purpose. He was made flesh that he might hunger and thirst, endure the contempt of the people, weep over Jerusalem, feel the hour and the power of darkness, agonize in the garden, and die upon the cross, and thus the penalty, the rigid satisfaction, death for death, and redeem a guilty world. . . . The death of Jesus Christ is the sacrifice of a divine person.

"His Godhead with the manhood join'd,

For every soul atonement made."

Watson's Sermon on the Incarnation of the Eternal Word.

"He (Dr. Taylor) cannot allow that the death of Christ should be considered as a price paid down for the salvation of men; and I confess I cannot understand the apostle in any other way. Nor can I see the weight of many of his observations, nor the force of his conclusions, on any other ground than this,-that the passion and death of Christ were an atonement made to divine justice in the behalf of man; and that it is through the merit of that great sacrifice that God forgives sin. Nor can I see any reason why such great stress should be laid on faith, but as that lays hold on and takes up the sacrifice of Christ, as a ransom price for the redemption of the soul from the thraldom and misery of sin and Satan."-Clarke on Romans iii.

A brief notice of a few objections to the foregoing view of atonement will form the conclusion of this article.

Objection 1st. "It involves the doctrine of imputed guilt to the innocent character of Christ."

This is a non sequitur; it only involves a transfer of the legal consequences of guilt. And to suppose this impossible, is to war with fact. A certain form of this transfer (though not for the same end) exists in the case of the infant world; who, being themselves innocent of any participation in crime, do, nevertheless, experience in part the consequences of another's guilt.

It is a fact that persons may, and that some persons have, voluntarily assumed the consequences of the sins of others. This, to some extent, is done by every philanthropist, who, in the benevolence of his heart, foregoes ease, and endures labor and suffering, and expends his temporal substance, to save the profligate from the effects of their evil deeds. This was done by the Lockrian king, who, by the voluntary loss of one of his own eyes, saved his son from the full infliction of the terrible penalty he had incurred:-an act which has received universal commendation, and has been employed by many divines as a singularly apt illustration of the subject of atonement.

"If King Codrus loved his subjects so far as to disguise and offer himself to death, in order to procure them certain temporal advantages; if the Deciuses and Curtiuses felt so strong an interest in the welfare

of their country as to sacrifice their lives in order to deliver their fellowcitizens from a transient calamity; if a Swiss so generously devoted himself to death, by running to Sampach covered with the lances of conflicting hosts, to clear the way for his victorious companions; if mothers have sacrificed their own lives to preserve those of their children; is it not absurd to say that infinite bounty never could, and never would, perform an act of compassion equally glorious and efficacious, to deliver millions of souls from more dreadful miseries, and to procure to them the blessings of an infinite duration, and of an inestimable value?" -Fletcher, vol. iv, p. 223.

We know that these are rare examples, and that none of them come up fully to the Bible view of atonement, in connection with which there is a mystery, sublimity, and glory, found nowhere else; yet they all involve more or less the principle on which the mediation of Christ proceeds: and the fewness and imperfection of the examples, should not be employed as an argument to invalidate the principle.

But suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the experience and observation of men furnish no instances which bear the slightest analogy to the proceeding against which this objection is urged, it would not follow that there would be any impropriety in it. It is not safe to infer from the regulations men have established among themselves in this world, what would, or would not, be proper in a divine plan for the redemption of sinners. We may reason from the analogy of the divine government in this world, and here the argument is in our favor; but we must not regulate the divine proceedings by the analogy of human governments. It is the business of courts of justice to administer law as it is established by the supreme power of the state: hence they have no right to require or accept a substitute in criminal cases. The subordinate judicatories of the Lockrian kingdom had no right to adopt the expedient resorted to by the king;-there was nothing in the laws delivered to them which would authorize it. But the king, being the source of all law and authority to his subjects, might adopt any expedient within his power that would honor the law, support justice, and at the same time save his erring son. If, therefore, we had no revelation on the subject, and if the government of God furnished us with nothing illustrative of the principle, still, it would be an assumption which no one has a right to make,-to say that God may not allow a substitute to receive the penal consequences of sin in his own person, and thus let in light and hope upon a doomed world.

Moreover, if the objection under consideration be deemed valid, how are men to be saved? If Christ was not treated as a sinner for our sake, how are we to be treated as righteous for his sake?

If Christ was not condemned on account of our sins, how are we to be justified on account of his death? And how shall we understand the apostle :-"He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." This view leaves the sinner without a meritorious sacrifice, without a guaranty of pardon, unless he may be justified on ground independent of the death of Christ.

Objection 2d. Another objection is based upon the supposed "impossibility that Christ should suffer to the extent necessary to honor the law by satisfying for the sins of men." But the question, we humbly conceive, does not relate to quantity but value; not commercial but moral value. If there be any force in the objection, it goes to say, there was not sufficient moral value in the sufferings of Christ to constitute a satisfaction in view of which the penalty may be waived, and pardon offered to the guilty. But by what standard is the value of Christ's sufferings to be determined? By his humanity? If so, then, indeed, is the objection valid, but the objector stands on Socinian ground; and to be consistent, he should go a step further, and deny the Godhead of the Saviour. We can just as well dispense with the divinity of Christ's nature, as the super-humanity of his sufferings. But if the infinite character of Christ as God, as well as man, forms the standard by which to compute the value of his sufferings, then, who is competent to determine the value with so much exactness, as to say it is insufficient for the purposes of redemption?

Objection 3d. It procures the sinner's release "on legal principles, to the exclusion of grace." This is a mistake, as will appear from the following considerations:

1. The whole scheme is the effect of divine benevolence. "God so loved the world," &c. The foundation of the entire arrangement is laid in grace. Hence it is denominated "the gospel of the grace of God."

2. The object of atonement as effected by Christ was to remove the obstacles to human salvation, so that grace might flow to the sin-⚫ ner in harmony with holiness and justice; that he might be "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

3. The redemption of the world by Christ secures the salvation of the individual sinner, only on condition of his faith:-a condition which the grace of God enables him to perform. The vicarious death of the Saviour does not make void divine grace. "But as sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that, as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord."

ART. VII.-On Natural Theology. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D., LL. D., &c. In 2 vols. New-York: Robert Carter. Pittsburg: Thomas Carter.

WHATEVER Chalmers publishes to the world is worthy of the world's attention. He brings to the investigation of subjects a mind almost unequaled for originality, deep research, discrimination, and power. He does not write for fame, but because he has a noble purpose to accomplish. The exigency of the times constrains him to take up his pen; and he writes because he has something to say. Neither does he beat the air, when he assails an error, or sets himself to defend a truth. He needs no eulogium on his own account, and his name is good recommendation of any book he pleases to publish.

Still, for the purpose of commending this treatise to inquirers after truth, it may be highly proper to give it a place among the works noticed in our excellent Review. We have no recollection of seeing this work noticed in our publications; and this is our apology for presuming, through this medium, to offer our observations to the public. And we now apprise our readers that we do not intend to review the whole of this treatise, but only to notice a few things in the beginning of it which we think especially worthy of attention.

The preface gives just enough of information respecting the nature and design of the work to enable the reader to form a pretty correct idea of the nature and importance of the subject before him. It opens by stating that the science of theology may be presented to the student in two different ways. The first method-which is the more common-is to begin with the being and character of God; "and then from this point of departure a demonstration is carried forward, in the footsteps of the history of the divine administration, from the first purposes of the uncreated mind to the final - issues of his government in eternity."

The other method is, to begin "with that sense of God which is so powerfully suggested to every man by his own moral nature;" and treat the subject "in the order of those inquiries which are natural to the exercised spirit of an individual man from the outset of his religious earnestness when the felt supremacy of conscience within tells him of a law and tells him of a Lawgiver."

By the first method, the works of our best authors proceed "in the chronological order of the history of the divine government;" descending "synthetically from principles which have their resi

dence in the constitution of the Godhead, and which transport us back to past eternity."

"By the second arrangement we are made to ascend in the order of man's fears and of his efforts to get relieved of them." Thus reversing the order of the first method, and so passing on through an early consideration of man's depravity, the character and government of God, the sanctions and requisitions of his law, the remedial dispensation, &c.: "thence, finally, and after the settlement of all that was practical and pressing, to the solution of the difficulties which are grappled with at the outset of the former scheme of theology." Our author does "not rigorously adhere to either of these methods;" but proceeds in such order as the state of the case seemed to render most expedient.

The treatise fills two volumes, 12mo., of four hundred pages each, and is divided into five books.

At the risk of "nauseating those of quick and powerful understanding," our author thought it advisable to be quite diffuse, and to employ many illustrations in the first two chapters of his preliminary views, in order, as he says, "to give the most plain and intelligible notices of their way even unto babes."

In reading this portion one cannot but feel sensibly the propriety of such an apology; for, in truth, the same idea will be so frequently presented in similar dress and relation, that one is in danger of becoming wearied of it before it is dismissed.

This, to some extent, is a trait in all the publications of this author which we have examined.

These two chapters are, "On the Distinction between the Ethics of Theology and the Objects of Theolgy;" and "On the Duty which is laid upon Man by the Probability, or even the Imagination, of a God." The next two chapters treat "Of the Metaphysics which have been resorted to on the Side of Theism."

In this part of the work we find particularly noticed Dr. S. Clarke's celebrated a priori argument on the being of a God; and Mr. Hume's objection to the a posteriori argument, grounded on the assertion that the world is a singular effect. Our author apprehends that some may be disposed to complain of the "impracticable obscurity" of these two chapters. But he thinks "the complaint should be laid not on the author, but on the necessities. of his subject."

He solicits the attention of the more profound class of readers to the fourth chapter, which treats of Hume's celebrated argument on the side of atheism. The infidelity of this philosopher, he thinks, has never been adequately met by any of his opponents.