the will of God, is purely reformatory in its aim. It must be admitted that these principles agree with one another, and that, in the general drift of his argument, Dr. Bushnell is consistent with himself. More than this we are willing to concede, -- every one of these principles has something in its favor. For if to love perfectly is not in strictness of speech to fulfil the whole law of right, it is to fulfil a great part of it and to ensure obedience to all the rest. If God is not bound by the moral law just as men are, that law is no less sacred and dear to him than to them. And if instituted punishment is not purely reformatory, the prospect and foretaste of it are often reformatory in the present life. The philosophy of "The Vicarious Sacrifice" is therefore partial, onesided; for it recognizes only a moiety of the facts given by consciousness and revelation; but it is more than plausible, for it embraces large masses of truth, some of which have never before been exposed so fully to the light. Hence it is liable to be accepted as comprehending all the truth on the subject of which it treats. Hence, too, the difficulty of reviewing it justly, commending what is good, and rejecting what is evil. Perhaps it is wise, though it may seem ungracious, to point out the evil more carefully than if there were less of good mingled with it.

When a system of philosophy or religion professes to give the whole truth on a given subject, while it ignores or rejects a certain part of it, the system is, so far forth at least, a false one. And this falsehood is all the more dangerous because it is imbedded in truth.

"For a lie that is all a lie may be met and fought with outright; But a lie that is part a truth is a harder matter to fight."

CHAPTER II.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LANGUAGE OF

SCRIPTURE.

HE positive elements of Dr. Bushnell's system are many of them sound and good,

but the negative are not; he affirms correctly, but denies incorrectly. Like the astronomer who stands on the earth and gazes at the moon, he has taken a mental position from which he can see but one side of the perfect sphere of truth. He readily perceives the manward aim of Christ's sacrifice, but does not catch a glimpse of its Godward aim. He sees the moral character and influence of that sacrifice, but is blind to its judicial character and value. Everything in his book looks to one end, the representation of Christ's death as expressive of compassionate love, and intended to awaken love in the hearts of men. Therefore, in his view, to justify a sinner by the blood of Christ, is to make him morally right by the persuasive power of the cross; to pardon him, is to release him from the control of inward depravity; to redeem him, is the same and nothing

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more; and to make propitiation for his sins, is to cleanse his heart from evil. Propitiation, justification, redemption, pardon, intercession, are therefore equivalent terms in the theology of this writer, all of them denoting the moral effect of the Gospel on the heart. We may therefore test the adequacy and correctness of his theory by ascertaining the ideas actually expressed by these terms in the Word of God.

९९

I. USE OF THE TERM “VICARIOUS.”

But we cannot enter upon this second and decisive part of our criticism, without protesting beforehand against Dr. Bushnell's use of the term vicarious." And it seems to us that, in this respect, he may fairly be condemned out of his own mouth. For, after quoting a number of biblical phrases descriptive of Christ's death, he says: "The whole Gospel is a texture, thus, of vicarious conceptions, in which Christ is represented, in one way or another, as coming into our place, substituted in our stead, bearing our burdens, answering for us, and standing in a kind of suffering sponsorship for the race. Now the word vicarious is chosen to represent and gather up into itself all these varieties of expression. It is the same word, in the root, as the word vice

in vicegerent, viceroy, vicar, vicar-general, vicepresident, and the like. It is a word that carries always a face (?) of substitution, indicating that one person comes in place somehow of another. Thus a vice-president is one who is to act in certain contingencies as and for the president; a viceroy, for the king. The ecclesiastical vicar, too, was a vicar as being sent to act for the monastic body, whose duties were laid as a charge upon him; and the pope is called the vicar of Christ, in the same way, as being authorized to fill Christ's place. Any person acts vicariously, in this view, just so far as he comes in place of another. The commercial agent, the trustee, the attorney, are examples of vicarious action at common law." This is all quite correct, though it seems to promise very little for the peculiar theory of Dr. Bushnell. By what sleight of hand in the use of language, we involuntarily ask, is this word "vicarious" to take on a sense in harmony with the doctrine of the book? Let us see. Dr. Bushnell proceeds thus: "Then, if we speak of sacrifice,' any person acts in a way of vicarious sacrifice,' not when he burns upon an altar in some other's place, but when he makes loss for him, even as he would make loss for himself in the offering of a sacrifice for sin. The expression is a figure representing that the party making such sacrifice for another comes into