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St. Paul's line of thought is not new, is not of our discovering. It belongs to the "Zeit-Geist," or time-spirit, it is in the air, and many have long been anticipating it, preparing it, setting forth this and that part of it, till there is not a part, probably, of all we have said, which has not already been said by others before us, and said more learnedly and fully than we can say it. All we have done is to give a plain, popular, connected exposition of it; for which, perhaps, our notions about culture, about the many sides to the human spirit, about making these sides help one another instead of remaining enemies and strangers, have been of some advantage. For most of those who read St. Paul diligently are Hebraisers; they regard little except the Hebraising impulse in us and the documents which concern it. They have little notion of letting their consciousness play on things freely, little ear for the voice of the Zeit-Geist; and they are so immersed in an order of thoughts and words which are peculiar, that, in the broad general order of thoughts and words, which is the life of popular exposition, they are not very much at home.

Thirdly, and in the last place, we by no means put forth our version of St. Paul's line of thought as true, in the same fashion as Puritanism puts forth its Scriptural

Protestantism, or gospel, as true. Their truth the Puritans exhibit as a sort of cast-iron product, rigid, definite, and complete, which they have got once for all, and which can no longer have anything added to it or anything withdrawn from it. But of our rendering of St. Paul's thought we conceive rather as of a product of nature, which has grown to be what it is and which will grow more; which will not stand just as we now exhibit it, but which will gain some aspects which we now fail to show in it, and will drop some which we now give it; which will be developed, in short, further, just in like manner as it has reached its present stage by development.

Thus we present our conceptions, neither as something quite new nor as something quite true; nor yet as any ground, even supposing they were quite new and true, for a separate church or religion. But so far they are, we think, new and true, and a fruit of sound development, a genuine product of the Zeit-Geist, that their mere contact seems to make the old Puritan conceptions look unlikely and indefensible, and begin a sort of rearrangement and refacing of themselves. Let us just see how far this change has practically gone.

The formal and scholastic version of its theology, Calvinist or Arminian, as given by its seventeenth century fathers, and enshrined in the trust-deeds of so

many of its chapels, of this, at any rate, modern Puritanism is beginning to feel shy. Take the Calvinist doctrine of election. "By God's decree a certain number of angels and men are predestinated, out of God's mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works in them, to everlasting life; and others foreordained, according to the unsearchable counsel of his will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to everlasting death." In that scientific form, at least, the doctrine of election begins to look dubious to the Calvinistic Puritan, and he puts it a good deal out of sight. Take the Arminian doctrine of justification. "We could not expect any relief from heaven out of that misery under which we lie, were not God's displeasure against us first pacified and our sins remitted. This is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free justification through the blood of Christ, that God's offence justly conceived against us for our sins (which would have been an eternal bar and restraint to the efflux of his grace upon us) being removed, the divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us." In that scientific form, the doctrine of justification begins to look less satisfactory to the Arminian Puritan, and he tends to put it out of sight.

The same may be said of the doctrine of election in its plain popular form of statement also. "I hold,"

says Whitefield, in the forcible style which so took his hearers' fancy, "I hold that a certain number are elected from eternity, and these must and shall be saved, and the rest of mankind must and shall be damned." A Calvinistic Puritan now-a-days must be either a fervid Welsh Dissenter, or a strenuous Particular Baptist in some remote place in the country, not to be a little staggered at this sort of expression. As to the doctrine of justification in its current, popular form of statement, the case is somewhat different. "My own works," says Wesley, "my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended God, so far from making any atonement for the least of those sins, which are more in number than the hairs of my head, that the most specious of them need an atonement themselves; that, having the sentence of death in my heart and nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope but that of being justified freely through the redemption that is in Jesus. The faith I want is a sure trust and confidence in God, that through the merits of Christ my sins are forgiven and I reconciled to the favour of God. Believe and thou shalt be saved! He that believeth is passed Faith is the free gift of God, which

from death to life.

he bestows not on

those who are worthy of his favour,

not on such as are previously holy and so fit to be

crowned with all the blessings of his goodness, but on the ungodly and unholy, who till that hour were fit only for everlasting damnation. Look for sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but Christ died." Deliverances of this sort, which in Wesley are frequent and in Wesley's followers are unceasing, still, no doubt, pass current everywhere with Puritanism, are expected, and find favour; they are just what Puritans commonly mean by Scriptural Protestantism, the truth, the gospel-feast. Nevertheless they no longer quite satisfy; the better minds among Puritans try instinctively to give some fresh turn or development to them; they are no longer, to minds of this order, an unquestionable word and a sure stay; and from this point to their final transformation the course is certain. The predestinarian and solifidian dogmas, for the very sake of which our Puritan churches came into existence, begin to feel the irresistible breath of the Zeit-Geist ; some of them melt quicker, others slower, but all of them are doomed. Under the eyes of this generation Puritan Dissent has to execute an entire change of front, and to present us with a new reason for its existing. What will that new reason be?

There needs no conjuror to tell us. It will be the Rev. Mr. Conder's reason, which we have quoted in our

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