years, and having assented to the engagement proposed to them, they were solemnly set apart by prayer. They are now prepared to go to whatever city or country, to whatever hospital or normal institution or private family they may be called, the taste and capacity of the individual of course being consulted; for it must be carefully explained that there is nothing like a monastic vow of "obedience to the Church" in this affair, and that the engagement is formed subject to being set aside by the claims of nearer domestic duties, if such should arise. Some deaconesses have been called away to assist their own families, some have been lost to the Institution by entering on the conjugal relation. In truth, unfortunately for their vocation, they are rather too popular as making excellent wives. But while one regards this circumstance with regret as respects the scheme, it is delightful to contemplate the sister of charity transformed into the rearer of her own children in the fear of the Lord.

In conversing with Mr Fliedner, before taking leave, on the utility of forming such an institution in Scotland, he suggested as a fundamental and absolute necessity, that it be ascertained that all who are admitted to the school are persons renewed in the spirit of their minds, and willing, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to devote themselves in humility and love to the service of their fellow creatures for Christ's sake. To this suggestion of course we gave a joyful assent. It is here that the secret of his success lies; and encouraging it is to see, that in the centre of a world of mysticism, mythism, socialism, and forgetfulness, wherever the true doctrines of the gospel are really planted, they take root and bring forth fruit.

One is glad to see the decidedly Protestant character of this society. The two Prussian provinces of the Rhineland and Westphalia are united for its support, and it is under the superintendence of the Protestant Provincial Synod. Above one hundred deaconesses are now at work in different parts of Germany. Sixty are occupied in seventeen hospitals and orphan houses

at Berlin, Dresden, Frankfort, Worms, Cologne, Elberfeld, &c. Several are engaged for large congregations which have no hospital, and about twenty are sent out at the request of private families to nurse their sick members, &c. Five are now at work in the German hospital at Dalston, near London: one of them is matron of the establishment. It can readily be apprehended how uniformity of language, ideas, methods of preparing food, &c., will render these acceptable nurses to their sick countrymen.

In this country we lack a little of the German simplicity, and are so nice about distinctions of rank, and what belongs to our supposed station in society, that it may excite strong displeasure if we say that there are many single women in Scotland, of the excellent of the earth, who are not so useful in the Church as they might be; that the reason of this is their want of proper guidance in selecting their work, and of support in its prosecution, and that the deaconess' status in society, and the style of character and bearing expected from her, is exactly what is wanted to confer the necessary energy and steadiness.

At Kaiserswerth there are scholars not only of the middle classes, but several of the higher ranks of life. The King of Prussia, having taken a lively view of the utility of the institution, is now forming a large model hospital at Berlin-a Baroness, trained under Mr Fliedner, is its destined matron; and twelve well-trained deaconesses are without delay to be called into active employment there.

The principle on which the deaconess is required to act is that of willingness to be a servant of Christ alone; to devote herself to the service, without the worldly stimulus of pecuniary emolument, and without over solicitude about worldly comforts; to do the work of charity and self-denial, out of gratitude to her Saviour.

Her wants are all supplied by the institution, respectably, but without superfluity; while the salary paid annually for her services by the family, parish, or hospital, by which she is employed, is paid to Kaiserswerth. From

they generate each other, life coming from doctrine, and form from both.

Wholesome doctrine takes the precedence of all else. Some, indeed, put life without doctrine before doctrine without life; but, first, true life cannot possibly exist without wholesome doctrine, whereas, which we often see, wholesome doctrine, orthodoxy may exist without life.

Further, supposing that there may be a certain degree of spiritual life, without a frank and thorough yielding to the truth, there is much room to fear, lest deprived of this salutary check, that life may generate and even throw those who possess it into scandalous irregularities; a thing that has often been seen; while, on the contrary, granting that there is wholesome doctrine without life, the latter cannot fail to result ere long from the former, wherever there is a sincerely honest heart.

As for form, it evidently holds an inferior place, both in order and importance, to the two first members of this ecclesiastical trinity. It is true, that a powerful party in Christendom maintain the contrary—namely, the papal party. The papal system is this: Form, the Romish form, before all, after which this form creates doctrine and life. Form ranks first in the Romish system, both in chronological and in logical order. The Gospel system, on the contrary, states the matter thus: Doctrine and life before all things, historically and logically, after which these create their form. I have no need, in this place, to stop to demonstrate that of these two systems, one is true, the other false.

Now that we are opening the course of instructions at this school of theology, I desire, gentlemen, to give the highest honour to doctrine, as the first link in the divine chain by which God would connect earth with heaven. A voice, which it is not for me to praise, and which is dear to me,* called your attention not long ago to life, in adverting to the pre-occupation of men's minds with form. It is not my intention to go back to an order of deductions which

has perhaps too exclusively absorbed our thoughts; but on asking myself what ought to be the ruling thought of Christ's servant, it is in the field of doctrine that I discover it. People are so much taken up with other matters at the present day, that there is almost a risk of losing sight of these primitive elements. No doubt it is easier to follow from country to country the discussions of the day on sects and forms, and perhaps these purely ecclesiastical pre-occupations of the present time, have partly their source in a certain impatience of mental fatigue. Far would we be from encouraging this tendency. Does not the Spirit of God, according to the Scripture, search the deep things of God, and does he not call upon us to search them along with him? First of all, then, gentlemen, follow me into the field of doctrine, after which we shall make an excursion into that of forms.

I. DOCTRINE.

Dear brethren, the ruling thought of our whole lives, which I have it now at heart to recall to your remembrance, is that which Paul points out to his disciple Timothy sya to Ts Evosßsías

vorgio-Oids ipuregale iv ogx-the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. I do not think that, in the time in which we live, there can be found any thought that can be recommended in preference to this to those who are studying sacred divinity. The activity of the minister of Jesus Christ must before all things be attached anew to his person and to his kingdom. You are not called chiefly to be the servants of an idea, but of a person. The master whom ye ought to serve is he whom John and Peter served. Cherish a wholesome dread of the vague indefiniteness of those theories which would lead you away from Jesus Christ; for it is from Christ alone, and from the man who believes in him, that there shall flow rivers of living water. Whatever in theology, and in ecclesiastical doctrines, does not attach itself immediately to Jesus Christ, is but of secondary importance.

If there be a doctrine that may be called the doctrine of this school, a doctrine that was the cause of its formation and the basis on which it was established, it is (that of) the real divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, manifested in his real humanity. When people looked about for grounds on which they could shew their malice to the founders of this institution, nothing could be laid hold of but this expression, employed in our address to the Churches: Arianism, which denies at once the true humanity and the true divinity of the Saviour, Arianism subverts the Gospel from its foundation. This assertion which was our crime in Geneva, we confirm and proclaim anew at the close of a period of fifteen years, joyfully, and, if possible, with greater urgency than we did then.

No, gentlemen, it is not that you may become servants of a creature that we have invited you hither, as the students of other schools are, but to be the servants of God become man. That Jesus, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who, being wearied, sat down by the well, who walked in Solomon's porch, who was struck by an officer of the high priest, who went to Calvary bearing his cross; that Jesus who was a real man, a man of grief, is God-God over all, blessed for evermore.

This great mystery of godliness must be incessantly recalled to the Church, and it is my conviction that never was this more necessary than at present. The grand cause of God manifest in the flesh is not gained. It is not gained at Geneva, We willingly admit several other of your doctrines," it is sometimes said there," but the doctrine of the real divinity of Christ, of his equality of essence with the Father-Never."

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from this battle before it is gained? Is it not for the Church a struggle of life and death, to know if we have for our Saviour an Almighty Being or a mere creature-a living Christ, or a dead Christ-a God or an idol? Were we to cease laying and defending the essential foundations of the faith, and should we give ourselves wholly to raising the forms of the Church, would not this be to erect a building on lava without caring about the volcano?

It is true, gentlemen, that we have apparently gained something, but this gain is rather a loss. Twenty or thirty years ago, our opponents frankly placed themselves with us in the domain of Jews and Socinians, and loudly maintained that Christ was not God. These tactics they have now changed; the greater number of them durst no longer utter their sentiments with such hardihood, and content themselves with proclaiming this great question a matter of indifference. Assuredly I would rather have men who view this as an important question, even although they resolve it in a manner that is contrary to the truth, for at bottom this indifference belongs to the same category with that which cares not about knowing whether there be a God or no.

What is it people say in defence of this indifference? That the doctrine of the real divinity of Jesus Christ is beyond the sphere of religion; that it does not essentially affect any of the great forms of the religious sentiment, neither Christianity, nor Protestantism, nor Theism. Well, then, gentlemen, we accept these terms, and we maintain that without this great mystery, there is no possibility either of Christianity or of Protestantism, or even of Theism. The result is, that unless this mystery be in your heart, and on your lips, you cannot present yourselves in the world as Christian ministers, or as Protestant ministers, or even in the name of the simple doctrine that there is a God. Let us follow out, one after another, the three fields (of enquiry) we have indicated.

CHRISTIANITY.

The opponents of this doctrine put themselves first of all on the general

field of Christianity. "If one considers Christianity in its largest sense," say they, "must he not perceive and own that the divinity of Christ is not necessary to it? Christianity, in fact, is the doctrine of the Saviour; now, in order that this Saviour may pardon sin, it is of little consequence his more or less intimate relation to God; pardon is not the less efficacious; I understand these words: Thy sins are forgiven;' that is enough for me. A bit of gold is not the less a bit of gold, whatever be the hand that gives it me."

I deny the thesis that is here maintained. If you require a Saviour for your own soul, that Saviour must be God. And if you be called to make him known to the souls of your brethren, you must make him known to them as God. What! you would proclaim to the world a Saviour who is not God! But that would be to deprive God of the glory of saving us, and to give that glory to another. Such a Gospel, instead of being a revelation of the love of God, which the Gospel professes to be, would most completely eclipse it. Far from being led to God by this singular Christianity, we should, on the contrary, be drawn away from him and attached to some strange being, neither God nor

man.

And, besides, how can we suppose that the merits of a creature can save the Church? In order to our being saved altogether, we must have a Saviour who is God altogether. If the Saviour be no more than half God, half man, as the Arians will have it, then he can give us no more than a half salvation, a salvation which does not save. The Unitarians are well aware of this; accordingly, when they speak of salvation, they dare not attribute it entirely to the Saviour, and they assign one half of it to man. Their salvation is half grace, half works. In order that you may proclaim a salvation which is altogether grace, you must likewise proclaim a Saviour who is altogether God-God in man.

Let people, then, abandon at last this absurdity, which has so long been in vogue, of a Saviour who is not God.

Out of God there is no salvation for man. If there be no incarnation of the divinity, there is no redemption of humanity. The love of God has not consisted in his giving commands to one of his creatures to redeem the world; that love has been manifested by quite other proofs. It has displayed itself in God himself having redeemed his Church with his own blood. (Acts xx. 28).

The doctrine of Christ's absolute divinity is not then a dogma superadded to the Gospel, and which one may take up or lay down according to every man's own fancy; it lies at the very foundation of the building; take it up we must, or else reject Christianity altogether. You cannot be Christian ministers without being the ministers of a Saviour who is God.

PROTESTANTISM.

"Let us have done with this question," our adversaries rejoin, we are Protestants, and on the field of Protestantism we can at least maintain the doctrine we have laid down. What is the offence of Protestantism, if it be not its declaring war against all superstition? The reformers rejected the scholastic doctrines of the middle age, and at the head of these doctrines we must place that of the Trinity."

God forbid gentlemen; quite the reverse. Without the absolute divinity of Jesus Christ, there is no true Protestantism. One of the essential principles of the Protestant Church is the nothingness of every finite being in presence of the glory and the essence of God. That Church admits no human mediation, no worship of man, no worship of angels, or of any being but God. Throughout the whole of Scripture we find an energetic protest, a holy anger (expressed) against all man's proneness to deify the creature; and the Protestant Church has charged itself with loudly proclaiming to the world anew that voice of Jehovah's thunder, which is at the sametime a voice of all gentleness: "I am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour."

Thus, then, the doctrine of Arianism which would establish a creature