Shiva, the third person of the Hindu trinity, is the god of destruction. He is really the latest development of Hinduism, and is the natural result of its religious system. His name does not appear in the Vedas, although, in order to establish his reputation, he is declared to be the Rudra of the Vedas. It must not be supposed that because this deity is called the god of destruction that he is so according to our definition of the term, for in the Hindu mind death is only change into a new form of life, hence the destroyer is the re-creator. His name, Shiva"the bright or happy one"-is indicative of this thought. But, at the same time, this change of existence is through a horrible process which marks, this phase of Hinduism as full of bloody scenes and dark, fierce passions. The home of Shiva was at Kailasa, in the Himalaya Mountains, and his favorite city, Benares, on the Ganges. "Shiva," says Monier Williams, "is represented in a human form, living in the Himalayas along with Parvati, sometimes in the act of trampling on or destroying demons, wearing round his neck a serpent and a necklace of skulls, and furnished with a whole apparatus of external emblems, such as a white bull, on which he rides, a trident, tiger's skin, elephant's skin, rattle, noose, etc. He has three eyes, one being in his forehead, in allusion either to the three Vedas, or time past, present, or future. He has a crescent on his forehead, the moon having been given him as his share of the products of the churning of the ocean." Though it is true that Shiva is represented in human form, the most common form under which he is worshiped is that of the Luiga, or male and female reproductive organs. The usual name given to Shiva is Mahadeva, the great god. He is represented as having a great fondness for the bull upon which he rode; hence an image of this animal, called Nandi, can be seen in front of many shrines sacred to him, and on the death of one of his followers a bull is turned loose, after the manner of the scapegoat of the Israelites.

It is worthy of notice that all the leading gods of the Hindus had their consorts, or female counterparts. Thus the wife of Indra was Indráni, called also Sachi; Brahma's wife was Sarasvati, the goddess of wisdom and science, the mother of the Vedas, and the inventor of the Devanagari letters; the wife of Vishnu was Lukhohmi, or Shri; Shiva's wife, the most noted

of all, was known by various names, among which were Umá, Parvati, and especially Durgá. Durga was a blood-thirsty goddess, and the embodiment of all other goddesses. Monier Williams observes, "that, just as the male god Shiva gathered under his own personality the attributes and functions of all the principal gods, and became the "great god" (Mahadeva)—that is, the most lofty and severe god of the Hindu pantheon-so his female counterpart became "the one great goddess" (devi, mahadevi), who required more propitiation than any other goddess, and to a certain extent, all other female manifestations of the Tri-múrti, and absorbed all their functions." She has a twofold nature-an Asita, white or mild, and a Sita, black or fierce, nature. In her mild nature she is known as Umá, Gaurí, Lakhshuri, Sarasvatí, etc., and in her fierce as Durgá, Kálí, etc. As Kálí she is worshiped throughout India to-day. She gives her name to the capital of the empire. Thieves, murderers, and highway robbers worship at her shrine. She delights in blood, and it is said that the blood of a man will appease her for a thousand, and the blood of three men for a million of years.

The deities were also blessed with children. Ganesh, the grotesque, elephant-headed god of wisdom, was the elder son of Shiva and Parvati, and Kartikeya, the god of war, was the younger. Besides these, there were a number of inferior deities and semi-deities, which go to fill up the Hindu pantheon. Such are Hanúnián, the monkey-god, who rendered such val iant service to Ráma Chandra, and Ganga, the deified Ganges, etc., while Jagaunáth," the Lord of the World," is supposed to have been the local deity of some now unknown tribe whose worship was ingrafted into Hinduism, and finally was regarded as another manifestation of Vishnu.

India is surfeited with gods. Through monotheism, pantheism, dualism, and polytheism, the tendency is to the most degrading fetichism. The people are intensely religious, and they must have a religion which will stir their souls to the depths. This neither Vedantism, theosophy, nor Brahmaism can do. True spiritual emancipation and development can only take place when the True Incarnation, Jesus Christ, shall supersede Ráma Chandra, Krishna, and Mahádeva.

ART. IV. CHRIST'S EDUCATION OF HIS BODY.

It is the purpose of this article to show that the Lord Jesus gave his human body a specific discipline for his work as our Redeemer. Of necessity, portions of the essay will be somewhat speculative, but it is hoped that the speculations will be within the bounds of Scripture license. The tendency of revelation is to create thinkers as well as to supply food for thought. Christ hinted many things which he never fully taught; so did the apostles, notably St. Paul, who was always in advance of the topic under consideration. Hints, therefore, have great uses.

ness.

The fact of this discipline must be assumed in order to explain his office as the Redeemer of mankind, for it cannot be doubted that Christ's body was an essential factor in the scheme of salvation. It had its sphere of activity and service. Within that sphere lay duties and tasks, burdens and sufferings, to which his body had to grow, not only in outward development, but likewise in an internal accommodation. Passing through infancy, childhood, youth, early manhood, and thence to mature manhood, the co-education of mental and physical life would go forward together, so that there could be no prematureThis must be taken into account, for of all influences that disturb normal growth, the greatest is the undue concentration of vital force in one or another faculty of mind or function of body, by which the relativity of energies is interrupted. Symmetry is the law beneath all laws. And, hence, if Christ's consciousness as the Son of God had enlarged in an exclusive sense, we may suppose that the nervous functions expanded, in a like degree, to support, vivify, and express this consciousness. And again, if perception, memory, imagination, reflectiveness advanced, step by step, to their utmost earthly limits, the corresponding agency of the corporeal man would not, at any moment, fall behind in its progress. The law of nature is, that each period of existence shall afford a double basis for its successor, a material no less than a mental basis, and that these two shall harmonize more and more as years increase, until their sympathy, the one with the other, is as complete as human conditions allow. This law would pre-eminently appear in

Christ, who was quite as typical or representative in physical qualities and habits as in the intellectual and spiritual.

When it is said, "A body hast thou prepared me” (Heb. x, 5–7), or, as Macknight renders it, "Thou hast made me thy obedient servant," more is meant than a contrast with "burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin." It is added: "Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, 0 God." Obedience is the prominent idea, and what scope and significance it has! Think of the nature and extent of this obedience; the conception set forth in its ideal, for the first time in the annals of humanity made not only visible but resplendently visible; the perfect obedience of a human body to a perfectly obedient human soul. You may go further. The human nature, constituted of soul and body, has its relations to the divine nature, and the two are always in entire accord, nor is there a break, nor even a jar, in the harmony of their co-activity in this one Person, distinctively Son of man, and as distinctively Son of God. Here is discipline in the highest and rarest form conceivable, since we have not merely the ideal union of the human soul and body, but that also in a divine union of two natures in a single personality. If, now, the Lord Jesus was to "magnify the law and make it honorable;" if he was to secure a new moral force for that law, and give it a new spiritual grandeur by uniting love with authority, and blending grace with sovereignty; and if this sublime task rested upon him from the carpenter shop in Nazareth to the struggle in the garden and the agony on the cross, we must remember that the training of the body had its place among the constituents of this obedience. Precisely here, the unity of his reverence for law in every form-law in matter, law in mind-makes its profoundest impression; and the glory of Christ as the subject of law, is vividly seen as the counterpart of Christ as the sovereign over law.

First, then, consider the connection of this discipline with the eighteen years of his seclusion at Nazareth after his visit to the temple. At first sight, it would seem that this privacy until he was thirty years old bore chiefly on his domestic character along with his intellectual and moral qualities. Yet there must have been a very marked effect on his physical (psychical?) nature in the insulating circumstances that surrounded

him. No one claimed to have taught him any thing, and all admitted that his life at Nazareth, from the outset to his public ministry, had been unique. Public training for public work he certainly had not. But that lonely Nazareth was to him a world of its own-lonely, indeed, since his supreme companionship was the infinite secret which lay in his heart. The consciousness of a divine work grew as he grew "in favor with God and man," never anticipating his years, and never other than perfect, in so far as childhood, youth, and early manhood allowed perfection. The influence of this anomalous isolation, growing out of his consciousness of the "Father's business," must have acted powerfully on his nervous system, since the sublime mystery which enveloped his own mind, and the stern demand it made on patience, self-possession, and habitual reticence, must have laid a burden on his nervous system that we are quite incompetent to imagine. If we may speak of the purity of pain, he must have undergone it through these long and tedious eighteen years. Powers asserting their presence and yet unused; capacities opening into wider realms; vistas rising beyond vistas; the sense of wonder purifying itself from vain curiosity, and all its lower and eager functions; this extreme waiting, and preparing, and holding himself in resolute abeyance, and in subjection to his Father's will--this verily was the initial process in "learning obedience" and becoming "perfect through sufferings." By means of such an experience, protracted beyond ordinary limits and intensified by exceptional conditions, he must have realized that peculiar suffering which we have ventured to designate as the "purity of pain." One may conceive of it as the product of thought in its loftiest activity. Healthy organs of body; life itself in the prime of natural strength and gladness; instincts fresh; and yet "suffering" by reason of the reflexes of sublimity in sentiment and emotion on the physical system. Now, this may be viewed as the most educative form of pain in respect to our corporeal organization, because it would instinctively tend to bring the functions of nerves and brain to the support of mind as non-related to the common modes of suffering. Where pain has its seat in the material structure, much of its moral benefit is lost by reason of resisting forces. But in the case of Christ, the law of self-denial and rigid self-government,