being, these appear to be the only possible alternatives. For he admits that some of our race will be finally lost; and this admitted, one of the propositions stated above must be true, if his doctrine is true, for a fourth hypothesis is inconceivable. But Dr. Bushnell does not teach that the vicarious sacrifice was limited, in the design of Christ, to the saved; neither does he teach that it will mitigate the woe of the finally lost; nor does he admit that Christ was ignorant of the ultimate results of his intervention. Every one of these propositions he denies, either expressly or by implication. But denying these, nothing remains but the abandonment of his whole system, so far as it is peculiar, or the acceptance of the doctrine of universal restoration. To this doctrine his reasoning gravitates irresistibly, and in this it will end with every consistent thinker.

Having examined the doctrine of "The Vicarious Sacrifice" as to the nature of the moral law and as to God's relation to that law, we proceed to notice what it teaches concerning

IV. THE PENALTY OF SIN.

This penalty is represented as being partly a natural consequence of sin and partly a remedial discipline.

Dr. Bushnell, it will be recollected, speaks of the moral law as "self-existent," along with God, as before God's will" in the order of nature, and as "the spring of his character and conduct and beatitude forever." He is "in it," if not "under it;" yet truly under it, if all thought of restraint or of reluctant conformity be excluded. This, doubtless, is an error; the law is in him, rather than he in it; but Dr. Bushnell is self-consistent, for the most part, in carrying out his theory to its logical results, and therefore he speaks at length of "the law before government." On the supposition that any beings created under that law disregard it, he says: "As certainly as they are broken loose from right, they will be chafing in the bitter consciousness of wrong, doing wrong to each other, contriving wrong, writhing in the pains of wrong. Their whole internal state will be a nimbus of confusion. For though nothing is contrived in them and in the world to have retributive reaction, their simply being moral natures will compel them to suffer a tremendous shock of recoil." (241-2.) Mark also the following statement: "There is no express sanction to vindicate the law absolute, and no definitely understood sanction. Certain effects of disorder and pain would follow disobedience, but that they would follow in any scale of desert, we do not know. The

justice which they will execute, therefore, is only a blind, quasi justice, if it be anything that deserves the name." (255.) Accordingly future punishment may not be anything which "deserves the name of justice," for "the fact of future punishment was in the law of natural retribution from the first, just as gravity was in the world before it was declared by science; for the penal disorders once begun are not reducible by us." (342.) Moreover Christ is represented "as only declaring that which lies in the simply natural causalities of retribution." (343.) (343.) Again: "The doctrine of endless punishment, taken as put into words, was never anything but a version of the fact, that retributive causes are naturally endless in their propagations.'

But what of the law in government? It is only given to sinners and for their recovery to holiness; for this work says: "The instituted government and the redeeming sacrifice will begin at the same date and point, and work together for very nearly the same purpose. In the largest and most proper view, the instituted government will include redemption; for, beginning at the point of transgression, already broken loose, mere legislative and judicial action, plainly enough, cannot bring in the desired state of obedience." (244-5.) Note also the following language: "The instituted

government of God is fast anchored in the terms of justice, declaring definite penalties." (255.) Yet "We shall very soon convince ourselves, it appears to me, that God has not undertaken to dispense justice by direct infliction, but by a law of natural consequence. He has connected thus, with our moral and physical nature, a law of reaction, by which any wrong of thought, feeling, disposition, or act, provokes a retribution exactly fitted to it, and, with qualifications already given, to the desert of it." (282.) Again: "In one view, all the statutes he enacts are explicatory, simply, of the law before government. In another view, they are only vindicatory of the same. So that the one fundamental principle of right contains, or demands, in a way of organic enforcement, all the statutes ordained; having these for its complete explication or fulfilment." (254.) Finally, "all the statutes we speak of are executory of this law (before government), else they are nothing." (250.)

A close study of these and other passages in "The Vicarious Sacrifice" will show that Dr. Bushnell teaches: (1.) That, properly speaking, God had no moral government over men before the fall. Both he and his moral creatures were in the eternal law of right, and a violation of that law by either of them would bring to the transgressor dis

order and misery. This result may be called a sort of quasi justice, though not proportioned to guilt, nor in agreement with any scale of desert. (2.) That, by reason of the fall, God was led to institute a government with "justice and penal sanctions." Yet these sanctions, appealing to fear and adjusted to the scale of desert, are inflicted by way of natural consequence. A law of reaction has been put into our moral and physical nature, by which any wrong provokes a retribution exactly fitted to it. (3.) That this instituted government and justice have for their object the recovery of men to righteousness. They are parts of the redemptive plan. "The moral sense is mightily quickened by the arrival of justice, and the tremendous energy in which it comes. As "enforcing and sharpening moral conviction, the instituted law is a necessary co-factor in the matter of redemption." (4.) That there is a "wrath-principle in God that puts him down upon wrong, and girds him in avenging majesty for the infliction of suffering upon wrong." Yet "this wrath-impulse is no law to God, requiring him to execute just what will exhaust the passion." It is no "fit conception of God's justice, that he will put evil upon a wrongdoer just because he is bad, and according to his badness, that he will fly at evil-doing and make it feel just as much evil as it practises." God's