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important series of volumes. With somewhat more editorial attention the doings of the second session could be substantially restored. The two should make the introductory volume of the series, and would thus perfect it. Some of our General Conference editors should be charged with this important service to the Church.

ART. II.-BUSHNELL'S VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

1866.

THERE are some undertakings too difficult for the clearest intellect; some, impossible to the sturdiest logic. To so construct a supernatural religion that it shall be only natural; to maintain a vicarious sacrifice which shall be void of all vicariousness; an atonement which is not an atonement, and a redemption which does not redeem, is an undertaking which Dr. Bushnell has carried on to a success that lacks only the succeeding. His argument is limited to the peculiar force and personality of his style. For five hundred and fifty pages he stoutly maintains both sides of the tenet of expiation, or satisfaction of justice, by retaining as sacred all the terms of Scripture and orthodoxy, and by taking out of them all the meaning of Scripture and orthodoxy, so that he ends where he begins. But he leaves the careful reader in possession of two advantages: first, the inherent uniqueness and strength of the orthodox view of the atonement, illustrated by the shifts and weakness of its ablest adversaries; for the theory of Dr. Bushnell is manifestly too weak to carry him and too heavy to be carried by him; and, second, a clear view of the moral power of the atonement, which is by no means excluded by the recogni tion of the claims and satisfaction of justice. Without making a direct assault, or laying a systematic siege for capturing the strongholds of Christian doctrine, he causes the spiteful guerrillas of figure and innuendo to so swarm about the garrisons as to convince the careless observer that all the country is possessed by his forces, though, in fact, the

forts, the strategy, the bases of supply, are unassailed and unassailable.

It is difficult to determine which he hates most cordially, infidelity or orthodoxy. He says on the very first page of the body of his work: "And which of the two is the greater wrong and most to be deplored, that by which the fact itself" (Christ's work) "is rejected, or that by which it is made fit to be rejected, I will not stay to discuss." And our author could see the Church fall rather than believe Luther's statement of justifieation by faith. (P. 439.) This is his animus.

The Introduction is the presentation of a NEW ecclesiastical father under an old name. Bushnell's Anselm is not the Church's Anselm, nor yet Anselm's Anselm. Bushnell's Anselm has to do only with "consequences turning on the consideration of what is 'becoming,'' due to God's honor,' necessary to save Him from magisterial'weakness.""-P. 18. But the real Anselm insists on the punishment of the sinner as the condition of "God's being JUST to himself." Again, our author's Anselm rejects in toto any satisfaction to justice. "Indeed, the idea of a penal suffering in Christ, and a satisfaction made thereby to retributive justice, is expressly rejected as a thing too revolting to be thought of."-P. 19. And the passage from the Cui Deus Homo, is quoted as proof of this remarkable statement: "Where is the justice of delivering to death for a sinner a man most just of all men? What man would not be condemned himself who should condemn the innocent to free the guilty?" p. 19. Dr. Bushnell ought to have noticed that this is not the sentiment of Anselm, but of his objecting, seeking pupil, Baso, and that the master answers it in the context. No wonder that our author's Anselm, "at points further on, appears to be a little clouded or obscure, where satisfaction turns more on the death and less on the obedience of Christ."-P. 21. Once more, Bushnell's Anselm makes the death of Christ no essential part of his work, only an incident. (P. 22.) But the real Anselm held, not only to the obedience, but also to the death of Christ. Read his Cui Deus Homo, or his "direction" for the visitation of the sick, (Opera i, 683. Ed. Migne,) where he says to the sick, "Go to, then, and whilst thy soul abideth in thee put all thy confidence in this death" (of Christ) "alone; place thy trust in no other thing; commit thyself wholly to this death;

cover thyself wholly with this alone; cast thyself wholly on this death; wrap thyself wholly in this death;" and much more of the same. Had Bushnell charged his theory to Soci nus, instead of Anselm, it would have been less embarrassing to the facts.

Dr. Bushnell divides his book into four parts. Part I. "Nothing superlative in vicarious sacrifice, or above the universal principles of right and duty." By an adroitly loose and ambiguous definition he includes the Eternal Father, the Holy Spirit, the good angels, and all souls redeemed in the same vicarious sacrifice. Part II. "The life and sacrifice of Christ is what he does to become a renovating and saving power." Part III. "The relations of God's law and justice to his saving work in Christ." Part IV. "Sacrificial symbols and their uses." The aim of the book is to show that Christ's work was simply and solely to renew humanity, to work a new life, and had no reference, in any way, to the satisfaction of justice; simply "to bring us out of our sins themselves, and so out of their penalties."-P. 41. There is no incurred penalty requiring

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attention. Justice has no claims to be met. The sinner needs only to throw down his arms, and he is, in that fact, fully reconstructed. Justice does not enter into the case at all, save that, so far as the sinner refuses to be reconstructed, so far justice does not reconstruct him. Any satisfaction to justice is denounced as the greatest outrage upon "every strongest sentiment of our nature," (p. 41;) "would satisfy nothing but the very worst injustice."-P. 46. To maintain the Socinian view, it is necessary to deny the substitution of Christ in the place of the sinner; to bring Christ under obligations to do and suffer what he did; to identify God and man as "fellownatures;" to make justice the creature of the divine will; to deny any reconciliation on the part of God, and the necessity of Christ's death; to give new and arbitrary renderings of all the Scriptures on the work of Christ; to take the meaning out of such terms as redemption, atonement, propitiation, reconciliation, bought with a price, and the like, and to give another system of sacrifice as a substitute for the system given to the Jews. This is the work before our author, and he enters upon it with a courage worthy of a better cause.

Let us consider his underlying principles.

I. CONCERNING THE DEFINITION AND USE OF THE TERM

VICARIOUS.

Our author undertakes an explanation of the word vicarious that promises results in harmony with the meaning it has with all other writers. “It is the same word in the root as the word vice in vicegerent, vicar, vice-general, vice-president, and the like. It is a word that carries always a face of substitution. . . . Thus a vice-president is one who is to act, in certain contingencies, as and for the president. . . . Any person acts vicariously, in this view, just so far as he comes in place of another."-P. 39. All this drives steadily forward the orthodox view that Christ's vicarious suffering is in our stead, for us, as we were under sentence of death. He died for us, that we might live. This will not suit Dr. Bushnell, so he concludes from all this definition, that "Christ, in what is called his vicarious sacrifice, simply engages, at the expense of great suffering, and even of death, to bring us out of our sins, and so out of their penalties."-P. 41. Vicarious suffering is nothing more than sympathy. God takes us on his burdened feeling, as the mother carries her child on her feeling. (P. 47.) That is, in brief, vicarious means," in the place of another," "in the stead of another;" therefore vicarious sacrifice does not mean sacrifice in the place of another, sacrifice in the stead of another: a non sequitur. The argument in support of this use of "vicarious" is more adroit than satisfactory. It is based on Matthew viii, 17: "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." Bushnell says Matthew quotes a verse "from the stock chapter, Isaiah liii, whence all the vicarious language of the New Testament is drawn," (p. 43,) and applies it to Christ casting out devils and healing the sick. Christ's relation to our diseases, therefore, determines his relation to our sins. We are asked, "Does it mean that he had our sicknesses transferred to him, and so taken off from us?... that he became blind for the blind, and the like. No one had ever such a thought. How, then, did he bear our sicknesses, or in what sense? In the sense that he took them on his feeling."-Pp. 43, 44. This is the way he bore our sins, namely, on his feeling, by way of sympathy. Does this strike bottom? Is it exhaustive?

All sickness and suffering is the fruit, the consequence, of sin; so that Christ bearing our sins bears our sicknesses and sufferings, in their cause, and thus, in the truest sense, fulfills the prophecy. As our substitute he has taken our diseases upon him, in that he has taken their cause, our sin, upon him. Thus it was fitting that he should manifest his relation to the cause by removing the effects, diseases. He did not take our diseases upon him in any surface sense, as having them as results of a deeper cause put upon him. But in the deeper and scriptural sense of taking upon him their cause, he did "take our infirmities and bear our sicknesses." To designate the 53d of Isaiah as a "stock chapter" is not sufficient to turn away the force of its clear, explicit statements of Christ's substitution in our place. Our author might better reject this 53d chapter of Isaiah and the word "vicarious;" his theory would then be less embarrassed. Why not reject the word instead of assassinating it? It has become so radically essential to Christian doctrine as taught in Scripture, and as demanded in the conscious want of guilty humanity, that to abandon it and the idea it contains would be to insure rejection. But which is the more to be distrusted, a wolf, or a wolf in sheep's clothing? Holding to our author's exposition (p. 39) and rejecting his use (p. 41) of the word vicarious, his Part I falls helpless in spite of his shifts and stout show of affirmations. And his view of the Eternal Father, the Holy Spirit, the good angels, and all souls redeemed in vicarious sacrifice, goes by the board.

II. CONCERNING GOD AND MAN AS FELLOW-NATURES.

Another radical error underlying our author's theory, and cropping out here and there, is the assumption that the Creator and the creature are of one nature, under the same law, under the same obligations. This is gratuitously assumed. No attempt is made to prove this dogma. We are continually met with such declarations as these:

We must bring everything back to common standards of eternal virtue, and we must find Christ doing and suffering just what he ought.-P. 38. What we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is nothing strange as regards the principle of it, no superlative, unexNothing is wantampled, and therefore unintelligible grace. . . .

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