man in his very origin is formed for Christ, namely as the Logos. The human nature is primitively disposed for the incarnation, just as all created personality is so in being made for communion with God. What since the fall the Holy Ghost is now for humanity in the sphere of redemption, and what before this redemption took place the Logos never ceased to be for the same humanity, though only as a light shinning in darkness, that he would have been for it entirely and in full if it had gone forward without the disorder of sin; so that in this sense also the Holy Ghost is the representative of Christ, (John xiv: 16, xvi: 7,) here of course as the Logos. And thus all that is truly noble and great in antiquity, in which a higher inspiration comes into view pushing aside for the moment the narrow interests of selfishness, is to be referred to the immanent operation of the Logos as its source; some sense of which indeed we have even in that memorable word of the earnest Roman philosopher: Nemo vir magnus sine afflatu divino unquam fuit. Now however, since the entrance of redemption, all true elevation, in the case of man, springs from the Holy Ghost, and so stands inseparably connected with the pursuit of holiness, with the consciousness of personal sin and strenuous endeavors to be delivered from its power." The passage, Col. i: 15-17, refers to this primitive relation. to the Logos, and not to what he is for the world by the incarnation. This is implied by the title πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, the first-born of the whole creation. In this view it is also, that Christ in his state of exaltation, having again the glory which he had with the Father before the world was, John xvii: 5, is described by the apostles as Lord and Head, not only of the Church, but also of the angels in their various classes and orders; comp. Eph. i: 21, Col. ii: 10, 1 Peter iii: 22, and the ἀνακεφαλαίουν Εph. i: 10. If this view of the ideal order of the world in the Divine mind be correct, all else becomes means for carrying it out to its appointed end. These are conditioned, in the everlasting omniscience of God, by the vast and mighty disorder which has been brought into the world by sin. The reality of this is so fearful, the catastrophe it involves so great, that to meet it properly required on the part of Divine love not merely a slight modification of its plan as arranged to proceed without sin, but the introduction of a new provision, the most wonderful invention of this love, the awfully glorious mystery of the incarnation. This takes its place thus indeed among the means which God employs to carry out the plan of the world, the centre in which all means meet that have for their object the overthrow of sin; a thought, which loses its difficulty just in proportion as we are brought to look into the abyss of evil and at the same time into the depths of Divine love. It is only the fact of sin in truth, apprehended in its worldvast solemnity and significance, that furnishes an adequate reason for the highest act of God's love. The sense of this fact therefore must lead the way in every effort that is made success fully, to understand or interpret the christological mystery. The distinguished writer, whom we have been trying to follow in this article in the way of free synopsis, is careful to tell us that he has no idea of charging the perilous consequences, which he is led to point out as apparently flowing from the theory he reviews, on such excellent men as Liebner and others who have stood forward in its defence. He regards them rather as fellow laborers with himself on the same platform of evangelical freedom, and has no doubt but that they have in their own way of looking at the subject what are supposed to be sufficient precautions against these consequences. His object is accordingly to open the way for their bringing out still more fully and distinctly the entire sense of their system, in all its aspects and bearings. "This inquiry proposes to be nothing more," he says, " than an excitement to a new revision of the christological theory in question, on the basis of the true biblical theism, and to a solution if possible of the difficulties now presented; for which very reason it has been felt necessary to give them the most sharp and distinct expression. If they can be shown to be groundless, of course on the basis just mentioned, the writer would not wish to be among the last certainly to embrace a view, the special advantages of which for the scientific construction of christian doctrine he can fully appreciate." J. W. N. 1851.] The Scotch Irish Element in Am'can Soc'ty. 239 THE SCOTCH IRISH ELEMENT IN AMERICAN THE return of the Eagle Wing to Ireland and debarcation of her disconcerted company at Lockfergus, Nov. 3rd, 1636, formed an incident in the world's chronicles, that in its results has exerted an influence upon the destinies of the United States next to that of the memorable event which has consecrated the Rock of Plymouth among New England reminiscences. The whole adventure was mortifying in the highest degree, and beyond surmise afforded rare sport to the laughers of the time. But those brave pilgrims might have consoled themselves, if they did not, with the reflection that an ordeal of great humiliation and reproach has in manifold instances proved, like the tomb of Christ, a watch-house of angels from which the exodus of a regenerated refined humanity has insured, in the end, a nobler life and destiny to different sections of the human family. The bird of flame rising from its ashes with stronger and more beautiful wings, parables a majestic truth. Had Hamilton, Livingston, Blair, and McClelland, gåined with their asso; ciates the New England coast, and settled, as was proposed, upon the banks of the Merrimac, they would undoubtedly have lost in a short time their distinctive peculiarities under the plastic hand of Puritanism. We fancy then, the tempestuous northwester which swept so fiercely around the ship's mast head, and drove back the dispirited adventurers to Lockfergus, was nothing less than one of God's strong angels. It was not for these predestinated patriarchs of the Scotch Irish family to resist the judgment of fate;-it was not for them to contravene the designs of Providence in reference to the true mission of their race. The horoscope of that race was already cast. Through the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Court of Louis the Fourteenth was to civilized Europe the cynosure of the political world. Statesmen on all sides were accustomed to scan with anxious eyes the bearings in council and camp of Mazarine and Turenne, the first stars of that constellation, and therefrom vaticinate the fortunes of mankind. During the same active period the province of Ulster, remote from the polished centres of European civilization, comprised within its borders an obscure Scottish colony, whose very existence was unrecorded by the great authors of the time. No modern Elijah then stood upon the top of Carmel, and discerned the little cloud arising from the sea like a man's hand. There nevertheless, unregar ded and unknown, the Covenanter rocked the cradle of liberty amid provincial turbulence, and prepared an element of power which, the next century, entered largely into the structure of the American model of constitutional freedom :--a model which the French people, forgetting the religion and loyalty of ages, transformed into a divinity, whose carnival they celebrated upon the ruins of the Bourbon dynasty. Let us not be understood, for a moment, as designing to present here a surprising instance of the frustration of human prescience, a magnificent case of "turning of the tables" in which the scene is shifted through the civilized world, and the time of exhibition extends through centuries. We do not think of this; for such ups and downs form no anomalies in human history. We wish first to engage transient attention to the inference that a pure faith and sound principles not only tend to elevate the moral life of a people, as every body knows, but, in the long race, are better adapted than profound diplomacy and gigantic power to insure the equivalents of terrene prosperity and renown. We desire however chiefly, through the passing sunshine cast by the Scotch Irish episode upon the surface of the historic stream, to draw attention to the deep divine flow beneath. History, as regarded in its familiar civil import, comes before us like Banvard's Panorama of the Mississippi, displaying by successive pictorial illustrations the majestic stream of human events, and giving perhaps, at each view, a useful lesson to the living world audience. No one however who discerns merely the human pencilling here can trace the moral of the exhibition in its largest sense. In a higher view the human must be counted as symbolic. History then must be deciphered like the Rosetta stone. It is God's symbolic registry; and the thoughts and deeds of men wrought into it are but hieroglyphs which convey to the thoughtful the strong and consistent development of the divine purposes. In truth, with Christ for our Champollion, we may find the true philosophy of all history here, as it serves to unfold the great mind of God in his providence. We have felt some chagrin, we honestly confess, at the neglect which the Scotch Irish have experienced from historians of American colonization. In vain, for example, do we look for the "exile of Erin" through Bancroft's picture gallery of the colonists. There is the Puritan limned again and again, with filial reverence and partiality, at the different stages of his career. Aye. there look out upon us his progressive portraits, reminding us forcibly of the old prints, that used to solemnize our juvenile thoughts, in which the successive decennial periods of human life, by a striking prosopopeia are made to follow each other over the arc of a semicircle. There is the Virginia Planter in full costume, and the story of his renown, drawn with "the point of a diamond," detailing the whole budget of romantic incident which distinguished his career on this side the water. All very well, as he had little to boast of among the colonial confessors in the way of trans-atlantic sufferings for either civil or religious rights. There too are the marked features of the Quaker: We see him as, with unearthly look, he emerged in England from his celestial school-house: We see him again in the midst of his early persecutions, looking like a great glad boy who shouts merrily in the howling whirlwind that is forcing and following him along. And we hail him again in the quiet vernal morning of Pennsylvania-as glorious as the morning, bargaining with the Red men under primeval trees. The Huguenot, the Hollander, and the Scottish colonist of East Jersey, all receive a fugitive sketch: but the Scotch Irishman, with his honest friend the German, has been suffered to pass through into the background, without the grace of a formal introduction. Whence this neglect? Is it forsooth because these comrades came late upon the ground? Our historian should not have forgotten the catholic scope of the lesson, taught in the divine apologue of the laborers who were sent at different hours of the day into the vineyard. There is a homebred prejudice potent in its influence existing in every community, enlisted as by some magnetic charm in behalf of what are termed "old families." families, sprung from fortunate land speculators of an early day, are seldom found in the front of those improvements which give dignity to the age; nay, as a body, they more frequently incline to obstruct the course of progress and reform. Yet their time-honored domains and lombardy poplars, acting like a prism, invest them with a fictitious glory, under which they claim and receive general homage. Upon the same principle, we suppose, the descendants of the earlier colonists, of those particularly over whose nativity the venerable elms of England waved their ennobling shadows, have exacted for their ancestral lineage down to themselves the chief place of honor among the elementary constituents of American Society. But, in all seriousness, we i elieve that our great historians have not done justice to the Scotch-Irish. A race which has dignified the military annals of the country by contributing thereto the great names of Montgomery, Stark, Wayne, Sullivan, and Jackson; which has furnished to the counsels of the nation a like proportion of eminent civilians, from Madison down to Calhoun; which has given VOL. IIL-NO. III. These 16 # |