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a doctrine as this may, upon principles which I have myself asserted, be accepted, in spite of a certain difficulty on moral grounds. The question here is the extent of that difficulty, and also of the Scripture evidence. If this notion of atonement by equivalent suffering be clearly opposed to our moral sense, it ought, I hold, to be laid aside. But on this point I allow that different persons may judge differently. On the other hand, different opinions will also be formed as to the fact of the Scripture evidence. know that texts may be quoted, which, taken literally and argued upon logically, seem to many a proof. But the like treatment of other parts of Scripture has landed men in many errors. Metaphors must not be taken too literally. Even such texts as 'being made a curse for us,' or being made to be sin for us,' 2 or bearing 'our sins in his own body on the tree,'s do not after all sustain this doctrine of transfer of punishment, though they do imply a suffering upon our account. It is one thing to say that Christ suffered upon our behalf, another thing that he was punished in our place. The doctrine before us does in reality require that Christ should have suffered the very same amount of pain to which every sinner would have been subject but for his intervention, and this I hold certainly cannot be proved from ScripWe know that in the early ages of the

ture.

1 Gal. iii. 13.

2 2 Cor. v. 21.

Peter ii. 24.

Church eminent Christian writers had a notion that the death of Christ was a sort of compensation to Satan. There really was something to suggest this idea in the Scripture metaphors from ransom and redemption. Should we, then, be very confident when we are building upon metaphors from sacrifice?

But although I feel constrained to look upon this popular theory of the atonement as unsatisfactory, and although I have myself no other explanation to give of the efficacy of Christ's death in a transcendental scheme of the forgiveness of sins, still I do most fully recognise the beauty and the instructiveness of that death when looked at from a moral point of view. It is, as I have said already, an example of the highest virtue, self-sacrifice for the noblest ends, on the part of the God-man. Nothing could be fitted to bring home to the hearts of his followers a higher, a better, or a more touching lesson. It has been said that the idea of the kingdom of heaven, as a kingdom whose subjects were all bound to obey one perfect character by the constraining power of love, was the highest idea which we could form of a government that was at once personal and moral. No doubt it is. The saying proceeds from a believer in the substitution view. But why should the bond between the Divine King and his sul jects need a theory explaining the efficacy

of his death? Why should it not be enough for them to know that he has died on their behalf?

I have thought sometimes that men's ideas upon this point were perplexed by a confusion between civil and criminal justice. We speak of civil justice as between man and man, in matters of property, or in fact in any matter in which value or compensation is due from one to another, and we speak of criminal justice where the question really lies between the offender and society at large. In this last case the punishment inflicted is not now thought of as a compensation to those who may have been immediately injured, but as needed by the general interest of all men. This latter kind of justice is, I hold, the better analogue to guide us in forming ideas of divine justice. One consideration alone I think will prove this assertion. It is this, that divine justice is mainly concerned with the infliction of pains and penalties, and these do not enter into the primary idea of civil justice, though they may become needful to give it effect. In spite of all that divines have written, I for one fail to see how sin can be like a debt, which anyone may discharge for the debtor. There does seem to me to be something of this last thought even in Anselm.1 It may be true that when we sin we

1 Anselm's notion seems to be that any rational being, angel or man, owes to God the complete subjection of his will to God's will; that when he sins he withholds from God the 'debitum' due to Him; that God would leave sin inordinatum' if this 'debitum' were not

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withhold from God what is his due. But when God punishes, it is not, so to speak, to recover damages. That would be a lowering, unworthy idea of the Creator in his relations to his creatures. God needs nothing from us. Even if it be thought that a part of the claim which he has upon us for our obedience might be fittingly compared to a debt, it does not appear how this could be compensated for by the sufferings of another. When you punish for non-payment, you introduce, I hold, the idea of correctional or criminal justice. Such seems to me at least the right idea, though it may not be perhaps that of English lawyers. There is evil no doubt in such withholding, but the evil must be in the creature, in the sinner, or some other creature on whom it works an ill effect. I would humbly venture to say that God's blessedness cannot be diminished, nor yet his glory tarnished by any evil deed of his creatures. And when God punishes, it is, I conjecture, to reform the offender, or to deter others. This, and not the vindictive view, seems to follow from that fatherly view of God so largely dwelt upon in the New Testament.

I have next to speak of that other part of the Christian doctrine of grace which concerns the direct

paid, and further some punishment for the dishonour done to him; and that this may be done by 'pœna.' God thereby takes away from the creature the happiness of which it is capable, and so proves that the creature is his.—Cur Deus Homo,' lib. i. cap. xi. to xiv.

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action of God upon the heart of man. would observe, to try this doctrine only by canons. of moral criticism. We are not now called upon to consider any metaphysical difficulty-how far, for instance, it brings into the world a supramundane cause, how far it blends the infinite and the finite, and repeats something like the alleged fact of creation, in a way difficult to reconcile with that order which men are beginning to trace in the mental as well as the material world.1 These questions we may pass by, and, if we do so, and confine ourselves to strictly moral considerations, we shall not I think find much to perplex us. The bare idea of God in any way helping weak and sinful man to do better and to become better would, I presume, commend itself to the conscience of every good and thoughtful man. I think that I may also say that the reality of moral improvement from Christian influences would also be so attested. But perhaps it might be objected that Christianity represents this grace as arbitrary and partial. On this objection I would remark as follows:-The facility or the difficulty of moral obedience with any of us depends greatly on outward circumstances, and these, upon the supposition of a

1 I would, however, observe in this place that if we adopt Bishop Butler's view (see 'Analogy,' part ii. chap. iv. sect. iii.), viz. that the Christian dispensation, like the course of nature, is carried on according to general laws, then this direct action of the Divine Spirit would not, I hold, give rise to any of the difficulties alluded to above.