Lord purely as a divine being, whom he could not sufficiently exalt. Nevertheless, he does not here say what he has been popularly supposed to say. Nothing of physical nature. His thought rises above that into a spiritual realm. The creation of which he speaks is not that of brute matter and conflicting elements and animal life, but a creation beyond all reach of the senses and all conception of the mind of man. His intention is to utter a lyric melody in homage to Jesus Christ, as the author and finisher of a new faith upon earth, as the creator of a moral dispensation, a fresh world of truth and activity and hope. His ascended Master, he means to say, had thrown a light ineffable upon the people that walked in darkness, as God had shot forth in the beginning his material rays into the bosom of the formless and void. He had set up a spiritual power over the nations which he was appointed to rule. He had set in motion a spiritual order of progress, that was to be like the system of the all-bountiful Providence; to travel on with the sun, and overmatch every hostile force, and outlive the dominions and principalities of this world. He was a Maker and a Lord in this supernal sphere; presiding over the new heavens and earth, which he was sent to call into being, through faith and virtue, for the souls and the societies of the human race. This is the construction that we feel compelled to put upon his words. It is not a forced construction, invented to remove out of the way an unwelcome assertion; but, on the contrary, the most natural one that the language will bear. We shall be led to discern this more clearly if we consider how common it is in the Scriptures to present a moral renovation or a new religious era under the image of a new-born creation. Nor is it only in the Scriptures that this is common, but in all writings that deal with holy themes, and are in any high degree of an imaginative character. "Behold," cries the prophet Isaiah, foretelling in the name of the Lord the coming prosperity and purity of his people, "I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a gladness and her people a joy." And again: "I have put my words in thy mouth, that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundation of the earth, and say unto

Zion, Thou art my people." Paul himself was speaking of Christian believers in general, when he wrote, in another place: "For we are his workmanship, having been created through Christ Jesus to good works." Again: "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation." Another passage is especially worth repeating, because it has the advantage of bearing a close resemblance to the one under survey, and in fact conducts us directly to the true interpretation of it. The Apostle is zealously pressing the revelation of the Gospel as illustrating the goodness of Him, "who," he says, "created all things by Jesus Christ; to the intent that now to the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." This "creation of all things" can evidently denote no other things than those which were accomplished through the mission of the Redeemer, the institution of his Church, and the spread of his religion. And how can we suppose anything else to be referred to here?

We hope, however, to carry with us the interest of our readers, if we resolve into its several parts the passage on which we have undertaken to comment, and add a few syllables upon each. It sets out by calling the founder of our faith "the image of God, and the first-born of every creature." That is, he represented that Invisible One, and made known his will to us. In the first Adam this image was imperfect and earthly; in the second, it was divinely complete. It must be obvious to every one, that the image of anything must be essentially different from the thing itself. In a sheet of water we may see reflected the eye of the world; but the reflection is not the sun. "First-born," like "only begotten," stands in the Hellenistic dialect of the New Testament for "most excellent," or "best beloved"; and chiefly was Christ eminent in that new creation which Paul goes on to describe. by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers," &c. The very turn of expression shows that spiritual, and not physical, objects are

"For

here set in array. And they are exhibited with a profusion of shining terms, piled up apparently rather for splendor than

with any design to discriminate nicely between them. "Things in heaven and earth" cannot be the heaven and earth themselves; not the fluid sky that rolls over our heads in shadows and light, and not the steadfast ground that nourishes the living and covers the dead; not the stars in their eternal heights, not the flowers in their painted pulpits; but whatever has an infinite elevation and an imperishable worth, beyond these circles of sight and sound, which will soon fade from us with all their sweep, and die for us in all their echoes. And what should this be but a great moral purpose and work, moral energy and rule, the light of redemption, the triumph of a holy joy, truth that is immortal, and hope that is immortal for perishing man? "Heaven and earth" means everywhere, aloft and below, a universality of mighty and gracious influences to be wrought out by the preached "word of the kingdom." "All things" can be only those special things which belong to that "word." But what are we to understand precisely by "thrones, dominions, principalities, powers"? Nothing precisely. The Scripture is misapprehended and demeaned by such verbal inquisitiveness, such minute anatomy of parts that are alive only when they move together. One tells us that those terms designate different orders of teachers and kinds of authority in the primitive Church; another will have it that they refer to those forms of civil power which were to be moulded anew in Christian states. We shall do well to be neither solicitous to decide between these two opinions, nor ready to assent to either of them. The words mean whatever on the earth is lofty or strong. At least we may be content with that large interpretation. Paul then goes on to say: "and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." This conveys little more, if any more, than what had just been set forth. We have substantially the same truth in a different speech. Christ is before all in dignity and glory; in the head place that he holds in this new empire of the heavenly grace; and everything relating to the good estate of this divine dispensation finds its uniting point in him, its reconciling harmony in him, its binding force in him. He teaches, he governs, he sustains all.

Nothing remains now but the last clause, which sums up in a plainer way what had been rhetorically painted before, and shows distinctly to what all that bold embellishment had tended. “And he is the head of the body, the Church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence." The Church, and the Church alone, is the subject of the Apostle's thought; the Church above and below, secret and manifest, inward in its spirit and outward in its ordinances, with the majesty of its laws and the permanency of its promises, with the beauty of its order, the sanctity of its precepts, the divinity of its sway; the Church, and not the scenery of land, ocean, and air, the hard rock and dissolving cloud, the rooted plants and the roving creatures. They must remain constantly under the same care that ordained them. That care can be but one, the Father's, exercised continually, and ever creative. The same Power that made all things in the beginning, goes on with his work. Now, does any one think that Christ created the men and women to whom he ministered, for whom he prayed and wept, and among whom he asked to be remembered? And yet did he not, if he literally created anything? for all are of one. The lordship that Christ exerts, and the effects which his faith produces, have nothing to do with any objects of space, whether lower or higher than the orbit of the moon. Finally, he "is the first-born from the dead"; "first-born" in a more literal sense than the word was used in just before. He was "the first fruits of them that sleep." This was his crowning distinction, that he rose the first from the grave, to show an example and a pledge of the undying life; and thus he was in all things chief.

Such is briefly our exposition of this famous passage. It is in no respect or degree a far-fetched one. Each separate word agrees with it. The general manner of Paul's writing agrees with it. The special purpose he had here in view agrees with it. The imagery of the Bible in many parallel places agrees with it. We should think it indisputable, were it not disputed. And now, the reader who has had the patience to follow the course of this disquisition will be forgiving, if it breaks off with little more than an earnest repetition

of what it has said once and again already. The power of the ascended Head of the Christian Church is purely and altogether a spiritual power. If while on earth he exercised command over the elements of material nature, and the waves and the trees as well as the powers of evil were subject to him, it was only because he had received for those special acts a commission from on high. What has he to do with the earth, when it buds in the spring of the year, except to make it display to us, through the influence of his instructions, more of the Father's goodness? What has he to do with the musical breath of the summer, except to make it more vocal for us with the Father's praise? What has he to do with the white sleep of the winter, except to remind us in the deadest time that the shroud of man shall be cast off from him in the day of God's brightness, and the streams of a higher life shall be set free, and a better song than of the birds shall be heard in the gate of heaven? The works that he creates are works of righteousness. The fruits that he ripens are love, joy, and peace. He came to make the solitudes of the heart glad, and the thorny places of human life whiten into fields of harvest.

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