Peripateticism. Those of them who followed Scotus Erigena found Pantheism in the Scriptures. When the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolf dominated the schools, that philosophy deter- mined the form of all Sci'iptural doctrine. And since the rise of the new speculative philosophy all that the Scriptures teach is cast in its forms of thought. No man can be so blind as not to see that all that is peculiar in what the modern theology teaches of the person and work of Christ, is nothing more nor less than the application of modern speculative philosophy to the doctrines of the Bible. This, indeed, is generally admitted and avowed. This being the case, all these speculations are Avithout authority. They form no part of the truth as it is revealed as the object of faith. We are bound to understand the Scriptures in their plain historical sense ; and to admit no philosophy to explain or modify that sense, except the philosophy of the Bible itself; that is, those facts and ])rinciples concerning the nature of God, the nature of man, of the world, and of the relation between God and the world, which are either asserted or plainly assumed in the Scrip- tures. To depart fi'om this principle is to give up the Bible as a rule of faith ; and to substitute for it the teachings of philosophy. That form of Rationalism which consists in giving a philosophical explanation of the truths of revelation, or in resolving them into truths of the reason, is just as certain in the end to teach for doc- trines the speculations of men, as the most avowed skepticism.
After all, apart from the Bible, the best antidote to all these false theories of the pei'son and work of Christ, is such a book as Doctor SchafF's " Christ in Song." ^ The hymns contained in that volume are of all ages and from all churches. They set forth Christ as truly God, as truly man, as one person, as the expiation for our sins, as our intercessor, saviour, and king, as the supreme object of love, as the ultimate ground of confidence, — as the all- sufficient portion of the soul. We want no better theology and no better religion than are set forth in these hymns. They were in- dited by the Holy Spirit in the sense that the thoughts and feelings which they express, are due to his operations on the hearts of his people.
1 Christ in Song. Hymns of Immannel: selected from all Ages, viih Notes, by Philip Schaff, D. D. New York, Anson D. F. Randolph and Co , 1869.