This participation of God in history is of special importance to the Holy place of the Christian religion, the atonement. It is an essential part of the Christian faith that God has not merely revealed, through Christ, an eternal reconciliation of God with sin, for there is no such thing, but rather a real, serious separation, divine displeasure against sin and sinners. The Christian faith is that, because in the person, doing, and suffering of Christ something not before existing, and which first in him became possible, has been realised, namely, satisfaction to divine justice, therefore God looks upon humanity differently from what he did before. For, beholding it as it is now, but was not before, he sees it not without the real possibility of the reconciliation of all individuals, which belongs to the whole race. And so humanity as a unity before God is no longer merely an object of the divine avo, because of the coming reconciler, but he looks upon it now as furnished with means of reconciliation which it lacked before, but which it now has in him who is destined to be its head. Displeasure towards the sinful race of man is not now unaccompanied by good pleasure in the Son of man, who belongs to it, and in fellowship with whom all may become objects of the divine good pleasure, nay, for whose sake God can take the initiative in offering grace to sinners. For he has died, not only for those who believe, but for all,* although all do not come to the actual enjoyment of that which stands open to all; they can put disbelief in Christ between them and reconciliation in him. If they do, they put in the place of the expiated and forgiven sin a new sin, for which Christ can have made no atonement, the rejection of Christ.

The passion of Christ, again, requires no self-losing of the Logos or of consciousness. The significance of his work rather depends upon the most intimate and living participation of the whole person of Christ in humanity. Far from the divine life in him having suffered, in his sacrifice of himself, obscuration or destruction, it was rather the powerful deed of his inextinguishable life, his conscious life of love (Heb. vii. 16; ix. 14), that was called for in his sacrifice. His love was not for a moment given up, or restrained, or consumed in the fires of suffering, but had to assert itself, and did assert itself, when he was surrounded by the darkness of death. He does not pass

through death "into a condition of complete unconsciousness and powerlessness, his self-consciousness is not lost," the darkening of the sensible side of his consciousness deprives him of his consciousness neither of the Father, nor of himself, nor of the actuality of his love.

* Here, and in one or two other phrases (see p. 374), we may trace the influence of Lutheran views on Dorner's generally precise and correct thinking.ED. B. & F. E. R.

It will be manifest, I hope, from the dogmatic investigation now engaged in, that any opposition to the modern doctrine of xvwo in Christology (which is the exact contrary of the old church doctrine, since in the latter the humanity, in the former the divinity, is the xevoúLEVOV) is based on far-reaching principles, and that the maintenance of this opposition in detail is an important task at the present time.

ART. VIII.-Recent Attacks on the Pentateuch-Davidson and Colenso.

1. An Introduction to the Old Testament, Critical, Historical, and Theological. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D. Vol. I.-The Pentateuch. Vol II.-The Historical Books. Williams & Norgate. 1862.

2. The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically Examined. By JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D. Part I., 1862; Part II., 1863. Longmans. 3. Historisch-Kritisch Onderzoek naar het Ontstaan en de Verzameling van de Boeken des ouden Verbonds, door A. Kuenen. Leiden. 1861.

4. Kurtzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch 13 Lieferung. Von AUG. KNOBEL. Leipzig. 1861.

READERS on seeing us bent upon saying something, like all the world on Dr Colenso's books, will heartily beg, we believe, to be spared the following things:

First, Any mournful ejaculations of ours over right-hand defections and left-hand fallings-off, and all reasoning by exclamations, a kind of syllogism of which most readers can themselves make slight use at a pinch-the present age being supposed to demand, not ejaculation, but argument, or if ejaculation, at least also argument. The phase of things we have to contemplate is certainly lamentable, but for that reason the less of lamentation and the more of earnest treatment applied to it the better.

Second, Any abuse of the writers of whom we are going to speak; though the old and orthodox way (and Dr Davidson is yet orthodox in this point at least) was, first of all, soundly to rate an opponent, and then, though this was not always thought necessary, to seek to confute him-it being now considered both somewhat ungenerous to an opponent, as well as somewhat arrogant in behalf of one's self, to ascribe the deflections of his reason to the natural corruption of his heart; and, indeed, it being also apparently undeniable that there are many excellent men sadly given to scepticism; and, on the other hand, many men given neither to scepticism nor excellence. No one denies this in theory, but many are inclined to forget it in the treatment of such men, and to expose them to a severity and

rigour of judgment, as if the denial of one truth involved the denial of all, and as if this obliquity of the intellect were entirely inconsistent with any rectitude of conscience. False and ungenerous, and inhumanly assumptive as such suspicions are, if possible more false on the other side, is the unscientific cant which is fond of expressing itself to the effect, that if the heart be right, the opinions of the head are of the least possible consequence. There is unmeasured petitio in that "if." As well argue that, if all the lines from a point within a figure to its circumference be equal, it is of the least possible consequence whether the figure be a circle or not. The lines cannot be equal unless the figure is a circle. And the heart cannot be right if the head be wrong. Perfect rectitude of soul is incompatible with partial aberration of intellect. For the human mind is not an opaque sphere like the moon, of which one side may be densely dark, while the other is intensely illuminated; the mind rather is a transparency of which the side visible, the emotional and religious nature, in a word, the life, exhibits accurately everything on the other side, so that every fleck, and bar, and cloud, projects in the light upon the heart its dark and distorting shadow.

Third, Any use of that mode of reasoning which has of late justly become so popular in our country, which consists in telling a man that he has broached no new heresy, such is the poverty of his invention; that all he has said has been said a thousand times before, and better, and as often triumphantly confuted; and we now, with equal triumph, confute him by telling him this:-there being yet alive some people who insist that if an opinion start up here and there and everywhere, boldly forcing itself upon us in all the literature of the age that is most read, and loudly proclaiming itself as an element in all the thinking of the age that is most approved, it cannot be said to have been definitively trodden down. Indeed, those who employ this argument, and they are not few nor mean, seem to us to resemble a physician, who, having already dispelled some corruption of the humours from one part of the system, and being called upon to administer to a new outbreak, should, instead of patiently treating it, begin to apostrophise and upbraid it with being nothing new, but the same old disease in a new place and form, with being already cured and unworthy of the notice of a respectable practitioner. The cry of "nothing new" is not without its use. But, like the harangue of the leader, in which he reminds his followers of former triumphs over the very foes now confronting them, it is not meant to be the substitute for fighting these foes anew, it is meant to excite enthusiasm by memory of past conquests, to keep the hearts that are troubled quiet, to make the victory

easier, and the triumph more complete. And, in truth, to assert that a modern heresy is nothing new, is but partially exact. If, in one sense, there is nothing new under the sun, in one sense also there is nothing old. The heretic in this case

is new. The public ear into which he pours his heresy is new. The mental elaborations and culture out of which it rises, and which propel it, are new. The social conditions and general mental soil into which he casts it are new. In a word, the great life tendencies and processes out of which the thought springs, and with which it eagerly combines, are new; and it must be met in the circumstances and under the forms in which it is presented; and if the enemies of truth are never weary assailing it, its friends need not weary in defending it.

And, finally, readers will wish to be spared any discussion in detail of the contents of the above works. Hearing that Dr Davidson has now matured his beliefs (he will excuse the word if too strong), and judging them somewhat crude aforetime, they will want chiefly to know what those beliefs now are, and, above all, whether there be in them any coherence, any root, be it philosophy of religion in general, or theory of revelation in particular, out of which, legitimately, if not necessarily, they grow.

It will conduce to clearness, and the more exact knowledge of our whereabouts, to state generally what the writers on whom we are commenting seem still to believe. Thus the doctrines with which we are not concerned will lie behind us, while those under discussion will clearly stand out in our front. In the case of Dr Colenso, to effect this separation is very difficult. He has nowhere given any indication to what extent his faith in the cardinal Christian doctrines has been affected by his disbelief in the authority of Scripture. He informs us that many inquirers have anxiously pled with him to state at once in what way Christianity, or the common acceptation of it, suffers by his discoveries. He can only bid them wait. His time is not come yet. Possibly, he does not quite see his own way. But a little distance before, if not even close upon him, clouds. and darkness settle down. He cannot, or he will not, meantime venture to forecast the exact issue of his destructive principles. Utter denudation of all that is outward, sheer selfstripping of every rag of belief which has not been spun out of the elements of his own soul, the annihilation of all between and besides himself and his merciful Father, may be the consequence; and if we can trust him, he is ready for it. This we take to be the meaning of his allusions to the cries and gropings after one great Teacher and Father among heathen peoples; and should he be thrown down to the same level with them, with himself and his God he will not despair. This certainly

seems the fair construction to put on Dr Colenso's language, although, both from the mental character of the man and the condition of his mind at the time of writing his first volume, we were not disposed to consider his words of so grave importance. The bishop is an impetuous, open-mouthed man. He cannot repress or conceal. What is working within he must, like Elihu, give vent to, that he be relieved. In his prefaces, he lays bare his whole mental state, with its brusque honesty and yet childish littleness, and ignorance, and want of balance. His thoughts ferment and boil within him, and he must blurt them out to the first convenient listener :

"Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns,

And till my ghastly tale is told

This heart within me burns."

Though without the instinct or discrimination of the Mariner, he insists on roaring his awful tale into all the world's ears. Men of this kind usually exaggerate. Their doubts are killing, their difficulties stifling, their anxieties harrowing; life is an agony; they are burdened, bent, crushed; they would that the "fever called living" were over at last;-all is tragic and superlative. And something of this quality seemed to attach to the bishop's first volume, and from this cause. Granting too, that he was sincere, which we cannot doubt, there is a kind of despair that seizes on a man when some belief which he judged to stand on eternal foundations, and on which most other beliefs themselves repose, is felt to give way beneath his feet. He feels himself sinking, surrounded by the ruins of his former stability; and as he falls, heaven and light recede and grow dim, while the bottomless darkness yawns beneath, and a kind of dizziness and desperate blankness comes over the soul, as if the loss of this one truth carried with it the loss of all truth. This seemed to us the condition of Dr Colenso's mind when he penned his first volume; and most speculative minds have been in the condition for moments, at least, till, by a desperate energy, they recovered themselves; and thus we attributed less to his broken sobs, that half indicated the slow recession of Christianity also from his view, than may really have been due to them. It is less pleasing in the second volume, where the man is out of sight more daring and selfpossessed, and where doubts and disbeliefs, that were written in the former only because they could not be stifled, are justified with singular hardihood and sophistry, to find the same hints of "modifications" of Christianity. As he says, we must wait. What Dr Colenso does believe is this :-that great part of the Old Testament, at least, is fable, even cunning forgery, written not because believed to be true, but in spite of being