and true, and that great service will receive an increasing appreciation in future ages, when other workers, profiting by his labors, shall have erected an appropriate doctrinal superstructure. Like Dorner, he blazed the way where others might go farther in finding a solution of the problem of the person of Christ that will do full justice to the facts of history and to the convictions of faith.

But Dr. Gerhart still moves in the realm of abstract metaphysics, whither many loyal believers in Christ, the Savior of mankind, cannot follow him, when he regards the incarnation as being the union of an impersonal human nature with the divine person of the logos. Nor is the mystery of such a divine transaction measurably relieved by emphasizing the eternal and ineradicable affinity existing between the divine and the human. Modern theologians take their departure from history, i. e., from the facts of revelation recorded in the New Testament. They realize keenly that, too often in the past, our theological speculations about the person of Jesus have ignored the very facts which they professed to explain. Therefore, instead of beginning their doctrine of the person of Christ with a theory of the preëxistent logos, they start with Jesus of Nazareth, with His matchless character and His unique consciousness, as portrayed in the Gospel narrative, confident that, thus, they will come to share the experience and the convictions of the earliest disciples, who found in this Jesus, "the Christ, the Son of the living God." They regard the term "logos" as being one of the most significant names that may be ascribed to Jesus, provided it be understood that the term is an historical label which men applied to Jesus in order to interpret adequately His redemptive power. Dr. Gerhart, however, uses the term "logos" as denoting a metaphysical divine entity, whose assumption of human nature constituted the incarnation.

Unquestionably, modern theology, in making its point of departure the full-orbed humanity of Jesus, His perfect humanity and not an impersonal human nature, rather than His

metaphysical deity-is in constant danger of lessening, or even losing, its emphasis on the full and true divinity of Christ. And if that were lost, the Christian religion would no longer be redemptive. It would become a splendid idealism, a great humanitarian enterprise, but it would lose its spiritual power of regenerating men and of transforming mankind. But the remedy for this defect is not a return to the speculative christologies of the past, whose defects were no less grave. The true remedy is a still more reverent study of the Jesus of history, and, especially, a deepening personal surrender to Him. The more men study the life of Jesus and the more deeply they come to experience His redemptive power, the more they will be constrained to raise questions about Him which faith alone

can answer.

That is the new path which Dr. Gerhart has opened up for us, even though he himself did not see clearly whither it led, and on that path modern theologians are pressing forward towards the goal. They envy the faith of their fathers in logic and metaphysics as a means of solving the ultimate mystery of Christian faith. But they do not share it. They realize that life is deeper than their logic, and they confess that at many points life surpasses knowledge. The greatest of these points is where God, through Jesus Christ, enters into a new lifefellowship with man. They accept this culmination of the incarnation of God as a fact of history, and as the very foundation fact of Christian experience. They believe that in Jesus Christ God manifests Himself for our redemption. But they cannot follow Dr. Gerhart in regarding this supreme fact of the incarnation as being brought about by the union of two natures in one person. They seek to find the solution of the mystery of the incarnation in the personality of Jesus, in His character and in His consciousness, in His works and words. Their methods are psychological rather than metaphysical. But, pending the outcome of these modern christological studies, Christian theologians assert with Dr. Gerhart that in Jesus "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

wars.

The foundations of the Mercersburg theology were being laid one hundred years ago, in 1817, the birth-year of Dr. Gerhart. Then the world was observing the tercentenary of the Reformation, after the travail and chaos of the Napoleonic Mankind looked anew for God in history, without whom, they felt, there could be no righteousness, no peace nor joy. And there were those who found Him in Jesus Christ, and who proclaimed the eternal salvation that God has provided in Him with new accents of assurance to hungry hearts. To-day, as we meet to observe the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Gerhart, history is repeating itself. We are observing the Quadri-Centenary of the Reformation amidst circumstances of even greater chaos and deeper gloom. But the war will cease, and when life flows in more tranquil channels, mankind will again seek God in this world. They will crave access to God as never before, and they will yearn for redemption from sin and for life abundant and eternal. May the theologians of to-day and to-morrow meet that supreme quest and need of men with the fidelity and zeal of Dr. Gerhart. May they present the Christian religion as the redemptive religion which God has established in Jesus Christ, and may they present Jesus Christ to men as their redeemer, through whom they have access to God, whom to know is eternal life. And, thus, they shall be the spiritual heirs of Dr. Gerhart, who took up the burden which he laid down after carrying it for many laborious years. With him, they shall be members of that glorious company of Christian men who, through all the ages, have sought to set forth the infinite riches of the wisdom and power of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

LANCASTER, PA.

IV.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL.

JULIUS F. VORNHOLT.

Christianity is preeminently the religion of the supernatural. As such it stands in contradistinction, first of all, to those religions that prevail among primitive and undeveloped races, which we call naturalistic. It is doubtful, however, whether this designation is accurate; for the term naturalistic can be applied only where there is a clear discrimination between natural and supernatural; and that is not the case with primitive races. So instead of calling their religion naturalistic, we might also call their conception of nature supernaturalistic. Christianity stands in contrast to these, therefore, in the clearness with which it distinguishes the two terms, and assigns to each its proper place; and in its emphasis on the supernatural it stands in contrast rather to those modern efforts which would eliminate the supernatural entirely, and give us a religion of nature, or, at best, a religion of humanity. But man craves for something higher than the world of nature, for something higher also than his own weak self, and he tries to come into contact with this, the supernatural and superhuman, in order that his life may be redeemed from its vanity and may obtain a worthy content. And just to the extent that religion can satisfy this craving will it be able to maintain itself among the varied interests of human life.

To this end it is necessary that we set the supernatural into the clearest possible light, and above all separate from it all those elements which have no rightful place there, and might prove a stumbling block to the faith of the modern man. The common use of the term makes it practically identical with the miraculous. But whatever our own personal views may be, it

is hard to find a place for miracles in the view of the world held by an ever-increasing number of people in our day. In the past it was not so. The world of nature seemed to be full of the extraordinary. The simple mind of more primitive ages looked out upon the world in constant wonder. They had not gone very far in tracing out the operation of natural forces, and so they saw in all these wonderful events the signs of special designs and of special agency on the part of the Deity. And when they looked into the past, the element of miracle loomed still larger. The Israelite, for example, looked back to the early beginnings of his national history, and he saw miracle upon miracle. Psalmist and Prophet found in these their favorite themes. They never wearied of recounting those wonderful events when God with an outstretched arm led his people out of Egypt, through the sea and wilderness, and finally established them in the land of promise. Similarly Christians look back to the age of the Apostles, when the sick were healed, the blind received their sight, and even the dead brought to life again by a mere word.

But it is right here that modern thought makes its greatest assaults. Natural science has cleared up mystery after mystery. It has explained by means of natural causes, operating according to natural law, what former ages referred to special divine agency. The historian has followed suit. He has not recognized any history as too sacred for him to enter with his modern methods of investigation. Everywhere he seeks for natural connections. And he has made miracles to vanish like mists before the rising sun. This is true in both profane and sacred history. The story is familiar and need not be recounted. So successful has the modern method been, so much of the mysterious has been drawn into the realm of clear knowledge, that science, both natural and historical, has become exceedingly bold, and has laid down the general hypothesis: There is no special divine agency, there is no miracle; all is due to natural forces, working according to natural law. And while there are still plenty of things that baffle, science adheres