the election be postponed? It was truly said by the President that if the nation dare not meet the trial, with all its perilsif the election shall be postponed, then our institutions are gone already, and popular government is a failure. But will it be safe in a time like this to submit questions, so vital, to the popular will? Safe or unsafe, it must be done; or our government has failed in the critical hour of its great probation.

The day dawns upon the nation. The sun looks down upon a great people engaged in fulfilling the most sublime of all political duties each man in his sovereignty recording his answer to the great questions before him. The work is done, peacefully done, undisturbed by any outbreak of passion. The nation solemnly uttered its judgment and its deliberate determination, by an overwhelming majority, to stand by the government to the end! to stand with it or fall with it!to give to the administration whatever might be wanting, of men or of money, to prosecute the war until the government was again acknowledged and obeyed by those who had rebelled against it. And this decision was pronounced with such emphasis, that the will of the nation could not be mistaken. The fiery ordeal was past. As we believe, our greatest danger was past. Republican government, till then, had been an experiment. It is henceforth a fact. Slavery has been the ruling and destroying power of the nation; it is such no longer. The peace of the nation had been broken by its enemies; it was restored when they ceased to violate it. Here, too, and here, especially, in this bloodless achievement, we recognize the presence and power of God.

Over this event we heartily rejoice. To triumph over a fallen antagonist, to enjoy another's disappointment and pain, is simply barbarous. We confidently believe that this event will yet be found to be as truly for the good of those among us who are now disappointed in their hopes and aims, as it is for us. There is not a more beautiful incident connected with this bloodless victory, than that which happened on the occasion when President Lincoln was first congratulated on the result of the election. "While deeply grateful," said he, "for this mark of the nation's confidence in me, if I know my own

heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one. But I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of the majority." If that is not a Christian sentiment, we do not know what the spirit of Christianity is. It does not sound like the language of a tyrant, or a man bent on his personal aggrandizement.

And now, as a nation, we have this record to which we can point the governments of the old world, and especially England and France. It is, that in the midst of a war against a rebellion without a parallel for its magnitude and fierceness, and with no contemptible minority of our own people in stubborn, though unarmed, opposition to the policy of the administration, a republican nation could and did recommit the most fundamental of all questions of government to the trying ordeal of popular suffrage, with an unalterable determination, on each side, to abide by the verdict. The acquiescence of the minority was as it should have been; it was, too, as it would have been, if the friends of the administration had found themselves in the issue, in the position of its opponents. The two would have abided by the verdict, even though it might have resulted in the dismemberment of the Union, and the overthrow of the Republic. If we cannot always receive the will of the majority, fairly expressed, as the supreme law of the people, until it is legally and peacefully reversed or modified, then our great experiment of self-government is a failure. If we cannot stand on our own distinctive principles, and stand by them, then we shall fall with them and under them, and bury in one grave the hopes of the masses of the people under the whole Heaven.

Many other divine interpositions, equally marked and wonderful with those we have noticed, may be found on the pages of our recent history, but we leave them untouched.

Since the times in which God interposed so miraculously and so often among His own chosen people, and afterward in the first extension of His kingdom to the Gentile nations, there has been no people to whom He has revealed Himself so palpably as to us, and no period in which He has come forth

so gloriously as in the past four years of our history. Truly the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Our mouth He hath filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing and they may well say of us among the heathen and throughout the civilized world, the Lord hath done great things for them. For if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us, then they had swal lowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us. Praise Him for His mighty acts. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.

ARTICLE IV.-THE WORD MADE FLESH.

THE following Article is admitted to the pages of the New Englander at the earnest solicitation of the author and several of his friends. It has the interest which properly belongs to an ingenious Essay upon one of the most difficult doctrines of Christian Theology, written entirely from the standpoint of physiology. The author is a physician, and makes no claims to any especial familiarity with Ecclesiastical History or Scriptural Interpretation. The serious deficiencies of the Article, in all these particulars, will be sufficiently manifest to most readers. These deficiencies are so great that the Editor has hesitated whether they did not constitute a sufficient reason for declining to publish the Article. On the other hand, the interest which pertains to the doctrine, and the ingenuity of some of the lines of argument adopted, seem to warrant him in giving it a place. It will of course be understood that the author is solely responsible for the views expressed, and for the arguments by which they are defended. [ED. NEW ENGLANDER.]

The Alexandrian Church held that in Christ there were two persons in one nature, the Western two natures in one person; each believed the other wrong, and with equal reason. The former had its rise in the efforts of Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, to establish a theory of the Incarnation more scriptural than that of Origen, seeing in that a tendency to degrade the humanity of Christ. He therefore substituted the divine Spirit of the Second Person for the spirit of the man Jesus; no change having taken place as to his irrational soul, which we might call animal, in contradistinction to rational life; so Jesus having a human but irrational soul and body, his

spirit, which was superadded, was divine, and this divine spirit shone out through the human soul so as to enable the man Christ to act by his own divinity. Thus he had but one nature, manifesting itself on earth as human, and in heaven as divine. This theory, evidently erroneous, was nevertheless about as good as Origen's, which Apollinaris demolished by the following convincing argument, to which attention is called, as it is aimed at the present theory of the church. "Either the man who was taken into union with the divine Logos retained his own self-determining will, and in that case it is impossible that any true personal union could take place;" "or we must suppose that the human nature suffered the loss of its free will in the union with the divine Logos. But as this belongs to the essence of human nature, the latter in loosing the free will ceases to be any longer a human nature, and consequently nothing more is now to be said of a union of divinity with humanity."

Appollinaris was in error in his theory, because he denied progressive development in Christ's spiritual character, and did not give him human attributes only; and thus he laid himself open to the successful attacks of those who held to so perfect a humanity in Christ, that he was evidently under the same laws which govern men. The theory of Origen, however, presented this advantage over the one of Apollinaris, that whatever of humanity or divinity Christ exhibited could be referred either to a perfect man or a perfect God. The chief trouble about it, however, was that it was impossible in the nature of things; nor did it meet exegetical difficulties. While it explained certain texts, it failed in others, which were better met by Appollinaris. The antagonists were both right and both wrong; one right in placing God upon earth, and the other in asserting the true human manifestations then presented. A union of both theories would have made one consistent with philosophy and with scripture, which is not true of either when taken in its totality and by itself. Avoiding all speculation, we propose to demonstrate THAT THERE WAS IN CHRIST BUT ONE PERSONALITY AND ONE ESSENCE, WHICH LATTER