The only remaining alternative is either that Christ is in very truth what the various writers of NT represent Him as claiming to be, and being, or that His immediate followers, those who gained for Him the homage of succeeding ages, and through whom He became the Saviour of the world, misunderstood altogether the teaching of their Master about Himself and about God, and made for Him, and represented Him as making for Himself, claims which He would have rejected with horror as blasphemous. This hypothesis requires us to believe that the various and very different writers of NT, including a friend and colleague of the murderers of Christ, fell into the same error, and adoi)ted the same complicated metapliysical conception of God therein involved. Nay, more. It requires us to believe that this error survived the theological conflicts of later days, and is now the deep and cherished, but mis- taken, conviction of nearly all those who have done most to spread the name of Christ and the bless- ings of Christianity. This is the easiest alternative open to those who reject the harmonious teaching of the NT about Christ and the historic faith of the Church of Clirist.
vi. One more difficulty remains. Not a few intelli- gent and educated men wlio jmy homage to Christ as the greatest of men refuse to accept as correct the portrait of Him given in NT. If this portrait be incorrect, these men have detected an ancient and serious error, and have restored to the civilised world the true conception of God. We expect to see in them as a fruit of their important discovery some moral and spiritual superiority to those who are still held fast by the great delusion. We look in vain. They who deny the divinity of Christ have done very little to carry the gospel to the heathen, to rescue the perishing at home, or to help forward the spiritual life of men.
On the other liand, if the confident belief of the apostles and of the mass of Christians in all ages be correct, the facts of modern Christendom are explained. If Christ be the only-begotten Son of God, His birth was by far the greatest event in the history of our race, and Himself iniinitely greater than the greatest of men. We wonder not that His advent was a new era in human thought and in history, and that the Christian nations enjoy to-day a position of unique superiority to all others.
The precise relation of the Son to the Fathei
CHKONICLES, I. AND IL
CHRONICLES, I. AND II. 389
belongs to the domain of systematic doctrinal theology- The various yet harmonious teachiii" of NT implies that the Son is, in a real and glorious sense, equal to, yet personally ilistinct ftom, siiUmlinate to, and one with, the Father. But this mysterious subject lies beyond the scope of this article.
It has been sufficient for our purpose to show that the various ami very different writers of NT give one harmonious account of the diuiiity of Christ and of His relation to God, that tliis con- ception has been in all ages the deep conviction of the mass of His followers, and that this remarkable unanimity, ancient and modem, can be explained only by trie truth of the conviction bo widespread and so lirm.
This important result of our examination of documentary evidence receives wonderful con- firmation from the direct inward moral and spiritual eflfects of the doctrine expounded above. In all ages the vision of the Son of God, divine yet human, lias been a powerful stimulus to every kind of excellence, an encouragement in conflict, a joy in sorrow, and the Light of Life under the shadow of death. Tlie moral helpfulness of this vision is a sure witness that the vision itself is an appre- hension of objective reality. J. AuAK Bekt.
CHRONICLES, I. and II.— Position in Canon.— The name Chrunicta is given, in the English liible, to two books written in historical form, which immediately follow 1 and 2 Kings. In the LXX their position is the same. This arrangement is due to similarity of contents. Heb. MSS place them, as one book, in the third division of OT, KCthubhim (c';in^), the Writings (Hagiogra^ha), either at the beginning (so in the Massoretic list-s and in Spanish MSS) or at the end (so in the Talmud, Bain bnlhra 13b-15, usually in German MSS, and from the.se in printed HeVj. Bibles), rarely in some other position \t.g. third, after Dn and Ezr, Kennicott 30 ; it is not probable that .Jerome (Prul. Galeat.) haxl MSS authority for placing it third from the end, followed by Ezr and Est). Its position, whether prelixea or affixed to the other Hagio- grapha, is probably due to the late date at which canonical authority was ascribed to it. Exactly when this occurred we cannot say. The historian Eupolemus (c B.C. 150) seems to have known, not merely the Heb. text, but the LXX translation of Cli, so that it appears to have been reckoned in the Canon not much after B.C. 200, at latest (Euseb. Pr(rp. Evnng. ix. 33, 34, cf. 2 Ch 2--'i> ; Freudenthal, Alex. Polyhixtor, 108, 119, cited by Schurer, HJP II. iii. pp. 162, 204).
Unity.— It is evident that the two Books of Ch are really one. The narrative is continuous, and the division due only to convenience, like the modem division of a book into volumes. Like the division of S and K, it was made in Alexandria prior to our oldest MSS of LX.X, passed through the LXX into the Vulg. and the modern versions, including the Eng., appeared in Heb. in the printed text of the Bomberg Bible (1521), and is now customary in printed Heb. Bibles. The Books of Ezr and Neli form a continuation of the same work, by the same hand, and might with pro- priety be entitled 3 Chronicles, or included under the one name of Chronicles (see EZRA AND Neiikmiah).