manity, or human body, was only a human body inspired, or inhabited by the reason of God himself. It is true that Apollinaris was willing to ascribe a soul to the Redeemer, and some, by a superficial understanding of him, have supposed that he did really allow in this respect a perfect human nature in Christ; and, in the same way many have supposed that Sabellius allowed that Christ had a human soul. What Apollinaris called a human soul, however, was only the Psuke, or vital breath of the body, the animal, according to the threefold analysis of man into the Soma, Psuke, and Nous. That which constituted the higher dignity of man, the Nous, or Psuke Logike of Christ, as it was sometimes phrased, could not be of human origin, but must be purely divine. Hence the oft repeated assertion that in Christ, the "Divine reason supplied the place of the human reason." Hence the expressions came into use in reference to Christ's death and birth, that "God died," "God was born." Sabellianism, under the lead of Apollinaris, was met by one of the best minds of that, or perhaps of any age, in the person of Athanasius. He brought up the old objections, showing the inconsistency of the doctrine in relation to other doctrines of Christianity, while he pointed out clearly the Pantheism to which it must inevitably tend. If the personality of Christ were nothing more than a transitory appearance, the same, and upon the same arguments, might be conceived in reference to all personal existence. If Christ were only an emanation of God, like a ray from the sun, to be at length taken back and reabsorbed in the sun, a ray from God, to be reabsorbed in God; then, just so might all things be reabsorbed. But this is Pantheism, ending logically in the denial of all personality, the modern statement of which is most fully made in the Positive Philosophy of Comte. Again, if the body of Christ was not strictly human, if it was only human but in appearance and but a mere body, what became of it? How then could Christ become the first fruits of the resurrection? What hope could there be for the Christian, that, according to the Scriptures, he should follow Christ with his body in the resurrection, and to become like Christ in the risen, the spiritual and glorified body? Yet again, it behooved Christ to be our example in every respect; but this would be impossible if his nature were not like ours, if indeed he had no human soul. By these arguments Athanasius refuted Sabellianism by showing that logically it must end in Pantheism; and that it was opposed to the manifest teachings of the Scriptures. It appears that one reason for the reluctance of the Sabellians to acknowledge that Christ had a human soul consisted in their false view of sin. Adopting more or less the Manichæan notion that sin was necessary in human nature; that sin was the real nature of man, and that freedom from sin must be a contradiction of man's nature; assuming that evil was an eternal principle and that in consequence man instead of being created in a state of innocence, was really by nature a sinning soul from the first; holding these opinions, they thought that the admission that Christ had a human soul was equivalent to the assertion that he had a sinful nature. Because this admission would dishonor Christ, and lead to the denial of his divinity, degrading him lower even than the first class of Monarchians had done, who held that he was a man and nothing more, the Sabellians thought best to maintain that Christ had no human soul, in order to maintain thereby that he was free from sin. But if they had accepted the doctrine that man was created in a state of innocence from which he afterwards fell; if instead of accepting the notion of evil as an eternal principle, and of sin as a necessity in man; if they could have allowed that the soul of man was at first holy and that man fell from that first estate by his own voluntary transgression, then they would have found no difficulty in allowing that Christ had a human soul. To have declared that he had such a soul, such as it was before the fall of man, such as this soul was when the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul," would have been to assume Christ's complete human nature, so as at the same time to maintain his sinlessness. This false view of sin led them to false conceptions of God, by ascribing to him acts of suffering and pain. This appears when in reference to Christ they said that "God was born," and that "God died." Because they could not allow that Christ had a perfect human nature, on account of their false notion of sin, they were obliged to declare that the divine nature suffered; that God himself suffered, hence in the West they were called Patripassians. We have already noticed how Sabellianism failed of giving a scriptural account of the resurrection through Christ. The cause of this failure will be seen, in this connection, to lie in the Manichæan notion that the effect of sin was such a contamination of the body that it would not be raised. Sin had ruined the body to such an extent that it could not, in reason, be raised. For the same reason Sabellianism is never clear in its outlines of eschatology. From the idea of sin as a necessity, and that it must have its course like an epidemic, so as at length to run itself out, the inference is drawn that future punishment will not be eternal, since punishment in running its course must have a purifying influence, and end in the restoration of all from the effects of sin, so that finally all would be brought back into the unity of God. Thus the Sabellian idea of sin, as theology, lies again in close logical sympathy with the Positive Philosophy. For to deny the real personality of Christ both as related to the Father, and as related to man; to assume his return to, and re-absorption in the Father, as a ray of light reabsorbed in the sun; to conceive the loss of all human personality by the loss of the body in the denial of the resurrection, and then assume the final restoration of all into the unity of God; is, to say with Comte, that "to desire a personal immortality is to desire to perpetuate an error to infinity; for individual existence is the error from which it should be the aim of life to extricate ourselves." Doubtless there were, and are now, many holding more or less to Sabellianism, who for themselves disclaim all sympathy with Pantheism. Our purpose, however, does not lead us to speak of men, only as it is necessary in order to state the doctrine as it may be gathered from its history and tendency. In this respect, the statement of a doctrine is like the work of the naturalist, who, finding parts of a creature, the scale of a fish or the bone of a reptile, is able to construct in symmetry the omplete form and organism. ARTICLE IV. THE THEOLOGY OF HAMLET.' For a drama is And just as the THOUGH Shakespeare was not a professed theologian, though he never studied in the schools, and probably never reduced his views to any consistent system, yet he has a theology. There can be no genuine drama without a theology. a living section cut out of human history. life of man needs a providence, so does this ideal representation taken from his life. A drama without a providence, would be like a landscape without an over-arching sky of blue; would be no drama at all. This is especially true of tragedy. For the true idea of the the tragic presupposes a moral desert or ill desert in the various characters of the play, which it is the office of the denouement, the catastrophe to meet. In short, a tragedy, rightly constructed, is an epitome of human life with the moral consequences of that life. To be lugubrious and bloody is not to be tragical. But, so to construct the Acts of a drama, and to interweave its Scenes, as to make the conclusion the legitimate moral outgrowth of its progress, so that the conclusion is justified by what has gone before, satisfies our moral sense; this is the true idea of the tragical. And, of course, to such a conception of the tragical, nothing can be more needful than an overruling providence. The dramatist, also, must not only have his theology, in accordance with which he shapes the general outlines of his work, arranges what is retributive in his work, acting the part of a providence in it; he must give a theology to the characters whom this retribution is to overtake. They must have a consciousness of right and wrong; they must be aware of the creeping over them and their lives, of that eclipse of punishment, which they have provoked. They, too, must be prepared to justify the ways of God toward themselves. Now, it is proposed to examine a single tragedy of the greatest of all dramatists, with reference to its theology. The play of Hamlet becomes a possibility only by belief in the supernatural. It is a purported communication from the world 1 The references in this article are to the "Globe edition" of Shakespeare; a very elegant and convenient edition, just published by Roberts Brothers, Boston. of spirits, that lies at the basis of all its complications, its plots and counterplots. It assumes, then, the immortality of the soul. Hamlet's father, having been "Cut off e'en in the blossoms of his sin, Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled; No reckoning made, but sent to his account, With all his imperfections on his head," Act I., sc. v., 1. 76–79. his unpurged spirit finds no rest in the eternal world. Here we encounter the Papistic doctrine of purgatory. This soul having passed from the confines of earth without the Romish sacraments, is, according to his own account, "Doomed for a certain time to walk the night, Are burnt and purged away." Act I., sc. v., 1. 10–13. The funeral rites denied the gentle Ophelia, for which Laertes gives vent to that spirited execration and prophesy, "I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling," Act v., sc. 1, 1. 262–264. as well as the country and age of the story, prove that the particular phase of Christianity disclosed here, is that of the Romish church. A belief in ghostly apparitions, as above intimated, springs from the doctrine of the soul's immortality, a doctrine which . Hamlet directly affirms in the lines: "And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?" Act I. sc. iv., 1. 66–67. Though itself a superstition, it yet implies a fundamental truth. And it is interesting to note the well-settled philosophy of the watch, who in that "witching hour" of night are awaiting the reappearance of the spirit that usurps "That fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march." Act 1, sc. 1., l. 47-49. Horatio thus enumerates the probable causes of its unrest : "If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease, and grace to me, |