bject which others may consider important, and which the tle of our paper may perhaps suggest, the explanation of such nission must be found in the limitation of our time and

ace.

By the Christological Principle we understand the idea of an ernal union of God and man in the person of Christ, as the edium of God's perfect self-communication and self-revelation o the world, and the consummation of all His ways and works. "his implies, on the one hand, that Christ is the principle of he divine constitution of the world, and that in Him, as St. aul says, all things consist or hold together. He is not an ccident or afterthought in the divine world-plan, but its central nd determinative idea-the vital root as well as culminating ead of all things. It implies, on the other hand, that Christ the principle of all sound knowledge of God and of His ays and works. We can only know God and man aright in he light and inspiration of the Christ.

The idea of a real union of God and man, as it is presented the teaching of the early Church, presupposes an original elation of affinity or kinship between the divine and human atures; and this is in agreement with the doctrine of St. John' oncerning the Divine Logos, as the archetypal source of the fe and light of men. According to the old Chalcedonian hristology, the God-man, who is "consubstantial with the ather as to His divinity, and consubstantial with us as to His manity, ... is one Christ, existing in two natures without ixture, without change, without division, without separaon,-the diversity of the two natures not being at all estroyed by their union in the person, but the peculiar proerties of each nature being preserved, and concurring to one erson, and one subsistence."

Such a conception of Christ is possible only on the assumpon that the nature of God and the nature of man, notwithanding their diversity, are not absolutely different or contractory, but homogeneous entities. If these two natures were their very constitution incommensurable and incompatible,

according to the assumptions and definitions of a later theology then it would be impossible to think of their coexistence in one person, without confusion or change, and without division or separation. In that case there could either be no union at all, or else the union would result in a being of mixed nature that would neither be like God nor like man; as happens, for example, when two gases of opposite characters combine to form a substance whose qualities are different from those of either of the constituent elements.

But if Christ be in one person truly God and truly man, according to the teaching of this old Christological formula, which is the most precious inheritance that has come down to us from the early Church, then His being and life are truly a manifestation of the nature and character of God as well as of the nature and destiny of man. And this manifestation is the only adequate representation to human thought of either God or man. In consequence not merely of the abnormal condition of man, but of the necessary incompleteness of his development without Christ, neither God nor man can be truly known outside of and apart from Him. This is one of the fundamental implications of the Christological principle.

God can be known perfectly only in Christ. This proposition is not an arbitrary or unwarranted assumption; nor is it the product merely of speculation. It is the teaching of human experience, as well as the teaching of Christ Himself. The history of religion and philosophy proves that man never of himself alone attained to a true and worthy conception of God. Christ, therefore, says truly: "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither does any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him." And in accordance with this St. John says: "No man has seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him."

The meaning of this is not that no sense or idea of God is possible at all without a knowledge of the historical Christ.

ach a proposition would be refuted by the existence of ethnic ligions, which imply some revelation and knowledge of God human consciousness. There is a manifestation of God in econstitution of the human mind, whose light is a ray derived om the eternal Reason or Logos: and there is a manifestation of od also in human experience, both internal and external. Hence e idea of God is a necessary product of our mental activity. The ecessary operation of the laws of thonght and the feeling of solute dependence impel the mind to the formation of the tion of an Absolute Being; which notion may be said to ceive its contents from the immediate impression which the bsolute Being makes upon the human mind in experience or nsciousness. And as the human soul is an offspring of God, riving its being and nature from Him, the notion which it us forms from itself must necessarily approximate more or Es to the true conception of God.

But how much this notion comes short of the truth is appart again from the conceptions of Deity which are found to preil in ethnic religions. The fault of these ethnic conceptions not simply that they are anthropomorphic. If the Christogical principle be true, then there is truth in anthropomorphilor anthropological conceptions of God, and the application Him of such conceptions is a legitimate process.* God ough an infinite, absolute, unconditioned Being, must possess ental and moral qualities which ally Him to man, and justify e application to Him of conceptions derived from the contemation of man and his actions. The error of anthropomorism consists in this, that the conceptions by means of which od is represented to the understanding, are not derived from e highest and best, but from the lowest and worst types manhood. The primitive imagination, which gives to the tions their gods, gets its first ideas of the character of Deity

"To Christians, the incarnation is the final sanction of anthropomorism, revealing the Eternal Word as strictly a person, in the ordinary se and with all the attributes which we commonly attach to the name." x Mundi, p. 165.

from the character of the rulers and hunters of men, who, lik Nimrod, or Ahasuerus in the tale of Esther, exercise arbitrar and despotic dominion over their fellow-men; and the god o the tribe thus becomes merely a magnified chieftain, possessin all the virtues and passions of the chieftain on an enlarge scale. Like the chieftain of the tribe, the god who is worshipped is a being that can be pleased and bribed with a gift, or appeased and propitiated by the sight of blood and torture.

It is not from these lowest and worst types of humanity, but only from the highest and best types that any true conception of the nature and character of God can be derived. But the highest type of manhood appears in Christ, who is not only a sinless man, but the ideal man-the man who embodies all the attributes of human nature in their highest perfection and in harmonious development. Hence it is only from the person and life of Christ that we can obtain the most accurate knowledge of the person and character of God. Christ is the most perfect revelation of God, because He is the most perfect man and, therefore, the most perfect medium for the manifestation of God in humanity. He is God manifest in the flesh. Therefore by comparison with the person and character of Christ we must correct and purify our ideas of God derived from every other source.

Now in the revelation of Christ, God is manifested, first of all, as a rational and moral personality, of which the human personality is but an imperfect image or copy. Various objections have been urged against the doctrine of the divine personality, which have at times been confusing even to Christian thinkers. These resolve themselves generally into the notion of a contradiction between the conceptions of personality on the one hand, and of absolute or unconditioned existence on the other. An ego, it is said, presupposes a non-ego as the condition of its development and self-consciousness. Self-consciousness results only in consequence of a distinction. between subject and object. In answer to this, it may be said that, while this is true in regard to finite personality, it follows

no means that it must be true also of the infinite. God, as finite and absolute existence, may have the conditions of ental and moral life entirely within Himself. It is not cessary to think of absolute and unconditioned existence as ing devoid of all inner processes and changes, but only as ving the relations and conditions of these processes and anges entirely within itself. If the conception of absolute ing necessarily required the notion of absolute simplicity d changelessness, then the absolute would be a dead and not living being.

But for the Christian believer the conception of the personty of God is necessarily involved in the personality of Christ; d the necessary postulate of an inner diremption and process the divine being in order to the existence of self-consciousss, is here met by the doctrine of a trinity of subsistences, or three-fold hypostatic distinction, in the essence of the Godad.* God could not be manifested in the form of human rsonality, if He were not Himself a personal being whose ributes are essentially the same as those which belong to rown personality. To Herbert Spencer's notion of the solute as "a mode of being as much transcending intelligence will as these transcend mechanical motion," the person of rist is at once a full and final answer. In the being of rist God is manifested as a person of like essential constiion as the human. God is a being that thinks, and wills,

It does not come within the scope of our purpose here to discuss the trine of the Trinity. In a discussion of that doctrine, however, we uld lay more stress upon the idea of the unity of the Divine Being than ften the case. Christ is God, and manifests not only a part, but the le Godhead. There are not a few current conceptions of the Divine ng which ignore this truth. When, for example, the Father is repreed as the just God, and the Son as the merciful one-the former as the who demands satisfaction, the latter as the God who makes satisfaction e sinner's stead; the former as hard of access and hard to be entreated, Tapairnras), the latter as philanthropic and gentle-then we have someg like the Greek conception of Zeus and Prometheus, but not the Christdoctrine of the Trinity.