of our sins, and thus expiating, because exhausting, our curse? —or only, as a disciple of Schleiermacher would phrase it, the necessary and crowning consummation of a life of entire obedience and self-sacrifice, which itself constitutes, from first to last, the one redeeming atoning act, the perfecting of his justifying obedience by suffering? We must say, that the following sentences, which occur in close connection with the foregoing, and are explanatory of them, seem to us to bear too close a resemblance to the latter view :

"All he came to do by action had already been finished. But his greatest trial was still awaiting him; his work was still incomplete. The hour of the power of darkness, as he himself calls it, was still to come. His great work was to be completed and made perfect, as every truly great work must be, by suffering; for no work can be really great, unless it be against the course of the world, in unison, indeed, with the order of the world, as constituted by God, but against that order as perverted by sin, unless it be an endeavour to correct this perverted order, and to re-establish the right one; nor unless we manifest our own sense of its greatness by our readiness to give up our own personal interests and pleasures, and comforts, and to endure hardship and pain, and bereavement, and death itself, for the sake of its accomplishment. Thus it was, by losing his own life, in every possible way; by the agony in the garden, by the flight and denial of those whom he had chosen out of the world to be his companions and friends,-by the mockery and cruelty of those whom his goodness and purity rendered more bitter against him,-by the frantic and murderous cries of the people whom he had loaded with every earthly benefit, and whom he desired to crown with eternal blessings, and by the closing sufferings on the cross, that Jesus was to gain his own life, and the everlasting life of all who will believe on him."

There is obviously nothing here which necessarily implies the idea of penal suffering in the orthodox sense, or any thing, in short, beyond Schleiermacher's doctrine of obedience perfected in suffering, and glorified by it. Considered in this view, the sufferings of Christ, transcendent as they are in perfection and glory, are not in their nature essentially different from those which are accomplished in his members. As his life and death was one act of perfect obedience and selfsacrifice, so, according to their measure, and according as they live by faith in him, are theirs. Accordingly, our author, a little further on in the same sermon, proceeds :

"The work which Christ on this day finished for us was wrought with the intent that it should also be wrought in us by him, and by us for him. As all God's words and works are at once universal and individual, embracing the whole order of things, and applying to every single member of it, so the work which our Saviour finished on the cross was finished at once for his whole church, and for every single member of that church, and is to be finished in and by his whole

church. and in and by every single member of it. Yes, my brethren, the work which Christ finished on the cross was finished for every one of you, and is to be finished by him in every one of you, and by every one of you for him."

There is a sense, of course, in which these statements will be admitted by all, and in which they convey a truth precious alike to every genuine follower of Christ. In one aspect of them, the life and death of Jesus is the type and pattern, as well as the spring, of a similar warfare and victory, to be accomplished in each of his living members, who in this sense. are in very deed predestinated to be conformed unto the image of his Son. Thus we suffer with him, overcome with him, reign with him, bearing about with us in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that his life also may be made manifest in our mortal body. We cling to this blessed truth, and would feed on it in the hidden communion of the heart with as fervent and adoring a faith as those do who make this the all in all of Christianity. But we protest against it as a whole account of the work of Christ upon the cross, or of our interest and share in it; and we maintain, in harmony, we believe, with the clearest utterances of the Divine Word, that there is another sense, and one still more profoundly precious to the conscience of man, in which the Redeemer's sufferings stand peerless and alone, admitting of no imitation and needing no repetition. In the discipline of suffering, and the victory of faith and patience, he has had and will have many followers; but in the path of penal and expiatory sorrow, he hath trod the winepress alone, and of the people there were none with him.

All this, we would fain hope, our author would not deny ; but certainly it is not contained in the above passage, or, so far as we can see, in any part of the sermon from which we have quoted-a sermon, be it remembered, on the express subject of the end of Christ's sufferings, addressed to a plain congregation on a day consecrated to the remembrance and contemplation of the great mystery of redemption. If our author holds this doctrine in his heart, in the full orthodox sense, it is plain, at least to us, that it is sadly overshadowed and cast into the background by other views, precious, indeed, in themselves, and necessary to a full exhibition of the Christian sys

* Sermons preached in Herstmonceux Church. Second vol. pp. 387, 389, 391, 392. We wish we could have found room for the whole passage, but we believe we have not omitted any thing essential to do full justice to our author's views. Let the reader who wishes to prosecute this subject compare this sermon with Maurice's on the "Prince of Sufferers," already referred to; Trench's lecture on "Sacrifice," in the Hulsean Lectures; and the sermon on "The Crucifixion" (also a Good Friday sermon), in Kingsley's Village Sermons, and he will discern the same general tendency on this head pervading them all,-the tendency to regard the last sufferings of Christ in connection with his whole life, and as its crowning and perfecting act, rather than as possessing in themselves a distinctly penal nature and peculiar expiatory virtue.

tem, but which have grown in his mind, and that of his school, to a too exclusive and hurtful predominance. We sometimes feel, in lingering over these pages, as if we were gazing on the setting sun, and as if the rich glow of evangelic thought and feeling that is diffused over them were only the parting hues of a bright day, soon to be followed by a dark and cheerless night. But we would fain and fondly cling to a better hope. Upon the whole, then, while we are not prepared to charge Archdeacon Hare with a clear and decided divergence from the received orthodox belief on this vital subject, we are, we think, fully warranted in complaining of an exceeding vagueness and incertitude on the whole subject. When we have said this we have made a charge sufficiently serious. Any vagueness or uncertainty of view in regard to a matter so infinitely momentous as the nature of the great propitiation, must constitute a grievous flaw in any theology in which it exists. It cannot stand alone. It must injuriously affect more or less our whole conceptions of the system of divine truth. An error or defect in a matter of subordinate importance may exist in the mind without danger to any vital interest of faith or holiness; but a disease at the heart must work, and just to the degree in which it is itself serious, with baneful effect on the whole body of Christian truth and life. Our views of God, of sin, of the law, of conversion, of the workings of nature and of grace, will take their colour more or less from the conceptions we have formed of this great central article, which sheds light upon them all, and is illustrated reciprocally by them, and therefore any material unsoundness here must give a new character to the whole revelation of God, and tend, so far as it goes, to change into another gospel the one everlasting gospel of Christ. For this reason we cannot but regard the defect we have been pointing out as a very painful feature in the writings of this school, and such as must render them a most unsafe regimen for such of our earnest and genial youth as are disposed to yield them any thing like an entire or paramount admiration.*

Those who are at all acquainted with modern German theology will not need to be told how closely the tone and spirit of the above passages resemble that of the school of Schleiermacher. With him, too, the person of Christ is the grand central vivifying principle. The mystical union is the all in all of theology and of the Christian life. By that union we obtain spiritual life, and by the continuance and growing intimacy of that union in the inward fellowship of the spirit that life is sustained, developed, perfected. He himself, too, in his person and his life, is our righteousness, and we are justified and accepted simply as his members. His whole existence on earth was one redeeming, atoning act in our behalf, and his sufferings and death possessed no peculiar virtue, save as the crowning and consummating act of such a life of entire obedience and sublime self-sacrifice as he led for us in the flesh. His death, then, was not a satisfaction to divine justice in any proper sense, but his whole earthly course in life and death was a sacrifice of obedience wellpleasing to God-according to Schleiermacher's own formula, a satisfactory substitution. Thus it will be seen, that in regard to the mystical union, and the positive

For ourselves, we declare for the clear, strong, assured utterance of our old theology on this and other fundamental truths. In a matter which touches the very question of a sinner's hope before God, nothing can meet the urgent exigencies of the soul but a clear, express, categorical deliverance. Here any thing like an uncertain sound is inadmissible. Men must have something solid to grasp and to hang by as for their lives. God's message to the world must be delivered in language which all men can understand; it must consist of announcements, not dim and shadowy speculations. In this respect the old evangelism has been well tried, and has not been found wanting. For three centuries it has constituted the very pith and marrow of whatever was living and strong in the Reformation churches, the spring of all the mighty energies they have put forth in behalf of souls and of the world. The most affecting, the most satisfying, the most spirit-stirring of all messages ever addressed to men, this old story of the cross has stirred the spirits and won the hearts of men of every varied class and character. In university churches, amid simple rural flocks, amid thieves and thimbleriggers in Moorfields, among strong iron-sinewed men around mines and pitmouths, arrested thousands have hung upon its proclamations, and bowed heart-stricken beneath its power. It has melted hearts, awakened and healed consciences, roused dormant energies, "created a soul" within the breasts of the most dull and apathetic. It has indeed been the power of God unto salvation to every one that has believed it, wherever its glad tidings have been carried and preached in living words by earnest men; and sorely do we fear that if the company of its preachers shall pass away, it will be but ill-compensated by those vague generalities, blended as they may be with much delightful evangelic thought, which it seems to be the tendency of the times to substitute in its place.

We are willing, indeed, to believe that some of those against whom we thus complain are themselves better than their own theology. We know well, and it is often an immense comfort to remember it, that saving truth is often implicitly held and lived on to a much larger extent than it is explicitly enunciated, or even clearly confessed, to one's self,-held, as it were, in solution, as an unseen though real element of life within their

justifying righteousness of Christ, his views approach comparatively near to the orthodox view; the point of divergence-a divergence wide as the poles asunder-is in the matter of the expiatory virtue of his sufferings. It is remarkable enough to find in our author and his friends the same comparative clearness in regard to the two former points, and a vagueness scarcely distinguishable from his doctrine in regard to the latter. In other points, such as the office and work of the Holy Spirit, their sound views of the doctrine of the Trinity raise them, of course, immeasurably above the level of his theology, and this may perhaps act as a conservative principle to preserve them from some of his worst errors.

hearts; but in such a case men will usually be better than their disciples, and that which in the fathers was only a defect or vague incertitude, will, in the children, issue in a total renunciation of the most vital and saving truths.

II. We have already seen that a certain laxity of view, in regard to the authority and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, was a result antecedently not improbable in the case of writers marked by the general tendencies we have ascribed to our author and his friends. The habit of regarding the Christian economy mainly in the light of an educative system, and contemplating it in a subjective rather than in an objective point of view, almost necessarily leads to our fixing our eyes rather on the general spirit and bearing of the sacred writings, and on the great central facts which they historically establish, than on their positive and distinct discoveries. To such an one, the conviction of the entire infallibility of each separate statement in the Bible will obviously be much less a matter of felt necessity, than to him who, regarding the Divine Word pre-eminently in the light of a message from God to a ruined world, receives every sentence as a voice from heaven, and builds upon it as the very foundation of his hope for eternity. In short, the whole religious scheme of these writers is far less dependent for its support on the letter of the written Word, than that of the great body of evangelical divines in this country, and therefore naturally, and almost inevitably, hangs more loosely by it. Then, again, the Platonic cast of mind which more or less characterises all this school, leading them to receive all truth rather as commending itself to their intuitive reason than as authenticated by any outward authority, falls in with the same tendency, and contributes to render the relation between the Bible and Christianity less direct, intimate, and necessary than it ever must be in the view of those who build their whole faith and hope on its explicit testimony, as the immutable and eternal rock of truth. Thus, judging even à priori, we might have been warranted, without any breach of charity, in regarding these writers with some measure of solicitude as regards this important point, and scarce expecting from them a very certain sound in regard to a matter which the great body of religious men in this country regard as deeply affecting the very foundations of the faith.

* This close connection between the prominence of objective doctrine in any system, and the views of inspiration held by its adherents, may be illustrated by the whole course of theological speculation in Germany in recent times. The more entirely subjective that theology has been, the lower, generally speaking, have been its views of the authority of the Divine Word, insomuch that an ascending scale of doctrine, from Schleiermacher to Olshausen and Hengstenberg, might serve almost equally well for a scale of inspiration. The left and the right hold equally good under both heads; and the middle school (represented by Nitsch, Neander, Tholuck) under the one category, is equally the middle school under the other. This is surely not accidental, but the result of a deep connection in the nature of things.