eye, joy illuminates the countenance, hope wreaths the brow with an ideal crown, and manliness of soul reveals itself in every attitude and movement of the body. Powerful emotion often kills the body at a stroke. Chilo, Diagoras, and Sophocles died of joy at the Grecian games. The news of defeat killed Philip the Fifth. The doorkeeper of Congress expired on hearing of the surrender of Cornwallis. And Largrave, the young Parisian, died when he heard that the musical prize for which he had competed had been awarded to another.

And do not overlook the power of ideas. How they do take hold upon the whole man and exert a perfect mastery! We need only to be reminded of Loyola, Peter the Hermit, Joan of Arc, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, to see the power of an idea to inspire a man with almost superhuman energy, and inaugurate a new era in human history. Ideas are the forces which move the moral world.

Mind also exerts a great influence in fashioning and developing the outward man. Ignorance, superstition, and vice will, in a few generations, deform the body, give dullness and stupidity to the countenance, listlessness to the eye, increase the facial angle, and finally lessen the volume of brain.* Intelligence, mental culture, refinement of taste, will reverse all this. They will give dignity to a man's gait, luster to his eye, expression to his countenance, symmetry to his features, and in a few generations the facial angle will be changed to 80°, the volume of the brain will be increased, and a more beautiful race will be the result. Whoever has had the opportunity of contrasting the physical development of the population of Van Dieman's Land with the people of America will be convinced of this. The great mental and moral differences are seen on the face and physique of the people. The Grecian beauty was no doubt the effect of Grecian mental culture; and the sternness of the Roman physiognomy resulted from their military employments, and their study of the law. From childhood to age the outer man is molded and fashioned by the soul; in some sense, the body is a creation of the mind.

See Pritchard's "Races of Men," vol. ii, p. 349.

"It appears to be conclusively proved that barbarism tends in a few generations to deteriorate the physical characters of even the highest races of mankind by increasing the facial angle, etc., while the reverse induces proportional physical improvements."-CUVIER'S " Animal Kingdom," p. 41.

ART. III.-HOLY SCRIPTURE A DIVINE REVELATION.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, BY J. F. HURST, D. D., OF BREMEN.

Ar the time of the Imperial Diet of Augsburg, 1530, when evangelical truth appeared to be in the most imminent danger, Luther wrote to his troubled friend, Chancellor Brück, as follows: "I have lately seen a miracle. As I looked out of the window at the stars and God's whole heavenly dome, I nowhere saw any pillars on which the Master had placed such a dome. But the heavens fell not, and the dome still stands fast. Now there are some who seek such pillars, and would like very much to feel and grasp them; but because they cannot do it, they tremble and writhe, as if the heavens would certainly fall for no other reason than that they do not see or grasp the pillars; if, however, they could only grasp them, the heavens would still stand secure."* The meaning of this vigorous allegory is clear enough-that all God's works, and even the truths of the Gospel, like the heavenly dome, need no visible support, but are established within themselves, and by their existence and indestructible duration bear within themselves their own proof.

It has been considered a vital task of the Church in these our days to write apologetical works, to establish apologetical periodicals, and to institute courses of apologetical sermons; and these efforts have been followed by good results. But though they all, together with the conclusions which we here present, may have the character of carrying on the defense of an important doctrine, yet it must not be understood that evangelical truth can first acquire stability and certitude by such defense, and, in general, by the palpable supports of human reason. It stands of itself. Never once has faith in these truths needed such props. Faith is rather, according to the exact translation of Heb. xi, 1, the self-supporting foundation of invisible things; as it is not the growth of reason but of the living experience of a new creation of the whole soul-that direction of our life to God which we could not take by our

Compare the whole letter in Walch's Quarto Edition of Luther's Works, XVI, p. 2140f.

own knowledge or will-so can it be neither shaken nor proved by the arguments of reason.

*

But when we speak of the necessity of defending Christianity it is important, first of all, to confirm for believers, on the ground of reason, those truths which have already become their vital forces; after this it is important to prove the untenable character of the ever-newly-presented assumption that Christianity is in irreconcilable conflict with the civilization of the age, and that it is absurd in these our days to affirm that the heavenly dome still stands. The civilization of the age is a certain sum of knowledge and intellectual facilities which have been promoted and made the common possession of the thinking minds in the nation by the progress of the sciences, by the improvement of the mental faculties, and by the enrichment of the mind which art has produced. But knowledge and facilities are in themselves neither believing nor unbelieving; they are the possessions of the intellect and memory, while faith is a fact of the soul. And it is therefore the task of apologetics to show that the civilization of our age, which has been employed by unbelievers as a weapon of attack, can just as well be used by believers as a weapon of defense; that as faith is not a merely knowing or thinking, but is born in that center of our personal life whose ground is the will, so also can unbelief (that is, not the contraction of single theological points, but of the whole doctrine of the Gospel) not conceal itself under any pretended necessity of thought, but comes entirely from the will. It must be granted that this perverted direction of the will is very wide spread among the cultivated minds of the present time. But to wish to conclude from this that unbelief is closely connected with the civilization of the age, would be just as absurd as to charge this civilization with the mania of spirit-rapping or secret medicinal remedies.

Simultaneously with the proof that the irreconcilable contradiction between faith and civilization is a matter of merely empty talk, it will also follow that there just as little exists the necessity, which has been deduced from it, of seeking to counteract this alleged hopeless loss of the age to Christianity by invoking the protection of an external human authority, such as the Romish Church presents.

• Comp. Twesten, "Vorlesungen über Dogmatik," vol. i, 3d ed., 1834, pp. 335ff.

From what we have said, those most likely to attend apologetical lectures are the men in the Church whose disposition to believe has been brought into perplexity by the assurance and scientific display of the modern attacks on Christianity. From this it follows that the method of the apologists must be to indicate, often briefly and inadvertently, those things which, with him who stands fast in faith, must have the force of main truths and real demonstrations; and, on the other hand, to treat with special care those points which are most exposed to the attacks of the present day, and to use the weapons which the civilization of the age presents.

If we now apply what we have said to our special themethat the entire contents of revealed, Christian, saving truth are laid down completely and with divine propriety in the fortynine books of the Holy Scriptures-it is clear from the start that, to one who believes, this theme in particular will require no proof whatever. For both a knowledge of the contents of the Scriptures, (Rom. x, 14,) and the acknowledgment that these contents are given by divine communication, that is, by revelation, are necessary assumptions of faith; this is so very much the case that we cannot conceive of faith without it. Therefore, even in the prosperous times of the Church this foundation of faith has been regarded so very certain in itself that, taking our German Reformers as an example, we nowhere find an elaborate proof of this proposition.* Likewise the earliest teachers of the Church, such as Irenæus and Origen, have said so little of this self-evident proposition that our acute Lessing could be led into the remarkable error of supposing that the Holy Scriptures had never been regarded as a rule of faith until after the Council of Nice.† Calvin teaches expressly that the self-proof which faith has of the divinity of the Holy Scriptures the witness of the Holy Spirit in our hearts—is the only thing which has force; all other things are only additions and supplements to this. And even such an impartial witness as Goethe corroborates the profound and far-reaching

Comp. Marheinecke, System des Katholicismus, II, p. 224f. 1810.

† Comp. the Refutation of Lessing, in Sack, Nitzsch and Lücke, über das Ansehn der Heiligen Schrift, p. 121ff. Bonn, 1827.

Compare Calvin, Institutio Religionis Christianæ, edit. Tholuck. T. I. P. 57ff. Berol, 1846. Also Schleiermacher, der christliche Glaube, I, p. 112. Berlin, 1821.

truth of the Scriptures by saying in his autobiography, with special reference to the Bible, that no criticism will be able to perplex the confidence which we have once entertained of a writing whose contents have stirred up and fructified our vital energy by its own.*

Faith, from this stand-point, will also not be at a loss to ac count more specially for the ground of this confidence. (1 Peter iii, 15.) It will say, "The Scriptures have for me a divine authority, because they have arisen by God's giving the thoughts to the sacred writers, and then causing them to write them down." And if faith be questioned as to the ground of its support of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, it will simply refer to the declarations contained in them. It will say, "I see in the prophets, the historians, and the poets of the Old Testament, and in the apostles and evangelists of the New, the purest will to say just what they feel; I see in them also a reverent submission to the truth which they proclaim, as if they had not received it from themselves, but from some One to whom they voluntarily subjected themselves. I nowhere see in them a disposition to exaggerate, and slavishly submit to, conscience by self-fabricated words. I see that they are chiefly simple-hearted and lowly-born men, whose sense of truth was not decomposed and dissolved by any false culture, or by any exercise in rhetorical, sophistical, and dialectic arts. I see in them, finally, a mighty and utterly unselfish desire of their spirit to help the men for whom they speak to the salvation of their souls. Comp. 1 Cor. vii, 35. And when these menwhom I must call holy men, because of such a pure effort, (2 Peter i, 21,) and for whose words and writing of them I can find no earthly motive, for they were confronted only by pain of heart at contempt, (Isa. liii, 1,) the hate of the multitude, (John xvii, 14,) and martyrdom,† (Luke xi, 50)—when these men say that the Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit, (2 Tim. iii, 16; 1 Peter i, 10ff.;) when it is to them a solemn doctrine, (Deut. xxx, 11ff,) that God's word does not come like the oracular voices of the heathen from the air, nor

• Werke, XXII, P. 75f. Stuttgart, 1840.

† Comp. Menken, Versuch einer Anleitung, zum eignen Unterricht in der Heiligen Schrift, 3d ed., p. 21ff. Bremen, 1833.

Comp. Van Oosterzee, in Lange's Commentary on the Bible, in loco.