Christ, and of Christ's merit to us, is the basis of this doctrine, (Form. C. 697, 58), because Christ, who need not have followed the law, acquired merit for us by his obedience. But Christ is Evvouos. The fact of the transference is given in Form. Con. έννομος. 684, 13. 697, 53. 696, 55; but the transferability is not made to harmonize with the primeval responsibility of man.

B. Christ's Obedience, Active and Passive. The early church emphasized the former, Anselm the latter. The Reformation sought to give proper weight to both, but made passive obedience relate to our poena, active to our culpa (Grunstädt), so that one seemed superfluous. Both, however, should be regarded as mutually interpenetrating.

C. The conception of punishment has never been sufficiently investigated, whether God's justice is satisfied by the lex talionis or not. (Ponerological defects.)

D. If, from the Christological standpoint, the divine in Christ is regarded as making recompense to God, the entire atonement threatens to collapse to a mere epideictic drama within God. E. The theological falsity of this view rests upon the torpid irresponsibility with which God is conceived.

§ 47. Subjective Theories of Atonement. Arminianism is transitional to Socinianism, and Socinianism to the somnolescence of eudæmonism. Kant said that the new man vicariously suffers for the sins of his ancestors, but God regards the inmost intentions of his heart, instead of the empirical reality of his deeds. Thus self-redemption begins first in the will, in knowledge and in feeling (Jacobi, De Wette). But all forms of selfatonement end in self-forgiveness. Subjective theory of indulgences.

§ 48. Subjective Theories brought in accordance with early Christian views, and views during the Reformation. After subjectivism had conducted back to a divine atonement, the old theories of the early church revived, and a unification of objectivity and subjectivity was sought.

(a.) Hegel and Schelling attempted this from a pantheistic standpoint, and referred to the divine humanity and to the atonement of every man with God; which atonement Christ was the first to proclaim, who by his death became the symbol of the death of the old man in us. So too Baur and Marheineke.

(b.) Stier, Menken, and Irving apprehend the atonement physically, and affirm that Christ died for his own sanctification and perfection, that he unites us mystically to himself by the sacrament of the supper, and raises us above sin and death.

(c.) Schleiermacher found a new standpoint, by excluding magical and self-redemptive theories. He said if Christ really wished to share humanity with us, he must suffer, especially from his sympathy with our sinful race which arises from the energy of his love. By virtue of his high-priestly office he draws us into the community of his holiness and blessedness, while as prophet, he is our antetype, and so eternal. On the other hand his love attracts us with great power, by it God has pleasure in us. The kingly office is distinguished from the priestly, in that from it the personal justification of our life proceeds. The impartation of blessedness is not possible without the impartation of holiness. Consciousness of atonement does not, however, depend on the degree of holiness, but upon consciousness of unity with Christ. Thus God is our surety, and we may dare to regard present sin as non-existent, and future holiness as already present. Nitzsch considers Christ's sufferings on account of sin, as embodying the principle of penance and of judgment of the world. Schleiermacher fails to show sufficiently the relation of Christ's sufferings and vicarious acts to divine justice. No essential progress has been made since. Hofman in 1854 published views arising from Schleiermacher's standpoint, which were sharply controverted by Thomasius, Harnack, Ritschl and Weizsäcker. He sets out from God's love, and declares the atonement to have been made as a sort of self-sustentation against all attacks of sin and death, and that it presents a relation of God to man, in which the former regards the race, not as determined through Adam's sin, but by Christ's righteousness. In his view of Christ's compassion, Hofman is behind Schleiermacher, but in advance of him in assuming a change in God's relation to sinners.

Dogmatic Exposition.

Vide Gess, Sartorius (Heil. Liebe), Schöberlein in Herzog's Real. Encyc. art. "Versöhnung." Thomasius, Philippi.

§ 49. I. God's eternal purpose of atonement. God's justice must be appeased, and mankind, which is powerless in itself to satisfy

justice, is exposed to divine punishment, which ends in death. But as in God justice and love interpenetrate, so in the world where sin obstructs the equal revelation of both, and brings that of justice into prominence, both are revealed together, as far as man is capable of atonement; and thus God's eternal will of atonement, or his will to impart his own will to man, is made plain. This possibility of atonement is implanted in man by virtue of his likeness to God.

2. Historical Atonement through Christ.

§ 50. Vicariousness and satisfaction in general. Atonement is possible only so far as it gives vicarious power, and so far as mankind is receptive of it. Christ is vicarious for us in every respect, save where our sin is of a purely personal nature. Absolute rejection of Christ is a purely personal sin, unless it takes place in ignorance. It is, at the same time, sin against the Holy Ghost, which Christ does not consent to bear.

§ 51. Christ's vicarious satisfaction.

A. In relation to Christ himself. Christ wills to assume the place of mankind to work atonement. He makes God's decree of atonement his own will. This he achieves by willing to satisfy penal justice, which is directed against a sinful world, by his vicarious temper (Gestimmung). Christ is the central conscience and heart of men whose wretchedness he tasted more than even they; Luke xii. 49; Col. i. 24; Gal. iii. 13; 2 Cor. v. 21. Не saw that no placation was possible if any claim of divine holiness was slighted, and therefore he offered up his entire person, and bore not only the penal condition of men in general, but sunk to the most profound abandonment by God, which man had not yet felt.

§ 52. Vicariousness objectively considered. Christ's vicarious satisfaction has an objective result. God sees in him a perfect surety and pledge, by virtue of which life and blessedness can be offered to the world. Since Christ's longing to make an atonement was no arbitrary desire, but a law of his boundless love, how can God otherwise than recognize this work as the best execution of his command?

When the atonement is accomplished, mankind is brought into a new relation to God. On the part of God it proceeds from his willingness to forgive; on the part of mankind it is

brought about objectively by the God-man, and on the part of the individual it is wrought by faith. Mankind is neither an object of divine punishment or of infinite forbearance, but man knows himself already judged, yet in such a way that judgment is arrayed with victory. Christ, the new principle of life, is our pledge and surety that God still has something to accomplish for man; and thus by his archetype, ever animated by the Holy Spirit, all humanity are renewed, and God, at the beginning, sees in it the completion. Great care must be taken that that divine justice, the wrath of which Christ bore, be not too much obscured or neglected.

§ 53. Transition. In Christ's death not only his earthly work was accomplished, but the internal spiritual completion of his person was involved. Hence the profoundest depth of his external humiliation is at the same time the beginning of his exaltation.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ART. V.-CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT TREATMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

By CHARLES A. AIKEN, D. D., Princeton, N. J.

According to the estimates of statisticians, a little more than one-fourth of the population of our globe is nominally Christian. Of this nominal Christianity a little more than one-fourth is reckoned as Protestant, a little more than one-half as Catholic. These two elements contain all that is really aggressive in the world's Christianity, as it confronts the more than 900,000,000 of our race who do not bear, some of whom abhor, most of whom hardly know, the name of Christian. If the Greek and the feeble Oriental Churches be classed with one or the other of the more active systems, according to their structure, history, and general affinities, they must be grouped with Catholic rather than with Protestant Christianity. The way in which they justify and maintain their own existence warrants this assignment. Such is the front which they present passively to the non-Christian world, though they may make little active demonstration against it.

How far is the nominally Christian world at one in respect to the methods by which it commends its Christianity to the non-Christian? How far is it at one in the reasons which it gives to itself and to others for being Christian? This Christianity of ours must in the first instance vindicate its own right to be. Its existence as Christianity covers less than one-third of the period of the world's history. Its persuasions have even nominally reached and gained hardly more than one-fourth of the race after eighteen centuries. What right has it to even so long an existence, and to this measure of success? Then by commission of its Founder and Lord it must continue to go forth, and "disciple all nations."

It is not proposed now to compare the two great types of nominal Christianity in respect to the external methods and appliances which they adopt in executing Christ's commission, but rather to inquire how far they agree, and in what they differ, in their conception and presentation of the evidences of Christianity. We are not to survey the field of apologetic literature, and compare the formal or popular treatises on Apologetics that have come from these two sections of Christendom. We might select a Pascal, a Chateaubriand and a Von Drey for comparison with a Lardner, a Paley, a Sack and a Delitzsch. We choose rather to compare the modes of presenting the evidences that are set before us in doctrinal and practical treatises. It will not be unfair to take as authorities on the Catholic side the Canons of the Tridentine and Vatican Councils, and the writings of such men as Perrone, Gousset, Nampon, Hettinger, Wiseman and Manning.

If the object of our present inquiry were to ascertain by what right, and with what relative justice, the two systems lay claim to the Christian name, one method of investigation would be plainly indicated. Three things would require to be first defined and then compared,-Catholicism, Protestantism and Christianity.

The two systems, holding much in common, do stand and have long stood before the world bearing the Christian name. It will not be disputed that, as a historical fact, these are forms which Christianity has assumed. How fully Christianity is in either, what beside Christianity may have been or may be in either, it is aside from our present purpose to inquire.