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wardly and necessarily connected with them" (p. 264); and again: "The rite was, to the offerer, an outward event; the sacrifice was not received into his very soul." With all deference, we must be allowed to say that, in the manifest and exclusive objectiveness of these sacrificial transactions, we recognize rather an illustrious instance of the wisdom of God. And we are not sure that we could wish a better foil, by the aid of which to set forth the real nature, and proper immediate design, of the sacrifice of Christ, than Ullmann thus puts into our hand by fastening attention on the typical sacrifices as external and objective. For it is unquestionably true that the direct and immediate result of Christ's sacrifice is connected with other results, from which, while it must be carefully discriminated, it cannot possibly be separated. Its proper and immediate design, according to the creed of Evangelical Churches, is to appease the just wrath of the offended Lawgiver; to expiate the guilt, by exhausting the penalty, of sin; to reconcile God and sinners; and to bring in for the unrighteous a perfect, justifying righteousness. And all this is manifestly and wholly an objective transaction. It is not in the least degree transacted in us, but out of us and for us. The sacrifice, however, which accomplishes this, and which faith appropriates on this understanding of its nature and immediate effects, cannot really be appropriated without other benefits besides these being enjoyed, and valuable subjective results being simultaneously accomplished. Guilt in the conscience is the very life's blood of sin in the heart; and the removal of guilt destroys the supremacy or reign of sin, initiating its progressive abolition. The purging of the conscience instates the worshipper in the chosen service of the living God; and the Spirit of Christ, who abides indissolubly with the sacrifice of Christ, cannot effectually reveal and apply its fulness of objective justifying merit, without bringing forth, from the fulness of the same slain Lamb of God, subjective prevailing grace, as well as powerful motive, to operate in the sanctification of the soul that has appropriated the sacrifice. The union of justification and sanctification is not arbitrary; it is a vital and organic harmony. And the doctrine of that harmony constitutes one of the finest wellsprings of a valid and refreshing theology. But this union is so indissoluble, and this harmony so complete, that with a class of minds, very estimable for their spiritual earnestness, but not accustomed to accurate discrimination, it leaves room for misapprehension as to what is primary and immediate, and what is secondary, though inseparable; and, in particular, it leaves room for greatly overlooking the objective perfection of the sacrifice as a juridical transaction, without

giving warning of the mistake by leaving nothing else whatever to attribute to it. The case of Augustine and the Augustinian theology is in point-a theology in which the recognition of the Redeemer as a fountain of subjective grace greatly predominates, to the exclusion of at least explicit recognition of Him as an agent by whom a work of reconciliation has been accomplished. But it is seldom that we see this tendency carried so far as with our author, whose ingenuity is really very marvellously put forth in evading the contemplation of Christ's sacrifice as considered per se, and apart from, and prior to, the results of its appropriation. He seems afraid to acknowledge it as having any perfection or completeness, or even realizable self-asserting subsistence of its own, till he see it "imparting a full knowledge of sin, and forming an actual communication of Divine grace; thus, and thus only, could His sacrifice be a substitution in the truest and deepest sense; thus only was it a real destroying of sin, and a real implanting in its place of a new life of sanctification." So that not only is reconciliation, which is the immediate effect of the sacrifice, set aside, but it would appear as if that which shall be called the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ is a composite thing, consisting of "the self-immolation of the Holy One," of our appropriation thereof, and of the implanted new life which is the result of our appropriating it. But if it is not a real substitutionary sacrifice till up to this point-if there is no substitution to be recognized prior to appropriation and the new life which follows-where is there anything tangible, not to say perfect, for faith to appropriate, or really worthy of being appropriated? The whole thing resolved back again into the former misapprehension of the incarnation, and everything is swallowed in the vague idea of a new influence having been implanted in humanity; and instead of an objective transaction in which the sins of individual men are expiated unto their sure and guaranteed forgiveness, the death of Christ appears merely as a vaguely-working subjective power that deals a death-blow to "the dominant sin of the race." Thus even the true subjective influence of Christ's sacrifice in the soul that has communion in it is displaced, together with all that is special in the experience of such, in favour of a general and indefinite influence common to all mankind, when its primary character as an objective work of perfect propitiation is not first of all realized.

But whether sanctifying efficacy and the implanting of a new life be its distinguishing original effect as a sacrifice, or whether its essential nature be not that of an objective transaction removing penalty, effecting reconciliation and con

The Sphere of Typical Sacrifices.

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ferring privilege, let the Mosaic sacrifices in their exclusively objective character be allowed to decide. For surely, if we find them parallel and analogous in their own sphere, in respect of one out of two characteristics inseparably appertaining to the sacrifice of Christ, that is the characteristic in which we are to recognize its primary and essential nature, its proper and immediate effect, as a sacrifice. To think these sacrifices typical in reference just to the very element in which they are not at all analogous, were to grasp an obvious incongruity in order to evade the truth which is pressing itself upon our recognition. What, then, was the essential nature of these sacrifices; and what the presupposition which they postulated? Be it remembered that-besides His relation to ancient Israel as their Moral Ruler in that they were His creatures, and His relation as their covenant God in that they were His professing saints, claiming, like their pilgrim fathers, to live on the oft-repeated pristine promise of the seed of the woman-Jehovah was pleased to stand related to them as the national, and in a true sense, the temporary, Head of their earthly commonwealth. In this character He was pleased to exercise over them a government inside His universal moral government, and alongside of, and illustrative of, the action of His covenant relation, but distinct from both. In order to exhibit to them in a very striking manner the principles on which breach of law under His moral government is dealt with and rectified by the provisions of His gracious covenant, he was pleased, in sovereign wisdom, as holding Royal Court amongst Israel in the wilderness, to constitute and declare certain things offences in His sight, which implied in themselves no moral blameworthiness, neither originating nor originating in any offensiveness of heart in His sight as the Ruler of the universe, yet still inferring penalties, which, unless expiated to His satisfaction and removed in the way of His own appointment, must inevitably fall on the offender, however morally blameless, however spiritually upright. Having no moral root or character, these offences might be substitutionarily expiated, and their penalty borne, by creatures having no moral nature; and of course the expiation could itself have no moral character, no inward spiritual efficacy. Thus a Thus a holy Israelite, without detriment to his moral purity and without derangement of his inner communion with God, might, by accidentally touching a dead body or a dead bone, or in various other ways, become unclean, and be deprived of the external privileges of the dispensation under which he lived. But there was the sin offering, or the sacrifice special to his case, whatever that might be. That offering was an external objective

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reality. The presentation of it, according to the instituted ceremonial, was an objective transaction. The result, in reinstating him unappellably in tangible privileges as member of the theocratic community, was objective, and could be wholly cognosced and enjoyed apart from inquiry into the subjective condition of the worshipper's own soul. All was real in its own sphere-the sphere of an external government distinct from the moral government of the Most High-the sphere of a "cosmical sanctuary" (Heb. ix. 1)— distinct from the most holy place of heaven, the way into which was not yet made manifest. All was real in that sphere, typical of what was real in another. But all was objective transaction, typical, it could be, only of what, in that other sphere, should be objective too. In that moral and spiritual sphere, breach of objective moral law is dealt with an objective sacrifice is provided in the person of a moral agent at his own disposal, appointed in the sovereignty of God, and with His own will consenting to endure and exhaust, through the Eternal Spirit, the penalty of that eternal law that rules in the sphere to which the whole transaction appertains. Of very necessity it is an objective sentence of condemnation which this sacrifice removes, and an objective relation between God and the offenders which this sacrifice rectifies. To apprehend and appropriate it, no doubt, implies an initial rectification subjectively of the heart towards God, while it explicitly confirms that rectification, securing the agency, the motives, and the means of perpetuating and perfecting it. Still that which is appropriated is, prior to its appropriation, an exclusively objective reality-a perfect work of completed reconciliation; rather it is God himself, in Christ crucified, reconciling the sinner to himself, not imputing unto him his trespasses. If the olden sacrifices have anything to tell concerning the sacrifice of Christ, it is this; and this they tell just in virtue of their being perfected as sacrifices, in their own sphere, objectively, and as standing wholly outside of the worshipper. They are not on this account in contrast with, but parallel, analogous, and typical to the sacrifice of Christ; and the analogy-the different spheres being taken into account-is as instructive as it is complete. How could it be otherwise than instructive and complete? It was the device of infinite wisdom expressly constructing an analogy. It so satisfied God's great idea in it, that He retained it in exhibition for a millennium and a-half, and then put on record a detailed and infallible exposition of its import-(Heb. vii., viii., ix., x.) ;—and until one-fourth part of the world's past history becomes a blank, it will continue to keep before the

Substitution not " Capricious."

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faith of God's Church, in variegated and convincing illustration, the sacrifice of God's Son as, in the sphere of the moral government of God and the enlightened conscience of man, a sacrifice primarily and essentially expiatory of sin-the perfect objective ground of a believing sinner's perfect and eternal justification.

It is quite natural that we should find, in the fourth place, the idea of strict and proper substitution stigmatized as in like manner external and lifeless. The only substitution which Ullmann will consent to honour is again a composite thing, consisting partly of substitution proper and partly of communion strictly so called-the latter element, as being subjective, having of course, practically, the whole field to itself. "The idea of substitution is, indeed, to be rejected as something false and dead, if what is understood by it be a merely external and formal, and thus, also, a capricious, transference of merit from the guiltless to the guilty; but seen in this light"-the light of "a power implanted within" -"it is something living and true." We object, as much as Ullmann can, to any external and formal and capricious transference, either of merit from the guiltless to the guilty, or of demerit from the guilty to the guiltless, of which latter transference, however, he never gives even a hint, though it is the indispensable postulate to the offering of a proper sacrifice for sin. Had we found him setting aside arbitrary and groundless transferences as in contrast with the real counter-imputations of sin and righteousness (2 Cor. v. 21) which, by the mediation of the Incarnate Word, God, in His love and justice, is pleased to effect according to the conditions and safeguards of the Covenant of Grace, we would gladly leave the obnoxious adjectives, "external," "formal," capricious," to all the condemnation which our author assigns to them. But his real objection, we cannot help seeing, is not to the adjectives as qualifiying an objectionable kind of imputation, but to the objective substantive transaction of imputation itself, as held by intelligent defenders of the Atonement, and which he seems to regard as necessarily characterized by formality and capriciousness. For, over against such imputation as he rejects, and in lieu of it, he pleads for what it would be an abuse of language to call imputation in any sense, being really a communication of sanctifying grace. "On this account," he says, "God can, in His love, impart to him His grace, even although sin still exists within him, because in his oneness with the sinless Christ the dominion of sin is destroyed, its power is broken, and a hope and a pledge of its ultimate overthrow are bestowed." That is to say, our author is in search of a righteous ground on