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I must, and came here to receive the coup de grace which ends all my mortal troubles. I think I shall live to get home. I am

content.

The rest of the letter relates to unimportant matters. It must be confessed that the lines we have underscored present Parker in a new light. Writing to a parishioner, he spoke of his affliction and probable death as "the work of an Infinite Father and Mother, who looks eternally before and eternally looks after, and rules all things from love as motive and blessedness as end." "If it were fate," he says in the same connection, "it could not be borne." The letter to Desor was written not a month later. Here it is "an inexorable fate which drives him on " to the end. Did Parker, then, really believe in Fate or Providence? Or had he one opinion for the philosopher with whom he corresponded and another for his parishioners? Parker knew perfectly well that this language was in direct opposition to all that he had preached and published on the subject of Providence. Yet the note to Desor seems to dilate on the notion of fate as explaining his conduct. Had a change come on in his convictions, or what had happened? This inconsistency could not fail to strike Mr. Weiss, and he thought it his duty as an impartial friend of truth to suppress it. The "Combe-Varin Album" is a rare book-not to be had of booksellers, and hence its suppression seemed safe.

Perhaps another motive influenced Weiss to shut his eyes upon the existence of this letter. He had mocked at the revival with its prayers for the conversion of Mr. Parker or his removal out of the way. His ineffectual wit, though like an unskillfully thrown boomerang, powerful and dangerous only in its recoil on the thrower, trained all its batteries upon the folly and sin of the prayer-meeting. Did Weiss fear lest such foolish people should find in Parker's statement that an inexorable fate drove him on, not letting him do as he would, but making him do as it would, and brought him to Rome to receive the coup de grace which was to end his earthly troubles, evidence that Heaven had heard them? Of course Parker was careless to let out his thoughts in such a way. Had Desor understood the situation as well as Weiss he never would have printed the unlucky letter. And as matters stood, what better could Weiss do than ignore its existence. Skillful Weiss!

The funeral is described in the "Life" in the following paragraph:

On Sunday, the 13th of May, at four in the afternoon, the hour corresponding to that in which he used to stand at the desk of Music Hall, an old friend, the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, held the fitting funeral service over the body of this pure and righteous man. He read the "Beatitudes."

Adroitly managed, Mr. Weiss! Never did a writer more neatly tell the truth and conceal it in the same breath! To show the full cunning of this bit of falsehood-telling truth, the account of Desor must be cited. "On reaching Florence, drowsiness succeeded undue excitement, and, only at intervals, left him the free exercise of his noble faculties. It was in one of these rare moments, some days after our arrival at Florence, that he called me to his bedside to impart to me his last wishes respecting his burial. The funeral took place in the manner which he had prescribed. He had especially enjoined upon me, as he had previously done upon his wife, to avoid all religious ceremony. No prayer was to be offered, no funeral discourse spoken, but one of his friends was to read over his grave the verses 2-12 of the Sermon on the Mount."

Honest and simple-hearted Desor has neither the reserve, nor the fears, nor the cunning of Mr. Weiss. Who would have suspected from the account of the latter that "the fitting funeral service" consisted merely in the reading of the "Beatitudes?" Who would have dreamed that Parker had prohibited prayer, burial discourse, finally, all religious ceremony. Thus, even the Bible lesson was not a religious act. The truthfulness of Desor's account appears from the fact that, with it under his eyes, Weiss does not deny it, but so shapes his words as to agree with it without drawing attention to the actual facts.

Some months earlier Parker sent to America a programme of services to be used, in case of his death, at the public funeral in Music Hall. This is so contrary to his prescriptions at Florence that it may be as well to reprint it here:

I. Voluntary by the choir-perhaps a chant of Psa. cxxxix, 1-4, 7-12, 17, 18, 23, 24.

II. Scriptures: Micah vi, 8; Matt. xxii, 37-40; John iv, 23, 24; 1 John iii, 18-20; iv, 7, 12, 16, 18; Psa. xxiii, 1-4, 6; xxvii, 10-13; Matt. xxv, 34-40; v, 3–12.

III. A brief funeral prayer.

IV. Hymn, "While Thee I seek," etc.
V. Remarks by Wendell Phillips.

There was

VI. Hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee." Look at the difference between the two funerals. religious ceremony enough in the one at Music Hall. Why so much there and none at Florence, when both were ordered according to the directions of the deceased? In both there appears a dislike of prayers. Yet he wrote not long before to a parishioner that he liked the custom of public prayer, and would almost as soon give up the sermon as the prayer. Let Weiss explain these contradictions.

Parker wrote to a correspondent that his "Experience as a Minister must be looked on as Parker's apology for himself." A perusal of the Scriptures read at the Music Hall funeral indicates that they were meant to serve the same end. No Scriptures could be selected more fitted to produce an awful sense of human responsibility than the first two. Then come several that set forth the privilege and dúty of perfect saints. Next follows the Saviour's address to the righteous in the final judg ment. Last of all a passage which would seem to rank him over whom it was read with the prophets. It would be a bold thing for loving friends and disciples to read such Scriptures over the remains of the most eminent saint. There is the most startling immodesty in Parker's selecting them to be read at his funeral.

The facts which have now been brought out enable us to see Parker as he was. Upon these let him and his work be estimated.

ART. II.-THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST.

THERE are in the New Testament over fifty passages in which Christ is called the Son of God, and over forty in which he speaks of God as his Father-calling him not our Father, but my Father. During the apostolic age, and long after, to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God was regarded as the condition of membership in the Church, and the distinguishing characteristic of a Christian. Acts viii, 36, 37: "And the

eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."

The question whether God has a Son was not a question in the minds of the sacred writers. In more than one hundred passages God is spoken of as the Father of Christ, or Christ is spoken of as the Son of God, in just the same way as would have been if the actual existence of a divine Son had been taken for granted without even the suggestion of a question on the subject.

What, then, is the precise import of this term, Son of God? Why was Christ called the Son of God? What is that relation between God and Christ which is indicated by this term?

1. This relation of Sonship is not founded in any event of Christ's human history, or any characteristic of his human nature, but is founded in his divine nature, and is a relation subsisting in the distinction of personality which the Scriptures teach belong to the essential nature of the divine essence. The eternal Logos is in some sense God's Son.

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All intelligent beings may address God as "our Father," and they are children and brethren because of their relation to a common Creator. But Christ is God's only Son—a Son in a sense in which he has no brother. Christians are children of God by adoption, but Christ was never an alien. He is child and heir by natural right.

It is asserted by some that Christ is called the Son of God because of the miraculous conception, and the announcement of the angel to Mary (Luke i, 35) looks like that: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." But this theory is antagonized, first, by the fact that he was called the Son of God by many persons who could know nothing of his miraculous conception; as, for example, Nathaniel, who evidently supposed him the natural son of Joseph, but nevertheless, on receiving evidence of Christ's omniscience, addressed him, saying, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel;" second, by the fact that Christ, when defending his claims to a divine Sonship, never referred to his mirac

ulous conception, but always to his works; and, thirdly, by the fact that results are ascribed to faith in the divine Sonship of Christ, which could not follow if Sonship had no higher import than the miraculous conception. 1 John v, 5: "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

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Another theory is, that Christ's resurrection was the basis of his Sonship, and this theory is supported by reference to St. Paul's apparent interpretation of the Second Psalm, Acts xiii, 32, 33: "The promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." This pa sage, however, may be rationally interpreted by Rom. i, 3, "Concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead;" in which it is plain that the writer regards the resurrection as the event which "declares," demonstrates, that our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as to his humanity or "according to the flesh" was made of the seed of David, was, as to his divinity, "according to the Spirit of holiness," "the Son of God;" that is to say, the resurrection is not the reason why Christ is the Son of God, but the event which declares him such. Moreover, the same objections may be urged against this theory as were urged against the theory of the conception; and again, the term "this day," in the Second Psalm, is wholly unintelligible on either the theory of the conception or resurrection.

Another theory adopted by a large class of interpreters teaches that Christ is the Son of God because of the Messiahship. In support of this interpretation, it is alleged that the term "Son of God" is in very many passages of Scripture put in juxtaposition with terms indicating the Messiahship, in the same way as synonyms are frequently put side by side for purposes of emphasis or illustration. For example, when our Saviour inquired of his disciples, "Whom do men say that I am?" and "Whom say ye that I am?" Peter answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of God." It must be conceded, first, that for all that is apparent in this passage, the terms

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