very poor creatures.^ The objection, however, to this system now in hand is not so much that it deifies man, as that it makes Christ nothing more than an ideal man. It is therefore utterly at variance with the teachings of Scripture, the faith of the Church, and the intimate convictions of the people of God.
Schleiermacher^s Anthropology.
6. As the system under consideration is unscriptural in what it teaches concerning the nature of God, and the person of Christ, it is no less contrary to the Scriptures in what it teaches concerning man. Indeed, the theology and anthropology of the system are so related that they cannot be separately held. According to the Bible and the common faith both of the Church and of the world, man is a being created by the word of God's power, consisting of a material body and an immaterial soul. There are, therefore, in the constitution of his person, two distinct subjects or substances, each with its own properties ; so that although intimately united in the present state of being, the soul is capable of conscious exist- ence and activity, out of the body, or separated from it. The soul of man is therefore a distinct individual subsistence, and not the form, or modus existendi of a general life. According to Schleier- macher, " Man as such, or in himself, is the knowing (das Erken- nen) of the earth in its eternal substance (Seyn) and in its ever changing development. Or the Spirit (der Geist, God) in the \vay or form in which it comes to self-consciousness in our earth." Der Mensch an sich ist das Erkennen der Erde in Seinem ewigen Seyn und in seinem immer wechselnden Werden : oder der Geist, der nach Art und Weise unserer Erde zum Selbstbewusstseyn sich gestaltet.2 By the Mercersburg writers the idea is set forth in rather different terms but substantially to the same effect.^ Thus it is said, " The world in its lower view is not simply the outward theatre or stage on which man is set to act his part as a candidate for heaven. In the widest of its different forms of existence, it is pervaded throughout with the power of a single life, which comes ultimately to its full sense and force only in the human person." And * *' The world is an organic whole which completes itself in
1 At a session of the Academic Senate of the University of Berlin, Marheinecke called Neander a blockhead, and asked him, What right had he to an opinion on any philosophi- cal question ? Neander, on the other hand, said that Marheinecke's doctrine, Hegelianism, was to him ein Greuel, a disgusting horror. And no wonder, for a doctrine which makes men the highest existence form of God, is enough to shock even Satan.
3 Doiner, first edition, p. 488.
8 In the Mercersburg Review, 1850, p. 550.
* Page 7 of same volume.
448 PART in. Ch. m. — the person of christ.
man ; and humanity is regarded throughout as a single grand fact wliich is brought to pass, not at once, but in the wa.j of history, unfolding always more its true interior sense, and reaching on to its final consummation." Again, " It is a universal property of life to unfold itself from within, by a self-organizing power, toAvards a certain end, which end is its own realization, or in other words, the actual exhibition and actualization in outward form of all the elements, functions, powers, and capacities which potentially it in- cludes. Thus life may be said to be all at its commencement which it can become in the end."
The theory is that there is an infinite, absolute, and universal something, spirit, life, life-power, substance, God, Urwesen, or whatever it may be called, which develops itself by an inward force, in all the forms of actual existence. Of these forms man is the highest. This development is by a necessary process, as much so as the growth of a plant or of an animal. The stem of the tree, its branches, foliage, and fruit, are not formed by sudden, creative acts, accomplishing the effect, by way of miracle. All is regular, a law-work, an uninterrupted force acting according to its internal nature. So in the self-evolution of the spirit, or principle of life, there is no room for special intervention, or creative acts. All goes on in the way of history, and by regular organic development. Here there is a fault in Schleiermacher's doctrine. He admitted a creative, supernatural act at the creation. And as the qumitum of hfe, or spirit, communicated to man at first was insufficient to carry on his development to perfection, i. e., until it realized, or actualized all that is in that life of which he is the manifestation (i. e., in God), there M-as a necessity for a new creative act, by which in the person of Christ, a perfect man was produced. From Him, and after Him, the process goes on naturally, by regular de- velopment.^ The life-power, the spirit, is quantitively increased,
1 Schleiermacher {Zweites Smdsclireiben zuLucke; Works, edit. Berlin, 1836, first part, vol. ii. p. 653), says: " Where the supernatural occurs with me, it is always a first; it be- comes natural as a second. Thus the creation is supernatural, but afterwards it is a natural process (Naturzusammenhang). So Christ is supernatural as to his beginning, but He be- comes natural as a simple or pure human person. The same is true of the Holy Spirit and of the Christian Church." In like manner Dr. Nevin repeatedly says, " The supernatural has become natural." This inconsistency in Schleiermacher's system, this collision be- tween his philosophy and his theologj' is dwelt upon by all his German critics. Thus Schwarz {Gesckichfe der neuesten Theologie, p. 254), says, "Schleiermacher steht in seiner Ontologie und Kosmologie, in Dem, was er ijber das Verhaltniss Gottes zur Welt in semer Dialektik feststellt, ganz und gar auf dem Boden einer einheitlichen und zusammen- hangenden Weltanschauung. Ebenso in der Lchre von der Schopfung und Erhaltung der Welt, wie sie die Dogmatik ausfiihrt. Gott und die Welt sind untrennbare Correlata; das Verhaltniss Gottes zur Welt ist ein nothwendiges, stetiges, zusammenhangendes. Fiir ausserordentliche Actionen, fur ein vereinzeltes Handeln Gottes auf die Welt ausserhalb des