and which was to be fulfilled in the dispensation of the fulness of time, Eph. i. 10. In the divine counsels he could not suppose there was a before and after; but by this mode of expression he marks the internal relation of the divine counsels and works to each other, the actual establishment of the kingdom of God among men by redemption, the final aim of the whole earthly creation. by which its destiny will be completely fulfilled. This globe is created and destined for the purpose of being the seat of the kingdom of God, of being animated by the kingdom of God, the body of which the kingdom of God is the soul. The end of all created existence is that it may contribute to the glory of God, or to reveal God in his glory. But in order that this may be really accomplished, it must be with consciousness and freedom, and these are qualities which can be found only in an assemblage of rational beings. It is such an assemblage therefore which is distinguished by the name of the kingdom of God; and when the reason of the creature has been brought by sin into a state of contrariety with the end of its existence, Redemption is a necessary condition of establishing the kingdom of God on this globe.

Paul could not indeed have represented human nature under the aspect of its need of redemption in this manner, if he had not been led to the depths of self-knowledge by his own peculiar development. But so far was he from mingling a foreign element with the doctrine of Christ, that from his own experience he has drawn a picture which every man, who like Paul has striven after holiness, must verify from his selfknowledge; it is a picture, too, the truth of which is presupposed by the personal instructions of Christ, as we shall find by reading the three first gospels. We gather this not so much from single expressions of Christ respecting the constitution of human nature, as from the representations he gives of the work he had to accomplish in its relation to mankind.' When he compares Christianity to leaven which was designed to leaven the whole mass into which it was cast, he intimates the necessity of transforming human nature by a new higher element of life which would be infused into it by Christianity. Christ calls himself the Physician of mankind; he says that

That the work of Christ presupposes a condition of corruption and helplessness, is acknowledged by De Wette in his Biblischen Dogmatik,

246.

he came only for the sick, for sinners; Matt. ix. 13; Luke v. 32. It is impossible that by such language he could intend to divide men into two classes-the sick, those who were burdened with sin, and who needed his aid ;—and the righteous, those in health and who needed not his assistance or could easily dispense with it; for the persons in reference to whose objections he uttered this declaration, he would certainly have recognised least of all as righteous and healthy. Rather would he have said, that as he came only as a Physician for the sick, as a Redeemer for sinners, he could only fulfil his mission in the case of those who, conscious of disease and sin, were willing to receive him as Physician and Redeemer; that he was come in vain for those who were not disposed to acknowledge their need of healing and redemption. Christ, when he draws the lines of that moral ideal after which his disciples are to aspire, never expresses his reliance on the moral capabilities of human nature, on the powers of reason; he appeals rather to the consciousness of spiritual insufficiency, the sense of the need of illumination by a higher divine light, of sanctification by the power of a divine life; wants like these he promises to satisfy. Hence in his Sermon on the Mount, he begins with pronouncing blessed such a tendency of the disposition, since it will surely attain what it seeks; compare Matt. xi. 28. When Christ, Matt. xix. Luke xvii. enjoined on the rich man who asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life-to "keep the commandments," it is by no means inconsistent with what Paul asserts of the insufficiency of the works of the law for the attainment of salvation, but is identical with it, only under another form and aspect. Christ wished to lead this individual, who according to the Jewish notions was righteous, to a consciousness that outward conformity to the law by no means involved the disposition that was required for participation in the kingdom of God. The test of renouncing self and the world which he imposed upon him, would lead one who was still entangled in the love of earthly things, though from his youth he had lived in outward conformity to the law, to feel that he was destitute of this disposition. Nor can we, from the expressions in which children are represented as models of the state of mind with which men must enter the kingdom of God, Matt. xix. 14, Luke xviii. 15, infer the doctrine of the incorruption of

human nature,' partly because the point of comparison is only the simplicity and compliance of children, the consciousness of immaturity, the disclaiming of imaginary preeminence, the renunciation of prejudices; and partly because childhood is an age in which the tendency to sin is less developed,3 but by no means implies the non-existence of such a tendency. Still Christ could not have used these and similar expressions (as in Matt. xvii. 10) in commendation of what existed in children as an undeveloped bud, if he had not recognised in them a divine impress, a glimmering knowledge of God, which when brought from the first into communion with Christ, was carried back to its original, and thereby preserved from the reaction of the sinful principle. And the recognition of a something in human nature allied to the divine, is implied in what Christ says of the eye of the spirit, of that which is the light of the inner man, by the relation of which to the source of light, the whole direction and complexion of the life is determined; so that, either by keeping up a connexion with its divine source, light is spread over the life of man, or if the eye be darkened by the prevalence of a worldly tendency, the whole life is involved in darkness. But as we have seen, Paul presupposes such an undeniable and partially illuminating knowledge of God in human nature, and this assumption is supported by what he says of the various degrees of moral development among mankind.

The idea of the need of redemption leads us to the work of redemption accomplished by Christ. Paul distinguishes in the work of Christ, his doing and his suffering. To sin, which from the first transgression has reigned over all mankind, he opposes the perfect holy life of Christ. To the evil whose consummation is death, representing itself as punishment in connexion with sin by virtue of the feeling of guilt and con

1 As Baumgarten Crusius appears to do in his Biblischen Dogmatik, p. 362.

2 See my Leben Jesu, p. 547.

3 On this account Paul in 1 Cor. xiv. 20, speaks of a vηriášev TŶ kaklą. The qualities which Christ attributes to children, are entirely opposed to a harsh Augustinian theology, and the gloomy view of life founded upon it, although this must be recognised as relatively a necessary step in the development of the Christian life, in reference to certain circumstances, and as the root of important phenomena in the history of the church.

demnation founded in the conscience, he opposes the sufferings of Christ as the Holy One; which, as they have no reference to sins of his own, can only relate to the sins of all mankind, for whose redemption they were endured. In reference to the former, Paul says in Rom. viii. 3, that what was impossible to the law, what it was unable to effect owing to the predominant sinfulness in human nature, (namely to destroy the reign of sin in human nature, which the law aimed to effect by its holy commands,) was accomplished by God, when he sent his Son into the world in that human nature which hitherto had been under the dominion of sin, and when he condemned sin, that is, despoiled it of its power and supremacy, and manifested its powerlessness in that human nature, over which it had before reigned, in order that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in believers, as those whose lives were governed not by sinful desire but by the Spirit, the divine vital principle of the Spirit that proceeded from Christ.' Paul does not here speak of any particular point in the life of Christ, but contemplates it as a whole, by which the perfect holiness required by the law was realized. Thus the reign of holiness in human nature succeeds to the reign of sin, the latter is now destroyed and the former established objectively in human nature; and from this objective foundation its continued development proceeds. And in no other way can the human race be brought to fulfil their destiny, the realization of the kingdom of God, which cannot proceed from sin and estrangement from God, but must take its commencement from a perfectly holy life, presenting a perfect union of the divine and the human. The Spirit of Christ, from which this realization of the ideal of holiness proceeded in his own life, is also the same by which the life of believers, who are received into his fellowship, is continually formed according to this archetype. In Rom. v. 18,

The other interpretation of this passage, according to which it means that Christ bore for men the punishment attached to sin by the law, appears to me not to be favoured by the context, for it is most natural to refer the ἀδύνατον τοῦ νόμου in the first class to the καταxρive TV dμаpríav in the last. But this will not suit if we take the first in the sense of condemning and punishing, for it was precisely this which the law could do; but to condemn sin in the sense in which the word is used in John xvi. 11, and xii. 31, the law was prevented from. doing by the opposition of the σάρξ.

Paul opposes to the one sin of Adam the one holy work (the ev dikaiwμa) of Christ. And if, induced by the contrast to the one sin of Adam, he had in view one act especially of Christ, the offering up of himself, as an act of love to God and man, and of voluntary obedience to God, still this single act, even according to Paul's statement, ought not to be considered as something isolated, but as the closing scene in harmony with the whole, by which he completed the realization of the ideal of holiness in human nature, and banished sin from it. In this view indeed the whole life of Christ may be considered as one holy work. As by one sin, the first by which a commencement was made of a life of sin in the human race, sin, and with sin condemnation and death, spread among all mankind; so from this one holy life of Christ, holiness and a life of eternal happiness resulted for all mankind. This holy life of Christ, God would consider as the act of the human race, but it can only be realized in those who, by an act of free self-determination, appropriate this work accomplished for all, and by this surrender of themselves enter through Christ into a new relation with God; those who through faith are released from the connexion with the life of sin propagated from Adam, and enter into the fellowship of a holy life with Christ. Since they are thus in union with Christ, in the fellowship of his Spirit, for his sake they are presented as dikator before God, and partake of all that is indissolubly connected with the holiness of Christ and of his eternally blessed life. In this sense, Paul says that from the one diraiwμa of Christ, objective dikaiwois and the consequent title to <wn comes upon all (Rom. v. 18); that by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous (v. 19); in this latter passage, he probably blends the objective and the subjective; the objective imputation of the ideal of holiness realized by Christ, founded in the divine counsels, or the manner in which the human race appear in the divine sight; and the consequent subjective realization, gradually developed, which proceeds from faith.

With respect to the second point, the sufferings of Christ as such, we find this (not to mention other passages where this idea forms the basis) distinctly stated in two places. In Gal. iii. 13, after the apostle had said that the law only passed