises; 2d, The letters addressed to the Portuguese Jesuits, On Obedience, and which are also believed to be Loyola's own; 3d, The Constitutions, and the Directorium, which probably were wholly composed, or digested by his immediate coadjutors, Laynez, Faber, Aquaviva, and others. At a later time there was brought to light, unadvisedly as it seems, the Monita Secreta, believed, however, to be a spurious production. A word then for these documents in their order.

The Spiritual Exercises.—This book, when the important place it has held in the Jesuit Institute is remembered, will not be looked into by the modern reader without a mingled feeling of disappointment, amazement, and perhaps contempt. It is not a summary of Christian doctrines; it conveys no particle of instruction; it is not a collection of deep meditations; it is not a diary of those alternations of sorrow and joy, depression and hope, which have filled the religious life of some eminent Christians—it is a manual of (so called) religious manoeuvres, or manipulations, upon and concerning sacred subjects; the tendency and spirit of the whole being in the last degree mechanical. As opposed to what might be intellectual and reflective, it is perfunctory; as opposed to what is imaginative, it is sensuous or beggarly; as opposed to what is spontaneous and nobly free, it is slavish and stupidifying. In conjecturing the probable results of a month's drilling—for a month is the time assigned to the entire course—regard must be paid to the moral and intellectual condition of those who submit themselves to such a treatment. A course like this, with its attendant seclusion in a cell, and abstinence from the incitements of pleasure or ambition—a four weeks' discipline carried forward in accordance with these prescriptions, might in a useful manner revive the decayed religious recollections of men of the world, supposing them to retain enough of religious conscience to make them uneasy while pursuing a course of lawless indulgence or ambition. There are also sedate, saturnine, and feeble natures to which this discipline would be well adapted. Men of this order might yield themselves inertly to so mechanical a scheme of life, and go on well in its trammels. As to strong minds, and as to the cultured, the month's task could be nothing but a temporary abnegation of their faculties of reason and feeling; it must induce a state of mind wholly factitious, and which must come to its end without result or product other than that of leaving Jesuitism, upon the memory a repugnant and humiliating recollection, and upon the manners and style of behaviour a stiffness and conventional hypocrisy. The reader who is already better taught than this strange book can teach him, may glean from it—especially from its latter chapters—some few useful hints applicable to the religious life. On the whole, the Spiritual Exercises is to be regarded as an engine of spiritual despotism—a tool for crushing the moral and intellectual life, preparatory to the function which the Jesuit will be required to fulfil.

The Letter on Obedience, addressed, as mentioned above, to the refractory Jesuits of Portugal, is, on sufficient grounds, attributed to Loyola himself. It was composed in 1553, three years only before his death, and it may be regarded as embodying, within the compass of a few pages, the very principle, the very distinctive element, of the Jesuit institute; and whoever wishes to understand this profound scheme of polity, and to form his judgment upon it, considered in its relation to the axioms of universal morality, or to Christian precepts, or in its bearing upon the wellbeing of nations, should read, and read again, this remarkable document. It is true that a doctrine nearly approaching that maintained in this Letter, may be gathered from the pages of some monastic writers, and is implied in the rules of some of the religious orders. But the differences are these two,—in the first place, in this Letter the Jesuit rule of obedience, involving as it does, the stagnation of the intellectual faculties, and a total abrogation of the individual conscience, is expressed in terms far more absolute, reckless, and unexceptive than had hitherto been anywhere heard; and, in the second place, this doctrine had heretofore been addressed to those only, who, having renounced the world, and living or professing to live apart from it, might, with little risk of serious ill consequences, profess any sort, and practise any degree, of submissiveness to the will of their superior. Obedience, within the walls of a monastery, was obedience in the midst of a routine of inanities. But the Jesuit dogma of obedience was to be carried out and acted upon in the throng of the busy world. The Jesuit, deeply concerning himself, as he did, with the interests of the social system—domestic and municipal—and meddling always, when he could do so, with affairs of state, did this, not as an individual moral agent who is in some degree mindful of the quality of his personal acts, and who judges them to be lawful or criminal; but as a being who has surrendered his responsibility—his conscience, whole and entire, and unconditionally, into the hands of a superior. In the sense of this Letter on Obedience, there is but one sin of which a Jesuit can possibly be guilty—namely, disobedience, or the mere thought which might impel him to call in question the rectitude of the commands of his principal.

The Constitutions of the Society, or that body of rules and methods which are the law of the community, relate to the practices and the routine that attend the selection and admission of members; to the classification of those actually admitted, according to their individual qualities; to the rejection or exclusion of candidates, and to the government of the body by provincials and a General, who was chosen for life, including also a provision made for holding this autocrat in check, or even for removing him from his place in extreme cases. The reader, whom we may suppose already to have acquired, from the perusal of the Spiritual Exercises, and the Letter above mentioned, an idea of the spirit of the Jesuit institute, will find himself perplexed when he looks into these, its forms and its modes of procedure, as set forth in the Constitutions, if he endeavours to divine what may be the real object—the practical purport or end arrived at by so vast and elaborate a scheme of discipline and government. What final purposes are to be the result of a method and of a mechanism so profoundly contrived, so far-reaching in its means, and so appalling in the conditions which it imposes.

Of this problem the documents in our hands afford no solution. To these reasonable questions no answer is returned by any of those writings to which the Society has been used to make its appeal when challenged to vindicate its doings before the world. If we grant, as we may, that Jesuitism is, to a certain extent, a religious institute, intended, like the more ancient monastic orders, to promote and carry forward the individual piety of its members, or to diffuse religious principles among the people, there yet remains, after these intelligible purposes have been secured, a vast apparatus in excess, which can have no relationship to objects or ends of this sort. What then are the ends which this deep scheme actually has in view? An answer to this question must be sought for in following the Jesuit Society through its history, from its earliest days to recent times. It is this history which expounds the Code and the Constitutions, of which Ignatius Loyola is the reputed author.

The Constitutions, as originally put forth, have become embossed—if so we may speak—with copious expositions, and they are followed by a body of instructions called the Directorium, which adapt the general principles to a vast variety of special cases. From these sources are to be gathered a true notion of the methods—peculiar to itself—of enforcing confession, and of surrounding every Jesuit with a network of delusion. These practices which are the special characteristics of Jesuitism, as distinguished from Romanism, and from the pre-existing monastic orders, call for the closest attention, if we would, in a thorough manner, and with philosophic impartiality, come to an understanding of this, the most notable of all the religious schemes which the world has ever seen or tolerated.

If in inquiring concerning the Company of Jesuits, such as it had become at the time of Loyola's death, we were to measure it against the systems, the institutions, and the men of that time, its one prominent characteristic, its main distinction, would appear to be this, that it had at its command, at every moment, the unscrupulous services of a large number of men, fitted by natural talents, and by the most careful training, for functions, offices, and labours of every kind—spiritual, intellectual, political, economical, and even commercial. The selection of its agents from among the number, each well adapted by natural talent for the function assigned to him, is clearly the principal intention of the Constitutions, of the Directory, and of the other documents of the Society. Then, the fit men having been secured, their discipline and training was the second principal care of the Society; and then the distribution of them over the world was the third. In relation to almost every department of human labour, men of this Society were found to be better instructed than any others; they were by natural talent better adapted to their special tasks; they were more diligent, more assiduous, more self-denying and indefatigable; and, in a word, they were more practically efficient, and they were more successful, than their competitors on the same lines of labour. In any circle of affairs, public or private, the Jesuit of that early time was the Joseph in Potiphar's house. It can be no marvel, therefore, if everywhere his valuable services were sought for, and were highly prized. It was especially so in whatever related to the business of education, whether in schools or colleges; and also in the delicate position courted for its members, namely, that of directing the consciences of statesmen and princes.

The duties or offices which the Society professed, at the first to undertake, and which have ostensibly filled its hands, and limited its views, were, as we have said, the cure of souls, the conversion of heathen nations, and the education of the young. But the work upon which, in fact—so we must infer from its history—the mind of the leaders of the Jesuit company has been always intensely fixed, but con- cerning which it has observed a discreet silence, was the giving the aid of its casuistical direction to men in power, and to women also, upon whose influence the turn of political affairs so often depends. It has been the discharge of this occult function which has given its character to the Society; it has been the immoral refinements which it has been compelled to invent or to adopt in discharging this function which have drawn upon it general reprobation and hatred, and which have made it the object of well-founded jealousy and fear in almost every country, Catholic as well as Protestant.

The Jesuit missions among the heathen have been illustrated by instances of Christian zeal and devotedness, such as have never been surpassed; while at the same time these very missions have exhibited, as in India, and in South America, those characteristics of the Jesuit institute which are the most to be reproached, namely—its unscrupulous compromises with pagan superstitions and vices, and its pursuit of worldly influence and power, as in Paraguay, apart from any genuine zeal for the spiritual, or even temporal, well-being of the people whom it has assumed to govern.

In like manner the Jesuit scheme of education has displayed the highest merits on the one side, combined always with a vitiating element, which, if it had prevailed without counteraction, must have led the mind of Europe in a backward direction, from the bright course it had entered upon, toward the dim regions of intellectual stagnation. No teachers, no professors, were more assiduous, or more able, than the Jesuits who placed themselves at the head of schools and colleges in the sixteenth century. Seldom could their rivals compete with them. But the education thus conveyed had a uniform characteristic—it was stationary, not germinant; it was dogmatic, not suggestive; it was static, not dynamic. The most ample and exact acquaintance with things as they are was conveyed by the Jesuit teachers; but along with this proficiency there was a prohibition, tacit or explicit, of inquiry or progress. Whereas in the sixteenth century the human mind had received an irresistible impulse, carrying it forward in all directions over the field of action and of speculation, the Jesuit institute, considered as an educational scheme, came forward to stay or to neutralize that impulse by offering so to teach, and so to train the mind of Christendom as should render inquiry needless, and advancement undesirable. To some extent this endeavour to supplant the opening science of the age, and to arrest movement, actually took effect; and it might have done so in a degree that would have been fatal to our modern advancement, if the Jesuit body had not, at an early time, so displayed its vicious tendencies in another sphere as to awaken salutary distrust and alarm throughout Europe.

This reaction against the Jesuit body took its rise within the circle of political movements, where it had already whispered doctrines against which the moral instincts of men prompted them to make an outcry.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER.

In taking a glance at the history of the order of Jesuits, there is little that can command attention beyond the field of its interference with the political interests of the European nations. So far as Jesuitism was an outbreak of religious fervour—and so far, when thus thought of, as it served in a time of laxity to reanimate the Roman Catholic world, and thus to maintain Catholicism against the assailant forces of the Lutheran and Calvinistic reformation—thus far, the Society may be regarded as having been a seasonable and useful conservative energy; for, unless the Church of Rome had at that moment found, and had availed itself of this aid, or of some aid of the same kind, it may well be believed that the Romanized Christianity which was destined for a lengthened term to hold the nations of southern Europe in a visibly Christian condition, must have given way to the hostile force, so that the places which knew it once should have known it no more. This was not to be. The reformation was itself far from being such as that the world could take it up as an ultimate type of Christian belief and worship; it was a sudden reaction from the errors and corruptions of many ages; it was moreover a violent reaction; it drew with itself large fragments of ancient errors, and an abundance also of crude novelties, and it was hurried forward by the tempests of the political world, and swayed this way and that by cross undercurrents. The German, the Swiss, the English, and the Scotch reformation—all and severally—were temporary forms of Christianity which could retain their own coherence only so long as they were each of them forcibly compacted by the vigorous circumjacent pressure of the old religion. The vivid zeal and the Protestant feeling of some overweening persons may prompt them to resent an averment of this sort, which, however, may be assented to without any peril by those who know how to hold fast their Christianity, while they forget their Protestantism. But Jesuitism, so far as it came in to save the Roman Catholicism of southern Europe, had done its destined work at an early time; or we might say, about the time when the Protestant evangelical fervour had subsided throughout the reformed nations. This counteractive energy had well spent itself on both sides toward the close of the seventeenth century. Thus far, therefore, the history of Jesuitism stands on record as a short chapter in the general history of the great religious movement of the sixteenth century. Thought of in this way, it may be granted that Martin Luther found his complement in Ignatius Loyola.

The history of Jesuitism, we have said, must mean its political history, and this is a dark narrative of a guileful interference with the course of national affairs; dark enough even when left to work itself out in its own way, but deriving a deeper colour, a fouler stain, from this source; not so much because crimes more flagitious were committed by the hands, or at the instigation of Jesuit agents, but because the Jesuit—whether suggesting crimes, or employed in smoothing the path of the criminal, or in extracting the sting of remorse—went about his work with refined reasonings, with an apparatus of orderly logic, with a carefully adjusted scheme of spurious ethics, which, as often as it made one man actually a criminal, prepared a hundred for walking in the same path. An aggravated mischief cannot but ensue in the social system when men who have been used to do ill at the blind impulse of sensual passions, curiosity, ambition, learn to do the very same things as recommended and palliated by sophistries. Those astute writers, who, at a very early time after the death of Loyola, and while his immediate successors were still living, gave themselves to the task of moulding an ethical system suited to the varied requirements of Jesuit confessors, may be regarded as compiling in cipher the blackest passages of the history of the courts of southern Europe for 150 years forward. The series of casuistic writers that is immortalized in the Provincial Letters—such as Sanchez, Molina, Baez, Bobadilla, Escobar—are the expositors of the course of events in all those countries where the "Company of Jesus" had reared its establishments, and had been treated with favour by kings, queens, and statesmen. Peruse these casuists, make yourself master of the doctrine they profess for giving nerve to the arm of the assassin, and you are furnished with a sort of programme of the tragedies of European history, through the course of the following century. Sweeping statements of this sort, condemnatory of communities of men, may be true in substance; but they should never stand alone, as if they might be taken as unexceptionally and universally true. Counter-statements, well Jesuitism sustained by evidence, and assented to by eminent writers, not of the Society, have been advanced; and every candid mind will rejoice to find that, in relation even to the Jesuit Society, as to almost every other institute or community, it is true that the better impulses of human nature largely avail to correct and to modify the vicious tendency of systems, and of codes, and of written doctrines.

Within the borders of Protestant countries it was inevitable that the Jesuit should be regarded, and should be dealt with also, not so much as the teacher of a reprobated religion, as a conspirator, as an incendiary, as a convicted enemy of the there established government. In particular instances, unwarrantable severities may have been enacted; but, as a rule, the paramount reasons of self-preservation must be held to bear out every infliction under which the Jesuits of those times suffered. In England, for instance, the proclamation of James I. (1604), and the procedures thence resulting, infringed no rule of a just polity, if it be granted that every government must sustain itself against the machinations of traitors, or of agents of a foreign power, found lurking about palaces, and waylaying princes with daggers under their cloaks. Even in these times, if treason were rife—if disaffection were widely spread—if a pretender to the throne were at hand—any class of men professing the principles, or known to be governed by the principles, that are avowed by Jesuit writers, must be summarily disposed of.

In France the presence of the Jesuits, and their admitted influence at court, under the protection of the Cardinal de Lorraine, and the expulsion of the order at a much later time (1764), all involve facts and reasons of a far more complicated order than those belonging to the same questions as affecting England. Jealousies, alarms, hatreds, the balancing of parties in the Gallican church, and in the universities, the inclinations of the court (that of Francis II. and his successors), and that tendency towards freedom of thought and action which already was at work among the people, all these, and other undefined influences, give complexity to those struggles which ended in the suppression of the order. The first expulsion of the order from France dates 1592. They were recalled in 1603; but finally expelled in 1764, occasioned by the failure of its trading operations. From the first, the Jesuit teachers and professors were able to place themselves in a position of indisputable advantage as men of more energy and assiduity, and of higher accomplishments, than were generally the doctors of the Sorbonne, or the existing professors in colleges and schools. On this ground the competitors were very unequally matched; or it was so in all instances but one; the eminent—the pre-eminent—men of Port-Royal, were well qualified in all branches to dispute the ground with the most noted of the Jesuit teachers. A mortifying consciousness of this unlocked—for and yet indisputable fact—the existence of a body of learned and accomplished men, highly esteemed also for their piety, their orthodoxy, and their personal virtue, worked its way to the heart of the Jesuit Society, and suggested a purpose of vengeance which was at length triumphantly realized in the destruction of their rivals. The damage and the humiliation which had accrued to the Society from the Provincial Letters might now be patiently borne by the "reverend fathers," for they could take to themselves the comfort of knowing that they had moved the bosom of royal violence to sweep over the home of their enemies—Port-Royal was no more.

An antagonism of another sort took place between the Jesuits and the clergy of the Gallican church, on the ground of those principles of national independence which were then in favour. Jesuitism, by its vow and its spirit, was ultramontane in the most extreme sense. Nothing which Hildebrand had affirmed, no enormity which Innocent III. had carried into effect, revolted the Jesuit leaders or writers of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. The papal Jesuitism: authority—regarded as the visible and audible will of Christ—could acknowledge no limit on earth, could yield itself to no gainsaying. But by a large proportion of the clergy of France these notions were repudiated, and an appeal to the judgment of councils through a course of ages, supported a very different belief, which yet was held to consist with a due regard to the chair of St Peter. On this ground, therefore, the Jesuits in France found themselves—among Catholics—the advocates of an anti-national doctrine: they might believe themselves to be firmly established in the closet of the sovereign, but they could never feel themselves to be welcome, or at home, in the church, or in the nation. The Jesuit's church principles were disliked and rejected; his machinations were not unknown; the corrupt morality which he taught at court, and whenever among private persons it might, with advantage, be advanced—these several grounds of exception, of suspicion, of dislike, attached to the members of the order in France, as decisively almost as in England, although under different conditions.

In other Catholic countries—as throughout the domains of Charles V., and in Portugal, whence the Society was expelled in 1579, and in Venice, where at an early date (1606) it gave ground, and in Sicily, in 1767—the Jesuit establishments made themselves obnoxious on somewhat different grounds. These governments found and felt themselves to be enveloped in the meshes of a mute organization, which held on to a distant and foreign authority—an organization which, spreading its fibres in the most intimate way throughout the very substance of the social system, domestic as well as political, acted in both directions—the centrifugal and the centripetal; that is to say, as an omnipresent reporter of all things, and as a universal influence controlling all affairs, under the direction of a power inaccessible and responsible to none—amenable nowhere. Loyola, or whoever it might be that was the contriver of the Jesuit institute, might have foreseen that course of events which ensued in almost every country within which it had at first triumphed—namely, that it must come to be regarded as politically incompatible with the security of civil government, whether autocratic or democratic. This incompatibility would be felt not less vividly in countries that were firmly Catholic, and intolerant of dissent, than in Protestant countries: the consequence was, the expulsion of the order from countries the most orthodox, as well as from the heretical.

Justice to the Jesuit Society demands that general allegations of this sort should be accompanied with modifying statements. In several instances—especially in that of the harsh and cruel measure of the Portuguese government, in concert with that of Spain, in 1750 and 1759—the Jesuit fathers were made the victims of state policy, taking its course in utter contempt of reason, truth, religious feeling, and common humanity. The history of the missions in Paraguay and Brazil, and the narrative of the violences attempted and perpetrated in these countries by the two Catholic governments, are of a kind to engage the sympathies of the reader strongly and entirely on the side of the Society. Little as we may approve of the principles which guided those missions, it is a fact not to be disputed, that, through a long course of time, the Jesuit rule secured to the aboriginal tribes an incalculably larger amount of social and individual well-being than they could have enjoyed in their native condition; or, need it be said, under the ferocious rule of their European conquerors.

But when Jesuitism had become the object of dread, of jealousy, and of dislike to the Papacy—that is to say to the pontiff and his immediate ministers, it was on a different ground. At a very early time the pope had seen that the vow of unconditional obedience to the vicar of Christ had Jesuitism, absolutely no meaning, whenever occasions arose which made this silent submission, or submission at all, inconvenient. The Jesuit doctrine was, that its vow of obedience included not merely an outward compliance with the command of a superior, but a conformity of soul and judgment also—an inward and absolute approval of such commands, whatever might be the contrary dictate of a man's individual judgment and conscience: he must not only say that white is black, but think it so. Then this outward obedience, and this inward congruity of the will, forbade any attempt, even in the most urgent instances, to persuade the superior, or to bring him over by argument, by expostulation, by entreaty, to another mind. Nothing can be more clear or more imperative than are the several statements of this doctrine wherever it presents itself in the authentic writings of the Society. Yet notwithstanding these professions, and in the face of them, Loyola himself, and the generals who succeeded him, never scrupled to use every sort of dissuasive importunity, when they thought it desirable to turn aside the sovereign pontiff from some course which they judged to be prejudicial to the interests, or damaging to the influence, of the Society. None could surpass the Jesuit General in silent obsequiousness, when this humble mood suited him; none so daringly contumacious as he, when it did not suit him to submit. If then the popes regarded the Society as a powerful auxiliary, they well understood also that it retained always a will of its own, which they could not control. The Society was at best a "fast and loose" ally.

This significant fact had betrayed itself from the first, and had been signalized several times during the lifetime of Loyola and of Paul IV. Such were those occasions when the general obtained release for his Society from the spiritual care of women, unless indeed, and this was an exception easily allowed, when ladies who sought the aid of a Jesuit confessor, occupied high positions at the court of princes. Such also was that occasion when the rule was to be maintained which forbade a Jesuit to accept a bishopric, or a benefice of any kind. The same practice of obedience, whenever convenient, and of contumacy on special occasions, had been freely resorted to in relation to the missions of the Society. At a time when the compromising behaviour of the Jesuit missionaries in India and China had become known in Europe, and had raised an outcry throughout Christendom, the popes made repeated endeavours to bring these propagandists back to a course of Christian simplicity and purity. These remonstrances, these injunctions, were scarcely heeded; they seemed scarcely to have become audible after they had traversed so many thousand miles. It was manifest that the "Company of Jesus" was governed, not merely from within, but that it had an independent life, and an object of its own, and that it might, as occasion arose, pursue its private ends in spite of injunctions, of decrets, of bulls, of anathemas. Hitherto no religious body had grown up within the pale of the Church which could in any comparable degree alarm the Papacy.

This jealousy and alienation had gone on always increasing, until it came to its natural issue in the decree of Clement XIV. in 1773, suppressing the order. At that time the relative forces of the two powers had become such as to render this act possible on the part of the Church. Besides that the Society, like every human combination springing into life with great energy, had by this time lost very much of its interior vitality; and it had, moreover, concentrated upon itself, from all quarters, an amount of opprobrium quite unexampled in any instance which might be brought into comparison with it. Religious orders had indeed often fallen into contempt from their laxity, and their departure from the spirit and rule of their founders. But the Jesuit institute had become hateful just because it had realized its original principle, and had fully developed, in act, the incurable viciousness of its constitution, of its maxims, of its distinctive tendency. Other religious bodies might retrace their downward steps, they might admit reforms, and might regain their position in the world's esteem. But as to the order of Jesuits, the fact had at length become incontestably certain—it was a truth uncontradicted (out of the Society)—that to this body a renovation, and a return to its primitive health, would be nothing less than a universal calamity—would bring every civil polity, every social interest, into peril. The act, therefore, which suppressed this order was borne out, and was assented to by the implicit approval of the European nations, Catholic not less than Protestant. In truth, it was by the urgency of the Catholic governments that Pope Ganganelli had been led, or driven, to take this course, which he did with the show, at least, of extreme reluctance. It was thenceforward in heretical Prussia and schismatic Russia that the Society found an asylum. Yet from Russia they were expelled by Alexander in 1817.

The events of the next following forty years were of that sort which could not but induce a reaction within the pale of the Church, and which would favour and bring on a resurrection of Jesuitism. Pius VII. yielded to an influence in re-establishing the order, which was almost as distinctly expressed as that which had had its effect with his predecessor in abolishing it. A deluge had swept over Europe in this interval; a tornado had laid waste the Church; heresy and atheism had reared themselves aloft, and had appeared to be in course for utterly obliterating religious belief, or such religious belief as the Roman Catholic Church could recognize, from the minds and consciences of men. The time, therefore, was come for having recourse anew to the most potent restoratives; nor could any means be devised so effective, or so near at hand, with this view, as a revival of the Jesuit order. It was called upon, therefore, at a time of need, to repeat its first services to the Church, and at the same time to redeem for itself the esteem which it had universally lost.

During the period that has elapsed since the re-establishment of the Society—now more than forty years—it has pursued its course, we may suppose, to the satisfaction of its patrons and employers. Undoubtedly, the Jesuit influence has come in to the aid of that reaction which has taken place throughout, and still more beyond, the limits of the Roman Catholic world. Every sort of tendency which there may be to seek for and to accept infallible authority in matters of religion, would meet Romanism under its Jesuitic form. It is the Jesuit who must be stationed at the gate of the Church to welcome and encourage returning and repentant heretics. The antique religious orders possess no powers of adaptation fitting them for a work of this sort; in every sense they are superannuated. But the very characteristic of Jesuitism is its applicant or polymorphous quality. It knows perfectly who and what the repentant are. It knows how those feel who stray away from Protestant communions, and what are likely to be their difficulties in seeking to return to the Catholic Church; then it has a perfect command of the pharmacopoeia of Romanism, and more than all, it has always a choice of agents, among whom it may find the very one who can best adapt himself to the humours of the individual patient.

In labours of this sort, the restored Jesuitism of our times has no doubt rendered great service to the Romish Church. It has also made some progress in recovering the position it once occupied as the director of education, popular and professional. Something, also, in recent times, it may have effected in that which we must call its proper work—political intrigue. But beyond these faint revivals of the parts it played throughout the world in the seventeenth century, there is little which is now possible to this once formidable association; and henceforward every new development of the substantial forces of the social system must remove to a still greater distance an interfering force, such as that of Jesuitism. As measuring itself in turn against each of these energies, this force must be conscious of its insignificance. Our modern science, in its irresistible onward course, tramples down the Jesuit non-progress educational system. Popular enlightenment supersedes its labours on lower ground; the triumphs of mechanical science, and, along with these, the irrepressible energies of commerce, are leaving in the rear, and far behind, those movements which obey the tardy tortuosity of the religious machinator. Railways, steam navigation, electric telegraphs, instantaneous international correspondence, to all these things there belongs a velocity which wily intrigue can never overtake. The threads and wires of the general of the order of the Jesuits, which once covered Europe, and stretched across oceans, were at that time the quickest, the surest, the most secret, and the most effective of all modes of correspondence. Now they are surpassed, they are superseded, they are put out of question, by means which not princes and conspirators merely have at their command, but which obey the momentary call of every trader for a few shillings. Do these things refute Jesuitism? Assuredly they do not; but the irresistible tendency of them is, to leave it, as a power, to that contempt which the inherent turpitude of its principles has so amply earned for it.

Yet this is not all: Jesuitism we must believe to be in itself unchanged, and unchangeable; but its relative value, and its available efficiency as a scheme of silent political influence, has already undergone, and is every day undergoing a change—a change touching its very existence. The mind of the European community is now passing through a process which, far as it may fall short of the wishes of the enlightened moralist, or the anticipations of eager philanthropists, is yet full of a cheering promise for the age next ensuing. Those things in which consist the welfare of nations are every year coming to be better understood than heretofore; the folly—not merely the criminality—of violence, of ambition, of political fraud, and chicane, is coming to be more and more seen and felt; the few and the intelligible axioms of private morality, embodying the requirements of truth, honesty, and open dealing, are now in course of being applied, more and more widely, to the public conduct of public men, and also to the policy of governments. Is it not true that those astute methods of government and those traitorous arts to which the opprobrious phrase "Jesuitical" has for a century been applied, are falling fast into disesteem, and are becoming the objects of indignant scorn? Notwithstanding any single instances that might be cited to the contrary, we believe that this is broadly the fact, and it is a fact which is characteristic of the times now present. But if so, and if whatsoever is "Jesuitical" is becoming more and more odious, and therefore less and less serviceable, then assuredly Jesuitism itself will find it a task more and more difficult to maintain the position which once it held in the closets of princes, and even in conclaves. This sanative course of things, which we are here supposing to be in progress, tends always toward an accelerated movement, borne upon, as it is, by what we have already adverted to—namely, the universality and the instantaneousness of those means of communication among the nations, which mechanical agencies have lately realized; for that which almost annihilates time and space, robs fraud and wrong and treason of their main resources. Crime is exposed as soon almost as perpetrated; the criminal is outrun by the ministers of law; and if such a phrase might be allowed, Europe is now living in the perpetual glare of mechanical day-light—light everywhere diffused, and which is liable to no intermissions. Those, therefore—the conspirators against the rights and liberties of mankind—whose practices lead them to court the hour of darkness, will find themselves continually driven into narrower and still narrowing corners, until at length the world will rid itself of them for ever.

(J.T.)

JESUS.

JESUS, the Divine Author of the Christian religion, was born at Bethlehem, a city of the tribe of Judah, about six miles south-east from Jerusalem. His mother was a Jewish virgin named Mary, the betrothed wife of Joseph, both in the humblest rank of life, though both of the royal race of David. The date of his birth is not mentioned in the sacred record; and there has been a difference of opinion among the learned who have engaged in the inquiry, respecting the precise period when it took place. It is now, however, generally agreed upon, that it must be fixed a few years earlier than is indicated by the epoch of our era, which, according to the common computation, corresponds with A.D. 754. We know that Jesus was born before the death of Herod the Great; and it appears from Josephus, that Herod died before the Jewish passover A.D. 750. From calculations founded on other parts of the gospel history, and particularly on a comparison between Luke, iii. 1 and 23, many have supposed that the nativity was in A.D. 747; and in this opinion some have been confirmed by the conjecture of Kepler, that the conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, which took place in that year, was the star seen by the wise men; though it may be justly questioned how far the principles of scriptural interpretation admit of the supposition that the phenomenon referred to corresponds with the particulars mentioned by St Matthew. In regard to the day or month in which the Saviour was born, a subject to which the devotion of a large proportion of the Christian world has attached much importance, we have no means of accurate knowledge. The description given of shepherds watching their flocks by night is inconsistent with the idea that it could have been in December or January, or during the heat of the summer months; as we know that in these periods the herds were no longer left in the fields. At other times of the year the flocks might be turned out to pasture day and night in the south of Palestine; but there is no circumstance referred to by any of the evangelists to determine whether it was in spring or in autumn that Jesus was born.

The chronological error in the vulgar era, and in the season for celebrating the festival of Christmas, does not in any way affect the truth of the gospel history; and cannot indeed appear strange, when it is considered that several centuries elapsed before the method of computing time by the birth of Christ was introduced, and that the festival of the nativity was not observed in the primitive church. During the first three centuries, the Christians adopted the ordinary modes of reckoning time, which prevailed among the heathen around them. Different methods were afterwards employed; and it was not till the sixth century that a Roman abbot named Dionysius the Less was induced, by motives of religion, to have recourse to the expedient of determining dates by the number of years from the period when the Son of God was born of a woman. The commemoration of the day of the nativity was not generally observed throughout the Christian world till the fourth century. At that time the western church fixed upon the 25th of December, and their example was generally followed. Different causes have been assigned for the choice of this day. Sir Isaac Newton, in his work on Daniel, supposes that it was agreeably to the principle by which the chief feasts were fixed at the cardinal points, without regard to historical accuracy; as the annunciation at the vernal equinox, and St John the Baptist's day at the summer solstice. Hospinian and others have been of opinion that the festivities connected with the celebration of Christmas were intended to make up for the Saturnalia, conformably to the practice which had been acted upon from an earlier period, of smoothing the way for the conversion of the heathen, by presenting their idolatrous ceremonies under a new form. And there is not wanting reason to suppose, that from the winter solstice being observed as the birth-day of the sun, when that luminary, returning from the south, seemed to be restored to the world, the transition was suggested to the celebration of the birth of him who was the life and light of the world.

The circumstances connected with the birth of Jesus corresponded in a remarkable degree with the predictions of the Jewish prophets respecting the Messiah. He belonged to the tribe of Judah, and was of the house of David. Events, over which his earthly kindred had no control, fixed his birth at Bethlehem, from which place the promised Deliverer was to spring. The seventy prophetic weeks of Daniel were approaching to their termination. And so determinate were these and other predictions, that a general opinion prevailed, even in heathen countries, that the tide of time was bringing our race to a mighty epoch, and that a prince was to arise in the East who was to obtain the empire of the world. The wisdom of Divine Providence was also shown in the appointed scene and season of the birth of Jesus. From the geographical situation of Palestine, forming a part of Asia, touching upon Africa, and connected by the Mediterranean with the whole of Europe, the Jews enjoyed the best opportunities of diffusing the knowledge of their principles. And the intercourse between remote nations, occasioned by the conquests of Alexander and the progress of the Roman arms, afforded increased facilities for propagating new opinions, while it forced upon men's notice the different forms of national worship, and led to an examination of the great principles of religious belief.

Soon after the birth of Jesus, his parents fled with him to Egypt, to save him from the fury of Herod, whose suspicions were awakened by the idea of a rival to his throne. An uncertain tradition fixes the spot of the residence of the holy family at Matarea, near the ancient Heliopolis; and one of the apocryphal gospels contains various idle accounts of miracles which marked the presence of a superior being. From such traditions the Jews took occasion to circulate many ridiculous tales of magical arts learned by Jesus while in Egypt, which were frequently referred to by some of the early philosophic opponents of the Christian faith. The malignant insinuations of Celsus, however, and the absurd legends which long found currency among the Jews, are wholly inconsistent with the authentic narrative of the return from Egypt upon the death of Herod, when Jesus might still be said to be in infancy.

Upon their arrival in Palestine, Joseph was led to take up his residence in Nazareth, in Galilee. Here the opening character of Jesus engaged the love and excited the admiration of all who knew him. And, even before his childhood was ended, in his twelfth year, when his parents carried him up to one of the annual Jewish feasts, we find him attracting the notice of the learned Rabbis, entering into discussion with them, and filling them with astonishment at his extraordinary knowledge and sagacity. It would appear that, according to the custom of his countrymen, he followed the trade of his foster-father. In Mark, vi. 3, he is spoken of familiarly as "the carpenter." And Justin Martyr tells us, that while he sojourned on earth, he was employed in the ordinary occupations of a carpenter.

In this lowly situation, and in the midst of these servile employments, a character was silently maturing, such as the world had never before witnessed; and those lofty designs were conceived, the accomplishment of which was to give a new impress to the condition of society, and to alter the destiny of our race. Frequent attempts have been made to explain by the operation of natural causes, how, in circumstances so unfavourable, a character like that of our Saviour's could have arisen; and various theories have been framed respecting the manner in which the plan to which he devoted himself was suggested to his mind. The insufficiency of these attempts we shall afterwards consider. In the mean time, however, it may be remarked, that, though no explanation can be given, from circumstances merely external, of the growth of such a mind as that of Jesus, which must be sought only in the seed of the immortal plant itself, it is by no means inconsistent with the highest ideas that can be entertained of the divinity of his nature, to suppose a progression in the development of his humanity. External influences must to a certain extent modify the character of every man. We are told, accordingly, that "he grew in wisdom" as well as "stature." And the commanding situation and romantic beauty of the city of his dwelling, the instructions of his mother, intercourse with the heathen, which, from the proximity of Nazareth to Galilee of the Gentiles, must have been frequent, may have proved among the subordinate aids for awakening that sense of the loveliness and majesty of external nature to which we find so many references in his discourses, and that susceptibility of every tender emotion which his whole history manifested, and that enlarged philanthropy which looked beyond the distinctions of Jew and Gentile, of sect and class, of rank and station, and considered the whole human race as members of one great family, as children of the same heavenly parent. Such influences, however, are matter of conjecture rather than of positive knowledge; for no reference is made to them by any of the Evangelists. The piety of his mother and of Joseph renders it certain that he would from infancy be made acquainted with the Old Testament Scriptures; and these not only contain the germ of all that is pure and elevating in religious sentiment, but also are, more than any other study, calculated to awaken the curiosity and stimulate the powers of the opening mind. His conversation and discourses everywhere show that he must have made a constant study of the sacred records. It appears that he never attended any rabbinical school, nor did he receive a learned education.

From the time when he appeared disputing with the Jewish doctors in the temple, we have no direct information respecting him till his thirtieth year, when we find him among those who presented themselves to John upon the banks of the Jordan to be baptized. The intervening period was no doubt employed in maturing the plan for the arduous undertaking to which he was prompted by the stirrings of the Divinity within him. The consciousness of his high vocation, however, to a career that was to attract the notice of the world, did not interfere with the pious observance of his filial duties, or the laborious discharge of the common offices of his early situation. The baptism of John served as a consecration to his new office. The heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit

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1 Schroeder's Kirchengeschichte, i. 403. 2 Tac. Hist. v. 13; Suet. in Vesp. cap. iv.; Virg. Poll. 3 "One loves here; I view it like Magdala." This passage seems to have been tampered with as early as the time of Origen, probably from a wish to do away the prejudice that existed in many minds against the idea of a Saviour in such a state of humiliation. There is another reading, "one views here as Magdala;" but the weight of evidence is decidedly in favour of the former. 4 Matt. ii. 13. 5 Luke, ii. 52. 6 Tryph. 88. See also Theod. 3, 23; and Soz. 6, 2. 7 Matt. xiii. 54; John, vii. 10. 8 Luke, ii. 51; and Just. Mart. ad nat. descended upon him, and a voice was heard from heaven declaring him to be the Son of God, and claiming for him the attention of mankind. Immediately after his initiation, he was impelled to retire into the solitudes of a wilderness, with a view, probably, of meditating on the work before him; and, by fasting and prayer, after the example of former prophets, to prepare himself for his great undertaking. A higher purpose was also accomplished during this retirement, an opportunity being afforded him for proving the purity and sinlessness of his nature, and establishing his fitness for the office upon which he had entered, by baffling the temptations of Satan.

After this mysterious conflict, Jesus returned to Bethabara, a place near to that part of the river Jordan over which the Israelites had passed under Joshua. It was here that disciples first began to gather around him; and few passages in history are more interesting than that which tells of the individuals who first attached themselves to his cause; of their curiosity, their doubts, their conferences with him, the influence he gained over their minds, and their eagerness to communicate to others the wondrous tidings, that they had found the promised Messiah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The first two individuals who joined themselves to him were disciples of John the Baptist, who pointed out Jesus when walking at a little distance, as the "Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." Upon this they introduced themselves to his notice, and on his invitation accompanied him to the house where he lodged. What took place at this memorable interview, or how a solitary and almost unknown stranger attached to his cause the first two disciples, we are not informed; whether by some token of supernatural knowledge or power, or by the natural influence of a superior mind; the conviction was produced; and with it was imparted the spirit, which was at the foundation of the indefinite extension of the new cause, viz., the desire of imparting their own impressions of the new doctrines to others. One of the two individuals was Andrew, brother of Simon, who afterwards became so eminent in the primitive history of Christianity. "Andrew first findeth his own brother, and saith, we have found the Messiah; and he brought him to Jesus." These three were the converts of the first day; and in a short time, without any advantages of birth or station, or human learning, without the aid of powerful relations or influential patrons, he had a considerable number of attached followers, who listened to his teaching, and accompanied him from place to place. At the feast of the Passover, along with the rest of his countrymen, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, where he increased the number of his disciples by his doctrines and miracles. He seems to have continued in the land of Judea about six or seven months; when the success of his preaching, exciting the attention and envy of the Scribes and Pharisees, led him to withdraw into Galilee, where the power of the Jewish Sanhedrim was less to be dreaded. In passing through Samaria, where the political circumstances of the inhabitants freed them from some of the prejudices of the Jews respecting the character of the Messiah, he first openly and publicly proclaimed the great truth, that all distinctions of Jews and Gentiles and Samaritans were to be at an end; and that, without reference to time or place, or outward ceremony, the Deity was to be worshipped in purity of spirit, and in faith on the promised Messiah. He then visited the whole of Galilee, everywhere accompanying the instruction he gave, in synagogues, or in private houses, or in the open fields, with miraculous proofs of his divine character and commission. In Nazareth he was first subjected to personal violence, his townsmen taking offence at his lowly origin. To avoid their malice, he passed on to Capernaum, which henceforth became the place of his general residence, and from which, as from a centre, he visited the whole surrounding country. The first year of his ministry seems to have been attended with almost universal success. He met with no outward obstruction in his work, except in Nazareth; his approach was everywhere welcomed, and increasing multitudes followed him in his progress.

During the second year of his ministry, his followers became so numerous that he chose twelve persons who might assist him in his work, and be prepared to propagate his religion when he should leave the world. These he named Apostles, an appellation which was appropriated at that time among the Jews to certain public officers who were the ministers of the high priests, and who were occasionally despatched on missions of importance to foreign parts. The number twelve had probably a reference to the twelve tribes, as the seventy whom he afterwards chose might be from the number of the Jewish Sanhedrim. The increasing success of Jesus raised up against him a host of enemies, and from this time he was continually subjected to the cavils of the Sadducees, and still more of the Scribes and Pharisees, whose objections were of such a nature as might be expected from unprincipled and hypocritical men, who witnessed with jealousy any proceeding likely to diminish their influence among the people, and who were inflamed with resentment at the exposure which was made of their true character.

It has already been observed that Galilee was the chief scene of our Saviour's ministerial labours. He did not, however, confine himself wholly to that province, but occasionally visited other parts. We find him at one time on the coasts of Tyre and Sidon; at another beyond Jordan; and at the passover he uniformly went up to Jerusalem. As the Evangelists do not relate events in chronological order, we are without any precise information as to the exact degree of success that from this period attended his labours; it seems probable, that his followers continued to increase, and that a deep and general impression was made upon the public mind. His proceedings at last excited the attention of all classes in Judea. Herod Antipas was haunted with the idea that he must be John the Baptist restored to life, and was desirous to have a personal interview with him; and there is not wanting reason to suppose that he received the homage of princes more remote. The eyes of the chief men of Judea were now upon him. The subject of his miracles was discussed in the Sanhedrim, and frequent attempts were made to seize and bring him before the council, though without any settled purpose, perhaps, how they were to proceed against him. At last, after the restoration of Lazarus to life, which led to the conversion of a multitude of the Jews, a meeting of the Pharisaic party was held, when it was finally determined that he should be put to death. The result is well known. In the dead of the night he was surprised in the midst of his secret devotions, hurried before the Sanhedrim, and, after the mockery of a trial, in which even his judge acknowledged his entire innocence, he was adjudged to suffer death. He was then carried to the usual place of execution, on a small hill named Calvary, on the west of Jerusalem, a little without the walls,

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1 John, i. 29, ad fin. 2 See Horsey's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 243. 3 Our information as to the first year of our Saviour's ministry is derived almost exclusively from John. The other Evangelists confine themselves to his preaching in Galilee, with the exception of what took place at Jerusalem immediately preceding the crucifixion. 4 Moshelin De Relig. Christiana, &c. l. 6. and there he was crucified. This dreadful scene was accompanied with signs and wonders which proclaimed the dignity of the sufferer. A supernatural darkness overspread the land of Judea, "and behold the veil of the temple was rent in twain, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened." After his death his body was taken down from the cross, and laid in a tomb hewn out of a rock, after the manner of the Jewish sepulchres. Every precaution was used to prevent the removal of the body by the disciples. A great stone was rolled upon the door of the tomb, and a watch of Roman soldiers, consisting of sixty men, was appointed to guard it. This was on our Friday. The following day was the Jewish Sabbath; the stone remained in its place fixed and secure, and the soldiers continued their watch undisturbed. But on the morning of the third day, amidst a display of supernatural agency that mocked the precautions of the Jewish rulers, Jesus arose from the dead. After this he continued some time on earth, affording the most indubitable evidence of his identity, and of the reality of his resurrection from the dead, and instructing his disciples in the nature of the doctrine they were to teach mankind. At last, at the end of forty days, he led forth his disciples to Bethany, and there, while giving them his blessing, "he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven."

The year of our Saviour's death cannot be exactly ascertained. Two extreme points, however, can be mentioned, within which that event must have taken place. The one is the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, in which John the Baptist began his ministry, and the other, the year in which that emperor died, when Pilate had left the province of Judea. As Jesus entered upon his ministry soon after the public appearance of John, it would bring us to a near approximation to the date sought for, could we say how many passovers were celebrated by our Saviour. Even this, however, cannot be determined with certainty. The most probable opinion seems that of those who fix the number at three, and this would bring us to A.D. 783. Irenaeus states that Jesus was forty or fifty years of age when he was put to death; but it is generally agreed upon that his opinion was founded, not on authentic records, but to suit a fanciful theory. Most of the Christian fathers assign only a single year to the ministry of Christ, and fix his death in A.D. 782. Their conclusions are drawn from an erroneous view of Isaiah, lxi. 1, and Luke, iv. 19.

We have little authentic information respecting the character or history of Jesus additional to what is contained in the New Testament. The name Christus is mentioned by Suetonius; but it has been disputed whether he referred to Jesus. Tacitus alludes to the fact of his death, and speaks of him as the founder of the sect of the Christians. The chief notices of him by the fathers have been embodied in the preceding narrative. There is a passage in Josephus, where his life and character are referred to in the following terms: "At that time lived Jesus, a wise man [if he may be called a man], for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. [This was the Christ.] And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him [for on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many wonderful things concerning him]. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists to this time." This remarkable passage is referred to by Eusebius, and its genuineness was never called in question from his time till the sixteenth century, when Gaiusius and Osiander refused to receive it. Since that period it has afforded matter for much controversy among the learned. In favour of the genuineness of the passage, it has been argued, that we have the undisputed fact that it is found in all the copies of the works of Josephus from the time of Eusebius. It also exists in a Hebrew translation in the Vatican; and there is an Arabic version preserved by the Maronites of Mount Libanus. In addition to this external evidence, it is urged that the number of Christians in the time of Josephus was too great to admit of the supposition that he should pass them over altogether unnoticed, an improbability which is increased by the fact that he makes mention of John the Baptist, and of the death of James, the brother of Jesus, called the Christ. On the other hand, it is certain that Josephus was not himself a Christian; and yet the passage, as it stands in his writings, involves the profession of belief in the divine mission of Jesus. It is farther to be remarked, that this testimony in favour of Christ is not quoted by any of the apologists of Christianity who preceded Eusebius; and in particular, Origen, while he refers to the allusion made by Josephus to the death of James, and to his account of John the Baptist, passes over in silence the passage in question, though it would have afforded a more decisive answer had it been contained in the copies of the Jewish historian then in circulation. The arguments on both sides appear plausible, and the difficulties upon either supposition cannot perhaps be removed but by the conjecture, that Josephus did introduce into his work a notice of Jesus, though without admitting him to be the Messiah, and that some over-zealous Christian about the time of Eusebius had inserted some additional clauses. This opinion is now generally gone into by the continental critics. Those parts which are usually looked upon as interpolations are marked within brackets in the preceding extract.

It was scarcely possible that the appearance of so remarkable a character as that of our Saviour should not have induced many individuals, from various motives, to commit an account of him to writing. Accordingly, it appears, that from the earliest period many histories of his life were in circulation. The words of St. Luke seem to imply that these narratives were defective or erroneous; but there is nothing to prevent us from supposing that some of them might be the productions of men of good intentions, though deficient in the talents or information requisite for so important an undertaking. It was otherwise, however, in succeeding times. After the four gospels had been written by the Evangelists, and had been generally received as of divine authority in the Christian church, heretics and others, who departed from the true faith, had recourse to the expedient of forging gospels, epistles, &c. under the name of some of the apostles, or that of our Lord himself; to which they might refer in support of their tenets. These works were frequently formed out of the genuine gospels, with such additions and omissions as the purposes of the

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1 Luke, xxiv. 51. 2 Luke, iii. 1. 3 John, i. 19, 29, 35; ii. 1. 4 Iren. ii. 22, 5; John, viii. 67. 5 Tertul. Lact. Inst. Aug.; Clem. Alex. i. 6 In his Life of Claudius, c. xxv. Judaeos impulso Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit. 7 Auctor nominis ejus Christus, qui Tiberio imperante per procuratorem Pontium Platum supplicio affectus erat. (Ann. i. xiv. c. 44.) 8 Acts, xviii. 3, 3. 9 Acts, xviii. 3. 10 Hist. Eccles. i. ii.; Demonstr. Evangel. iii. 5. 11 Acts, xxix. 9, 1. 12 C. Col. 13 Luke, i. i. writers required. There were not wanting members of the true church who followed the same practice, with the mistaken idea that the piety of the faithful might thus be promoted, or that an answer might be afforded to some of the objections of Jews and Heathens. In the second century, Irenæus tells us that the Gnostics had an innumerable multitude of spurious and apocryphal books; and in the following age they were greatly increased. The greater part of these writings perished in the course of ages. Of such of them as remained, a collection was published by Fabricius, about the beginning of last century, in his Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. A full account of them is given, with translations, in Jones' well-known work on the Canon. Several of them were republished in London some years ago, in a work entitled The Apocryphal New Testament.

That these works are not to be received as genuine, may be proved by their vast inferiority to the canonical gospels, and still more decidedly by the fact, that they were not recognised by the Fathers. In The Gospel of our Saviour's Infancy, there are some passages which are referred to by Eusebius, Athanasius, and Chrysostom, as containing some trifling particulars of true history connected with the life of Christ, but it is not ranked by them among the inspired writings. It is worthy of remark, that it was from this production, and from The Gospel of the Birth of Mary, and the Protevangelion of St James, that Mohammed derived all his knowledge of our Saviour's life. Indeed he does not seem to have been at all acquainted with the canonical gospels; and the legends of the East in general concerning our Lord are all from apocryphal sources.

There is an account in Eusebius of a message having been sent by Agharius, king of Edessa, who had heard of the miracles of Jesus, and who requested him to come and cure him of a malady with which he was afflicted. It is added, that our Saviour wrote to him a letter, in which he promised to send one of his disciples to heal him. A translation of this correspondence from the Syriac original, contained in the archives of the church of Edessa, is given by Eusebius. Additions were afterwards made to the story,—as that Thaddeus, one of the seventy, was deputed by Thomas, after the resurrection, to fulfil the promise of the Saviour; and Evagrius mentions, that our Lord not only wrote a letter, but that he sent a handkerchief also, with his picture drawn upon it. There can be no doubt that the letters mentioned by Eusebius actually existed among the records of Edessa, and that they were seen by that historian. But, in addition to the external evidence from the letters themselves, the fact that they are taken notice of by no preceding Christian writer affords demonstration that they are forgeries, which owe their existence probably to the national vanity of some of the early Christians of Edessa. We are not informed that our Saviour ever committed anything to writing, and we may be assured that if he had, it would not have passed unnoticed by his first followers.

There is another statement contained in Eusebius, deserving of more attention. He mentions that Pontius Pilate, after the crucifixion of our Lord, wrote such an account of his character and miracles to the Emperor Tiberius, as induced that prince to propose to the senate that a place should be assigned to Jesus among the deities worshipped by the Romans, but that the senate opposed the wishes of the emperor. It was certainly the custom of the governors of provinces to write memoirs of the remarkable occurrences of the places where they presided; and there is nothing improbable in the idea that Pilate, who was convinced of the innocence of Christ, should send an account of him to Tiberius. It is certain also that Justin Martyr, in his Apology for the Christians, presented to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, refers to the acts of Pilate, as containing an account of the circumstances connected with the crucifixion; and Tertullian, towards the end of the century, appeals to the same records. Still, however, we conceive that the evidence for the existence of these acts is defective; and the proposal alluded to by Tiberius to the Roman senate, though mentioned by Tertullian, and repeated by writers who succeeded him, is irreconcilable with the character of Tiberius, and the state of the Roman empire at that period. At a later period, a spurious work, entitled The Acts of Pilate, was circulated by the Jews, containing many slanders against Jesus; and it appears that acts of a contrary nature were fabricated by certain Christians, to do away the impression.

From the time that the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity, a belief in magic formed a borrowed part of the national character; and at an early period the natural expedient was resorted to by the enemies of Jesus, of disparaging his character, by representing him as a magician. It was believed among them that there was a mystic word which enabled those who had learned it to direct at will the current of events; and a foolish story was circulated as early as the second century, respecting the means by which Jesus discovered and remembered this potent sign. Upon this fable a life of Jesus was ultimately constructed, entitled Toldoth Jeschu. The substance of this abominable fabrication is, that Jesus was born in adultery, the particulars of which are detailed with revolting minuteness; that he contrived to steal the sacred word, by pronouncing which he performed miracles at will, healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead; by means of such works he gained over many converts, and would have been still more successful had not another Jew abused the minds of his countrymen by learning the same word, and disclosing to the people how the same miracles could be performed. The work terminates with an account of the death of Jesus, and of his body being stolen away by his disciples. It was published, with a Latin translation and learned notes, by Wagenseil, in his Tela Ignea Satanæ, h. e. Arcani et horribiles Judæorum adverbum Christianum Deum et Christianam religionem libri ANEKDOTON, 1681. It can scarcely be believed that the more learned among the Jews gave credit to its mendacious absurdities; though they long encouraged its circulation, to inspire their brethren with a deeper contempt for Christianity and its followers.

The determination of the questions relative to the person and character and history of Jesus involves all the essential particulars connected with the evidences and doctrines of the Christian faith. But in an article like the present, we cannot enter fully upon the consideration of any of these important subjects. We shall merely offer a few remarks upon such particulars as depend upon elements of a historical nature, leaving the discussion of matters of doctrine for other departments of this work.

The existence of such a person as Jesus Christ has scarcely ever been seriously denied; and the general tenor of the narrative of the Evangelists, with the omission of the miraculous parts, has been received as substantially correct by many who refuse to acknowledge the truth of our religion. The evidences for the genuineness and authenticity of the four Gospels will be stated under the proper heads, from which it will appear that no history whatever is supported by stronger external proof; and that were it not from internal grounds as to the nature of the facts recorded, and the consequences which flow from them, the truth of the narrative would never have been called in question. Even the miracles were admitted by the earliest opponents of Christianity, Celsus, Philostratus, and Hierocles. These individuals did not deny the reality of the works performed by Jesus; they only, upon internal evidence, objected to the idea that a person in circumstances so lowly should be supposed to be divine, or explained away the supernatural appearances by the supposition of the exercise of magical arts, or maintained that the few miracles which were performed did not warrant the idea of a divine character.

Different ground has been taken up by infidels in modern times, who, while they have been constrained to admit the truth of the general statements of the Evangelists, have rejected altogether the supernatural machinery. In setting aside the miraculous part of the gospel history, the chief difficulty has been found in giving a consistent view of the character of Jesus. If the miracles performed by Christ were not real, the conclusion seems irresistible that he must have been either a deliberate impostor, or a self-deceived enthusiast. By some writers, accordingly, Jesus has been held up to ridicule and contempt, as exhibiting many weaknesses, and even vices—as a pretended miracle-worker and false prophet. Several of the deistical writers of our own country took up this position, and were followed by Voltaire and other French authors. The anti-Christian views of Voltaire were adopted by Frederick the Great, whose example and encouragement gave rise to the spirit which has unfortunately led so many of the theologians of Germany to exclude from Christianity every trace of supernatural agency.

The notices of the English deists of the last century, respecting the miracles and character of Jesus, in many instances at least, were little more than incidental, and formed merely a part of their general argument against the truth of our religion. In Germany the work has been more systematically pursued. With the characteristic industry of that learned people, the writings of the Evangelists have been considered in every possible form. Different theories have been framed as to the secret views of Jesus, as to the real causes of his success, and as to the true character of the alleged miracles which were performed. Voltaire, after our English authors, had endeavoured to account for the exalted morality taught by Jesus, by supposing that it was borrowed from the self-denying tenets of the sect of the Essences. The idea was followed out by various German authors; while the lofty theology of the Alexandrian Platonists, and the liberal spirit of Sadduceism, were referred to by others as sufficient to originate in an enthusiastic mind the system taught by Jesus. Some, like Edelmann, while they have not disputed that a virtuous Jew named Jesus actually existed, have refused to acknowledge the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels. Reimarus, in a posthumous tract on the object of Jesus and his disciples, while he acknowledges the excellence of the morals, and even of the doctrines, of the Gospel, accuses Jesus of not observing the rules which he prescribed, and of making use of his system as a means for promoting his political views; and while he does justice to many of the high qualities of Jesus, he represents him, upon the whole, as actuated by ambition, and as aiming at the establishment of his own power under the character of the triumphant conqueror to whom the Jews looked forward in their promised Messiah. His arguments are chiefly founded upon the acknowledged ideas of the Jewish people respecting the Messiah, upon the caution exhibited by Jesus in arrogating that character, and upon his entering Jerusalem in royal state, when he conceived that his cause was sufficiently advanced to insure his success; while the grief he exhibited in the garden of Gethsemane, and his exclamation on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" are considered as tokens of his disappointed hopes. This view has been taken by other writers, with various minor modifications, and with different degrees of learning and presumption. Others have represented Jesus as the dupe of his own imagination,—as one who, by the dreams of a fond mother, and the workings of an unrestrained fancy, was led to believe himself to be the Messiah; and who, partly by his superior knowledge of the occult qualities of matter, and partly by the sympathetic influence of a highly-wrought enthusiasm, favoured occasionally by accidental circumstances, performed many works that seemed to exceed the limits of natural causes, which were afterwards exaggerated into real miracles. Another class of the theologian school describe Christ as a pure and exalted character, who was animated with the desire of raising the condition of his degraded countrymen, and of promoting the general interests of humanity; and who, in the lowly situation in which he was placed, found no other means of accomplishing this end but by personating the character of the Jewish Messiah. As the Jews expected miracles to be performed by their long-looked-for Saviour, Jesus accommodated himself to their views in this respect. According to this class of writers, he is supposed sometimes to have availed himself of fortunate contingencies, representing the restoration from a faint as a resurrection from the dead, as in the case of the daughter of Jairus, and of Lazarus, and sometimes to have succeeded, perhaps beyond his own expectations, by the aids of animal magnetism. His appearance to his disciples after his burial has

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1 Celsus. 2 Hierocles. 3 Frederick, while he treated with contempt the doctrines of the Gospel, acknowledged the excellence of its morality, which he considered (it is unnecessary to remark how erroneously) as essentially the same with that of the Stoics. 4 Diet. Phil. art. Essences. The untenability of the theory had long before been well exposed by Prideaux, Connections, vol. ii. p. 264. 5 This tract was published in 1789, by the celebrated Lessing, among his "Wolfenbüttel Fragments by an anonymous person." It is entitled Fragment von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger. It is now universally ascribed to Reimarus, well known as an able critic, and as the author of a work on natural religion. He was born at Hamburg in 1694, and died in 1768. He published nothing respecting his views as to the subject of revealed religion during his life, but he left various manuscripts of an anti-christian character, some of which, falling into the hands of Lessing, who at that time held the superintendence of the ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, were published by him in the Beiträge zur Geschichte und Litteratur, und den Schriften der Hessischen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel. They excited great attention; and, more perhaps than any other work, led to the theological spirit that has since so much prevailed in Germany. Various answers were called forth. Of these, one of the ablest was that by Reinhard, a celebrated German preacher, in a work entitled Versuch über den Plan der Stifter der Christ. religion zum besten der Menschen einzuführen. The main object of the author is to show that the mere plan for effecting the happiness of the species—a plan which he purposed to carry into effect, not by violence or force of arms (in opposition to the theory of Reimarus), nor by the influence of a secret society (in opposition to the wild imagination of Bahrdt), but by means of moral suasion alone,—a plan which no great man of antiquity had ever conceived, and which entered into no other religious system—proves Jesus to have been a messenger sent by God. This work by Reinhard is one of the most valuable contributions to the evidences of the truth of Christianity. It has been translated into French; and a translation of it into English has been published in America. 6 A list of the writers who hold these opinions is given in Winer's Biblisches Realwörterbuch. been also explained away, as if it had been the result of natural causes; it being argued that the suspension from the cross for a few hours was insufficient to occasion death, though in a worn-out frame it might occasion a temporary swoon, from which he might be restored by the myrrh and aloes and odoriferous substances which his disciples brought to embalm him.

In regard to the theory which is founded on the idea that Jesus was actuated by selfish or worldly or ambitious motives, it may safely be affirmed that it is altogether inconsistent with the facts connected with every part of his history. The whole tenor of his proceedings showed that his views were above this world. He used none of the arts necessary for gaining a party among his countrymen. He did not flatter one sect at the expense of another. He neither courted the favour of his countrymen, by inflaming their prejudices against the Romans, on the one hand; nor did he, on the other hand, artfully conciliate the favour of the Romans to be employed as a means towards attaining the sovereignty of Judea. He openly denounced the vices of the reigning sects; and though his benevolence led him to such a course of conduct as could not but excite the admiration of many among the lower orders, he made no attempt to render his popularity subservient to his personal interests; he shunned the demonstrations of popular favour, and unsparingly exposed the unworthy motives that led many to pay court to him. Not a single instance can be mentioned in which he had recourse to any means for establishing a temporal authority. His whole conduct showed that he was animated with more elevated aims. From the commencement of his ministry he asserted his divine commission, and spoke with undoubting confidence of the success of his cause. But the success of which he spoke was not in schemes of worldly greatness, but in the diffusion of truth and righteousness. He availed himself of every suitable opportunity for correcting the erroneous impressions that were entertained respecting the character of the Messiah. And so far was he from entertaining views of personal aggrandisement in the character he assumed, that from the very first he intimated that the good he was to render to mankind was to be procured by laying down his life for them. And the tenor of the evangelical history proves, that in proportion to the increasing clearness with which he communicated to his chosen followers the information as to his divine character, was the expressness of his declaration that his death was at hand.

There is only a single instance that can be adduced in which there was any appearance on the part of Jesus, of the assumption of temporal authority, viz. in the case of his last entrance into Jerusalem. This has been represented by Reimarus as an unsuccessful attempt made by him, counting upon the support of the populace, to take possession of the temple and of the city. But such a view is inconsistent, not only with the proceedings of Jesus upon former occasions, but also with his conduct in Jerusalem at that very period. There was no concert between the people and Jesus or his apostles. The city of Jerusalem was filled with strangers from all parts, who had come up to attend the passover; the report of the resurrection of Lazarus had been widely circulated; when Jesus approached, curiosity assembled multitudes to behold him, and, in the enthusiasm of the moment, they rendered homage to him as a king. But Jesus did not avail himself of the feeling that was excited. He addressed to the multitude nothing calculated to rouse their passions. The jealousy of the Roman governor, sufficiently awake to the danger of an insurrection, took no alarm at the approach of the procession to the temple, and Pilate made no allusion to it when Jesus was brought before his tribunal. The same day that Jesus entered into the temple he voluntarily left it for Bethany, though it is obvious, that if he had entertained the views ascribed to him, he would have availed himself of the advantages it presented to him, as the citadel that commanded the whole of Jerusalem. After this he openly returned to the temple on the following days; he made no appeal to the passions of the people, but continued to address to the chief priests such denunciations as could not fail to rouse those vengeful feelings of which he had foretold that he was to be the unresisting victim.

The attempt to prove that Jesus was merely an ambitious adventurer is now generally abandoned. But many, while they admit the excellence of the personal character of Christ, endeavour to account for the supernatural parts of the gospel history on what is called the principle of accommodation, supposing that Jesus suited his proceedings to the expectations of the Jews respecting the miraculous power of their Messiah. But to act upon such a principle is surely inconsistent with the simplicity and integrity of a spotless character. It is admitted by the defenders of the hypothesis referred to, that we have in Jesus Christ a character which stands single and alone in the history of mankind, free from any defect, and combining every species of excellence. We have this same Jesus, without advantage of education or outward condition, introducing a system of religion and morals such as the world had never witnessed; the only system of positive religion that does not bear on its face evidence of its falseness; a system to which the most enlightened men in every age since its first propagation have yielded their homage; and a system of morals so pure in its nature, and so comprehensive in its requirements, that while the most extraordinary progress has been made in every other subject, it might easily be proved that all that ethical inquirers have attempted is an analysis of the principles of our nature, on which the rules of the New Testament are founded, or an application of these rules to the circumstances of mankind in new conditions of society. If such a system had been originated by an individual who made no claim to supernatural assistance, we would have been presented with a moral phenomenon altogether inexplicable. But this is not the state in which we find the question. Jesus declares that he received from God all that he reveals to man. Had he offered no proof of this assertion, his moral qualities, even supposing him to have been in error, might have remained unimpeached, and he might have moved our compassionate respect, as the self-deceived enthusiast of virtue or religion. But our Saviour not only demands credence on his own authority; he makes an appeal to the miracles which he wrought, in proof of his divine mission. Now, the miracles which our Saviour refers to are of such a nature, that either they must have been performed or he must have lent himself to a deceit. There is no other alternative. He could not but know whether they were actually wrought, or whether they

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1 See, in particular, the Leben Jesu by Dr Paulus of Heidelberg, who conceives that his opinion is strengthened by an attempt to prove (which he has endeavoured to do in a separate tract upon the subject) that only the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross, his feet being merely bound to it by a strong cord. But even supposing this to have been the case, which we consider as by no means established, the evidence of actual dislocation is decisive. We have in the first place the testimony of the Evangelists, then the proceedings of the soldiers in general (John, xix. 33), and then the wound inflicted by one of them with a spear, which, from the account given of it, must have entered the heart itself (v. 34.)

2 In proof of this, see Joseph. Antip. xviii. 3, 2.

3 Michaelis.

4 John, xiv. 11. were only seeming and illusory. And if the miracles were not truly performed, then we have the individual whose moral character stands in all other respects higher than that of any other of the children of men, and who was made the instrument of conferring the greatest boon that ever was made to mankind,—we have that individual guilty of an artful and criminal imposture.

In regard to the theory that the apostles filled up the picture of the character of Jesus from what they read in the Old Testament Scriptures respecting the Messiah, it may be remarked, that the conception of such a character in such circumstances is a phenomenon as inexplicable upon ordinary principles as the actual existence of the prototype. And that four different writers, or that even two different writers, without having a common subject, should have given so many points of resemblance of such an extraordinary nature, and in so many varied circumstances, is altogether incredible.

Among those who admit the divine commission of Jesus, different opinions have been entertained as to the rank he holds in the scale of being. The general doctrine of the Christian church, as expressed in ancient creeds and in the confessions of reformed churches, is, that Christ exhibited in his person a union of the divine and human nature; that the second person in the Trinity was united to the man Jesus, who was God and man in one person. To avoid the difficulties which have been supposed to be involved in this mysterious doctrine, it has been maintained by some that the Son is not equal with the Father, and did not exist from eternity, but that the first created being, the highest angelic nature, was made flesh and dwelt on earth. The essence of this theory is, that the Son of God was a creature, but that he existed in a separate state previously to his manifestation in the form of man. It is variously modified according to the higher or lower character that is given to the Son of God; and is distinguished by the name of Arianism, from the individual who in the early part of the fourth century first brought the question into general discussion. According to a third class, Jesus Christ was a mere man, distinguished from other men only by being employed by God in making a revelation of his will to mankind, and superior in no respect to the prophets who appeared among the Jewish people, except in superior virtue, and in a more enlarged measure of divine countenance and assistance. This view, in its essential features, was embraced by the Ebionites, and also by Artemon and others during the second and third centuries; by Socinian in the sixteenth century, from whose name those who adopt this opinion are frequently named Socinians, though they assume to themselves the name of Unitarians; a title which is sometimes conceded by Trinitarians for the sake of distinction, though they equally hold the doctrine of the unity of the Deity. In America the name Unitarian is applied to all those who reject the doctrine of the Trinity. The differences of opinion respecting the person of Christ are connected with different views as to the object and nature of his commission. Trinitarians consider him as not only teaching a purer system of morality than the world had before known, but also as making an atonement for human guilt by his death; while Socinians and many Arians deny the doctrine of the atonement, and look upon Jesus merely as a teacher of religion and virtue.

The character of Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, presents to us the only example, anywhere to be found, of the perfection of humanity; and the contemplation of it has ever been considered by his followers as one of the most edifying and delightful exercises of piety. A constant regard to the will of God, and a delight in doing it, form the distinguishing features of his character. With this was connected the absence of all sordid, or selfish, or ambitious aims, and an enlarged and enlightened philanthropy. There is perhaps nothing more remarkable in the life of Jesus than the apparently inconsistent qualities which are blended together in one harmonious whole. We see in him the most unbending constancy united with great tenderness of feeling—hatred of sin, and compassion for the offender—a heart superior to all the allurements of pleasure, with a condescending indulgence for the innocent relaxations of life—a mind of universal philanthropy, alive to all the domestic charities—views that extended to the whole human race, and a generous compliance with national and individual peculiarities. It is difficult to conceive that the portraiture presented to us in the sacred history can be contemplated without benefit; but the chief benefit will be lost if it is forgotten that he whose life was the model of every virtue laid down that life for the sins of the world.

Those who hold the highest ideas of the divinity of Christ, admit to the fullest extent that he was also man; and the curiosity is not unnatural as to the personal appearance assumed by the Son of God. Upon this subject no direct information is given in the New Testament. From incidental notices, it has been conjectured that he was of a robust frame, and that there was nothing particularly marked in his appearance; but it may be doubted how far the passages referred to bear out these conclusions. There is better evidence that the mixture of divine beauty and commanding authority which he everywhere displayed in his character, were conspicuous also in his voice and aspect.

The most judicious of the fathers agree that nothing was known of the personal appearance of Christ, though inquiry upon the subject was not prohibited. During the first ages of Christianity, the church, under persecution, required a model of patient endurance; and the general opinion of the fathers during that time seems to have been, that the personal appearance of Christ corresponded literally with the description in Isaiah, liii. 2, 3. There was at the same time a prohibition, founded on the second commandment, against attempting to frame any pictorial likeness of the Son of God. We read, however, of pictures of Christ in the hands of one of the Gnostic sects. Alexander Severus had his bust in the chamber set apart for his devotional exercises; and Eusebius relates, that many among the heathens had pictures of Christ and of his apostles, which he himself had seen. At a somewhat later period, when paintings began to be admitted into churches, the attempt to present a likeness of Christ was no longer considered as unlawful; and full scope being given to the imagination of the artist, attempts were made to embody the purity, and elevation, and loveliness of the Saviour's character, in lineaments of extraordinary beauty. Certain theologians justified the attempt by explaining the description in Psalm xiv. as literally applicable to Jesus. There is a minute description of the personal appearance of Christ by the Greek ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus, who flourished about the year 1330; and another in a letter purporting to be addressed by Publius Lentulus, governor of Judea, to the Roman senate. Both of these,

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1 A catalogue of some of the most important treatises upon this subject in English is given by Bishop Newcome, in the preface to his work on our Lord's conduct and character. 2 John, xx. 15, and xxi. 4. 3 Tertull. De Carne Christi, 9; adu. Jud. 14; Clem. Alex. Pard. iii. 1; Orig. Contr. Cel. ii. 4 Iren. i. 25. 5 Lamprid. c. 29. 6 John, xviii. 6; Matt. vii. 29; John, vii. 47. 7 L. vii. c. 18.