application in the Divine elements of his nature, and the fulness of God, morally and personally residing in him, and manifesting himself through him.

"The reality of Christ," says Dr. Bushnell (p. 156), "is what he expresses of God, not what he is in his physical conditions, or under his human limitations. He is here to express the Absolute Being, especially His feeling, His love to man, His placableness, conversableness, and His real union to the race; in a word, to communicate His own Life to the race, and graft Himself historically into it."—"God certainly [p. 157] is able to assume the human, to become incarnate in it, so far as to express His union to it, and set Himself as Eternal Life in historic and real connection with it.""It is [p. 163] certainly competent for God to work out the expression of His own feeling, and His union to the race, in what way most approves itself to Him." Again, Dr. Bushnell says (p. 161), "The mystery of the Divine-human must remain a mystery. I cannot fathom it. Reason itself will justify me in no such attempt." We ac

cord with these remarks, but do they not apply to Christ's nature with as much force on our view as on his? We should be glad to show, by numerous illustrations, how the view we have taken of Christ's nature fulfils all the important purposes for which, according to the work before us, the word became flesh; and more particularly, how it harmonizes with the Gospel narratives, and the references to Christ in the Epistles. But we have not space here for so extended a discussion. There is, we readily admit, no subject which is to us so full of difficulties as this. Christ's character spreads itself out, heaven beyond heaven, in beautiful transparency, and with a Divine consistency, and whosoever will come to him with profound humility may partake of his fulness. So with his revelation of truths, and his practical precepts. But we know so little of the springs of life, even in a human being, we are so little able to analyze our own nature, body and soul, that it should be to us no matter of surprise, if we cannot frame a theory of Christ's nature which shall entirely satisfy us. How he may have been left to unfold freely the laws of his own being, while he was, at the same time, so personally united with God that, in a most important sense, they were one, is no more mysterious than some of the facts relating to the manner of our own existence, and our spiritual life. But, to carry out our conceptions of Christ's nature, and show

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how, in its loftiest manifestations, it accords with the highest terms which the Scriptures apply to him, requires in us a breadth of thought, an elevation of moral and religious feeling, a depth and clearness of spiritual intuition, which shall bear some proportion to the life that was in him; and that is what no human mind may hope to reach. All that we can

say is, that, while to us every other view that we have examined is diametrically opposed to some express declaration of Scripture, this manifestly answers to a large portion of the sacred texts, and does not directly contradict any of them, when interpreted by the light of other and similar passages. The main thing, as Dr. Bushnell has so forcibly said in many ways, is not the metaphysical theory that lies underneath, but the manifestation of the Divine life through Christ. So that he bring God down to us, giving to us a sense of his infinite nearness, his mercy, and his love, and lifting us up in lowliness of heart, to partake of the eternal life that was in him, we care comparatively little what theory is maintained, provided it be not made a test of discipleship. The best Christians, thousands of them, have received of that life and rejoiced in its blessedness and peace, without having had any theory on the subject. It was enough for them to go to Jesus as the Son of God, who has "the words of eternal life," and in him, living in the light and dying in the hopes which he has brought, to find the resurrection and the life." It is comparatively of little consequence, whether, taking the Divine personality as the basis of Christ's nature, they see God manifesting himself through a human being, or, taking the human personality as a basis, they behold, in that, God reconciling the world to himself.

We come now to the Discourse on the Atonement, which follows that on the Deity of Christ. The early part of it is taken up with a bold and eminently successful confutation of the common Orthodox views upon the subject,- views which we cannot but regard as among the most pernicious speculative errors ever adopted. Dr. Bushnell passes from them to his own view of the Atonement He regards Christ, first, as having come to renovate character; to quicken by the infusion of the Divine life "; in one word, "to be a Saviour, as saving his people from their sins "; and, secondly, "as a propitiation, a sacrifice, as bearing our sins, bearing the curse for us, obtaining remission of sin by his blood." (p. 191.) The main object that which gives its peculiar interest to the

VOL. XLVI.

discourse is the attempt to show that this latter view is the objective form under which Christ may most effectually present himself to us in order to renovate the character, infuse into us a Divine life, and save us from our sins.

The first part of this double view of the atonement, the subjective, is substantially the view of Christ which is most frequently and earnestly enforced by Unitarian writers. First, "Christ, considered only as a perfect being, or character, is an embodiment, in human history, of a spirit and of ideas which are sufficient of themselves to change the destinies of the race and even their, capabilities of good." (p. 205.) Secondly, "the appearance of Jesus, the Messiah, has a much higher significance and power, when taken as the manifestation of the Life, the incarnate word, God expressed in and through the human." (p. 206.) Regarding the world even as an upright and sinless world, . . . . . his appearing is a new epoch in their history. He will live in their hearts, life within life. A Divine light from the person of their Emanuel will stream through their history. Their words will be sanctified by his uses. Their works will be animated by his spirit. A Divine vigor from the Life manifested among them will penetrate their feeling, elevating their ideas and purposes, and even their capacity of good itself." (p. 207.) "But if we

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are to understand the full import of Christ's mission, we must farther. . . . . We must regard him as the Life manifested in the history of an alienated and averted race. . .

go

The condition of sin is a condition of blindness and spiritual darkness. . . . . . The man lives in his senses and becomes a creature of sense. . . . . . How needful that God should meet them in the element where their soul lives, that is, in their senses. . Therefore the Word is made flesh, and dwells with men. The understanding that was darkened, being alienated from the life of God, beholds once more a light in the manifested life. . . . . . While the understanding is blockaded by doubt, a God streams into the feeling, and proves His reality to the heart." (pp. 208-210.) The consciousness of immortality is awakened.

"When he that was in the form of God comes into the human state, when we see one here who visibly is not of us, when he opens here a heart of love, and floods the world with rivers of Divine feeling, when we trace him from the manger over which the hymns of heaven's joy are ringing, to the cross where his purpose to save embraces even death for man; and then, when

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we see that death cannot hold him, that he bursts into life again as a victor over death- following such a history transacted, in our view, we begin also to conceive the tremendous import of our own, the equally tremendous import also of our sin. If God, to renew the soul moves a plan like this, what is it to be a soul, what to desecrate and destroy a soul? The conscious grandeur of his eternity returns upon the transgressor, and he trembles in awe of himself himself the power of an endless life."

pp. 211, 212.

The consciousness of sin also is awakened, the feeling of unworthiness and guilt, from which man cannot escape. Hence "God needs to be manifested as love," and to offer the assurance of forgiveness. But what then becomes of the justice of God? how shall the sacredness of his law be established, if the sinner is thus pardoned? Here an important question comes up. While we can view only with abhorrence the old doctrine of a vicarious atonement, we must confess that we have been a little disturbed by the practical workings of the opposite theory, where the love of God is dwelt upon without regard to his justice. Both are elements of the Divine nature, and must be united in every dispensation, law, and act of God. Guilt is with him something more than misfortune, and the sentiments with which we are to look upon it and treat it are of a nature entirely different. We can, therefore, as Christians, have little sympathy with the philanthropists who look only with pity on those who, by violating just human laws, subject themselves to the penalty. They are, undoubtedly, to be treated with compassion, as unfortunate; but also with justice, as guilty. So far as we confound the distinction between guilt and misfortune, and thus favor the weakly sentimentality which assumes the name of love, but which is only in another form the foolish spirit of indulgence by which so many promising children are ruined, we disarm society of a most effectual instrument of protection, and expose to crime thousands who might have been preserved from it by a healthful tone of public sentiment. So, in all the relations of life, love, pity, compassion must be united with a keen sense of justice, or they lose their distinguishing excellence. In the Unitarian writings that we have seen on these subjects, the two classes of attributes have been kept separate from each other. In treating of the goodness of God, they often betray a leaning to the weakness of which we have spoken, losing sight of the great fact, that justice is an essential ingredient of the Divine goodness; and

then they hold up the laws of retribution, without regard to the nature of the mind, as if they were fashioned like physical laws, and to be enforced with the same unconscious and unalterable severity. Combe's "Constitution of Man," an admirable work as relates to the body, but wholly at fault when its principles are applied to the mind, furnishes the type of too much of our philosophy when treating of this great subject. The laws of matter a brute, unconscious subject must, from the nature of the substance in which they reside, be fixed and unchangeable. So far as we are subject to them, we expect no reprieve. But, as moral beings, we are endowed with a moral freedom of will, and the laws of God's moral kingdom must and do adjust themselves always to the changes growing out of this essential condition of our being. If, therefore, we would get at the heart of our religion, and understand what is meant by the riches of God's mercy, grace, and love, as manifested in Christ, and as taken in connection with what we are also told of his justice, we must look on the dispensation of the Gospel as vitally associated with the mysterious principle of free agency, which belongs alike to God and all his moral agents, and in respect to which we can draw no analogies from the laws of the physical universe.

But, not to dwell longer on this point, we enter most heartily into Dr. Bushnell's statement, that, while Christ has come to offer pardon and justification to the sinner, he has also brought the law closer to men's souls, and given it even a more sacred rigor and verity than it had before his advent." This he has done, first, by his teachings, the law of God being nowhere so rigorously enforced as in the Sermon on the Mount; secondly, by his own obedience to it; and thirdly, by the pains which he has taken to bring us back to it.

"Every thing he does and suffers, every labor, weariness, self-denial, and sorrow, becomes an expression of his sense of the value of the law, every pang he endures declares its sacredness." (pp. 228, 229.) The law of God," Dr. Bushnell adds, "is yet more impressively sanctified by Christ, if possible, in the article of his death, considered as counterpart to the uses of blood in the ritual." This last consideration may have had its effect on Jewish converts, but we have been so much more in the habit of looking on Judaism through Christianity than on Christianity through Judaism, that it does not come to us with much force.