We think this may be taken as a rough epitome of our author's teaching on this subject, so far as comprehensible, apart from his account of infant baptism and of the offices of the church.

Whether this is a correct representation of the virtue of baptism, whether God does really accomplish any such benefit through it, whether, in short, baptism is an ordinance or a sacrament,' is simply a question of Biblical interpretation-as Ebrard also assumes-which every one must decide for himself. And happily every one may decide it for himself. Neither Pope, nor council, nor doctor, is required as arbiter. To the law and the testimony! Let there be only a simple and unbiassed willingness to receive its verdict as supreme and unquestionable in the case!

We doubt not that here some of our readers, while strenuously rejecting baptismal regeneration, in every established sense of the phrase, and wishing, perhaps, that our author had avoided the mention of it, will be glad to have baptism, the most prominent ordinance in the New Testament, earnestly honored as something more than a mere sign. Others, and probably the large majority, are content to think of baptism as a ceremony denoting grace already experienced at the hand of God, and the public dedication of the candidate to God's service. What is done, in baptism, is rather by the candidate towards God and fellow men, than upon him by God. Anything beyond this is not unnaturally feared as threatening the pure gratuitousness of salvation, and so the honor of Christ, the author and giver of it. Yet those of the other side may be warranted in the feeling that this is not all, perhaps not the principal thing effected in baptism. As a matter of experience, they ask whether they have not, in the holy ordinance, felt conscious of a peculiar effect of grace received, a blessing which no act of obedience on their part, as such, no profession of faith made by them, ever gives. They have seen the countenance of the baptized shine with lustre from heaven, never before seen, or repeated afterward, on earth. It was manifestly the espousal of the soul to Christ. Thus are they constrained practically to suppose that they are, in this ordinance, subjected to an operation of Christ, made the recipients of grace by which they are furthered in the mystic life, quite otherwise than they could have been through any other, though equally trying, exhibition of their faith, or patience, or love. And as a question of interpretation, they, too, have already asked: What mean those words of wonders, "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins;" "Except ye be BORN of water and

1 Sacramentum est visibilis forma invisibilis gratiæ in eo collato. Hugo of St. Victor, vid. Hagenbach's Hist. of Doctrines, II. 77.

of the Spirit;""he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" being "BAPTIZED into Jesus Christ;" being "buried with him in the baptism;" and others of like import? Can due weight be given to these marvellous utterances of the Holy Spirit while that is placed uppermost in the "matter" of baptism, which is not so much as named in Scripture in connection with it, and that, on the other hand, carefully belittled or explained away which the Scripture plainly, emphatically, repeatedly, perpetually ascribes to it?

It may be difficult to conceive distinctly the inspired account of the value of baptism, except under these figures, and so to explain it to the theoretical understanding; but then it is quite too easy, many will feel, to declare that all such passages mean something a great deal less than they say, or very different from that-as different as seeming from being,

To some it will even appear that much of the importance apparently attached by many among us, at the present time, to such questions as, Whether the New Testament expressly states that the act of baptism on the believer's part must come prior to his eating of the Lord's supper, is owing to the inadequate, not to say shallow and inane notion entertained of baptism, the initiation to a Christian life. Why, indeed, if it be merely the act of the recipient, his profession of faith, or a sign only of what has previously and completely transpired for him, need so much account be made by God or man of the order in which it comes in? But is not the Lord's supper for his body, the church? And is there any other way recognized in the New Testament by which one may be incorporated into this body than by being "baptized into Jesus Christ?" This relation of the sacraments, universally recognized by the old theologians, is intimated in their phrase already quoted: nascimur, pascimur.

If we ask of such: Do you then hold that God regenerates the already believing soul in baptism? Is it not preposterous to speak of regenerating one whose faith proves that he is already alive? they might refute our metaphorical objection by the metaphorical answer, that there is life before birth. More deliberately some will say that they would prefer to avoid the use of the term "regeneration" here, and would be better pleased with Ebrard's discussion if he had called baptism the sacrament of the Saviour's mystic union with the believing soul. But then they have to consider that the Scripture itself calls baptism the bath, or bathing, of regeneration; and, although it may be possible, if other Scripture require it, to understand this emblematically, it actually falls in well with what we read elsewhere of the nature of baptism, if understood as the rite from

And so they

which the believer comes forth for the first a new man. may call on us to review the few places in the New Testament—as distinguished from our formal systems of theology-which speak of "regeneration," being "born again," being "begotten" of God; and see whether they do not lead us to believe that the new birth, the being "born again," is the full emergence of the believer into the company of the saints, that is, into the body of Christ, which may well be solemnized by a visible ceremony, and that ceremony a sacrament. Before that the penitent, the believer is "begotten" indeed, is alive, but with an inchoate, embryonic life, not yet duly manifested nor fitted to share in the work of God's children.

Here and there one, at least, already cherishes among us, more or less distinctly, sentiments like these; and it would not be strange if their number should increase through the more searching and profound, yet reverent and believing, investigation of the word of God which, amid so much that is frivolous and perverse, has of late been happily illustrated by many Biblical scholars.

Whether this is to prove so or not, and whether it be desirable that it should or not, we, surely, of all Christians, may readily accept whatever of efficacy towards the believer's salvation, any one may discover certified by the Bible as contained in our characteristic rite. It cannot disturb, but only strengthen us, if this should be demonstrated to be not only a token of past, but a vehicle of present grace. The more of saving help God has connected with it, and especially the more he has made that help dependent on its purity and completeness, the more necessary is it that we should maintain that purity and completeness as once delivered to the saints. Having held fast to it, defended it, bled for it, considered mainly as Christ's appointed symbol, through all the Christian ages, we certainly shall not lose attachment to it, when it is shown to be of even more substantial importance than we had perceived.

LEWISBURG, PA.

GEORGE R. BLISS.

IT

T was on the twenty-second of March, 1832, that Goethe came to his earthly end. He had been seized with violent fever a few days before, and was rapidly failing, though he himself had no idea that the end was so near. Sitting in his easy chair on that March morning, he had been gazing out once more upon the face of nature, which he had known and loved so long and so well, and had cheerfully talked of the coming of another Spring; but as the hour of noon drew on, his sight and speech gradually became dim and indistinct, till at half past twelve-his last words "more light" having just escaped his lips-the Great Seer closed his eyes forever on all earthly scenes. Strange opposition, in this our double sphere of existence, that while the sun was high in the heavens, and all nature was rejoicing in his light, there should sink to his final setting that great luminary of the world of mind. And so departed the greatest poet of his country and his age, who, by the might of his genius, fully developed under the most fortunate circumstances by the most assiduous and various culture, had held during his long career a sovereign rule over the spirits of men.

Of all the great works of this remarkable man, the poem of Faust is the most characteristic. It is a monument of his genius in all the periods of its development, the consummate result of the poetic ac

tivity of his whole life. Only five days before his death he wrote in a letter to William Von Humboldt,-and they are his last written words," It is now more than sixty years since the entire conception of Faust first stood before my mind." But, as he says in the same letter, the poem was not composed continuously, but at intervals, the manifold elements of the plan being wrought out singly, according to the interest they had for him at the time. Thus the composition of the first part covers a period of more than thirty years; it was published as "A Fragment" in 1790, when the poet was about forty, and in its complete form in 1808. The third act of the second part appeared as late as 1827, and the remaining four acts were written after the age of seventy-five, and the whole published after the poet's death. On the day when he had written the last passage, he said to Eckermann, "My remaining days I may now consider a free gift; and, indeed, it is all one to me, what I now do, or whether I do anything more." What Horace said of his patron Mæcenas, may be said, therefore, in a still higher sense of Goethe's Faust-it was the theme of his earliest and of his latest song. Even in his boyhood his imagination was seized by the weird story of Faust, as he read it in the then popular book of Meynenden, and saw it in the puppet shows at that time so common in Frankfort. In his student life at Strasburg, when he was himself full of aspirations for knowledge, yet ever unsatisfied with his attainments, the character and career of Faust so fell in with his own experience, that he then conceived the idea of its poetic treatment. Three years later the conception had taken form within him, and he began to give it expression; and from that time to the last of his life, he was busied, though sometimes at long intervals, in filling up the grand canvas which the conception required; the poem grew up into being even with his own spiritual growth; the manifold scenes of the great Dramatic Mystery successively unfolded themselves, and rose to the view, along with his own ever widening observation and experience; and the last scene of all, that scene, which opens to us glimpses into the invisible world, reached its consummation only a year before the poet's own departure from the earth.

This poem, which thus represents Goethe's entire life, stands also in closest relation to the life of his age, especially of the German people. It entered into that life even as a vital force, giving impulse and character to its higher manifestations in literature and art, and to the thoughts and convictions of the popular mind. Appearing in a transition period of unrest and excitement, it seemed to be a sovereign word which all were waiting to hear; it acted like a sudden