not prepared to go. They would
shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all
things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing in the
story of his miracles, or the legendary account of his appearance in
this world; above all, his virginal conception and birth they often
repudiate in terms. They are coming to see--these open-minded men and
women of the Anglican body--that the pre-eminence of Jesus must rest,
not upon miracles, but on morals; that it is not his mystic offices,
but his moral grandeur, which makes him to be so great a figure in
history. In a word, that it is not his miracles which prove his
teaching, but his teaching must authenticate his miracles.

Now, all this is, of course, very hopeful, and makes directly for that
reconstruction of religion on an ethical basis which we conceive it our
duty to press upon the attention of our age. Venerable to us is the
memory and teaching of the last of the noble line of Jewish seers. Not
one of the masters of the Church ethical, whom we obediently follow,
but has exhausted, one might say, the possibilities of speech in their
reverence and admiration for the great spirit of Jesus. When Immanuel
Kant published the _Critique of the Practical Reason_, old men and
thinkers of the Fatherland were moved to tears at the thought that the
great deliverance had come at last, that a man had at length arisen who
had penetrated to the core the significance of the great prophet's
teaching. The only true commentator on Jesus and his religion is
Immanuel Kant. Heretofore, men have followed Paul, Athanasius and
Augustine; it is high time the ethics of Kant were substituted in
colleges and seminaries of the clergy, and our ministers of religion
taught to interpret the Gospel from the standpoint of the moral law
instead of the imaginary dogmatics of Paul, and the dialectics of
Athanasius and Augustine.

But the doctrine of incarnation unquestionably embodies a great element
of truth, which it were our very serious loss to overlook. It supplies
us with an admirable illustration of what was asserted in the
beginning, namely, that an error is but a truth misstated, either by
excess or defect. The Christian, or rather the ancient, orthodox
presentation of the dogma errs in both ways. By excess, because it
proclaims a man to be the personal Deity, that the flesh and blood of a
mortal being is adorable, as is the highest Being, with the supreme