for our guidance and consolation. It is as the prophet of Humanity, that we own and accept Christ with religious veneration. It is in this character that we are willing to bow our hearts to the sway of his spirit, and commit our lives to the pure and noble impulses of his god-like example.

After all, we must come to the incomprehensible at last— to that mysterious relationship which subsists in Christ, as the highest form of manhood, between the human and the divine. Only let us not force it on prematurely or unnecessarily. The finite and the infinite are really brought into no closer or more explicable union, on Mr. Bushnell's than on the Unitarian Hypothesis; and the language of Scripture which is supposed to call for this-not simply incomprehensible, but absolutely self-destructive, phenomenon would be just as full of religious meaning, and express as deeply and solemnly the manifestation of the Divine through the Human-if accepted for the overflow of poetic fulness from a devout heart, as if compelled to find a rigid and literal interpretation in some objective reality. In truth, what acts upon and influences man's soul-what brings Deity and the blessed warmth and vital power of religion, home to every human bosom-comes to us with the same evidence and authority, and stands on precisely the same footing, as far as the divine presence in the midst of us is concerned-whether we recognize in Christ a Man filled and possessed to the inmost depths of heart and will with the intensest consciousness of union with the omnipresent God, or whether we suppose him the intermediate being, finite and infinite conjoined, compounded half of man and half of God, whose intervention, we are told, is necessary to bridge over the gulph between the seen and the unseen worlds. We can draw no other conclusion even from Mr. Bushnell's own words :

"As to any metaphysical or speculative difficulties involved in the union of the divine and the human, I dismiss them all, by observing that Christ is not here for the sake of something accomplished in the metaphysical or psychological interior, but for that which appears and is outwardly signified in his life. And it is 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. Regarding Christ in His exterior, and, as it were, æsthetic way, he is that Holy Thing in which my God is brought to me,brought even down to a fellow relation with me. I shall not call him two. I shall not decompose him and label off his doings, one to the credit of his divinity, and another to the credit of his humanity. I shall receive him in the simplicity of faith, as my one Lord and Saviour, nor any the less so that he is my brother." -P. 147.

We must be excused for calling this a kind of theologic vapouring. A man makes statements flagrantly at variance with overt phænomena, and when he is pressed with the consequences, he coolly tells us, he shall not offer any explanation, but only insist on the phænomena that are admitted as fully by ourselves as by him. Mere language-conceding it all the force that is contended for -(inasmuch as it admits of another solution) is no plea for the assumption of an astounding contradiction, which it appears after all has no effect on the ultimate results, and leaves them in the very same relation to the human soul, as if it had never been introduced.

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The second discourse (on the Atonement)-delivered before the Divinity School in Harvard University—is the most elaborate of the three. But though it contains some fine and noble passages, it is blemished by a good deal of special pleading, and comes to no satisfactory conclusion. It is here that the principles which he has developed in his preliminary dissertation, for the use of symbolical language -are brought most freely into play. He cuts the doctrine of the Atonement into two corresponding halves-the subjective and the objective view. With a few exceptions, we accept almost entirely his statement of the former view, which he has set forth with great argumentative skill, and much felicity of illustration. The Atonement in its subjective sense-as here defined, is the deliverance of man through the new moral power brought into the world by Christ, from the enthralment of sin. Expulsion of sin is the one great end of Christ's mediation; and this end is accomplished by making men feel, in the circumstances of his death, at once the sanctity of the moral law, and the mercy of God in relieving them from the

penalty of its violation. But we will let Mr. Bushnell be his own expositor:

"Such a character [as Christ's] has, of necessity, an organific power. It enters into human thought and knowledge as a vital force and since it is perfect, a vital force that cannot die or cease to work. It must of necessity organise a kingdom of life and reign. The ideas it has revealed, and the spirit it has breathed into the air, are quick and powerful, and must live till the world itself is no more. The same sun may shine above, the same laws of nature may reign about us, but the grand society of man embodies new elemental forces, and the capacity, at some time or other, of another and a glorious renovated state. The entering of one such perfect life into the world's history, changes, in fact, the consciousness of the race."-P. 185.

"Sin, once existing, becomes, and even must become, a corporate authority—a law or Ruling Power, in the world, opposite to God." "To break the organic force of social evil, thus dominant over the race, Christ enters the world, bringing into human history, and incorporating in it as such, that which is Divine. The Life manifested in him becomes an historic power and presence in the world's bosom, organising there a new Society or Kingdom, called the Kingdom of Heaven, or sometimes the church. For the church is not a body of men holding certain dogmas, or maintaining, as men, certain theologic wars for God; but it is the Society of the Life, the Embodied Word. Thus it is expressly declared to be the body of Christ, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. Hence our blessed Lord, just before his passion, considering that now the organic force of evil was to be broken, said, now is the judgment of this world, now is the prince of this world cast out. The princedom of evil is dissolved-the eternal Life, manifested in the world, organises a new society of life, breaks the spell for ever of social evil, and begins a reign of truth and love that shall finally renew the world."-P. 188.

This subjective process, the power of which is ultimately resolvable into a profound influence on man's heart and will-is aided, according to our author, and stimulated into stronger action, by an objective representation-by the dramatising-as it were-of human relations towards God-which acts with an æsthetic force on the mind. We cannot indeed-he argues-give the dogmatic "equivalents of the life and death of Jesus Christ;" for the only real equivalent is the representation of the life itself.

"It is not absurd, however, to say something about the subject, if only we do not assume the adequacy of what we say :-we could offer some theoretical views of a tragedy, but our theoretic matter would not be the tragedy. No more can we set forth, as a real and proper equivalent, any theoretic matter of ours concerning the life and death of Jesus Christ, which is the highest and most moving tragedy ever acted in this mortal sphere; a tragedy distinguished in the fact that God is the chief character, and the divine feeling, moved in tragic earnest-Goodness Infinite manifested through Sorrow-the passion represented."-P. 184.

This reference to scenic effect is a favourite topic with Mr. Bushnell, and it is here that we find our point of divergency from his system. With us, the subjective impression-the state of mind produced towards Christ and God-is everything—the objective accompaniments of the case having no moral significance whatever, but as they take a colour from the reflexions of the mind itself. In Mr. Bushnell's view, the public death of Christ with the propitiatory ideas investing it, is something ultimate, prearranged and progressively led up to in the eternal order of Providence the indispensable condition and immediate cause of the state of mind where the salvation of the Christian is to be found. With us the spiritual change originating in the mind of Christ and imparted through moral sympathy to other minds-gives all their value to the outward circumstances under which it was developed, and which can only so far be regarded as the subject of special appointment, that they occupy their fitting place in the comprehensive scheme of Providence. With him, the inward renovation takes its character from the occurrence of a particular event, and even depends on it for the possibility of existence. The distinction is a vital one. To our feelings, we must confess, there is something offensive, and out of harmony with the unobtrusive simplicity which marks the Divine dealings with mankind -in the notion so emphatically dwelt on by Mr. Bushnell -of God's getting up a grand spectacle for the sake of a calculated effect. We here see the certain consequence of seeking to place the efficacy of Christ's mediation on any other ground, than its action on human convictions and sympathies. Divines rush into the contradictory and im

possible to account for that intercourse and union between God and Man, which is neither more nor less conceivable on one supposition than the other; and when they have thus cut off the channel of natural sympathy, they resort to the mystic spells of the imagination, and overwhelm the mind with a terrific display of the agony and bloody sweat and death-struggle of a God, at which earth trembles to her centre, and the sun hides his face for dismay. To us this reads like the poetry of a lingering heathenism in the traditions of Christianity. So the Greeks, when their national mind was first awakening to its moral consciousness, did not trust to the representation of simple humanity for dramatic effect, but brought heroes and demigods on the stage, that by the contemplation of their crimes and woes, the heart might receive a deeper impression and be awakened to a strange and awful sympathy. That such stimulants should be felt necessary, is conclusive evidence of the actual weakness of the moral sentiments. It indicates a time, when imagination was still more powerful than conscience.

With these views of the objective value of the Atonement, erroneous as we deem them in the main, a profound truth is collaterally blended, in the importance which the author justly attaches to every influence which is fitted to carry the mind out of itself. So far as the Atonement takes away the inducements to scrupulousness and morbid self-introspection, it works with beneficial effect. But the same result would follow-and we believe more perfectly from any earnest surrender of the heart and will immediately to God. In the most favourable view, the doctrine of Atonement can only be regarded as a disciplinary process (inevitable it may be in certain conditions of mental advancement) to help the affections out of the bondage of anthropomorphic conceptions of God, into a purer service of freedom and love-all propitiatory obligations being henceforth cancelled by the one propitiation of Christ. There is a large element of truth in the following observation:

"Christianity, set forth as a mere subjective, philosophic doctrine, would fail, just where all philosophies have failed. Instead of bringing us into the bosom of a divine culture, it would throw CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 49.

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