one should find in oxygen, Galvanism, magnetism, or whatever new agent had come to view, the very corner-stone of his respective theory. At a time when the human mind worked entirely upon itself, and philosophers were universally agreed in giving external or objective existence to whatever their minds conceived as necessary-in other words, which will probably be more familiar to you-at a time when philosophy consisted in an unbounded system of realism, which to every idea of the mind gave an independent existence in the universe; nothing could be more acceptable than a tangible point, a standing-place, upon which those mighty fabrics of the imagination, those theosophical systems, which were vended about as mysteries of the highest interest and value to man, might repose. Thus it happened in regard to the Gospel. Christianity had been published only a very few years, when all the mystic and speculative sects in Syria commenced a series of efforts to incorporate the Gospel with their own tenets, and to graft their peculiar notions on the young and vigorous stock, whose branches they could not but perceive were about to spread over the face of the earth. Although the writers in the New Testament do not mention the name of any philosophical sect, except the Pharisees and Sadducees, it is clear to those acquainted with the doctrines of eastern philosophy that the notions from which Paul especially apprehended a danger to the simplicity of the Gospel, belonged to those mystic systems which, in some instances, combined with Judaism, in others directly opposing it, were widely diffused, soon after, under the name of Gnosis.

But no warnings were sufficient to prevent a rapid growth of the evil which the great apostle feared and opposed. Men whose resources for wealth and distinction lay in the admiration of the multitude, saw a most favourable opportunity of rising in the world, by availing themselves of the ardour with which the primitive converts had embraced the Gospel. Vain babblers, pretending to a deep and extensive knowledge of the invisible world, flocked to the infant Christian communities; and, such was their power over the ignorant and simple minds which made up the great majority of those societies, that the miraculously gifted founders of them found it difficult to maintain their own

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authority against them. Paul's distressing difficulties at Corinth are too vividly and feelingly described in his two Epistles to the church of that great city, to require assistance from another pen. But no tolerably well-instructed reader of the New Testament can doubt that Paul's rivals belonged to the class of Judeo-philosophical speculatists. Paul's express determination to lay down all claim to that kind of knowledge which our version denominates wisdom (copía, sophia), and to confine his teaching to the doctrine of "Jesus Christ, and him crucified," clearly points out by contrast, what kind of preaching had seduced the minds of his converts. It is true that the apostle mentions the names of James, Cephas, and Apollos, men who, as we certainly know, were guiltless of the spirit of party which made use of their names to oppose the authority of Paul. That the persons thus named were not really leaders of those divisions is proved by the appearance of Paul's own name as the watchword of a party. Even the name of Christ was, we find, used for a similar purpose. The fact seems to have been, that, when various intruders undertook to reduce the Gospel to a philosophical system, each of them pretended to build his own speculations on the peculiar views-sometimes real, sometimes supposed—of the persons whose names they adopted as a party distinction.

Besides the many remarkable passages of the two Epistles to the Corinthians, in which Paul's renunciation of all scientific teaching pointedly marks, in his rivals, a dangerous affectation of deep philosophy, there is a circumstance in the notices preserved concerning Apollos which is strongly confirmatory of my view, that the attempts of various teachers to theorize on Christianity was the chief source of Paul's anxiety. It is on record* that Apollos was a native of Alexandria, the great seat of speculative philosophy at that period. This fact alone would be a fair ground for conjecturing that he belonged to the numerous class of Alexandrian Jews who, like Philo, united the study of the Old Testament with the idealistic and mystic system which was taught in the schools of that great city. But this conjecture will grow almost into certainty when the word which, in the

* Acts xviii, 24.

English version, is translated eloquent, shall be expressed by learned, which gives the true sense of Xóyios (logios) in that passage*.

In the public disputations with the Jews, Apollos must have found it necessary to employ all the subtleties of the Alexandrian school in defence of Christianity. He may at a subsequent period have been checked by Paul in the use of weapons which, though of service in dialectic contests, would be eventually injurious to the simplicity of the Christian system. But vain and light-minded Christians would naturally be allured by the public triumph of the Alexandrian, to imitate and (as secondrate minds will always do) to exaggerate Apollos's manner and method. As we have the most powerful reasons to believe that Apollos himself was not actually at the head of an anti-Paulistic party, but remained in close friendship with the apostle, we may safely conclude that his name was adopted for the purpose of expressing the nature of the system which his imitators professed to follow. In a similar manner we must conceive that the names of James (who, as the local president of the congregation of Jerusalem, could not reside at Corinth) and of Cephas (who, as the apostle of the circumcision, is not likely to have ever been in Greece) were taken by other portions of the Corinthian church, under the guidance of teachers who respectively pretended to follow the views which they described as peculiar to each of those distinguished apostles.

When once the notion that an essential part of Christianity consists in a system of speculative doctrines began to take root, it must have made a very rapid progress. A Christian teacher, full of the true spirit and power which Christ promised for the

* Neander, from whose instructive and interesting history of the apostolic age-Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel— I borrow this remark, observes that the peculiar service rendered by Apollos to the Christians was that of confuting the Jews in public disputationsἐυτόνως γὰρ τοις Ιουδαίοις διακατηλέγχετο—an ability which depends much rather on dialectics and metaphysics than on eloquence. Neander confirms the above given signification of λós by two passages, one of Josephus, de Bello, Jud. vi, c. v, § 3, and another of Philo, de Vita Mosis, i, § 5. Josephus uses the word λόγιοι in opposition to ἰδιώται. Three words of Philo are enough to shew that he agrees in the same signification: Alyuπtíwv i: Xóysos.

purpose of announcing the simple and sublime truth of salvation through him, might easily employ a long life in announcing these "good tidings" to a world morally sinking under the double pressure of vice and superstition. But the case of a nominal Christian preacher is quite different. In both ancient and modern times the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, among the Christian teachers, have deeply felt the necessity of abstract theories to raise and maintain their personal importance. The heathen priesthoods were indispensable to heathen nations, on the ground that priests alone possessed the mysterious knowledge of the numerous and intricate performances by which the gods were rendered propitious. But Christ had appointed no priesthood. Nevertheless the natural tendency of the human mind raised a confused notion that the presidents and directors of Christian congregations must be equivalent to the priests of other religions. But here again the absence of complicated ceremonies left this class of men without an office, so peculiar to them as to make them indispensable to the unofficial part of the community. How, then, could the ambitious and worldlyminded rest satisfied in such a position? We know that, they

did not. The supposed necessity of both mysterious doctrines and mysterious ceremonies, was soon set afloat by Christian teachers of that class of which the apostles Paul, James, and John, complain in their writings. The materials for such speculations were already present in great abundance. The Old Testament, on the one hand, had become for a very great part of the Jewish nation, and especially for the Alexandrian Jews, a collection of allegories: numerous theories about a long series of incorporeal emanations from God were, on the other hand, the favourite subject of the then prevalent philosophy. In these circumstances it was that speculations about the nature of Christ had their origin. I shall here introduce to your notice only one instance of these speculative corruptions, as a specimen of a numerous class of errors which infested Christianity during the first three centuries.

One of the earliest heresies (I shall now use that word in the ecclesiastical acceptation) was that of the Ebionites-Jewish converts to Christianity; forming a sect whose name offers an

insurmountable difficulty to the ecclesiastical historian, since it is impossible to ascertain whether that appellation is derived from a Hebrew word which signifies a pauper, or from the founder of the sect. The former derivation is, however, more probable than the other. The information which we have about the doctrines of the Ebionites comes through Epiphanius, a bishop of the fifth century, a man of the most bigotted, narrow, and passionate mind. But in comparing what he says of these heretics with what is known of the ancient Jewish Gnostics, considerable light is derived, and the substance of their views may be reduced to this.

The aim of all Gnostic systems was simply to account for the existence of evil, without implicating the moral character of God. By a very absurd, yet too natural, blunder, all the Gnostics conceived that this might be accomplished by means of a system of emanations from God, which should place all imperfections at a very great distance from him. Hence the chain of generations of worlds, which they conceived as having for its lowest link man, and this earth, was almost interminable. The immediate emanations from God were, of course, the highest and most perfect. As to the origin of the evil which had mixed with the more remote emanations, the Gnostics were divided. Some conceived an eternal and self-existent power of evil and darkness, which, having seduced some of the beings descended from God, succeeded in corrapting his creation. Others explained the imperfection and consequent evil of the lower parts of the universe as a natural degeneracy, originating in their distance from the supreme and all-perfect Being.

Among the Jewish Gnostics, who generally incorporated their theosophical systems with their national scriptures, there were many, as the Ebionites, who asserted the existence of, what may be called, a MODEL MAN, a most perfect being, very nearly or immediately descended from God, who was the TYPE of perfect mankind. This SPIRITUAL MAN was originally united with Adam, but was forced to separate himself from our first parent on account of his sin. Desirous, however, of recovering our fallen race, the model man appeared united to the most holy men mentioned in the Old Testament. Finally, he fully pos