Christ, Christ's atonement is necessary. Dr. Campbell regards Christ as our vicarious confessor of sin, condemning it in our name perfectly, in our behalf testifying by word and deed against it. In like manner he vicariously acts in favor of holiness, and in favor of every precept of God's law. He recognizes our ill-desert, and the ill-desert of all sin. In his whole course he is on the side of God and of his government.

As the incarnate Word he demonstrates the falseness of the slanders of Satan against God. He is an actual manifestation of love for the poor human wretches who have fallen in with Satan's lie. In their behalf he takes away this consent to the base lie of Satan, and exhibits in full all the transcendent goodness of God.

If men, influenced by what he has done, believe, repent, and cast themselves on God's mercy, they are accepted; otherwise their condemnation is awfully increased. I think that it must be said of this theory, that all that is positive in it is true and wholesome, and that it is erroneous only by defect and omission. Perhaps it does not insist as much as it should on the bearings of the whole work and sufferings of the incarnate Word on the general interests of the government of God; or, as the new school men express it, on the interests protected by general justice. In a remarkable degree this theory recognizes the mediatorship of Christ, and gives it very interesting characteristics.

THEORY OF DR. HORACE BUSHNELL.

The only other theory of which I shall take notice is that of Dr. Horace Bushnell, more celebrated, and at least in our country, more influential than any other proposed in our days. That of Dr. John Young of Scotland, presented in his book, called "The Life and Light of Men," remarkably coincides with Dr. Bushnell's view. Dr. Bushnell's " Vicarious Sacrifice," and Dr. Young's book appeared the same year. Dr. Bushnell had in previous publications presented substantially the same theory. His views are set forth in that masterly style of original eloquence for which he is distinguished.

Dr. Bushnell has, perhaps, made it plainer than any previous writer had done, that all the virtue there can be in any atonement must be found in its moral influence on God's moral creatures. Nothing can be extracted of good from any theory of atonement but moral power or influence for God's moral government. Even the juridical theory, which supposes that the great thing done in atonement is the realization of justice in vicarious punishment and righteousness, thus rendering man's salvation possible, holds that salvation is in part effected by the manifestation to souls of God's holy, gracious love.

The tenor of Dr. Bushnell's theory is, that Christ, appearing in our world with truly divine perfections and powers, in due season puts forth most earnest efforts for the good of man, body and soul, realizes and manifests in the most extraordinary and affecting way the ideal of moral excellency, intensifying this manifestation by his submission to the death on the cross. By the life he lived, and the death he died, and all the wonders he displayed, he acquired transcendent moral power to employ for the deliverance of mankind from sin, and for establishing in the heart everlasting righteousness. When the gospel that proclaims him, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, is believed with practical faith, deliverance from sin begins; and at the same time begins salvation from the misery that sin produces, and the enjoyment of the peace and blessedness effected by righteousness; and the salvation. advances to perfection as the Saviour becomes more and more known. The punitive causes more and more cease to operate, because they more and more cease to exist; and the causes of good grow in volume and power more and more till salvation is completed in complete moral excellence attained through the saving power of Christ, the Holy Spirit co-operating by showing the things of Christ to the soul, working faith and all right willing and doing. This is a very feeble account of the theory as compared with the glowing picture which Dr. Bushnell draws; and to propose to substitue it for his picture would be like proposing to substi

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tute for the Paradise Lost a meagre table of contents, or argument; or for the Transfiguration of Raphael a slip from a newspaper report of a chance traveller.

I understand both Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Young to hold that when deliverance from sin begins in the soul, and righteousness begins to take the place before occupied by the evil thing, this is a beginning of remission, forgiveness, justification; these words expressing salvation, as to inward experience, in its entire extent, so far as deliverance from punitive evil and enjoyment of gracious reward are concerned. Only, when the good work begins, time is needed for its consummation; but all that follows is of a piece with the commencement.

The great facts of the life and death of Christ, in their natural bearing on the soul of man for his rescue from sin and attainment of a true life of love, are set forth by competent advocates of this theory in an excellent manner, and with happy results. It is very edifying to read in this view much found in the writings of both these able men.

One of the most interesting things in Dr. Bushnell's "Vicarious Sacrifice," is the account he gives of the spirit and manner in which the Saviour takes our case on his heart and feeling, entering into the disordered state of our souls, our guilt, or deep misery, and the countless evils we have pulled down on our own heads. In his masterly way he turns this over and over, and makes it clear how this is adapted to give the Redeemer great power in our unhappy hearts. It is quite clear that this deep compassion, so holy and tender, must belong to the character of a divine Redeemer for man. As our Lord bore our sins in the sense that he felt intensely their odiousness and ill-desert, and groaned in solemn indignation when he had before him the infinite evils and horrors with which sin has filled the world, this Dr. Bushnell fully accepts, and sets forth as scarce any other man has done so impressively. Such sin-bearing has a mighty curative power, manifested often in infinitely humbler spheres. To see his creature-man in the power of such

a monster, stirred the heart of God to redeem the race, and his love culminated in the cross of Calvary.

The work of redemption logically, according to this theory, terminates with a moral and spiritual deliverance; and there is nothing for the Redeemer to do for man, saved from sin and its necessary natural consequences, more than for moral creatures of God who have never sinned. The atonement provides for no pardon or justification except in the sense of a moral deliverance. There is no expiatory power or force in any possible atonement-in the "Vicarious Sacrifice" Dr. Bushnell maintained that there is no propitiatory power. In his recent amendment of his previous works Dr. Bushnell maintains, not that the atonement when made propitiates God, but that God in making it propitiates himself; that is, in the work of saving he becomes more and more interested in lost sinners as he makes cost for them, and takes the burden of their sin and misery on his soul. In this he resembles a man, made in his image, who should, renewed in love, undertake to rescue from ruin loathsome wretches from whom at first he shrinks; but as he goes on in his work he is more and more interested in them, his saving love reacts on his own heart, and so propitiates him. If Dr. Bushnell only meant that God is phenomenally more and more in the work of redemption, this would not contradict his own doctrine of the perfection of God in love and pity, and the impossibility of any change in him making him more loving or merciful or propitious. As I understand this book I regard it as no amendment of his previously taught theory, but inharmonious with the whole spirit and tenor of it. It was magnanimous of this distinguished man to write it, and blot out so large a part of the "Vicarious Sacrifice"; but it might have been a nobler magnanimity to recall the whole of it. It is in disharmony, not only with Dr. Bushnell's theory, but with all theories which the church has seen.

To me the greatest errors in the theory of Dr. Bushnell appear to arise from his opinions on punishment and reward, and on remission and justification. I think that both he

and Dr. Young are seriously astray on these several points. The Greek word rendered remission appears to be used in two senses. 1. It is used to express forbearance towards evil-doers, and granting them a space for repentance. This is the sense the word bears in the prayer of our Lord for his murderers. 2. The other sense is that of the complete setting aside of the punishment of the sinner, which is always represented as conditioned on his repentance. This is the sense the word has in the Lord's prayer. The sense given to the word by Dr. Bushnell I do not find in the Scriptures. A concordance, English, Greek, or Hebrew, will settle the question for most unsophisticated minds. It plainly seems to be taught in the Scriptures that when sinners have been brought by the grace of God to repentance, to a revolution. in character, they need the remission of their sins - an act of mercy by which the punishment they deserve is set aside. This is not a mere natural effect of the change in the heart, but a procedure of divine authority. It was this that David prayed for when he repented of his heavy sins; and it is this for which, in the Lord's prayer, we all supplicate. We pray that we may be forgiven as we orgive our injurers; but we surely do not mean by our exercise of forgiveness effecting a moral change in our injurers' hearts.

To justify a sinner, in the view of Doctors Bushnell and Young, is to make him righteous in heart, to work a radical moral change in his character. There are two cases in the Old Testament in which some authorities, ancient and modern, suppose the original expression, usually rendered justify, to exhibit this meaning. The passage most favorable to Dr. Bushnell's interpretation is found in Daniel xii. 3. Here the hiphil participle of the verb is rendered in our version, "they that turn [many] to righteousness." The Vulgate translates "quia justitiam erudiunt multos," which is somewhat ambiguous, as "justitiam" may here have the so-called Pauline sense. The Greek translation given in the version of Daniel in Van Ess's Septuagint, would, Englished, read "Some of the righteous ones of the many"; which differs