alone in the ideas and language composing it, but likewise in the mood and motives of the speaker or writer. When an author has emotion rather than knowledge to express he will try to make his audience feel instead of know; he will aim to enforce upon them some share in his emotion rather than to give them information. When we hear a cry of "murder" we know the object of the person in distress is not so much to declare a fact as to stir feelings of concern. When we have gone to the rescue we shall most likely find that it is not at all a case of murdering, but of wife-beating or abuse of children. We are made to feel first and get definitive knowledge later. So far as he may the poet does the same. He would make us feel, and is not much concerned, if he succeed, about what happens after.

It is as necessary to know what prose is typically, and what it is not, as to be definitely advised as to what is properly poetry and what is not poetry at all. One of our earliest notions is that whatever is not expressed in verse is prose, and that any one composition cast in unmetric and unrhymed forms is as prosaic as any other lacking the same embellishments. This theory is pretty certain, in due time, to be much shaken. Consciously or unconsciously we become persuaded of an essential difference between the language of the almanac or the market place and such utterances as we find, for instance, in the one-hundred-and-fourth psalm: "Thou art clothed with honor and majesty: who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind." These sentences are manifestly nowhere in the least a record of facts. They are nothing, barring the solemn style, but plain prose in respect to form, but are unmistakably something vastly beyond plain prose in respect to meaning. A little reflection will discover to us that by no conceivable rhetorical industry could they be reduced to prose, because in this case the overpowering and all-possessing sentiment cannot be made to descend to items or instances of intellectual knowledge. The thing to be felt is made to do duty for what is to be known, and, since it cannot be merged in 50-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.

more definite knowledge, remains till the end of the experience wholly unexpanded into knowing. The same must be largely true of all examples in which a seer or poet attempts to impart an experience of the unconditioned. The sentences just quoted are interpretative, as all efforts to give expression to the sublime are interpretative, in the second or truth way. The opening utterance of the Hebrew Scriptures is a yet more potent and significant example: "In the beginning God brought into existence the heavens and the earth." This was originally the product of the most tremendous seership, and must have been indited by its pre-Mosaic author, and discerned for many generations by all truly spiritually minded readers, in a surpassing experience of mystic awe. Now that experience rounds out for us, or the most of us, with the revelations of the telescope and the spectroscope, and with our nebular and monistic theories, into somewhat of intellectual cognition. The language of interpreted truth and beauty is always lofty, but not always versified. Yet sometimes the mind that declares such meanings is not content unless there is added the minor rhythm that we call "meter," but that is native neither to the Hebrew nor the Anglo-Saxon race.

Interpretation is, then, the poet's secret-a secret he has himself not always consciously known. "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world," says Ruskin, "is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. . . . To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one." Browning recognizes the same truth, we think, in a better view, by his division of poets into "seers" and "makers-see." It is not difficult for such, or even their humblest disciples, to recast the baldest prose meanings into poetic form. They need but to spiritualize the fact aspects, to transfigure the material and outward with light from the inner principles that they postulate or evince. We can always find some influence or element of the good, the beautiful, or the true, or of their antitypes, in every common thing. For one may make poetry, as is evident, from antitypal feeling. Milton does that, as did Dante long before, and as Goethe has done since.

6. A. Sherman.

ART. VIII-THE KENOSIS.

THE principal Scripture touching this question, and the one chiefly discussed, is Phil. ii, 5-8. There is considerable diversity in the rendering of the passage, and still more in regard to the meaning of the terms employed. It is, therefore, difficult to secure a perfectly satisfactory and decisive interpretation of it. But a close attention to the literal sense of the terms and phrases of the text will greatly assist us in our efforts to understand the passage.

The title "Jesus Christ" occurs about seventy times in the New Testament. It generally, if not always, refers to him in his incarnate state; for it is by no means clear that in this passage it is properly applied to him in his preincarnate existence. If only a few texts out of a large number can be so construed as to favor this theory, then the case seems quite doubtful. For it is not probable that a matter of so much importance would be left to depend upon a slender and inadequate foundation. When the proof texts are few they ought to be lucid and explicit. If their teaching is not clear and positive, but simply constructive, then an opposite deduction may be equally logical and conclusive.

The word "form" must be taken in the sense of likeness. The phrase "the form of God" is placed in antithesis with "the form of a servant;" and hence this term "form" is employed in the same signification in both instances. To assume the form or likeness of a servant was to take the place or condition of a servant, for that is just what Christ did. So, likewise, to be in the form or likeness of God, was to be in the state or condition of supreme Deity, and that is precisely the character ascribed to him. His Godlikeness consisted in the possession of the divine nature, attributes, and personality, and the consequent majesty and glory of the Godhead. "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." He considered it no unlawful undertaking to grasp and retain equality with God; that is, to possess, exercise, and exhibit divine majesty and glory to their fullest extent in his incarnate personality. And it would have been no injustice if he had done

so, because "God was in Christ;" "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."

"He emptied himself." This is a literal translation, but its application is in controversy. It is generally referred to the deity of Christ; but that is evidently a misapprehension. Of what did he divest himself? Not of his divinity, nor indeed of anything essential to it, for such an emptying must be utterly and forever impossible. He certainly possessed a theistic personality, and exercised divine prerogatives in his incarnate state. Where then is the evidence of self-abasement in the divinity of Christ? The incarnation of Deity was a marvelous condescension, but not necessarily a humiliation or self-abasement. The embodiment of the Deity was simply a modification in his condition, and by no means of his essential personality. It is true that the deity in Christ was enswathed in his humanity, the glory of his Godhead was obscured by his personal environments, and the divine prerogatives were exercised by his subordination to the will of the Father. But that was not a kenosis of his deity, nor an elimination of his glory, nor a taking away of his authority. This was simply an official subordinacy, and perfectly consistent with his divine character.

And here the question recurs, What then was the kenosis of Christ? It was confined chiefly, if not entirely, to his human personality and to his Messianic offices. The phrase "he emptied himself" is a general statement of the case, and this is sustained by three distinct specifications:

1. "Taking the form of a servant," literally, "a bond servant"-the lowest social position. Not simply did he become a servant of God and of the Church, but a bond servant of the human race. He bound himself to make any sacrifice and to render every service for the ransom and restoration of sin-ruined souls. In himself, as divine, "he was rich," his resources were unlimited. Nature was subject to his will, and the universe was at his command. By his volition water was changed into wine, and the loaves and fishes multiplied into an ample repast for thousands. And yet he went down into the depths of poverty and suffered want. He subsisted by the charity of friends, and was buried in a borrowed tomb.

He "made himself of no reputation." He mingled with the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, and the guilty. He submitted to insult and injury, to reproach and slander, and maltreatment of the grossest kind. All this he endured in order that he might reach the lowest man, lift him up into the light of a new life, into conscious favor and fellowship with God, and ultimately into everlasting glory and bliss.

2. "Being made in the likeness of men "-"in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. viii, 3). This refers to the moral elements of his nature and the probationary conflicts involved. He was a real man, and just as much like other men as he could be, without sin. He endured the trials and afflictions incident to human experience-"a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." His sensibilities were acute; hence he could not fail to be deeply grieved by unkindness, injustice, cruelty, and moral wrong. His suffering life was also burdened with our great load of sadness and sin. "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."

Again, he underwent the severest moral conflicts. Some of his disciples were weak and vacillating; others betrayed his confidence. His enemies were numerous, powerful, cruel, and unprincipled. A generation of vipers swarmed and hissed in his pathway; and that old serpent, the devil, challenged his supremacy and endeavored to destroy his kingdom. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." The name "Jesus" indicates the human personality. Deity cannot be tempted. "Led up of the Spirit." Not by the Paraclete, for he was not yet given. But the divine Spirit or essential Deity, who dwelt in him bodily divinity incarnate-led him to the battlefield. "To be tempted of the devil." This was the chief of the fallen angels-the most desperately wicked being in all the universe. It was, indeed, a great self-abasement for Christ to meet Satan in such a combat. But it was intimately related to his great mission as our Saviour. "In that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." His temptation was severe, persistent, and repeated. Doubtless Christ felt the force of his temptations; otherwise they would have been no trial at all, and he would