has stumbled others who were glad to have a stumbling-block. In the theory of Anselm, as Neander interprets it, and in the views presented in these pages, the sufferings of the Son of God were a necessary result of his glorious devotion to the restoration of the honor of his Heavenly Father, and his law, and the salvation of men; and they create a moral influence which tends to do away sin, and bring in everlasting righteousness, and make reconciliation or atonement for iniquity. In this world of sinners the Son of God could do no otherwise than meet his death in his conflict with God-dishonoring and man-ruining sin; and his death could not but demonstrate in various ways that sinners deserve a death unspeakably worse. It shows and means all and more than any direct effusion of his blood by divine authority, in the manner of the animal sacrifices, could express.

The death of Christ, indeed, on these theories, does not by itself express anything, but is an absolute dumb mystery, unless accompanied by explanatory words. It is so with the animal sacrifices so far as respects the mere slaying of the victims. But on Anselm's theory the whole life and death of the Son of God explain themselves. All the facts, severally and taken together, are naturally significant. Words, if needed at all, are employed to call attention to what the facts say with the voice of divine emphasis. No one can doubt that they honor God and magnify his law of love, and, done and suffered for man, are a wondrous manifestation of holy love. But it is very much doubted by many honest thinkers whether, as interpreted by the old school or new school theory, these sufferings are a fit expression at all of what they are held to express, or fit at all to be an atonement. But all theorists who have Christian hearts read alike the law-honoring obedience to death of the Redeemer, and expatiate on it with widely efficacious persuasion. All Christian schools harmonize in this that, first or last, the moral influence going forth from this obedience is promotive of salvation; and that this must be brought to bear on the soul by the agency of the Holy Ghost.

THEORY OF S. T. COLERIDGE.

The writings of Coleridge have exerted a fascinating influence on some of the best minds in our English-speaking world; but, except on the negative side, I know not whether his doctrine of redemption, as propounded in his "Aids to Reflection," has had much sway.

After having been in his early manhood a zealous preacher of Unitarianism, he was in his riper years, and to the end of his life, a most earnest advocate of Orthodoxy in most of its doctrines; but he differed from the great divines of his beloved church of England on the doctrine of redemption. I think that his difference was not so great as he imagined it to be. No great English divine believed, as he seems to represent, in a redemption that left the sinner enslaved to his sins. This misapprehension appears in the case supposed of Matthew as a vicarious son, discharging all filial duties, shamefully trampled on by James an only son of a most loving and self-sacrificing mother, and then proposing that this unworthy son should be treated by the abused mother, on account of this vicarious goodness of Matthew, as if he had done no wrong at all, when he gave not the least sign of repentance. I know of no orthodox sect or divine that represents God as so treating persistent sinners.

In his formal statement of his doctrine Coleridge seems to represent regeneration as redemption:

"The causative act [of Christ the Redeemer, who is the co-eternal Word, and Only-begotten Son of the living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing, crucified, submitting to death, resurgent, ascendant, communicant of his Spirit] by which redemption is effected is a spiritual and transcendent mystery that passeth all understanding. The effect caused is the being born anew as before in the flesh to the world, so now in the Spirit to Christ. The consequence from the effect are sanctification from sin and liberation from the inherent and penal consequences of sin in the world to come; these consequences being the same to the sinner, relatively

to God and his own soul, as the satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his creditor; as the sacrificial atonements made by the priests for the transgressor of the Mosaic law; as the reconciliation to an alienated parent for a son who. had estranged himself from his father's house and presence; and as a redemptive ransom for a slave or captive. Now, I complain that this metaphorical naming of a transcendent causative act, through the medium of its proper effects, from actions and causes of familiar occurrence, connected with the former by similarity of result, has been mistaken for an intended designation of the essential character of the causative act itself; and thus divines have interpreted de omni what was spoken of de singulo, and magnified a partial equation into a total identity."

That this illogical interpretation has prevailed a good deal must be conceded. The old school divines, who on this subject are perhaps the most literal interpreters, avoid this error with respect to the relation of debtor and creditor. In the process of redemption as to those who are really saved by it, the causative act which Coleridge speaks of, the regenerative operation of the Spirit of Christ, mysterious as Christ represents it, must occur; and the consequences are, in all cases of salvation, sanctification and liberation from the inherent and penal consequences of sin in the world to come.

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Coleridge did not differ from his fellow-Christians essentially on this point; though he uses words of more learned and philosophic sound. In speaking of the agens causator - that is, active causer-in redemption, he goes over an outline of the great facts in Christ's person and career, but does not say what these facts have to do in redemption,what Christ does by them, what we have to do with them, or whether they have any bearing on the forgiveness of sin or the rescue of the soul from its power. But inasmuch as he mentions these characteristics of the Redeemer it is fairly inferable that he thought them somehow necessary to redemption. A partial understanding of his view may be gained by considering a portion of his Matthew-and-James

illustration, preceding his formal statement, but not included in it: “If, indeed, by the force of Matthew's example, by persuasion, or more mysterious influences, or by an inward co-agency compatible with the idea of a personal will, James should be led to repent, if, through admiration and love of this great goodness, gradually assimilating his mind to the mind of his benefactor, he should in his own person become a grateful and dutiful child, then, doubtless, the mother would be wholly satisfied."

There is nothing in this theory respecting the restoration of the parent's honor, as the moral and authoritative head of the family, as in Anselm's theory. On repentance the child is restored to full favor, and is, of course, grateful to his moral Saviour and to his forgiving parents. The theory, so far as it goes, contains elements of power, and not encased in an unworthy casket; but lacks that combination of kingly, rectoral majesty with grace, which satisfies fully the demands of the moral nature.

The Matthew-and-James illustration of Coleridge has a remarkable parallel in a paragraph from President Edwards, given by Professor Park in his elaborate introduction to his volume of treatises on the atonement. "The satisfaction of Christ by his death is certainly a very rational thing. If any person that was greatly obliged to me, that was dependent on me, and that I loved, should exceedingly abuse me, and should go on in an obstinate course of it from one year to another, notwithstanding all I could say to him, and all new obligations continually repeated; though at length he should leave it off, I should not forgive him unless upon gospel considerations. But if any person that was a much dearer friend, and was a very near relation of him that offended me, should intercede for him, and, out of the entire love he had for him, should put himself to very hard labors and difficul ties, and undergo great pains and miseries to procure him forgiveness, and the person that had offended should, with a changed mind, fly to this mediator and should seek favor in his name, with the sense in his own mind how much his me

diator had done and suffered for him, I should be satisfied, and feel myself inclined, without any difficulty, to receive him into my entire friendship again; but not without the lastmentioned condition, that he should be sensible how much his mediator had done and suffered. But if he was ignorant of it, or thought he had done only some small matter, I should not be easy nor satisfied. So a sense of Christ's sufficiency seems necessary in faith." 1

This remarkable passage contains some important elements not in the Coleridge theory; but, what is quite strange in Edwards, it says nothing of satisfaction to rectoral honor and influence, or the restoration of that. No doubt many a soul has been saved by a glimpse of one beam of the great Sun of Righteousness.

THEORY OF DR. J. M. CAMPBELL.

An interesting treatise on the atonement not very long since came from the pen of an able divine of Scotland, Dr. Campbell, whose theory cost him his ministerial standing, though it appears by the suffrages of all that he bore an excellent character. His book on every page gives evidence of his Christian spirit; and under his exclusion from the ministry of his church he manifested the utmost meekness and freedom from a schismatic heart, attending respectfully on ministrations from his brethren, and in every becoming way promoting Christian love and fraternal union. There is a great deal of edifying matter in his volume, of which I can take no notice. I can only briefly state what I understand his theory to be.

Dr. Campbell expatiates on a quotation from President Edwards, in which that illustrious divine says, that if man without any other atonement were to exercise an absolutely perfect repentance, he thinks that repentance might be accepted. But as such a repentance is never exercised by man, and the repentance he does exercise is derived from

1 Discourses on the Atonement, by Edwards, Smalley, and others (Congregational Publishing Society), p. xxiii.