Dr. Bushnell's interpretations are all to the opposite conclusion. We had proposed to examine some of them, but our limits will not allow us to do so at present. Perhaps on some future occasion we may show that his interpretations of special passages are as untenable as is the philosophical theory which made them necessary.

There are two passages, however, which we cannot pass over, they seem to us so decisive of what was preached by the apostles in respect to the design and import of the death of Christ. These are Rom. iii. 19-26, and 2 Cor. v. 18-21. In the first of these passages the starting-point is the thought that all are condemned and pronounced guilty. No mention is made of the pollution of sin. It is not even hinted at, so absorbing and overwhelming is the consideration of the ill-worthiness of the human race. The next thought is that a way of deliverance from this condition and of transference into another, is clearly manifest, being effected by believing in Christ. Then Christ himself is spoken of as taking the place of the old propitiatory offerings. Christ, to become effective, must be received with faith, as these offerings were made effectual by the sprinkling of blood. The design and effect of this provision is to manifest in these last times that the past forbearance of God, in remitting sins committed in the previous ages, had been on grounds of justice, the death of Christ being all the while respected as the ground of this procedure. This thought the apostle dwells upon, and repeats it again, this is what I intend, that God has set forth Christ as a sacrifice, that at this time of the world's history his justice might be vindicated, in all his acts of justification, whether past, present, or future.'

·

This interpretation is, we believe, in the main correct. Not only is it sustained by the careful study of the words and the grammatical structure of the sentences, but it is required by a consideration of the logical relations of the parts of the passage to each other, and to the whole argument of the Epistle. Any other interpretation fails to meet these conditions of truth.

The second passage is interesting, as it purports to be an explicated statement of the import of the gospel which the apostle was accustomed to preach. God is through or by means of Christ reconciling the world of sinful men to him

self; but in what does the act consist? in not imputing their trespasses unto them. But what is this? Does it mean no more than that he imparts to them inward purity, or that he gives them that favor of God which they had forfeited? Which of these two thoughts is expressed in the apostle's words, or was in fact in the apostle's mind? Who can doubt that there was but one thought in his mind and which of the two was that one? This is made more clear, if possible, by his summary of the message of entreaty "in Christ's stead" "be ye reconciled to God." Here the responsibility is thrown upon the men addressed, of bringing themselves into that relation to which they were invited. The argument gathers strength when the reason for their compliance is added. For he hath made him [Christ] to be treated as though he were a sinner, to the end that he might treat us as though we had never sinned.' Into the effect described in the words "that ye might be made the righteousness of God in him," the additional import may enter that they also might be made really righteous or "inwardly pure," but this is not the consideration prominent in the mind of Paul.

It would seem that no more clear, precise, or decisive explanations could be asked for or given, respecting the "vicarious sacrifice," than are furnished in these two passages.

We cannot bring to this abrupt conclusion our remarks upon what we regard the oversights and errors of Dr. Bushnell, without a single additional observation. While he contends most earnestly against the doctrine of the atonement as it is usually received, he contends as earnestly, that Christ has most amply sustained the rectoral honor of God, and deepened the impressions of men concerning his essential holiness. He has done this by sanctifying the precept of the law by his personal obedience, by threatening eternal judgment and perdition in a manner and in terms most awful and impressive, and by suffering all the corporate evils as well as the retributive causations under which the race exist. His exhibition of these truths are very earnest and impressive.

It seems then, after all, that Dr. B. contends as earnestly as any that an expression of God's holiness must be made as well as of God's mercy; that God's rectoral honor must be upholden as truly as his vicarious love; and that Christ most effectual

ly accomplished these objects. He only differs from us by denying that this expression was directly made by the incarnation and death, or that these are set forth as the ground of possible pardon. These express only tender love and pity. The work of Christ as a whole provides for an honorable ground of pardon, but not the humiliation of Christ to the cross. Christ does sustain God's rectoral honor, and thus provides for the propriety of pardon. But it is not by the great act of condescension unto death. This illustrates only the mercy of God.

He rejects the doctrine of a required expiation because his philosophical scheme provides no occasion for it, because, as he asserts most distinctly, there is no possible antagonism between justice and mercy, which makes an atonement necessary or even possible. How incorrect and untenable these assumptions are we have endeavored to establish. Into what defective in. terpretations of the Scriptures this philosophy has led him, we might more fully have shown, had our limits allowed.

The practical conceptions, however, which he everywhere exhibits of the place which Christ should hold in the soul of man, of the power which he is fitted to exert over his moral being, of the completeness of man's dependence upon him for all his salvation, and of the free grace from which this salvation proceeds, cannot be mistaken nor overlooked, except by those whose creed is more Christian than their justice or their charity. No one of our living writers can be easily named who gives to Christ a higher place, or who ascribes to his supernatural Incarnation and Work a larger honor, than does Dr. Bushnell. No one can be named. who has taken nobler and more comprehensive views of the completeness of Christ for every exigency which he recognizes. No one can conceive more vividly the tenderness, the sublimity, the subduing and constraining power of his self-sacrificing and vicarious love. No one certainly can draw out by a finer analysis the workings of that love upon the soul of man to purify and bumble, to elevate and ennoble, to sanctify and save his ruined nature. It is singular, remarks an acute critic in a private letter, that men who, like Bushnell and Robertson, reject the full import of the death of Christ, should make Christ a far more living and effective power than the majority of those who receive it. It is singular, yet, it must be confessed, it is true.

While, then, we reject the theory of Dr. Bushnell as falling short of the fullness of Scriptural truth, we recognize, with the utmost satisfaction, that he reaches substantially the Scriptural view of Christ's work in every possible practical application which may be made of it to the soul of man. In one view the prayer with which he concludes his book might be construed as a piece of unconscious irony perpetrated by himself upon his own theories. In another and more Christian construction, it ought to be regarded as the confession of the truth in which the heart is far more orthodox than the head. We think none

enables us by

the worse of our Congregational system that it its free and charitable spirit to recognize such a man as we know him, and as all the world knows him to be, as a Christian preacher with whom we may hold fellowship, while at the same time it allows us freely to discuss and refute the er rors of that philosophy which has so seriously misled him in the interpretation of the teachings of Scripture in respect to one of its most important doctrines.

ARTICLE V.-THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN CONNEC

TICUT.

The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, from the settlement of the Colony to the death of Bishop Seabury. By E. EDWARDS BEARDSLEY, D. D., Rector of St. Thomas Church, New Haven. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

We are under no temptation to speak otherwise than kindly of Dr. Beardsley's History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. We cannot but respect the author's attempt to trace the origin, the early difficulties and embarrassments, and the growth of the ecclesiastical body with which he is personally connected as the rector of an Episcopal congregation in New Haven, and as counting among his ancestors some of the earliest Episcopalian dissenters from the established churchorder of the colony; and we are happy to testify that the result is creditable not only to his diligence and carefulness in collecting, and his skill in arranging and combining the materials of the story, but also to his candor and Christian catholicity of spirit. It would be preposterous to expect from him such a history of Connecticut Episcopalianism as a Congregational pastor might have written. Recognizing him as an Episcopalian not only by inheritance and education, but also by personal conviction, and by the associations and sympathies of his religious experience, we cannot demand of him a perfect impartiality. We would honor him instead of blaming him for the undisguised affection with which he regards the subject of his story, and for that filial reverence toward his ecclesiastical forefathers which enables him to find heroes and confessors where we might not have thought of finding them. Nor do we deem his work unfit for other than Episcopalian readers. A man of whatever ecclesiastical connections, who would be really intelligent in respect to the church history of New England, must be willing to see the events and actors of that history not only in one light, but also in all the cross