only so long
as Gnostic ideas were prevalent. When Gnosticism declined in importance,
and its theories faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine that God could
not act directly upon the world sank gradually into oblivion as the
Church grew more and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philosophy. And
when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable that the Logos,
as the creator of the world, should be raised to an equality or identity
with God himself. In the view of the fourth evangelist, the Creator
was necessarily inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the Creator
could be none other than God. And so the very phrases which had most
emphatically asserted the subordination of the Son were afterward
interpreted as asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnostic formula,
lumen de lumine, was added the Athanasian scholium, Deum verum de Deo
vero; and the Trinitarian dogma of the union of persons in a single
Godhead became thus the only available logical device for preserving the
purity of monotheism.

February, 1870.

V. A WORD ABOUT MIRACLES. [24]

[24] These comments on Mr. Henry Rogers's review of M. Renan's
Les Apotres, contained in a letter to Mr. Lewes, were shortly afterwards
published by him in the Fortnightly Review, September 15, 1866.

It is the lot of every book which attempts to treat the origin and
progress of Christianity in a sober and scientific spirit, to meet
with unsparing attacks. Critics in plenty are always to be found, who,
possessed with the idea that the entire significance and value of the
Christian religion are demolished unless we regard it as a sort of
historical monstrosity, are only too eager to subject the offending
work to a scathing scrutiny, displaying withal a modicum of righteous
indignation at the unblushing heresy of the author, not unmixed with
a little scornful pity at his inability to believe very preposterous
stories upon very meagre evidence. "Conservative" polemics of this sort
have doubtless their function. They serve to purge scientific literature
of the awkward and careless statements too often made by writers not
sufficiently instructed or cautious, which in the absence of hostile
criticism might get accepted by the unthinking reader along with the
truths which they accompany. Most scientific and philosophical works
have their defects; and it is fortunate that there is such a thing