thought in view; dressed in metaphor, it may mean too little or too much. In the work before him logic has cause for unadorned simplicity, severity, and directness. Nothing could take the place of it. But one cannot avoid the thought that a little ornamentation could with safety be occasionally indulged without peril to perspicuity and logical precision, and with manifest help to the average reader and student. Bald rock glints with mica and quartz. Frowning mountain peaks are decked with fern and ivy. Our Lord, the severest of logicians, abated no part of logical precision by parable and illustration. If our acute Drew professor had occasionally picked a flower by the way and indulged in an analogue, he might have made a book of less hard reading, and logic would not have been sacrificed to the graces of rhetoric.

Dr. Miley believes in short sentences. Manifestly he thinks each thought should be shut up to its own sentence. A thought has enough duality or plurality to be shut up in a sentence, as it were housekeeping in its own castle, without having the repulsiveness of a hermit. More than one thought, dual or plural in attribute, is often let into the homestead, at the expense of elegance, perspicuity, and effectiveness, on the principle that two families live in one house with less comfort than in two; but, without meaning to be hypercritical, it has seemed to me that in many cases the doctor might lengthen his sentences with happy effect, and with a gain in power.

The fact of Atonement is admitted by all who admit the Bible. Atonement is the fact of the Bible. Prophets before apostles testified the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. A suffering Christ is meaningless except as he is an atoning Christ. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. This is the central truth of Christianity. This is Christianity. Reconciliation involves atonement. Reconciliation is atonement. The word "atonement" occurs but once in the New Testament. "And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." Rom. v, 11. The word is KаTahλayn. It is used four times. Twice it is translated "reconciliation," and once "reconciling." It is an old Saxon combination-at-one-ment: the means and act of being at one with one with whom we have been at variance.

Sin is alienating. It alienates man from his fellow; it alienates man from God. "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God." Isa. lix, 2. The alienation is mutual. Not only does the sinner turn from God, but God turns from the sinner. Sin never can be regarded with complacency by a holy being, still less by one infinitely holy. "God is angry with the wicked every day." Psa. vii, 11. And the sinner turns with such malevolence from God that "the carnal mind," which man has apart from the renewing of the Spirit which makes him "spiritually minded," "is enmity against God." Rom. viii, 7. The Atonement is the means of ending this alienation. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 2 Cor. v, 19. God loved his enemies, and in Christ looked upon them in compassion. God loved the unlovely, the hideous, the repulsive, and in Christ reached out in quest of the prodigal and the lost. And the Atonement is the means of ending human alienation from God. The ministry of reconciliation in Christ puts into operation influences divine, angelic, and human, by the highest motions of which our nature is capable, to induce us to be "reconciled to God."

Atonement reaches God-ward, not to make God placable; for the placability of God made the Atonement; but to remove all barriers in good and righteous government to the legitimate exercise of placability. Atonement reaches man-ward, to secure voluntary acceptance of the divine overture and all the blessings of reconciliation; for, as sin is voluntary alienation, the Atonement calls for a voluntary termination of it.

Our author fortifies impregnably the basal truth of the reality of the Atonement by what he calls "witnessing facts" and "witnessing terms;" and insists that a true theory of atonement should fit these facts and be in full harmony with these terms. As in any science, a true theory will be the outgrowth of the facts and an inductive generalization from the factors which the God of nature puts at our disposal in the revelation. of his works; so in this science of redemption, a true theory will be the outgrowth of biblical facts and an induction from the inspired factors which the God of supernature puts at our disposal in the revelation of his word. Any theory is false if it is not true to all these facts and terms; a theory true to them all has highest proof of being true.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.—46

What is the true theory of the Atonement? is the question in Dr. Miley's book. In answering it there must be no preconceived opinions, no favorite hypotheses. There must be pure love of truth. Lord Brougham says, "There is nothing so plain to which the influence of a preconceived opinion, or the desire of furthering a favorite hypothesis, will not blind men; their blindness in such cases bears even a proportion to their learning and ingenuity."

A priori, we cannot conclude as to the fact of the Atonement or what the Atonement is; for we can have no a priori knowledge of God. God is known only so far as he chooses to reveal himself. His works are known only so far as revelation, either natural or supernatural, makes them knowable. In the simplest of all God's works there are impenetrable adyta. No philosopher has a plummet long enough to sound the depths of mystery in an atom. A man must be very bold in presumptive arrogance when he ventures beyond revelation in his theorizing concerning confessedly the greatest of all the works of God. Creation, a priori, is unknown; it is known only so far as it is revealed in the things that are made: and creation cost God only a word; for "he spake and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast." The mysteries of Redemption are as much greater, we would argue, as its cost is greater, for in redemption God had to become incarnate, suffer, and in his human nature bleed and die.

Frederick Robertson insisted that truth should be put constructively, by stating it without polemics with the opposing error. Robertson thought the establishment of truth was per se the destruction of error. The ushering of light is the dismissal of darkness. In the main, this is the proper method, if we can judge from the example of the Great Teacher.

In a work where such valuable service has been rendered the cause of truth, we should be very modest in venturing a criticism at so vital a point of methodology; but Dr. Miley's argument, which is apparently unanswerable, would perhaps have been more satisfactorily, effectively, and logically put if Robertson's idea had been carried out by a clear enunciation of what he calls the Governmental Theory as the primary and staple part of this division of his discussion, leaving the confutation of the Moral Theory, which he calls no atonement at all, and

of the Satisfactional Theory, to as natural result as the fading of darkness before the opening beams of day. For satisfactory reasons, doubtless, to his own mind, the author has concluded that the confutation of error was the proper prelude to the establishment of truth; and he has evidently kept in thought "the influence of preconceived opinions and the desire of furthering favorite hypotheses," of which Brougham speaks; and felt the importance of preparing the way for a true literature on this central point in theology, where the vast bulk was on the wrong side.

Arminianism is not only good to preach, as Dr. Patton has ingenuously confessed; it is good to write and print and publish. Illogically so far as the creed is concerned, but logically so far as the oracles of truth are, Satisfactionists have, both in review and volume, come over to the true Governmental idea.

Albert Barnes, identified with the New School dissent from hyper-Calvinism, and the chief mover in that organization, but who came over to the unified Church in which the old theology was reaffirmed, has written some of the strongest words in the Arminian line of thought.

Dr. Enoch Pond, in "Bibliotheca Sacra," 1856, says all that Dr. Miley or Dr. Raymond claim:-

He (Christ) endured, not the proper penalty of the law, but a complete governmental substitute for the penalty. His sufferings and death in our room and stead as fully sustain the authority of law, as fully meet the demands of justice, as fully answer all the purposes of the divine government, as would the infliction of the penalty itself; and consequently are a complete substitute for the penalty; or, in other words, a complete atonement.

Were

It is commonly and justly understood among evangelical Christians, that Christ's death was vicarious, or that he died as a substitute. But a substitute how? and for what? Not that he endured the proper penalty of the law for us, but that he endured an adequate substitute for that penalty; so that_the_penalty itself may now be safely and consistently remitted. the penalty all borne, there would be nothing to be remitted. But as it has not been borne, but only a substitute for it-as it has not been removed, but only a way opened by which it may be-there is as much need of forgiveness as though the Saviour had not died.

This is not the monergism of Calvinism, in which redemption has been achieved by contract between the Father and the Son

for a definite number, who are the elect, no more and no less; but it is the synergism of Arminianism, in which the result of redemption "may be," if we comply with the requisite conditions.

Dr. Symington, as quoted by Dr. Miley, defines Atonement, "Such act or acts as shall accomplish all the moral purposes which, to the infinite wisdom of God, appear fit and necessary under a system of rectoral holiness, and which must otherwise have been accomplished by the exercise of retributive justice upon transgressors in their own persons." This definition Dr. Miley willingly admits.

The definition of Atonement given by the author is more succinct, but full: "The vicarious sufferings of Christ are an atonement for sin as a conditional substitute for penalty, fulfilling, on the forgiveness of sin, the obligation of justice and the office of penalty in the moral government."

Truth in a theory of Atonement must be the analogue of truth in any other theory. A true theory of astronomy must harmonize with the phenomena of the sidereal bodies. A true theory of electricity must harmonize with the phenomena of this subtle fluid. A true theory of Atonement must harmonize with the phenomena which twinkle like the fixed stars in the firmament of everlasting truth, revolve like the planets in the orbit of obedience to law, and shine like the sun, the center of light and gravitating power, and with the flashes and thunder of the storms of wrath which purify the air and precede the beauty of the bow of promise and of hope. What are these phenomena ?

1. As the Atonement is for sin, it must meet the demands of the demerit, the guilt, the condemnation, the pollution, the enormity, the hideousness, the prevalence, the suffering, the death of sin. No theory meets the facts either in biblical record, or in the experience of life, which in any measure makes light of sin and dares not treat it with the awful gravity which the facts of an accusing and punitive conscience and all the experiences of transgression attest. The doctrine of sin must be tremendously emphatic. "Sin by the commandment" is "exceedingly sinful." Its heinousness and malignity are mitigated only by apposition to the commandment. A theory which deals with sin as if it were curative by the influence of