In considering the question of doctrines, it is obvious that our attention will be confined chiefly, if not entirely, to those points of teaching which are usually considered to he characteristic of Chris tianity as a revealed religion, as distinguished from those which belong to it in common with that na tural religion of which it is, in some respects, a republication. Coincidences in the latter may be expected from the nature of the case ; and how ever interesting and important it may be to com pare, in this respect, the amount and extent of knowledge enjoyed by the heathen world with that which has been given to the Christian, such a comparison would throw but little light on the question of the supposed influence exercised by heathen philosophy on the Christian Scriptures. We shall therefore limit our inquiry to doctrines which have a spec'al title to the name of Christian; and, in particular, to that which has been princi pally dwelt upon by writers adopting this point of view, and to which all other questions of the kind may be regarded as subordinate,—the doctrine concerning the Person of Christ.
In its revealed as well as in its natural character, Christianity may be considered as occupying a common ground with heathen religion and philo sophy, and as presenting features in which we may naturally expect to trace a partial resemblance to them. If the conception of Christianity as a natural religion implies a communion with other religions in the truths attainable by man's natural reason, the conception of it as a revealed religion no less implies a communion in the problems which that reason endeavours, unsuccessfully, to solve. The value of a revelation to man implies its fitness to satisfy some pressing need of man's nature ; and the previous consciousness of that need involves the previous effort, however unsuccessful, to meet it. The distinguishing feature of the revelation in this respect will consist, not in the introduction of wholly new ideas and feelings with. no relation to the past, but in its containing an answer to ques tions and a supply to wants which men have vainly sought to satisfy without it. To examine the exact nature of the answer thus given, in its philosophical character, as demonstrative or authoritative, abso lute or relative, appealing to faith or to reason, or to both, would be foreign to our present pur pose : it is sufficient for the present to call attention to the fact that there must needs be a communion between philosophy and revelation in the problems with which both undertake to deal ; and that, through that communion, the former may be ex pected to appear as in some sort the precursor of the latter.
The distinction between God as concealed and God as revealed has a necessary basis in the nature of human thought (Tholuck, Commentary on the Gospel of St. 7ohn, p. 58, Eng. tr.) It is impos
sible for a devout mind, whether Christian, Jewish, or heathen, to reflect on the great fact of the existence of God, and of his relation to the world, without seeing that it introduces us to a problem the most important and the most mysterious with which philosophy can attempt to grapple. The end and aim of philosophy is to bring together into a system of connected thought the sensible and the supersensible, to determine the nature of that rela tion which it is compelled to believe as existing between the many and the one, between effect and cause, between the relative and dependent existences of the phenomenal world and the absolute and in dependent existence which they imply, and from which they spring. Thus far the problem of philo sophy would seem to have a theoretical and meta physical, rather than a practical and religious, in terest. But along with this line of thought there runs another, which, commencing from a different starting-point, endeavours to converge towards the same end. In addition to the inquiry suggested by the phenomena of the world without us, there is another no less forced upon us by the facts of the consciousness within us. As a religious and moral being, man is conscious of a relation of a personal character, distinct from any suggested by the phenomena of the material world—a rela tion to a supreme Personal Being, the object of his religious worship, and the source and judge of his moral obligations and conduct. Could we follow these two lines of thought to the point at which they converge, could we grasp in a clear concep tion the identity of the one absolute existence to which philosophy aspires to lead us with the personal God, postulated by our religious feelings, philosophy and theology would become one, and would justify the ancient classification in which theology and first philosophy were synonymous terms. But this, under the present limits of human thought, we are unable to do : the meeting point of the two lines is at an infinite distance from us ; and therefore, to our apprehension, they are as if they were parallel. And hence it is that, in various ages and among various nations, the philo sophy that strives to ascend to the One and the Absolute has found itself driven to abstractions in which the personal attributes of the Deity have vanished out of sight ; while the theology that keeps faithful to its essential principle of a personal God has been compelled to acknowledge the existence of a gulf beyond its highest conceptions, which hides from its apprehension the mystery of absolute being.