give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish." John 10: 27, 28.-If Martha, sorrowing because her brother is in the grave, hastens to meet the Redeemer, and when told by Him, "thy brother shall rise again," cannot be comforted, supposing that Jesus referred only to the rising at the last day, she is then assured that life greater than that which would appear on the morning of the resurrection was embodied in Him at that very moment, and could manifest itself upon the spot. His words are: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." John 11: 25, 26.-And then when Jesus himself is about to die, and he had to say to his disciples, "the hour is come," He seemed to gather great consolation from the thought that by a death unjustly induced and agonizing, life, spiritual and eternal, would go out from Him and reproduce itself as it never could have done without such a death. He calls that trying hour, the hour in which the Son of Man should be glorified, (Sosaoon,") and immediately adds: "I say unto you except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." John 12: 23, 24.

In adducing this passage in support of Mr. Coleridge's view of the atonement, we do not mean to say that there were not other and distinctive modes in which Christ was glorified in his death, besides that of giving forth his life to be reproduced in the hearts of men. We do not even affirm that the image of the corn of wheat dying to give its life out, and so beautifully appropriate as introduced by the Redeemer to convey the idea that, by dying, His own life would emerge and diffuse itself over an apostate world to regenerate and save it, was used by Him in this passage for that purpose only; but we do affirm that if it was the intention of Jesus to tell the world that that spiritual Vitality which, as it came out from Him during his life, had sanctified and blessed so many hearts, would at his death, and ever afterwards, manifest itself with a power and result indefinitely increased, it is difficult to see how He could have uttered the thought with more expressive significancy than through this very image of the dying grain of wheat. As every seed must die, in order to give forth its life, as indeed nothing is quickened except its previous form dies, as even the animal creation and the spirits of men, must put off their old investitures and organization in order to manifest a more efficient and exalted existence; as empires, when falling, yield up the material for new and better ones; and martyrs speak most powerfully from the flames, if dying words, having bound up in them the struggles, aspirations, and ultimated experience of a whole previous state of being, have always been the words which have lived, and carried "spirit," and conveyed life to others; is it singular that Jesus should say to His disciples, sad and wondering at

his speedily approaching departure, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Does He not here mean to say, that as a corn of wheat cannot put its life forth except it die, so the laws for the development and reproduction of His own life are such that dissolution under the appointed circumstances would send that life forth with accumulated power, to perform its sublime and sanctifying work: thus confirming the idea that the heart of man might be renewed and fortified by the quickening energy of Christ's life as it emerged from himself, and was inducted into them by the Spirit. What is made thus probable by the words of Jesus, and the analogies of nature and human existence, is confirmed by the facts that soon transpired at the cross, and have continued ever since. The Centurion believed when he saw Christ's agony and heard his prayer, and so did the condemned malefactor. Forty days afterwards, thousands repented that they had killed the "Prince of Life," and were baptized in the name of Jesus. In thirty years Christianity crossed the Mediterranean, and in three hundred was on the throne of the Cæsars converting their armies.

As in the life-time of Jesus a virtue went out from Him to heal the diseased as they touched but his garments, so after He died and ascended on high, virtue and immortal life still issued from Him with a wonderfully exalting and regenerating power, augmenting its triumphs as if the kingdoms of this world were all to become the kingdoms of our Lord. With this testimony before us we are prepared to hear even the apostle Paul direct the Roman Christians to a "law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," as all-sufficient and necessary to free them from the "law of sin and death." We are prepared also to hear him assure the Corinthians, when speaking of death and the ruin occasioned by the sin of Adam, that " as the first Adam was made only a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

With this view of redemption we are not disappointed that many who have felt in sadness, the death-bringing power of sin, should cleave with grateful and adoring joy to the life-giving power in the Saviour's person and atoning work; delighting to believe that if through Adam a law was introduced into our world bringing sin and death, through Christ another and stronger law was introduced bringing life and peace, and yet when in their dying hours asked as to the ground of their hopes, compelled to answer in the solemn and discriminating words of a departed saint, "Just so far forth as the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death, just so far forth have I hope and no farther." Neither are we surprised that the learned and revered Neander should utter as his last words in the American Preface to his Life of Jesus, " Perhaps the impulse which the

American mind has received from the profound Coleridge, who, (like Schleiermacher among ourselves) has testified that Christianity is not so much a definite system of conceptions as a power of life, may have contributed, and may still further contribute to prepare the way for a new tendency of scientific theology in your beloved country."

Whether the hopes of this distinguished historian and Christian teacher, in relation to the theological tendencies of our country, will ever be realized, it is difficult to say; there is nodoubt that as a nation we need an inward and subjective culture; a young and busy people incline to the outward and superficial in everything. In theology as in life they will be attracted by forms and systems, rather than by that which gives the power to any form or system; because the appearance is always easier to see and to apprehend than the reality; they will look at effects rather than at their causes, direct their attention to conduct rather than to the feelings which dictate it, in religion to statements and formalities, rather than to the universal truths that are embodied in the rituals and the beliefs. This tendency in our nation, nowhere manifests itself more distinctly than in the views which are often taken of this very subject of the atonement. One effect of Christ's work has been prominently contemplated by one portion of the church, and another by a different portion, until at length general and diverse theories have been constructed on the basis of each specific image, designed, with others, only to magnify a common and grander end: and thus a figure of speech, drawn from some local custom in a Roman or Jewish community, is permitted to determine the range of an event whose bearings may be as wide as the whole circle of the universe. Hence it is a subject of congratulation, as Neander has intimated, that Coleridge's writings have been introduced among us: he thinks they may prepare the way for a new theological tendency, and calls them "profound." It is certainly true that they direct the mind away from all theories founded only on some local and outward event to a fact which must be admitted to exist as a theme for endless gratitude, viz. to the life-imparting power of Jesus in His redemption: which may be illustrated and magnified by many outward events, and confirmed by many moral and scriptural considerations. For example:

The fact that the life of a fallen first-parent has passed over into the human race, and entailed upon it serious moral disabilities, does, of itself, make it probable that if that race should ever be redeemed, it might be by the transmission of the Life of God into the soul of man, through some appropriate channel. And what more appropriate channel than an incarnation of Jehovah, with its accompaniments of sorrow, and toil, and death, brought close to human hearts.

Not only is our race a fallen one, but that fall is perpetuated by

the life of the first Adam still lingering and working death in the chambers of the soul.

By whatever laws the influence and character of one being may infuse itself into the source of another's existence, by those laws have the perponderating affinities of the fallen Adam obtained the control in human hearts. Not only are men sinners, but in a sense they are sinners by their nature. They come into the world with hereditary prepossessions, occasioned by the transmitted and reproductive emanations from their beguiled original. Now, if the evil tendencies of such a fall, from such a source, working in such a way, are to be met and overcome, have we not reason to believe that it will be done by a greater life from a greater source, transmitted by similar laws, working with as wide-spread and even intenser power, until conveyed into the hearts of all the nations to purify and save them?

Such a source of life was Jesus Christ. "In Him was life." Such a restorative power began to go out from Him as he toiled and died in Palestine; and has been transmitted from Him by invisible agencies, as He sits on the throne of His glory, and now waits to enter and sanctify the hearts of men. It was to be expected, that if God redeemed men from the Fall, it would be done by bringing before them, and into them, a being and influence stronger than that which had betrayed and despoiled them; even "force against force, law against law, incessant and inward action of a heavenly kind, against incessant and inward action of an earthly kind, i. e. a law of life against a law of death.

It may be well here to add, that the words of the apostles are just such as they would have been, had they believed that the life of a pure and holy Being, claiming to be God, yet appearing as a man, had penetrated the sources of their own being, and was manifesting itself to their consciousness in irrepressible longings that Christ might be formed in other hearts.

Take, for example, Paul's letter to the Galatians: after a few words of salutation, in which he speaks of Christ giving himself for our sins, that "He might deliver us from this present evil world," he alludes to the time when "it pleased God to reveal His Son in him ;" and then, with a most animating description of the power which that vision, and those words of Jesus, which he received on his way to Damascus, had on him, closes the 2nd chapter with that memorable passage, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Commencing the third chapter with an expression of surprise that the Galatians should have been led away from Christ, he asks them whether they received the Spirit by adhesion to an outward ceremonial, or by faith in an inward and crucified

Jesus? He reminds them in the fourth chapter, that he should travail in pain for them, until Christ again be "formed within them ;" and closes in the fifth and sixth chapters with earnest exhortations that they would stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free, assuring them, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availed any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature."

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So the Epistle to the Romans: whilst parts of it contain the idea of legal justification, conveyed under the image of propitiation; and whilst the first four chapters are taken up with an elaborate argument to show that an external and sacrificial righteousness can avail nothing in the sight of God; yet the design of the epistle is to magnify the blessing of Christ's redemption, and to show that as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many shall be made righteous;" that "as sin reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Then, as if the apostle would show to men the mode of their redemption, after complaining bitterly, and at length, of the laws of his being that warred against the better laws of his mind, he closes with the exulting assurance, There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit; for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

The prayer of this same apostle in the Epistle to the Ephesians is, "that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith;" and among his last exhortations to them is the following, "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light."-He tells the Colossians that their "life is hid with Christ in God."

The other writings of this apostle, as well as the Epistles of Peter and of John, are just such as would come from men who had so seen and loved the Lord Jesus, that His spirit had infused itself into their very nature. All their words are more or less about Him. If for a moment they speak of something else, it is only to honor Him who was formed within their hearts. They cannot write a page without introducing His name whom "having not seen they loved." Christ seemed to be in them in a very peculiar and significant sense. John says in his epistle as he had done throughout his gospel, "That which was from the beginning which we have seen, that eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us, that declare we unto you, that your joy may be full," or as Paul says, that you may glorify God

in us.

If it should be urged as an objection to this view of Christ's work for the souls of men,

"That there is a mysteriousness about it, a want of definiteness THIRD SERIES, VOL. V., No. 3

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