Bushnell on the Mystery of Redemption

Art. III.--God in Christ. Three Discourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge...
Anonymous
Brownson's Quarterly Review (1844-1875); Jul 1851; 5, 000003; APS Online
pg. 318
Brownson's Quarterly Review, July, 1851
Art. III. - God in Christ. Tliree Discourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Prelimi­nary Dissertation on Language. By Horace Bushnell. Hartford : Brown & Parsons.   1849.   12mo.   pp. 356.
We proceed now to the second of these three Discour­ses, the one delivered at Cambridge, before the Unitarian Divinity School. It is on the Atonement, and is designed to give us Dr. Bushnell's views of the sacred Mystery of Redemption. The author discusses this subject with spe­cial reference to the points in dispute between Unitarians and the so-called orthodox Protestants, and not without the hope of disclosing a ground on which the two parties may come together, and each retain every thing really essential to its own theory. He selects for his text 1 John i. 2, " For the life was manifested : and we have seen it, and do bear witness, and declare unto you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us" ; or, as the author reads from the Protestant version, " For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." Hav­ing recited his text, he proceeds : -
" This particular passage of Scripture has seemed to me to ofler one of the most comprehensive and most deliberate announcements of the doctrine of Christ, that is anywhere given in the sacred writ­ings, with the advantage that it is yet so far unoccupied as not to have become a teohnic, under the wear of any theory. In the verse previous, the writer opens by setting forth the fact, as I sup­pose, of a Divine incarnation in the person of Jesus. By the Word, or Word of Life, that peculiar power in the Divine nature by which God is able to represent himself outwardly in the forms of things, first in the worlds and now in the human person, which is the live­liest type of feeling possible, and closest to God, - by this Word of Life, God has now expressed himself.    He has set forth his Divine feeling even to sense and as a fellow-feeling, - he has en­tered into human history, aa one of its biographic elements. We have seen, looked upon, handled, what may thus be known of him. Then he adds, - throwing in a parenthesis which is to be a solu­tion of the whole evangelic history, -' For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto
us.'
" Observe three points in this very peculiar language. First, there is a manifestation of something, the mission of the Word is looked upon inclusively as a manifestation, that is, a coming into visibility of something before invisible. Secondly, it is the Life that was manifested, - not life generally speaking, but the Life. And, thirdly, as if to distinguish it in a yet more definite manner, it is called that Life, that Eternal Life, that Eternal Life that was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.
" Taking, now, these three terms, in connection with the assump­tion, elsewhere made, that our human race, under sin, are alien­ated from the life of God ; also, with the declaration of Christ, that, as the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son, as the world's Redeemer, to have life in himself; and, again, with that deep utterance of joy sent forth by an emancipated soul, - ' For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,' - taking the text, 1 say, in connec­tion with these others, as commentaries, we have a good synoptic view, it seems to me, of the doctrine of the Messiah.
" It is not that Christ is a man, a human teacher, who is sent to reform us by his words and his beautiful human example, but it is to this effect: - All souls have their proper life only in the com­mon vivifying life of God. Sin, being a withdrawal into self and self-hood, separates them from the life, and, as far as their own freedom is concerned, denies all influx of the Divine into their character and their religious nature. Passing thus into a state of negation, as regards the Divine all-sustaining life, they become im­prisoned in darkness, unbelief, idolatry, and a general captivity to sense. And now the Life is manifested in sense; in Christ is life, and the life is the light of men. Christ enters into human feeling, by his incarnate charities and sufferings, to re-engage the world's love and reunite the world, as free, to the Eternal Life. To sum up all in one condensed and luminous utterance, every word of which is power, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. The Apostle says nothing here, it will be observed, of reconciling God to men, he only speaks of reconciling men to God. Had he said, ' The Life of God was manifested in Jesus Christ, to quicken the world in love and truth, and reunite it to himself,' he would have said the same thing under a different form.
"I am well aware that, in offering such a statement, as the true doctrine of Christ and his work, I affirm nothing that is distinctively orthodox, and shall even seem to rule out that view of Christ as a sacrifice, an expiation for sin, a vicarious offering, which, to the view of most orthodox Christians, contains the real moment of his work as a Saviour. It will be found, however, that I am proceed­ing exactly in the line of the Scriptures, and I trust also it will ap­pear, hefore I have done, that the Scriptures advance two distinct views of Christ and his work, which are yet radically one and the same.
" I. A subjective, speculative, - one that contemplates the work of Christ in its ends, and views it as a power related to its ends.
" II. An objective, ritualistic, - one that sets him forth to faith, instead of philosophy, and one, without which, as an Altar Form for the soul, he would not be the power intended, or work the ends appointed.
"Thus, when it is inquired, as in the first form specified, for what end did Christ come into the world, we have a class of terms in the Scripture which can scarcely get any proper meaning, if what is said under the second form is considered to be the whole doctrine of Christ. The converse also is equally true. The real problem is to find a place and a meaning for all that is said con­cerning him, - to effect a union of the two sides.
" As examples of the manner in which the Scriptures make an­swer, when the question is, for what ends did Christ come into the world, we have the following: -
'"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth,' - a passage that is remarkable as being the most direct, specific, and formal statement Christ ever made of the object of his Messiahship; and here he says, that he came to bring truth into the world.
" ' I am the way, the truth, and the life'; - 'I am the light of the world,' - are declarations of a similar import.
"' Unto you, first, God having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.' ' Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all in­iquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,' - where the end of his mission is declared to be a moral effect, wrought in the mind of the race.
" For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the ' works of the devil,' - a passage declaring the precise object of the incarnation as affirmed in my text; and, as the work of the devil is not the punishment, but the corruption, of his follow­ers, we are brought to the same conclusion as before.
" In all these citations, we have so many echoes of the one just produced, as the grand, comprehensive doctrine of Christ's work, or mission : - God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. And I affirm, without hesitation, that whenever the ques­tion is about the end of Christ's work, that end to which he stands related as the wisdom and power of God, the answer of the Scrip­ture will be, that he comes to renovate character; to quicken by the infusion of the Divine life ; in one word, that he comes to be a Saviour, as saving his people from their sins." - pp. 187- 191.
The reader will perceive here a repetition of that form of the old Apollinarian heresy which we pointed out in our last Review, and which, if it does not absolutely deny the Incarnation, at least completely reverses it; namely, that the Word, in some sense, enters into human nature, or is converted into flesh, or that the Divine is assumed by the human, instead of human nature by the Word or second Person of the Ever-blessed Trinity. The reader will also perceive that here again the author represents the Word, Logos, or Son, not as a Divine person or Hypostasis, but as the power or faculty of God to produce himself out­wardly in the forms of things, which, if explained so as to escape pantheism, can only mean that the Eternal Word is simply the creative power of God, or God's ability to create existences, and therefore the Incarnation is only the creation of a human existence, or a human person. Giv­ing the author the benefit of the most favorable construc­tion his language will bear, he undeniably falls into these two fatal errors, errors which necessarily imply the denial of the whole Christian religion.
But passing over these two fatal errors, as already suffi­ciently discussed, it is obvious that the author's doctrine in regard to the purpose or purposes of our Lord's mission is, that Christ came solely to effect a moral renovation or change in the human race, to make satisfaction for sin, to fulfil the law, and effect the Atonement by reconciling us to God, that is, by leading us to repentance and newness of life. The whole significance, end, or aim of Christian­ity is the moral regeneration of mankind, or the'production of certain subjective states or affections in us. This is ev­ident from the extract we have made, and from the whole Discourse.
With some modification, we could accept this state­ment, so far as relates to the end of our Lord's mission. The end of his coming was undoubtedly the salvation of sinners.    " The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." (St. Luke xix. 10.) St. Paul says, it is " a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief." (1 Tim. i. 15.) « The only cause of the coming of Christ," says St. Augustine, " was to save sin­ners. Take away diseases, take away wounds, and there is no cause for medicine. If the great Physician came from heaven, great infirmity was on the earth." - Si venit tie coilo mag-nus medicus, magnus per totum orbem tcrrccjace-hat ccgrotus. (Tom. V. 1208.) On this point we have no controversy with Dr. Bushnell. Mankind were sick, and Christ came to heal them ; they were alienated from Clod, and he came to liberate them from their sins, and to recon­cile them to God, - although he reconciles by liberating, rather than liberates by reconciling them, in the author's sense.
The author contends that Christ does not reconcile us as a human teacher, by his beautiful words and beautiful examples, as Socinianism holds. Something more is ne­cessary. The subjective view alone is insullicient, and the objective view must always be joined with it.
" Then, again, to show that a view is offered of Christ, in the writings especially of the Apostles, which is wholly different from this, one that speaks of him as a propitiation, a sacrifice, tis bearing our sins, bearing the curse for us, obtaining remission by his blood, is altogether unnecessary. In the Epistles to the llomans, the Galatians, the Hebrews, those of Peter and John, this altar view or form of Christ appears even as the eminent, or super-eminent truth of the Gospel.
" Omitting, therefore, because it is unnecessary, to offer any par­ticular citations to this effect, I will simply refer you to a passage that is remarkable, as being an instance where one view runs into the other, and the altar form becomes, in the issue, a renovating power. The eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews opens with a look toward sacrifice, describing Christ as a ' priest' ' hav­ing somewhat to offer,' but still as ' having obtained a more excel­lent ministry' than the priests of the law, and brought in for us a ' better covenant.' How better ? Because it has a more trans­forming power in the life, because it fulfils a better and higher de­sign, writing the law in the heart: -' / will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.'' Here the objective, ritual view passes into the subjective, and reveals the fact that it has and was designed to have a renovating power in character;-thus be­coming a ' new' and ' better covenant.'    Accordingly, I design to show that, if the first or subjective view of Christ, that in which I state the end and aim of Christ's work, is true, that end or aim could not be effectively realized without the second, or objective view, in which his whole work is conceived in the altar form, and held forth to the objective embrace and worship and repose of faith." -pp. 191, 192.
But this objective or ritualistic view and the subjective " are yet radically one and the same." The objective view represents no objective reality, no truth independent of the subjective, and is only the subjective objectively expressed, or the machinery which the Almighty invents and em­ploys to produce and express the subjective states or affec­tions which it was the end of Christ's mission to produce in us.
To understand this, we must bear in mind that the end of Christ's mission, according to the author, is the produc­tion of certain moral changes, states, or affections in us, and the whole truth and value of all the transactions brought to view in the Gospel history consist in their artis­tic or {Esthetic fitness to produce them. They do not pro­duce these changes, states, or affections in the way of doctrine or didactic teaching addressed to the logical un­derstanding, not as philosophy or as theology, but as art, addressed primarily to the feelings. This ritualistic view is the artistic form of the subjective or philosophical view, and without which it would be practically inefficient.
We shall better understand this, if we glance at the author's theory of language laid down in his Preliminary Dissertation. According to the author, all language de­pends for its significance, not on an objective world to which it introduces us, and of which it is primarily the sensible sign, but on the mind to which it is addressed. Words are signs, indeed ; but not signs of objective reali­ties ; they arc signs only of subjective states or affections, and the whole value of the verbal sign is in its fitness to suggest to the mind or call up in the mind' a certain thought or feeling. All words, even those which are sug­gestive of spiritual thoughts and affections, will be found on analysis to be primarily signs of feelings, and only me­diately signs of intellectual and spiritual affections. They are not purely arbitrary or conventional signs, but are signif­icant by virtue of a certain innate correspondence between the sign and the feeling, and between the feeling and the intellectual or spiritual affection. Our philosophical read­ers will readily understand this theory, which is substan­tially the old Conceptualistic theory, advocated in the twelfth century by the too famous Abelard, completely and confessedly refuted by St. Bernard. On this theory there is no intelligible reality, that is, the intelligible is simply in mente and does not exist a parle rei, and God himself is for us only our subjective conceptions. He can reveal himself to us only by means of certain sensible signs, which are significant only by the affections they are fitted to produce in us. God is supposed, mediately or imme­diately, to prepare the signs and to construct them artisti­cally as signs of our feelings, as he does the feelings as signs of spiritual affections. Hence the whole value of the signs as a medium of Divine communication consists, not in what they signify of God to us, but in what they express in us that has its equivalent in God, or rather, that is identical with God.
Christianity is constructed and made expressive on the same principle. The author's radical conception of it is that of a work of art, a Divine drama, or fable, intended to illustrate and impress a moral, or to produce certain moral or spiritual states or affections in the soul. The Trinity, he tells us, is the machina Dei, or the Divine ma­chinery by which God reveals himself to men; and he expressly calls the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost the dra­matis personcc of the revelation. They are not three per­sons eternally subsisting in the Godhead, but three imper­sonations, or representations expressing in a dramatic or poetic form to our feelings the three characters or atti­tudes which God, regarded as absolute being, bears to his creatures ; or, in other words, they are the machinery or fable which God employs to make us aware of the con­tents of his own being. Their value is solely in what they express. They are real or true, because the subjective af­fections they stand for in us are the affections of God; but whether, beyond what they express to our feelings, that is, beyond the subjective affections, they have any reality or not, is more than we can affirm or deny, for to do either would require a knowledge of the internal nature of God to which we cannot attain.
The Incarnation completes God's dramatic representa­tion of himself, and adds the fifth and last act to the Divine tragedy. It includes, in fact, the whole of the Chris­tian representation; for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are first brought to view in it, and are either incidental to it or produced by it. " This threefold denomination is itself incidental to and produced by the central fact, or mystery of the Incarnation, as an impersonation of God developed in time." (pp. 167, 168.) In it God expresses himself under a human form, under human relations, as living a human life, associating with us as a friend and a brother, and pouring out upon us the human contents of his being; that is, he expresses in it, in a manner most impressive to our feelings, the human affections, charities, and sympa­thies which eternally dwell in the bosom of the Divinity. Strictly speaking, the Incarnation is not God exalting hu­man nature by taking it up to himself, nor does it import new divinity into humanity, but is simply a new and striking manifestation of the substantial identity of the human and Divine natures. Christ is not God, is not man, absolutely considered ; but the expression of both in what they have in common. He is God in that what he expresses is God, and man in that what he expresses is also human, and both God and man in that he expresses the common properties of both, - that is, the humanity of God and the Divinity of man, which at bottom are one and the same. This must be the author's meaning, for he denies the doctrine of two natures in Christ, and contends that he has but one simple nature. If, then, he is the ex­pression of both God and man, both God and man, as far as he is their expression, must be identical; which follows, also, from the author's pantheism. But apart from the expression, what is Christ? Is he man? Is he God? Is he both ? Let no one be foolish to ask ; for whether he is, or what he is, independent of the expression, is a matter clearly out of the range of our investigation. He is for us only in the expression, and as he expresses both God and man to us, he is both to us, and that is enough for us to know. Who asks whether the beasts and birds in iEsop's fables were or were not objectively real, and really talked or not ? The errors and divisions among theologians all grow out of the attempt to get behind the expression, and to impose their idle conjectures and uncertain guesses as dogmas of faith. We should learn to stop with the ex­pression itself.
Such, in brief, is the author's conception of Christianity. It is a divine tragedy, conceived, written, and acted by Almighty God, by which he makes known to us through our own subjective states the affections of his own bosom, the feelings of his own heart. Like every dramatic per­formance, nay, like every work of art, it is addressed pri­marily to our feelings, and affects and improves us on the same principle that any tragedy affects and improves us, though in a far higher degree, as being far more perfect as a work of art than any human tragedy ever represented or conceived.    Hence the author says : -
" The value of Christ's mission is measured by what is ex­pressed. And if so, then it follows, of course, that no dogmatic statement can adequately represent his work ; for the matter of it does not lie in formulas of reason, and cannot be comprehended in them. It is more a poem than a treatise. It classes as a work of Art more than as a work of Science. It addresses the under­standing, in great part, through the feeling of sensibility. In these it lias its receptivities, by these it is perceived, or perceivable. Moving, in and through these, as a revelation of sympathy, love, life, it proposes to connect us with the Life of God. And when through these, believingly opened as inlets, it is received, then is the union it seeks consummated. Were it not for the air it might give to my representations, in the view of many, I should like, in common with Paul (Phil. i. 9, 10), to use the word (esthetic, and represent Christianity as a power moving upon man, through this department of his nature, both to regenerate his degraded percep­tion of excellence, and also to communicate, in that way, the full­ness and beauty of God.
" Hence, it would not be as wild a breach of philosophy itself, to undertake a dogmatic statement of the contents of a tragedy, as to attempt giving in the same manner the equivalents of the life and death of Jesus Christ. The only real equivalent we can give is the representation of the life itself. It is not absurd, however, to say something about the subject, if only we do not assume the adequacy of what we say ; we could offer some theoretical views of a tragedy, but our theoretic matter would not be the tragedy. No more can we set forth, as a real and proper equivalent, any theoretic matter of ours concerning the life and death of Jesus Christ, which is the highest and most moving tragedy ever acted in this mortal sphere ; a tragedy distinguished in the fact that God is the Chief Character, and the divine feeling, moved in tragic ear­nest - Goodness Infinite manifested through Sorrow - the passion represented." - pp. 203 - 205.
We can now easily understand what this objective or ritualistic view is, and what is its relation to the subjective view. The subjective view is Christianity philosophically stated, the objective is the same philosophical truth artis­tically represented. The former is plain prose, the latter is the former done into poetry, or the form in which it must be expressed in order to be practically efficient.
Turning now to the subjective view, we find that it represents Christ as accomplishing his mission, the salva­tion of sinners, - 1. By placing in the world " the example of a sinlessly perfect being," which of itself is sufficient, by the new feelings and ideas it awakens, " to change the destinies of the race, and even their capabilities of good" (p. 205). 2. By the fact that it manifests the Life, the Eternal Life of God, which penetrates men's souls, moves their feelings, enlarges their views, " elevates their ideas und purposes, and even their capacity of good itself" (p. 207). 3. By giving assurance, through the charity manifested in the Life, of God's willingness to forgive and justify the sinner on condition of repentance and reforma­tion of life ; and thus dispelling the imaginary fears of the wrath and vindictiveness of God, and that dread of fu­ture punishment which sin generates in the breast of every transgressor, and exciting the sinner's love to God, inspiring him with confidence, and giving him courage to begin a new life (pp. 213-216). And 4. By bringing the law closer to men's souls, and giving it a more sacred rigor •and verity than it hud before his advent (p. 219).
Christ brings the law closer to men's minds and gives it a more sacred rigor in four methods : -
By his instructions concerning it.    The advent of Je­
sus was a new and more fearful revelation of God.    Christ
holds up the law in tones of greater rigor and exactness
than any which had been used before,    (pp. 219, 220.)
By his obedience.    This and the two following meth­
ods the author considers in relation to the institution of sac­
rifices, and to do him justice we must extract a't length his
own words.
"The institution of sacrifice is most reasonably regarded as a positive institution, originally appointed by God. We find the rite in use at a time when marriage, a far less artificial institution, is represented as being received by God's appointment, and when he himself was introducing, by his lessons, the culture of the ground and even the dress of the body.    It was most natural, too, that, when he was teaching the guilty, fallen pair their severance from him, by removing them from their paradise, he should also teach them by what rites of penitence and worship they might be puri­fied and restored to union with him. We also find a positive stat­ute enacted, at a very early period, forbidding the eating of blood, the object of which is to make it a sacred thing for the uses of the altar. Afterwards, undeniably, the system of sacrifice was care­fully elaborated by the minutest and most specific positive statutes. Besides, which to me is most convincing of all, there is a certain fore-looking in this ritual, and then, when Christ appears, a certain retrospection, one answering to the other, one preparing words and symbols to express the other, and a beautiful and even artistic cor­respondence kept up, such as argues invention, plan, appointment, and indicates a Divine counsel present, connecting the remote ages of time, and weaving them together into a compact and well-ad­justed whole. And if the redemption of man is the great work of the world, that in which all existences here find their highest moment, as most assuredly it is, then what may belter occupy the wisdom and the greatness of God, than the preparation of so great a work ?
" The matter and manner of the sacrifice are familiar to us all,- the going up to Jerusalem, driving thither, or purchasing there, a choice, unblemished animal; the confession of sin upon his head before the altar ; the solemn formalities of the slaughter and prep­aration of the sacrifice ; the sacred blood sprinkled before the vail that is closed against unholy feet, the horns of the altar touched with blood, and the remainder poured out before it on the ground ; then the fire kindled and the smoke of the victim, made a total loss for sin, rolling up before the eyes of the worshipper to heaven. And then he returns again to his tribe, thinking, on the way, of the journey he has undertaken for his sins, - as he went up thinking of the sins that required him to go.
" What, now, is the real meaning or value of this transaction ? The ceremony is proposed to be connected with the remission of sins.    How thus connected ?
" It is not that God has been appeased by the smell of the sac­rifice. It is called an atonement, or propitiation, but it cannot be supposed that God is pacified in any way by the sacrifice.
" It is not that the worshipper has embraced the atonement of Christ, typified in his sacrifice, as we sometimes hear. He had no such conception. Even the sacred prophets themselves, we are told, were guessing what^ as well as what manner of time, the Spirit that was in them did signify when they spoke of Christ and his day. Nay, his own disciples, explicitly taught by himself, could not understand the import of his death till they were spe­cially illuminated. Doubtless the worshipper did sometimes, and ought always to have exercised faith in God, as a forgiver of sin ;and, as God is Christ and Christ is God, there was exercised, of course, a virtual, hut not formal, faith in the Christ of the future.
" It is not true or supposable, as needs to be specially noted, that the animal offered is punished for the sins of the worshipper. No hint, or trace of any such impression can be found. Nor can it be argued from the confession of sins upon the head of the vic­tim ; for, when the scape-goat is employed, the confession upon his head is even more formal, and yet the animal is only driven away into tho wilderness to signify the clearing of sin, its forgiveness and removal forever. Besides, if there were any idea of punish­ment connected with the sacrifice, if the death of the animal had a penal character, because of the sins supposed to rest on it, then something would be made of the suffering inflicted ; which we know was never thought of, and made no part of the transaction. The animal was simply despatched, as when slaughtered for ihe table, and it nowhere appears, in the whole range of Hebrew lit­erature, that any one ever thought of the sufferings of the animal as entering at all into the real moment of the transaction.
" We come now to that in which the real value of the sacrifice did consist. The institution had, of course, a historic value as connected with the future life and work of tho incarnate Redeem­er ; for in it are prepared correspondences and, so, types or bases of language, in which that more spiritual grace may be repre­sented. It had also a value, considered as part of a great national religion, in which public remembrance of sin is made every year. It was also, as a rite, to have a renovating power over the charac­ter, somewhat as the manifested Life in Christ Jesus is designed to have ; only in a vastly feebler and inferior degree. And there­fore, in cases where it had no such effect, it was openly declared, on the part of God, to be an abomination to him, and as such to he rejected. The value of the sacrifice lay chiefly, however, in the power it had over the religious character, - the impressions, exercises, aids, and principles, which, as a liturgy, it wrought in the soul of the worshipper. And among these, as connected es­pecially with the remission of sins, was the impression it cher­ished of the sanctity of violated law; for, as I have said already, it is on the ground of that impression secured, both that forgive­ness will be wanted, and may be safely offered." - pp. 222-225.
The design of the ritual sacrifices was to strengthen and sanctify the law in the minds of the worshippers, and es­pecially to impress them with a sense of the sanctity of the violated law, however freely through God's mercy sins may be forgiven. " The same impression is made, and far more deeply, by the obedience of Christ; for, considering who he is, there is more of meaning in his obedience than there is in the obedience of many nations." " God is really under the same law of obligation that we were under and [which we] cast off, and it is the glory and greatness of his nature that he delights eternally to acknowledge this law. Christ is the manifested Life revealing this everlasting obe­dience of the Divine nature. All that he does and suffers is but an expression of the homage, rendered by God him­self, to that which we reject." If God himself renders homage to the law we have violated, how sacred must that law be !    (pp. 226, 227.)
" Christ, coincidcntly with the sin-offering, sanctifies
the law through expense and painstaking.    The sacrificer
must come bringing the best and choicest of his flock, - a
lamb or a bullock without blemish.    He must be absent
from home, and leave his business behind for whole days,
- all in the way of expense and painstaking."   Save in its
subjective effect on himself, all this is " a dead loss."    The
victim  must  be   wholly  destroyed, - must  all   " go  to
smoke," and then it will move his conscience, and make
him feel the sacredness of violated law.    " Christ, by the
sorrow and suffering of his painstaking life, accomplished a
like result."    " Every thing he does and suffers, every labor,
weariness, self-denial, and sorrow, becomes an expression
of his sense of the value of the law, - every pang he en­
dures declares its sacredness."    (pp. 227 - 229.)
" The law of God is yet more impressively sanctified
by Christ, if possible, in the article of his death, considered
as counterpart to the uses of blood in the ritual."    The
whole ritual turns on the essential  sacredness of blood.
The blood was considered as the life, and its use in the
ritual signified to the worshipper that " only the most sa­
cred thing he knows, even life, can suffice to resanctify the
law violated  by his sins.    Nay, more, a sacred  thing is
something that belongs especially to the occupancy and
right of God, and the impression was that blood,  being
the mysterious principle of life, is somehow especially near
to the Divine nature, - thus and  therefore  sacred."    The
meaning of sacrifice is, therefore, that  " only something
derivable from God, some sacred element yielded by him,
can suffice to cover man's sin, and hallow again the vio­
lated majesty of broken law."    Hence the maxim, " With­
out the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins."
" Christ appears and closes his sanctified and sublime life by submission to a violent death. He is not a sacrifice in any literal sense, as we know. There is no altar in his death; no fire is kindled ; by no act of religion or priestly rite is he offered up; he is simply murdered by the malice of his enemies." But his life, considering who he was, in comparison with which the most sacred things the apostles had ever known were profane, - it was the life of God, and, being yielded up in devotion to the law, and in its honor, was admirably fitted to show us that nothing conceivable is too sacred for us to yield up to cover the breaches made by our sins.
Here the author apparently breaks down in the attempt to sustain the analogy which he asserts, and really gets no more in the death of Christ than he had previously got in the sacrifices under the law. The signification of the sacrifice, he says, was that " only some sacred thing, yielded by God, is sufficient to cover the breaches made by sin," and therefore blood, as the most sacred thing known under the law, and yielded us by him, was offered in sacri­fice. To carry out this view, he should be able to say that we have something infinitely more sacred than the blood of goats and calves yielded us in Christ, and which we can ofler to God, or which by his death in our place he of­fered for us. Christ was sinless, and shedding his blood on the cross, not for us, not in the place of sinners, but simply as murdered by the malice of his enemies, could in no sense signify that only some sacred thing yielded by God is sufficient to cover the breaches made by sin, for in his case there were no breaches made by sin to be covered. The only view the author can take, in accordance with his theory, is, that Christ was engaged in a work of charity to mankind, and he chose rather to suffer himself to be mur­dered by his enemies than to desert it, and thereby showed that the law of God exacts that in a charitable work we persevere unto death, even the death of the cross; which, we apprehend, is not true, since the law of God only com­mands us to love our neighbor as ourselves. However, let the author speak for himself.
" Looking, now, at the death of Christ in this manner, we are made, first of all, to feel, whether we can explain it or not, that it has a marvellous power over our impressions, concerning ourselves and our sins, the law of God and his character. It brings an ele­ment of divinity into every thing, sheds an air of solemnity and grandeur over every tiling. It is even more awful lo the guilty conscience itself than the thunders of Sinai. And, then, secondly, we shall be ublo also, 1 think, to see that the whole effect, contem­plated under the laws of art, is produced by the fact that the Life, thrice sacred, so dimly shadowed before in the victims of the altar, is here yielded, as a contribution from God, to the pacification and reconsecration of his realm. The effect depends, not on any real altar ceremony in his death, but it depends, artistically speaking, on the expressive power of the fact that the Incarnate Word, ap­pearing in humanity, and having a ministry for the reconciliation of men to God, even goes to such a pilch of devotion, as to yield up his life to it, and allow the blood of his Mysterious Person to redden our polluted earth ! " - p. 236.
Here is the whole significance of the Gospel considered philosophically in its relation of a means to an end. Setting aside the author's attempt to explain the Hebrew ritual, his blunder as to the significance of sacrifice, and his asser­tion that God is under the same law of obligation that we are, we recognize, not, indeed, the whole truth, nor the cen­tral truth of Christianity, but a truth, and an important truth, in what he appears to be driving at. Christianity, no doubt, is, in some sense, addressed to our feelings, and operates aesthetically. The life and passion of our Sav­iour are admirably adapted to afTect us, and they move us far more powerfully than do the simple truths they express, when logically drawn out and stated in a dry and didactic form. Remembering who our Lord is, we cannot follow him step by step from his lowly birth in the stable to his agony in the garden and death on the cross, - we cannot see him, who was rich, for our sakes become poor, who was in the form of God and without robbery could judge himself equal to God, take upon himself the form of a ser­vant, humble, and as it were annihilate, himself, live a life of poverty and want, go about doing good when he had not whereon to lay his head, - despised and rejected of men, derided and scorned by the world, betrayed by a follower, deserted by his friends, arraigned as a criminal, mocked, buffeted, spit upon, scourged, and finally crucified between two thieves, - bearing all in meekness and patience, in sweetness and without a murmur, forgiving his enemies, and in the agony of his passion, with his latest breath, praying for his murderers, - without being touched in our hearts, filled with abhorrence for sin, and furnished with the most powerful incentives to contrition  and virtue.    Certainly one of the most efficient means of Christian growth is daily meditation on the life and passion of our Lord, and no one can hope to attain to Christian perfection who neglects it. All this is true, and well known to all masters of spiritual life.
But this is not by any means the whole truth, and would not be a truth at all on Dr. Bushnell's theory. The power of the life and passion to produce the effect indi­cated depends on their being believed to be the life and passion of a real being, a real individual, who in the high­est and most absolute sense is both God and man. Dis­miss this belief, let it be understood that the whole life and passion are only a grand dramatic representation, or the­atrical exhibition, gotten up and displayed merely for artis­tic or aesthetic eilect, and their power to move us would be destroyed, because they would want reality. In denying or rendering doubtful the objective reality or ontological truth of the Christian mysteries, the author should bear in mind that he takes away their very power to affect us. If Christianity is only a dramatic fable, designed simply to illustrate and impress a moral, and has no reality but in the feelings it excites, the thoughts it suggests, and the resolutions it leads us to form, he has done a very unhand­some thing in telling us of it. He has destroyed the illu­sion by admitting us behind the scenes.
There is no doubt that the ceremonies, sacrifices, sacred things, and observances enjoined by the Jewish ritual, reacted upon the worshippers in the way the author sup­poses, and that the worshippers, when sincere, were really instructed, edified, and made better by them, as simple spiritual exercises. But if the worshippers had approached them with the understanding that their sole value was in the spiritual exercises they demanded or were fitted to pro­duce, they would have failed to receive from them even that advantage. Prayer is certainly the most holy and profitable spiritual exercise conceivable, - indeed, it in­cludes every spiritual exercise ; but if undertaken solely for the sake of the exercise, it would not be, for it would then cease to be prayer. Prayer is the elevation of the soul to God; but a man praying for the sake of spiritual exercise does not elevate his soul to God, and therefore loses the benefit of prayer even as an exercise. The poor man would be merely endeavoring to lift himself by pulling away with all his might at his own waistbands. The Gospel, no doubt, operates to some extent on the principle ex opere recipientis, but to make it operate solely on that principle is pushing the matter further, we should sup­pose, than even Protestants generally are prepared to go.
But waiving these obvious objections to the author's doctrine, we confess that we do not see wherein he gets any thing more from Christ than beautiful words and beautiful examples. All the methods by which he repre­sents the Gospel as regenerating men are reducible to the moral force of the truths Christ taught, and the examples he set. It is true, he calls Christ the Life of God mani­fested in the world, but this life, according to his own prin­ciples, operates only resthetically, as a poem, a picture, or a statue, and connects itself with the life of mankind only in the thoughts it generates and the feelings it excites in them, - that is to say, only in and through the effects which naturally result from the contemplation of a holy life, - a life of truth and goodness, love and mercy, meekness and patience, disinterested affection and heroic suffering. That such a life has power to move and excite us to virtuous effort we have conceded ; but it imparts no new power to the soul, no new strength to any of its fac­ulties. It only stimulates the powers and calls forth the strength the soul already has, and always has had ; for the author must remember that there is, on his doctrine, no infused grace, and that Christ does not exalt humanity, or import any divinity into human nature. He only de­clares the union of the human and Divine natures which has always existed, and all the additional power he im­parts to us to keep his commandments is what naturally flows from a clear and full conviction, that, up to a certain point at least, the human and Divine are one and the same, - a conviction produced by a dramatic representa­tion, instead of a dry, didactic statement of the fact. We confess, therefore, we do not sec wherein the author rises above simple Unitarianism as to the substance of his doc­trine, and he even falls far below it, for Unitarians in gen­eral do at least admit our Lord was a real man, not the mere hero of an epic poem, a drama, or a novel.
But the author himself concedes that this subjective view of Christianity is insufficient, - is not the complete Gos­pel of our Lord.
" Here I close the subjective view of Christ's mission. Consid­ered as a power moving the spiritual regeneration and redemption of man, this is the conception we form of it. Is it a true concep­tion ? I have a degree of confidence that it is. But there is yet another question: is it satisfactory,- is it the Gospel of Christ? However it may seem to others, for it certainly appears to be a plan not wanting in magnificence, lam still obliged to confess, that, taken by itself, it is not satisfactory to me, and 1 could not offer it as the full and complete Gospel of Christ.
" I observe, in the Scriptures, a large class of representations, such as speak of the atonement received by Christ, his sacrifice, his offering, his bearing the sins of many, the holiest opened by his Hood, the curse he became, the wrath he suffered, the righteous­ness he provided, which do not seem to have their proper, natural place and significance in the view here presented. I recollect, also, that around these terms of grace the whole Church of God, with but a few limited exceptions, have hung their tenderest emo­tions, and shed their freest tears of repentance; that by these the righteous good, the saints and martyrs of the past ages, have sup­ported the trial of their faith ; that before these they have stood, as their altar of peace, and sung their hymn of praise to the Lamb that was slain ; and remembering this, I cannot convince myself that they were wholly mistaken, or that they were not receiving here, in the living earnest of their spirit, something that belongs to the profoundest verity and value of the cross. Men do not live in this manner, from age to age and by whole nations, upon pure er­ror. Spiritual life is not fed, thus interminably, upon a Gospel that mocks all reality. If their supposed Gospel does not stand with reason or theory, it must somehow stand with faith, feeling, and all that is inmost in eternal life. This brings me to the second depart­ment of my subject, that in which I proposed to unfold an objective ritual view, answering to the mere speculative and subjective now presented, and necessary, as such, to the full effect and power of Christ's mission."- pp. 244-246.
This would seem to be something; but, as we have seen, it is only the subjective view we have already stated, objectively expressed. In itself considered, this objective view contains no truth not contained in the subjective view, and is only a sacred language, a divinely constructed system of signs, for producing in us certain states or affec­tions. It is true because it expresses the truth to us, but the truth it expresses is subjective, not objective truth. It is only the form under which Christianity is to be repre­sented in order to have an artistic effect.
" But it will be imagined, I suppose, by some, that the objective religion, the view of vicarious atonement which, as we have seen, may be generaled by a transfer of the speculative doctrine, is only a rhetorical accident, - that the Aposlles and Evangelists only took up certain Jewish figures, made ready at their hands, using them to convey the Christian truths. Contrary to this, it is my convic­tion, and I shall now undertake to show, that God prepared such a result, by a deliberate, previous arrangement. It is the Divine Form of Christianity, in distinction from all others, and is, in that view, substantial to it, or consubstantial with it. It is, in fact, a Divine Ritual for the working of the world's mind. It was not more necessary, indeed, that the Life should find a body, than it is that the power Christ deposits in the world should have an opera­tive vehicle. The Christ must become a religion for the soul and before it, therefore a ltite or Liturgy for the world's feeling,- otherwise Christianity were incomplete, or imperfect." - p. 258.
This ritualistic view, if not a rhetorical accident, is not so only because its author is God, and not man. It is clearly an accident in relation to the substantive truth of Christianity, for it is only the artistic form of that truth, and is no more essential to it than the fable is essential to the moral it is intended to illustrate and impress. With this objective view the author's system is at best only So-cinianism clothed in Christian garments, or Unitarianism expressed in orthodox phraseology; and the only reason why, in so expressing it, we are not guilty of fraud and de­ception is, that God himself has prepared that phraseology as the fitting vehicle of Unitarian doctrine. How the au­thor has learned all this, and many other things he asserts, is more than we know, or are able to divine.
The objective or ritualistic view of the author comprises the whole of the great mystery of redemption objectively considered, or the representation of Christ as our sponsor, our redeemer, the propitiation for our sins; as dying in our place, bearing our sins, redeeming us by his blood, mak­ing satisfaction for us to Divine Justice, and by his own merits obtaining for us the grace of pardon, and sanctifica-tion, and heaven. This view must be taken, not because Christ really did die in our place, satisfy for us, and merit our pardon and salvation, but because this is the necessary form of Christian expression, the only form in which the Gospel can be expressed so as to produce its intended ef­fects. It is a Divine form, because the old ritual from which it is borrowed was itself the work of God, designed, aside from the aesthetic effect it was to have on those who observe it, to supply a fit and appropriate  language for worshippers under the new law.
That the Mystery of Redemption expressed in orthodox language is admirably fitted to produce the subjective af­fections the author supposes, is not denied, and we have al­ready conceded it more than once; but only on condition of its being believed to be objectively true. Reduced, as the author reduces it, to mere fable, to mere poetical ma­chinery for the production of those affections, it would not be so fitted. Moreover, we are not prepared to look upon God as dealing in fable, using fiction, and requiring us to believe it literally and strictly true. To say that he cannot without fiction or fable reveal himself to us, or move us to contrition and virtue, is to derogate from both his wisdom and power; and to say that he uses fiction, and requires us to believe it as truth, is to derogate from both his truth­fulness and his justice. God does not employ fiction as truth, and Christianity is not a fable. Either the objective form of Christianity is objectively true, true to the letter, or God has deceived us, and the Gospel is an imposition.
Dr. Bushnell is, no doubt, an able man, and many parts of his theory indicate no little ingenuity and speculative talent; but he fails to see his doctrine in all its bearings. If his theory, that Christianity effects its end only aestheti­cally, be true, the whole benefit of the life, passion, and cross of our Lord must be restricted to those who have lived and died since his coming. The old patriarchs, and the saints under the old law, were not then saved by Christ crucified, and they cannot hail him as the Captain of their salvation. He did nothing for them; he did not by his cross and passion consummate their faith, and perfect what was wanting to them; for, as all the transactions brought to view in the Gospel were subsequent to their death, they could not affect them as Divine art. The Di­vine drama, not being represented before them, could not touch their hearts, and operate their reconciliation to God. Either, then, they are not saved, and are suffering now in hell, or there is another than Christ crucified in whom there is salvation, contrary to St. Peter, who says, " Neither is there salvation in another. For there is no other name given under heaven to men whereby we must be saved." (Acts iv. 12.) It would not be true, then, as  St.  Paul teaches us, that "there is  one God, and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due time." (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6.) Nothing is more evident from the Scriptures, than that all who are saved at all are saved by Christ crucified, and that the effects of the cross of Christ extend backwards to the first sinner of our race, as well as forward to the last, and were as essential to the salvation of those who lived and died before his coming as to those who live and die since. There never has been but one true religion, but one medium of salvation, and that medium is the cross of Christ. Hence, St. Paul, enumer­ating the saints who lived and died before the Incarnation, and commending their faith, adds, u And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the prom­ise, God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." (Heb. xi. 39, 40.) This plainly intimates that we have received something necessary to salvation, which they had not received; that we have received the promise, that is, the fulfilment of the promise, in which they confided, but which they did not receive; and that our having received it, or that which was promised to them having now come, not only perfects us, but them also. The author is therefore precluded from giving to the life and passion of our Lord any interpreta­tion which restricts their effects to those living only after his advent.
The author denies the vicarious atonement, or that Christ suffered as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, and made satisfaction for them to the justice of God. Such satisfaction, he contends, was not necessary, was impos­sible, could serve no purpose, and God would have been unjust and cruel either to have exacted or to have accepted it from an innocent person. That it was not absolutely necessary is conceded. God could have pardoned the sin­ner gratuitously on the simple condition of penitence and amendment of life, if he had so willed. " If God had willed," says St. Thomas, " to liberate men from sin, with­out satisfaction, he would have done nothing contrary to justice. The judge who is charged to punish crime com­mitted against another, as another man, the common­wealth, or a superior prince, cannot, indeed, save justice, and dismiss the guilty without punishment. But God has no superioi*, and is himself the supreme and common good of the whole universe. Therefore, if he forgives sin, which derives its guilt from the fact that it is committed against himself, he does no one any injury; thus a man who for­gives an offence against himself acts mercifully, not un­justly. Hence David, seeking mercy of God, says, Tibi soli peccavi, as if he would say he can be forgiven without in­justice." *(footnote: * Summa 3, Q. 46, A. 2, ad 3.) On this point we have no controversy with the author, or with his Unitarian friends.
But because God could have willed to liberate us from sin without satisfaction, we cannot say he has so willed. Arg-nmenlum a posse ad esse, non valet. God was free to will not to pardon without satisfaction, as he was free, if he had willed, not to accept satisfaction, but to leave the sinner to suffer in his own person the full penalty of the law he had broken. He was not obliged to pardon either with or without satisfaction. Man had sinned wilfully, and had voluntarily incurred the penalty of everlasting death, and would have had no cause of complaint against the Divine justice if left to suffer it. To have pardoned the sinner on the simple condition of penitence and refor­mation would have been a great mercy, an act of grace on the part of God; but to refuse to pardon on that condition, for the sake of making a higher display of his infinite love and wisdom, and of raising us to a greater dignity and to a higher blessedness than we lost by sin, would have been a still greater mercy, a higher act of grace. Now this may have been the reason why God refuses to pardon gratui­tously. He may have willed something better for us, some­thing more to his own glory; and all orthodox Christians believe that such is the case, that he willed, not only to repair the damage done by sin, but to make even sin itself contribute to the exaltation of the sinner and the Divine glory by the means taken to repair it. Hence the Church in her exultation breaks out, " O felix culpa, quoe talem ac tanturn meruit habere Uedemptorem! " Hence, whether we reason either from the justice or the mercy of God, we cannot conclude, that, because God could have remitted our sins without satisfaction, he actually does so remit them.
To all human wisdom and power the satisfaction as­serted is unquestionably impossible, and no created intellect could ever have discovered its possibility. But not there­fore was it impossible to God. The author's arguments against its possibility are irrelevant, because founded on a misapprehension of the orthodox doctrine. He states the doctrine as he may have learned it in the bosom of his own sect, but not as it is taught by our theologians. He gives what he calls " the Protestant views " of the Mystery of Redemption, and states them to be, - 1. That Christ satisfied the Divine justice by suffering in his own body all the pain to which mankind were doomed for their sins; and 2. That he suffered simply to express the Divine ab­horrence of sin. The cross certainly does express this ab­horrence, and the suffering of Christ during his life, which was one continued passion, was beyond our conception, for never were there sorrow and pain like his, and his hu­manity was miraculously strengthened, by its union with the Divinity, to suffer; but neither view stated by the au­thor is the essential condition of the satisfaction. The sat­isfaction contended for is what theologians call condign satisfaction, that is, a satisfaction which is equivalent in value and dignity to the penalty incurred by transgression, or that renders to the majesty of God offended by sin an honor equal in dignity to the offence. Christ does not make it by suffering in his own body the actual amount of the debt, for the satisfaction concerns personal, not material things', but by offering that which in the estimation of Divine justice is, to say the least, fully equivalent in value to the offence. A debt can be discharged, without pay­ing its actual amount in money, by offering its equiva­lent in some other form, if the creditor consents to accept the commutation.
That Christ could make condign satisfaction, offer to Divine justice a full equivalent, and far more than a full equivalent, for our debt, or our dishonor to it by sin, is most certain ; for he was both God and man, the union of the Divine and human natures in one Divine person, and we can therefore, as we showed in our last Review, predi­cate of him on the one hand all that is predicable of God, and on the other, all that is predicable of man, sin excepted. He could not, indeed, suffer in his Divine na­ture, but he could suffer in his human nature, and his suf­fering in his human nature would be as really his suffering as God as if he suffered in his Divine nature, since what I suffer in my body is as really my suffering as if I suffered it in my soul. Christ could suffer, and, as the value or dignity of whatever is done or suffered is always deter­mined by the value or dignity of the person doing or suffering, his suffering, since his person is God, would have an infinite dignity or value. We say not that it would be an infinite suffering, for human nature, however exalted, is still unite, and cannot be the medium of infinite suffering, but by virtue of Christ's infinite person it would be infinite in dignity and value. A single drop of blood, a single tear, a single sigh of the Incarnate God, therefore, was am­ply sufficient to satisfy for the sins of the whole world, whether we say with some that sin is finite, or with oth­ers, that, since committed against the infinite majesty of (•rod, sin is itself in some sense infinite. But as his whole life on earth was one continued passion, simply consum­mated on the cross, and as he shed every drop of his blood for us, his suffering was not only a full satisfaction of the law even to its utmost rigor, but even a superabundant satisfaction. The value of this suffering of our Lord he did not need for himself, either as God or as man. Not as God, for as God he possessed the infinite fulness of the Divine nature, and could neither need nor receive any thing; not as man, because he was without sin, and had no sin to atone for. The title to this value was not in the Trinity, because it was acquired by suffering, and the Trinity did not and could not suffer, but was in Christ, the Son, who had acquired it in his human nature, the only sense in which God did or could suffer and die. It is, then, in the Son as the Son of Man. Possessing it as Son of Man, Christ could make it over to us, or, what is the same thing, offer it to the Trinity in satisfaction for our sins, and in doing so he would offer it to another than himself as Son of Man, in which sense he acquired and holds it, and offer what is even more than equivalent to all the demands of Divine justice against us. The satisfac­tion is, then, possible on the part of the Redeemer, and herein is seen the wonderful wisdom of God, as well as his unbounded goodness, that he should have provided a Re­deemer who could make full and complete satisfaction to the law for all the sins of all mankind.
That it would be unjust on the part of God to accept this satisfaction in commutation of the penalty annexed to transgression cannot be maintained. It is certainly not unjust to the sinner. To the sinner it is an act of pure mercy, because God might have justly refused to accept any commutation, and actually inflicted on him the whole penalty of sin. It is a great favor to the sinner, and not merely a favor of the Son distinctively considered, for, though only one person of the Trinity was incarnated, the Incarnation, without which no satisfaction or commutation could have been made, was the work of the whole Trinity, in which the whole Trinity concurred. The Trinity pro­vided the Redeemer, and therefore the redemption is a display of the mercy of the Trinity, not, as the author sup­poses, of one person only. There is no violation of eternal justice in accepting the satisfaction in so far as it releases the sinner, because we have seen God could have willed to release the sinner without any satisfaction, and if he could justly release him without satisfaction, he certainly could with satisfaction.
But the author contends that it would have been un­just to Christ on'the part of God to have required him to make the satisfaction, against his will, and still more to have accepted it in case the Son freely consented to make it. That it would have been unjust to have com­pelled the Son of Man to make the satisfaction against his will, we do not deny, but not unjust to exact or accept it, the Son voluntarily consenting to make it. The Son of Man freely consented to redeem mankind, and as he had the right to consent, since he had free will, and violated no law in consenting, no injustice is done in accepting it. Otherwise, we must say that every exaction from the surety of the payment of a debt is an act of injustice. If I volun­tarily become surety for another, there is no injustice on the part of the creditor in accepting me as surety, or even in ex­acting payment of me, in case the one for whom I become surety fails to discharge the debt. If not unjust, it is not cruel, for there can be no cruelty where there is no injus­tice. Moreover, the injustice and cruelty, if any in the case, are not avoided by the author's own theory. There is just as much suffering of the innocent for the guilty, of the just for the unjust, according to his doctrine, as there is according to ours; for he holds that Christ was innocent and just, and that God permitted him to lead a life of hu­mility, to be persecuted and finally crucified by his cnemies, for the purpose of manifesting to sinners the Divine love and mercy, and of reconciling them to God by taking away their sins. It is as unjust and cruel to permit him so to suffer for the sake of reconciling sinners aesthetically, or by way of dramatic representation, as for the sake of reconciling them by way of satisfaction. But there is no injustice or cruelty in the case, unless it is unjust and cruel on the part of God to permit any act of heroic charity, or any heroic suffering for the sake of others. All through the world the good suffer for the bad, the innocent for the guilty, the just for the unjust, and if this were forbidden, not a (lower of charity would ever bloom to gladden us with its beauty and fragrance, and not a shower of mercy would ever descend to refresh the earth, and clothe its dusty face with verdure.
Dr. Bushnell contends, that, even if Christ makes satisfac­tion for our sins, nothing is gained by the transaction but the simple transfer of the evil from the guilty to the inno­cent. This objection is founded on a misconception of the orthodox doctrine of Redemption. Christ does not satisfy for our sins by bearing in his own body an amount of pain equal to that which mankind have incurred by transgres­sion, but by offering to God in its stead its equivalent in value, or that which does more to repair the honor of the law dishonored by sin than would be done by the actual infliction of the penalty. God is more pleased with the sub­mission and obedience of his Son, than he is displeased with sin, and his justice is better satisfied by his offering than it could have been by the suffering of all mankind in hell eternally for their sins; for their suffering could never fully satisfy it, otherwise it would not be endless. There is, then, by the transaction the gain of perfectly satisfying the Divine law by the offering of Christ, and on such condi­tions that its honor may be fully repaired and the sinner be saved, enter heaven, which he could not have done if he had had to endure the penalty.
The author, moreover, does not seem to understand that to the innocent and just there is and can be no evil. Strictly speaking, there is no evil but moral evil, that is, sin and its penalty, because nothing else excludes us from our supreme good. The evil of what Christ suffered was not evil in him or to him, but solely in the malice of those who persecuted and crucified him, that is, in the malice of mankind for whose sins he suffered, and to them alone. Christ merited in his sufferings. He merited for himself, as Son of Man, the resurrection from the dead, the glorifi­cation of his body, his exaltation to the right hand of God the Father, and all power in heaven and in earth. " He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those that are in heaven, on earth, and in hell, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father." (Philip, ii. 3-11.) He was rewarded for what he did with the glory as Son of Man which as Son of God he had had with the Father before the world was. He bore our evil, but none of his own,, for he knew no sin, and his humility and obedience, his cross and passion, became, through God's wisdom and love, the medium of his exaltation to the glory of the Father, to be honored as we honor the Father, and obeyed as Universal Lord.
We, also, gain by the transaction, if we are sanctified, more than tongue of men or angels can tell over and above what we should have received by gratuitous pardon. In being redeemed by the passion of Christ, we receive many things pertaining to salvation besides the simple remission of our sins. We learn from his passion the great lov« wherewith God loves us, which excites our love to him, and in which consists the perfection of salvation. " God commendeth his charity towards us: because when as yet we were sinners, according to the time, Christ died for us." (Rom. v. 8.) In being thus redeemed, we have given us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues exhibited by our Lord in his passion, and which are necessary to salvation. " Christ suffered lor us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps." (1 Pet. ii. 21.) Again, Christ by his passion, besides lib­erating us from the penalty due to transgression, a penalty that God could have remitted gratuitously, merited for us the grace of sanctification and of final beatitude. The simple, gratuitous remission of our sins would have im­parted to us no additional grace, would have given us no new interior strength, no supernatural elevation of our na­ture, and would have left us as blind and as weak as we were before, and equally incapable of that supernatural virtue to which alone is promised the reward of heaven. "We know little of what would have been the final destiny of Adam  had  he persevered in the original justice  and sanctity in which he was constituted, but a higher destiny, a more supernatural blessedness, is promised to us who are redeemed and sanctified in  Christ.    The redemption we have in him is not merely the remission of the penalty of transgression, is not merely our restoration to the state in which Adam stood before he fell, but our supernatural elevation to a higher spiritual state here, and to a higher glory and blessedness hereafter.    Christ does more than re­pair the damage done by sin; he makes the very fact of sin turn to the advantage of the sanctified.    " Where sin abounded, grace hath abounded more."    Christ was con­stituted our head, and Christians are members of his mys-tie body, and as such partake of his fulness.    " And of his fulness we have all received, grace for grace."    (St. John i. 16.)    The grace by which lie is constituted our head, and by which Christians are made members of his mystic body, and therefore the beatitude   of being united to him, and participating not only of his human, but also of his Divine nature in heaven, the reward of the sanctified, we receive through his incarnation and passion, over and above the remission of sin, and over and above what we should have received even if restored to the state in which Adam was before he fell; and therefore it is the Church, anticipating as it were, on Holy Saturday, the resurrection of our Lord from the tomb, and his triumph over the grave, over sin, and the powers of darkness, breaks cut, " O felix culpa, quag talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem! "    Herein, we repeat, is displayed the wonderful wisdom and love of God.     It were comparatively a small thing for God to de­feat the Devil, and to repair the damage done by the fall of Adam, but to turn sin, which is the abasement of man, the death of his soul as well as his body, and hi's exclusion from all good, to his advantage, and to make it the occa­sion of exalting his nature, and raising him to a higher dignity and blessedness than he would have attained to had he not fallen, is what passes all created understanding, what we can never sufficiently admire, and what will ex­cite the admiration and gratitude of the blest through all eternity.    God's love and mercy are manifested to us not merely in not leaving us to suffer the penalty incurred by transgression, not merely in restoring us to the state in which Adam stood before he fell, but in making man's sin, through the mode of reparation adopted, the occasion of ennobling our nature, and of raising us, who had offend­ed, grossly insulted, his infinite majesty, to be in some sense companions of God himself, and coheirs with his Son. " Behold, what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be named and should be the sons of God." " We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."    (1 John iii. 1, 2).
Moreover, the reflection that we are purchased with a price, that we are redeemed by the precious blood of God, presents us a far stronger motive to preserve our bodies pure, undefiled by sin, than any that could have been fur­nished by mere gratuitous pardon. " Ye are bought with a price. Glorify and honor God in your body." (1 Cor. vi. 20.) And, finally, it turns to the greater dignity of man, that, as man had been overcome and deceived by the Devil, so there should be a man who should also overcome the Devil, and as man had merited death, so man might by dying vanquish death. Therefore, " thanks to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. xv. 01.)*(footnote: * Summa 3, Q. 8 ;   Q. 46, A. 3; and Q. 48) Here are considerations, and we have adduced only a few of the many we might adduce, to show that there is great economy in the transaction, and that it is not a simple transfer of the evil from the guilty to the innocent.
The author adduces other objections which it may be well to glance at.
" Then, again, according to the same view, Christ is also God and ruler of the world, in his own person. Would any king, then, be in a fair way to maintain justice in his kingdom, if he took all the penalties of transgression on himself ? Or if it be said that the human nature only of Jesus suffered, then we have the brief pangs of one human person accepted, in strict justice, as the equivalent of all the penalties of all human transgression, since the world be-
gan !
Again, there can be no such thing as future punishment or retribution, in this view, without involving a charge of injustice. For if justice be exactly vindicated, and the terms of the law exactly satisfied, to punish after that is plainly to exact double justice,- which is injustice.
" Again, it is a fatal objection to this view, that it sets every transgressor right before the law, when, as yet, there is nothing right in his character ; producing, if we view it constructively, and not historically (for historic and speculative results do not always agree), the worst conceivable form of licentiousness. For, if the terms of the law are satisfied, the transgressor has it for his right to go free, whether he forsake his transgressions or not. As far as any mere claims of law or justice are concerned, he may challenge impunity for all the wrongs lie has committed, shall commit, or can commit, while his breath remains ! " - pp. 197, 198.
Christ makes the satisfaction  as  Son   of  Man, in
which sense he was not the king against whom the offence
was committed, for as Son of Man he was exalted to do­
minion only as a reward for having made the satisfaction,
for having humbled himself and become obedient unto
death, even the death of the eross.    It is not true, because
our Lord suffered  only in   his human nature, that "we
have the brief pangs of one human person accepted, in
strict justice, as the equivalent of all the penalties of all
human transgression, since the world began," because his
pangs are not accepted as satisfaction on the ground that
they are equivalent as suffering to the penalty, but equiva­
lent in value; and because there was no human person in
the case.    The person of our Lord as Son of Man is his
person as Son of God, and therefore the pangs were the
pangs of a Divine person, the pangs of God, not of a hu­
man person; and being such, although suffered by God in
his human nature, not in his Divine nature, which is im­
passible, they are of infinite value, and therefore amply and
superabundantly satisfactory in strict justice for all the sins
of all mankind.    The author must remember that Christ
is the union of the human nature and the Divine nature
in one Divine person, or Hypostasis, and that, though some
things he can do only as the suppositum of the Divine na­
ture, and others only as the suppositum of the human na­
ture, yet in both he is the one Divine suppositum, and the
dignity and value of either class follow the dignity and
value of his person.
Christ in the Incarnation received not only grace as an individual, but also the grace of headship, as the head of every man, and it is as our head that he makes satisfac­tion for us; that is, he satisfies for us as his members, on the principle that the members satisfy in their head. His satisfaction, though amply sufficient, and even superabun­dant, considered in relation to the offended majesty of God, for the sins of the whole world, can yet be as to us an ac­tual satisfaction, an actual, or personal, remission of our sins, only on condition that we are joined to Christ the Head as members of his mystic body. We do not satisfy the Divine justice out of Christ; we satisfy only in him ; and it is only in him that we have redemption from sin. Consequently, if we are not in him, if we are disjoined or sundered from him, we cannot reap the fruits of the re­demption. If, then, we refuse to become members of his mystic body, through baptism, ihe medium he has ap­pointed for the reception of the grace which incorporates us into his body, and unites us to him as our Head, - as we may refuse, since we are endowed with free will, and he forces no one to become his member, - we remain practically under sin, have no practical application of the Atonement, are not practically washed from our sins in the laver of his blood, and therefore remain as obnoxious to all the penalties of sin as if he had not died, besides being guilty of rejecting the grace proffered us, and despising the Lord who has died to redeem us. The Son of Man was free to establish the conditions on which he would apply the pardon he purchased, or bestow the grace he obtained for us, and if we refuse to comply with those conditions, we may be justly punished for our sins. So the author is mistaken in saying that the sinner cannot, since Christ has made satisfaction superabundantly sufficient for all men, be punished without injustice. If he remains a sinner af­ter so much has been done for him, he only shows the deeper malice, and that he deserves the greater damnation. 3. The answer to the third objection follows from the answer just given to the second. Redemption does not set the transgressor, save in Christ the Head, right before the law while as yet there is nothing right in his character. The sinner, regarded in himself, is not justified before the law till he is intrinsically just. The law is satisfied in Christ, in whom is our redemption and our justification, or rather redemption  and justification  for us;  but it is practically ours only as we are practically united to him as our Head, or as members of his body. The justification is in him, not out of him, and we must be in him in order to have it practically ours; and whoever is in Christ is a new creature, is regenerated, and therefore right in charac­ter. Till thus right in character, he is not individually right before the law. The doctrine of forensic justification, or our justification in the eye of the law, while we are practically unjust, though held by some sectaries, is not orthodox doctrine, any more than is the author's doc­trine that Christ has made no satisfaction at all. The practical application of his satisfaction to us is essential to our individual justification in the eyes of the law, so that there is no personal justification without sanctiiieation. The justice of Christ is imputed to us, justifies us, only in that we are living members of him, and united to him as our living Head by the efficient operations of his grace in us.
We pass over without comment what the author says in refutation of what he calls " the mitigated orthodox view," namely, that Christ by his cross satisfied the Divine justice in that he showed the Divine abhorrence of sin, because, as he states it, we do not hold that view, and regard it as no less heterodox than his own. The cross expresses that abhorrence, no doubt, but the formal expression of that ab­horrence is not the satisfaction which Christ offered.
The author objects to the doctrine of satisfaction, that it implies, as he alleges, that God transferred his displeasure against the sinner to his Son, which cannot be supposed, for the Son had never done any thing to displease him. The objection grows out of the author's misapprehension of the Mystery of Redemption. The Father transferred no dis­pleasure to the Son. The voice from heaven was, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And the Son himself declares that he always does those things which are pleasing to the Father, and never was the' Father better pleased with the Son, than in his agony- in the gar­den and in his passion on the cross. Christ did not incur the Divine displeasure against sin. Through love he bore the effect of sin, that he might deliver us from it, as the author must, even on his own hypothesis, concede; but as he was himself without sin, the Divine displeasure against the sinner was not manifested against him. He was made a curse for us, it is true, because it is written, tl Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal. iii. 13), but only in the sense that the Scriptures frequently call sin the effect of sin. The curse of sin is death, for death came by sin, and whoever is made subject to death, or is in a mortal body, does so far share the effect of sin, and is cursed. Yet if sharing it without sin, he is not the object of the Divine displeasure. Thus, " God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful [that is, mortal] flesh, even of sin, condemned sin in the flesh." (Rom. viii. 3.) That is, re­moved the curse, or death, the effect of sin, through his res­urrection, which he could not have done had he not been made in the likeness of sinful flesh, or subject to death. He did not suffer death as a punishment, but that he might destroy death by rising again, and becoming the first fruits of them that slept, the first-born of the dead, and obtaining our resurrection and triumph over death and the grave. Here was no Divine displeasure against the Son, but an excessive love of the Son for us, and of the Father, who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die, that whosoever should believe in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. Nor less did the Father love the Son, for he hath highly exalted him, given him a name above every name for his humility and obedience in effect­ing our redemption, and hath received him into his own glory, and placed all things under his feet. The whole Mystery of Redemption is nothing but the manifestation of the surprising love of God to sinners and to his Son who died for them.
The objections to the orthodox doctrine urged by the author, being thus shown to be unfounded, he is bound to admit it; for he concedes that it is clearly taught in the literal sense of the Scriptures, and the rule is always to take the literal sense, unless something obliges us to take another.
The author concedes the fact and the necessity of sac­rifice, and not merely such sacrifice as possibly Adam might have offered in paradise, or men may offer in a state of innocence, but such sacrifice as is demanded in the present order of things, offered on account of transgression, and designed to resanctify violated law, and to cover the breaches made by sin; that is, sacrifice designed in some way to repair the honor of the law dishonored by sin, as well as the damage done by sin in us.    But sacrifice of this sort is impossible without the propitiatory sacrifice of our Lord, and cannot be asserted without recognizing in his obedience, in his cross and passion, a satisfaction made for sin.
The author very properly concedes that the sacrifices under the old law were made on account of sin, and had reference to the honor of violated law; but he fails in his attempt to explain the true nature of sacrifice, and the mode in which it effects the purpose for which it is made, lie makes sacrifice consist in offering some sacred thing to God, and tells us that its significance is, that only some sacred thing yielded by God, and by occupancy and right especially his, can serve to resanctify violated law, and cover the breaches made by sin. The sacrifices of the old law all turned, he says, on the sacredness of blood. Blood was held to be the most sacred thing yielded by God, be­cause it was held to be the mysterious principle of life. Hence it was the most proper thing to be offered in sacri­fice, and because it was so offered came the maxim, " With­out the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." This clearly proves that the author holds that the sacrifice was offered for the remission of sin, which is so far all very well. But blood, even considered as the principle of life, is not necessarily more sacred in the sacrificial sense of sacred, and no more God's by occupancy and right, than is every thing else he has created, for the earth is his and the fulness thereof. Life belongs to God as its author and sustainer, and so does every thing else in creation by the same title. The author puts the effect for the cause. The thing is not offered because it is sacred, but is sacred because it is offered, or rather becomes sacred in being of­fered. Sacrifice is making a thing sacred (from sacrum and facere), and consists not in offering a sacred thing to God, but in making a thing sacred by offering it to God ; that is, in separating it entirely from its ordinary uses and devoting it especially and exclusively to God, to testify his supreme dominion, by way of satisfying his majesty dishonored by sin, rendering him supreme homage, giving him thanks, and impetrating his favors or his gracious assistance. The reason why blood was offered was not because blood was the most sacred thing known, but because, in all the sacri­fices under the law, there was a remembrance of sin, and the offering of blood signified that the life of the sinner was forfeited to God, and he had in strict justice no longer the right to appropriate it to the ordinary uses for which life is bestowed ; that is, life itself was in justice sequestered from the purposes for which it was originally given, separ­ated, made sacred, or accursed, as the penalty of trans­gression. This is wherefore the destruction of the victim, as to all its ordinary or human uses, was essential to the consummation of the sacrifice. Hence the bloody sacri­fices, not only of the Jews, but also of the heathen, bear witness to the tradition of the fall of man, and the terrible penalty incurred by sin, -•" In what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death." They bear witness, also, to a promise and a hope of redemption through vi­carious satisfaction ; for the life of the sinner is sacrificed only vicariously, - not his own life is offered for his sins, but the life of another, and of one not a sinner.
Now it is certain that we have nothing in our own right as God's creatures that we can offer in sacrifice that will be a sacrifice of reparation, or that will tend in any way to resanctify the law violated by our sins, for the sacrifice of our own life would be simply an infliction of the penalty of death. The animals offered in sacrifice were not in themselves real sacrifices, and the shedding of their blood could in no sense vindicate the majesty of the law, could in no sense make it honorable, for they were wholly disjoined from the sinner, had no communion of nature with him, and in dying yielded no obedience to the law. They could be only symbolical or figurative sacrifices, needing a sub­stantial sacrifice, which they were not, in order to have-any sacrificial value. And hence St. Paul denominates them figures, types, or shadows of the one sacrifice of our Lord. Sacrifices in a state of innocence are, perhaps, con­ceivable, but sacrifices in such a state cannot be sacrifices in the Christian sense, nor in any sense applicable in the present order of things; for we are not born in a state of innocence. Through the prevarication of Adam, we are all born under sin, and sacrifices must in some way be repara-tory of the honor of the law, and remove the disability of sin, before they can be acceptable to God as latric, cucha-ristic, or irnpetrative sacrifices. We do not mean to say that we can perform in our fallen state no actions not sin­ful, till the Divine justice is actually satisfied in us for the sin under which we are born, for that is not true.    Not all the works of unbelievers are sin. Men are not born with a totally depraved nature. They have not lost by the Fall reason and free will, nor any of the essential faculties of human nature. By the Fall man lost original justice, in which Adam was supernaturally constituted, with the in­tegrity of his nature, and was turned away in his nature from God, passed under the dominion of Satan, and be­came darkened in his understanding and attenuated in his will; but his nature, as pure nature, seclusa ratione cu1pa>, is still substantially what it was before the prevarication of Adam, and he may still by actual grace perform acts which arc not sinful, which are in some sense good and even meritorious in the natural order, though not merito­rious in regard to everlasting life, or in the supernatural order, in which lies our real and only true destiny, since, strictly speaking, we have in hac providentia no natural destiny. What we mean, then, is, that we must be lib­erated from the curse of sin, before we can render unto God in the present order an acceptable worship,and there­fore must be able to oiler a sacrifice of propitiation before we can of lev an acceptable sacrifice of homage, thanks­giving, or impetration. " The victims of the wicked are abominable to the Lord ; the vows of the just are accept­able."    (Prov. xv. 8.)
Sacrifices, of course, arc not alone for propitiation, but sacrifices in the present order must always have a propitia­tory character, and in some way liberate from sin. And hence they are always assumed to have this character, whether among the Jews or among the heathen. They are undeniably presented under this character in the Holy Scriptures, and the author implies it, by expressly connect­ing sacrifice with the remission of sins. Now sacrifices un­der this character, no mere creature, whether man or angel, can offer, for all the creature has or can offer is only suffi­cient to fulfil the law, and to save him from being guilty before it. Yet sacrifices in this sense are plainly possible. The sacrifices under the old law were sacrifices, and were expressly enjoined by God himself, as the author clearly allows. But whence became they sacrifices? Whence did they derive their sacrificial virtue? Whence do we derive our ability to offer real sacrifices to God ?
Undeniably, we derive this ability only from the one sacrifice of Christ, for none but he ever could offer a sacrifice the value of which could be applied to repairing the honor of broken law, or to covering the breaches made by sin. He could offer such sacrifice, on the principle and for the reasons we have assigned in proving that he could make satisfaction for sin. The sacrifices under the old law not being in themselves sacrifices, they could be sac­rifices only by virtue of a real and absolute sacrifice; and we not being able to offer any thing of our own, unless something made ours by supernatural gift, can offer them only in so far as they participate of the merit of a sacrifice offered by one who is competent to offer a sacrifice that is intrinsically and absolutely a sacrifice. No one but he who is at once God and man in the unity of one Divine person can offer such a sacrifice, and consequently our Lord, who is and who alone is at once God and man in one Divine person, alone could offer a real sacrifice of the character we are considering, and therefore all other sacri­fices of the same sort can be sacrifices only by virtue of his one sacrifice, by which he has for ever perfected them that are sanctified.
But how could the sacrifices of the old law, and how can our sacrifices, derive their sacrificial virtue from the sacri­fice of Christ? Nothing is more evident from the Scrip­tures than that sacrifices in the present order, in so far as they enter into the worship of God, whether propitiatory, latric, eucharistic, or imperative, do derive all their virtue from his sacrifice, for we are not sufficient to think any thing of ourselves as of ourselves; our sufficiency is from God, through Christ (2 Cor. iii. 5), who expressly declares that without him we can do nothing (St. John xv. 5). How, we repeat, can our own sacrifices, or those of the old law, become sacrifices by virtue of his ? Certainly, only on condition that his was offered for us; that is, that he, not needing the infinite value of his sacrifice for himself, since he was without sin, offers it to God for us, or, what is the same thing, makes it over to us to be offered by us in sac­rifice for our sins. To offer it to God for us, or to make it over to us to be offered by us, is only offering it in satis­faction for us. Consequently, it follows that sacrifices in the present order, even of the sort the author concedes, if he understands himself, are and were possible only on condi­tion that Christ offered himself a propitiation for the sins of mankind, and by the merits of his sacrifice made satisfaction for them. Supposing him to have done so, then, as referred to him and as signifying his sacrifice, the sacrifices of the old law were truly sacrifices, acceptable to God ; and every act of self-denial, mortification, or alms-deeds of ours becomes a true sacrifice by virtue of his one sacrifice of himself offered on the cross and perpetuated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Hence, in Christ we can do what the Apostle beseeches us to do, " present our bodies a liv­ing sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God," (Rom. xii. 1,) and it becomes literally true that " a sacrifice to God is an af­flicted spirit."    (Ps. 1. 17.)
No one who carefully studies the Scriptures, especially the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, can fail to perceive that they fully warrant this view, and can be reconciled with no other. It is necessarily implied in the priesthood of Christ. Christ is a priest, our high-priest, and he abid-eth a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech. But the especial function of a priest is to offer sacrifice, and there is no more a priest without a sacrifice, than there is a sacrifice without a victim. " Every high-priest is ap­pointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; wherefore it was ne­cessary that he [Christ] should have something to offer." (Hub. viii. 3.) Christ was both priest and victim, and what he had to oiler, and what he offered, was himself. " Christ hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God, for an odor of sweet­ness." (Eph. v. 2.) A priest is a mediator between God' and men, and though men who are priests are obliged to oiler for their own sins, as well as for the sins of the peo­ple, yet he who is the true high-priest, the source of all sa­cerdotal virtue, needs not to offer for himself, for he is without sin, and offers for the people only. " For it was tilting that we should have such an high-priest, holy, inno­cent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who necdeth not daily, as other priests, first to oiler sacrifices for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this he did once by ottering up himself." (Heb. vii. 26, 27.) The sacrifice is plainly propitiatory, and is ottered in satisfaction for sin. " For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of a heifer, being sprin­kled, sanctify such as are defiled to the cleansing of the ilesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the Holy Ghost, ottered himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God."    (Heb. ix. 13, 14.)
It is only on the principle, that all sacrificial merit in
the Christian order flows from the one sacrifice of Christ,
that the reasoning of the Apostle concerning the sacrifices
of the old law becomes either intelligible or pertinent.
These sacrifices were appointed by God himself, but in
themselves they had no virtue to cleanse the conscience;
" For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and
goats sins should be taken away." (Heb. x. 4.) Yet they
had a shadow of good things to come, and as a shadow
implies a substance, they implied the sacrifice of Christ as
their substance, as the substantial or real sacrifice which
they foreshadowed, and without which they could be no
real sacrifice. The Apostle plainly teaches that what was
wanting in them was supplied by the one offering of Christ.
" And every priest, indeed, standeth daily ministering, and
often offering the same sacrifices, which can never take
away sins; but he, offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever
sitteth at the right hand of God, for by one obla­tion he hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified." (Heb. x. 11-14.) That this has reference to saints before
as well as since his coming, is evident from what the Apos­
tle says farther on, in a passage which we have already
cited : " And all these [the patriarchs, and the saints under
the old law] being approved by the testimony of faith, [that
is, by the testimony they bore to the faith, or to the corn­
ing, of Christ, and salvation through him,] received not the
promise, [the real sacrifice not having as yet been actually
offered save in the prescience and decree of God,] God hav­
ing provided something better for us, that they should not
be perfected without us," (Heb. xi. 39, 40,) plainly imply­
ing that with us, or by the sacrifice of Christ which is now
ottered, and which we have, and which they had only in
promise, they should be made perfect, for it gives reality to
their sacrifices, and completes or fulfils them.
It is idle, after this reasoning, if we admit the authority of the Apostle, to deny that Christ offered a real propitia­tory sacrifice, made by his obedience, his cross and passion, a real satisfaction for sin, and to assert that he removes our sins only on aesthetic principles, by the mere tragic display of his passion and death. The author in so doing loses the whole force of the  Apostle's reasoning.    The sacrifices under the old law did cleanse by way of satisfaction from defilements of the flesh contracted under the law; if they could do that, " how much more," asks the Apostle, " shall the blood of Christ, who, through the Holy Ghost, offered himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, [that is, from sin,] to serve the living God ? " There would be no analogy in the case, and no place for the a fortiori of the Apostle, if the sacrifice of Christ did not cleanse from sin by way of satisfaction. On the author's theory, the sacrifices under the law could take away sins, in the same sense, though not in the same de­gree, perhaps, that the sacrifice of Christ takes them away ; but this the Apostle denies, and declares that, in the sense in which he represents Christ's sacrifice of himself as tak­ing away sin, "it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sins should be taken away." If the Apostle was right, Dr. Bushnell is undeniably wrong, and ought to give up his aesthetic theory, and return to the or­thodox doctrine of redemption.
Taking the view we have presented, it is easy to under­stand that the sacrifice of Christ was infinitely meritorious, in satisfying for our sins, and in procuring us grace to rise from sin and to walk in newness of life, We see, also, that all merit, in the Christian order, comes from Christ, that we have no merit of our own, that we merit only in his merit, and are saved by his justice and sanctity, not by our own, - the great truth which the author's Calvinistic friends and their Jansenistic allies so strenuously assert, and which they so seldom fail to abuse. Christ is the great fountain of merit, and is "made unto us from God wis­dom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption." (1 Cor. i. 30.)
But. this can be true only in the orthodox sense. Christ satisfied and merits for us by his obedience, not simply by his suffering and dying on the cross. The cross stands for redemption, not because it was the mere death of Christ that redeems us, but because on it was consummated his obedience. " He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." What satisfies is not the death, but the infinite merits of the obedience of which submission to death was the last crowning act. " For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one shall many be made just." (Rom. v. 19.) But merit is of a personal nature, and not transferable; how, then, can the merits of Christ's obedi­ence become ours, or we merit in his merit? Christ was constituted, as we have seen, and as the Scriptures plainly declare, our spiritual Head, and he was obedient, offered himself for us, as our Head, and only as our Head, not merely as an individual man, and his merits, which, consid­ered in their intrinsic value arc amply sufficient and even superabundant for all men, can avail us only as they be­come ours; and they can become ours only on condition of our being mystically united to him as his living members. We are redeemed, sanctified, only in him, that is, only ass we arc in him, and merit in his merits, as the members are in, and merit in the merit of, their head. If we are out of him, sundered from him, and are not made, through the ef­ficient operations of his grace in us, one with him, there is no connection between his merits and ours, but, as it were, a chasm between him and us, across which his merits can­not flow to us, and become ours. Hence the dogma of faith, Extra Ecclesiam, nullvs salus,- Out of the Church, no salvation,- a dogma which many hold to be unreason­able, but which could not be denied without denying the; whole doctrine of redemption, and of salvation through the merits of Christ. God operates by his grace, indeed, in all men to bring them to Christ, to be mystically united to him, and no one can come to him without grace; since he says, " No man cometh to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him." (St. John vi. 44.) But it is only as so united to him in his mystical body that the merits of his obedience are, as it is termed, practically applied to us, that is, become ours; for it is only as so united that we obey in his obedience, or are crucified with him on the cross, and can offer his merits, as merits acquired by us, not individually indeed, but in our Head, in satisfaction for our sins, and plead them as the ground of our title to par­don and everlasting life; since " Christ is the head of the Church," and "the Saviour of his body"; " he loved the Church and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanc­tify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life; that he might present it to himself a glorious church with­out spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." (Eph. v. 23-27.) Hence Christ tells us, " I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." " As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine ; so neither can you, unless ye abide in me." (St. John xv. 1-4.) But when we are thus united to him as living branches to the true vine, or as living members of a living body to its living head, his merits, acquired as our Head, are, through his free gift, in­fused into us individually, as the sap Hows from the root through the vine to its living branches, and become the principle of our sacrifice and our charity, - of our new life and all its acts, - and we are personally justified because personally just, and we are personally just by the justice of Christ, because as real members of him we participate of the justice of our Head; and being thus just, God can jus­tify us and still retain his justice in all its rigor. Thus are we "justified gratis by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to the showing of his justice, for the remission of past sins, through the for­bearance of God, for the showing of his justice in this time; that he himself may be just and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ."    (lloin. iii. 24-26.)

The difficulty the author feels in admitting the doctrine of satisfaction, we apprehend, grows out of his having con­templated the Mystery of Redemption only in the form presented by his own and kindred sects, which regard the relation of Christ to us as our Head and of ours to him as his members, as merely extrinsic, as a matter of mere out­ward covenant or agreement. So regarded, Christ does not and cannot make any real satisfaction for us ; his mer­its could only be imputed to us, or reckoned to be ours, without being so in fact, and our justification through him could be only an imputed justification, without implying any inward or intrinsic justice or sanctity on our part. God does not and cannot deal in fictions of law, and does and can pronounce no man justified who is not intrinsi­cally just in the eyes of the law. The doctrine of imputed justice, the common doctrine of the Reformers, invented to save the glory of Christ, entirely mistakes the great Mys­tery of Redemption, and reduces the new law to the level of the old, and Christ to the level of Moses, instead of making him the mediator of a better testament. Moses was the mediator of an extrinsic testament, and his sacri­fices did not and could not of themselves take away sin as pertaining to the conscience, and were only types, figures, or signs of the real and intrinsic sacrifice, which was needed and was to be made. But Christ, we are told, is the medi­ator of a better testament than that of Moses ; and better because intrinsic, not extrinsic merely, so that justification and sanctification may in fact be one and the same thing. " For this is the testament I will make to the house of Is­rael after those days, saith the Lord; I will give my laws into their minds, and ,1 will write them on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Heb. viii. 10.) Hence a testament that effects the justice of the sinner while it justifies him before the law, which the sac­rifices of the old law could not do.
Here is the truth the Mercersburg Reviewer so strenu­ously contends for, and which, singularly enough, he ac­cuses the Church of denying, although it is well known that she has always asserted it, and condemns the Reformers, in condemning their doctrine of imputed justice, its contradic­tory, for denying it. The original pretence of the Reform­ers for separating from the Church was that she held it, and our Mercersburg friend, having discovered its impor­tance, does not do well to charge us with denying it, and claiming it as the great and essential doctrine of the Refor­mation. This is at once to bear false witness and to be guilty of the attempt to commit robbery. The doctrine is a truth essential in Catholic faith and theology, and after we have been abused by the whole Protestant world, during three hundred years and over, for holding it, we cannot now consent to be robbed of the honor of having held it, and declared to have rejected the Gospel on the grounds of our not having held it. The Reviewer has well seen that Christ's obedience can satisfy for us, and his merits be­come ours, only by virtue of our real, living union with Christ as our Head, what the Church has always told him, but, having no infallible guide in matters of faith, he exag­gerates the union, makes it hypostatic, asserts that every believer bears to the Divine Word the same relation which subsists between the Word and the human nature he as­sumed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, which is to fall into a sort of Christian pantheism, the grand error of our author, and of a large class of German neologists. The union is mystical, not hypostatic, and is effected, not by way of the emanation of Christ, but by the efficient operations of his grace in us, by which he creates us anew in him, or by which he begets us unto himself, generates his own life in us, and through it transmits to us his merits.
The author may here see that the two views of Chris­tianity he insists upon can coalesce more really than on his hypothesis, without denying, but by asserting, the objective reality of what he calls the objective form of Christianity. What he wants to maintain is, that Christ actually re­deems only in sanctifying us, that the redemption becomes effectual in us only inasmuch as it removes our sins and renders us intrinsically just; and this on the orthodox doc­trine is actually the case, and hence, though his merits are always declared to be sufficient and even superabundant for all mankind, none are represented as ever really partici­pating of them but those who are living members of Christ, because it is only in him as our Head that we merit, satisfy, or are saved. No man has ever any occasion to be heterodox in order to assert truth, for there is no truth not amply provided for in orthodox theology.
In the orthodox view we have presented, we may see the wonderful wisdom and goodness of God, who not only re­deems us from sin through Christ, but gives us the power to render every one of our acts a sacrifice well pleasing in his sight, by enabling us, through a mystic union with Christ, to participate of the infinite merits of Christ's one sacrifice, which was offered in a bloody manner on Cal­vary, and is perpetuated in an unbloody manner upon our altars, - whether regarded as a propitiatory or a latric, a eucharistic or an impetrative sacrifice, - and of the infi­nite merits of his most perfect obedience, freely given us through grace operating efficiently in us. On the score of mere magnificence, this somewhat surpasses the author's aesthetic scheme ; and to even untutored reason must ap­pear far more worthy of the Divine interposition for the salvation of men. If" joined to Christ, through his mystic body, by faith, hope, and charity, we share his infinite mer­its, and the gift of even a cup of cold water in the name of Christ is sufficient to entitle us to the infinite reward of heaven. What dignity to be bestowed on man, who in himself is but a worm! What grandeur does it give to the humblest act of the humblest Christian !