The sacrifice of Job for his sins is the single historical example on which Dr. Bushnell relies, and as we believe that in the burnt-offerings' of patriarchal times, the expiatory idea, if present at all, was exceedingly obscure, we do not take any exception to the paragraph in which it is contended that this was at most a supplicatory offering.

We cannot extract, nor indeed is it necessary that we should, Dr. Bushnell's account of the solemnities of the day of atonement. A single paragraph in which, under the influence of the fundamental mistake of his whole argument, he implies that what is intended to produce a moral effect upon man, cannot at the same time be expiatory before God, will adequately represent his account of these remarkable ceremonies.

'We shall be struck, in the review of them, not with any discovery of an expiatory element, but with the fact, that everything is ordered with such a manifestly artistic study and skill, to beget, in minds too crude for the reflective modes of exercise, a whole set of impressions answering to those of the Christian doctrine of salvation; the holiness of God, the uncleanness and deep guilt of sin, and the faith of God's forgiving mercy.'*

Expiation, as defined by Dr. Pye Smith, 'denotes anything 'that may supply an adequate reason for exempting the criminal 'from the penalty due ;'† and it admits of proof that expiation was the most conspicuousand sometimes the only idea of all the 'sin-offerings' and 'trespass-offerings' of the Mosaic legislation. The subjective effect was secured by the presentation of an objective atonement.

Dr. Bushnell discovers no expiatory element' in the service on the great Day of Atonement; but what was a Jew likely to discover in it? If the Moral View' had been suggested to a devout worshipper in the Tabernacle or the Temple, we can imagine him giving some such reply as this: What atonement is, I know. More than once, ignorantly and unintentionally, I 'have broken the precepts of the law, and when I discovered my 'offence, I was troubled by fear of the Divine displeasure. I brought a kid of the goats to the priest, and he offered it as a "sin-offering,”-it was an expiation for the transgression I did ⚫ not mean to commit; when it was offered my involuntary offence was blotted out. But I have been guilty of sins innumerable 'for which I could not offer any expiation. For my ungoverned anger, for my selfishness, for my want of pity for the poor, 'for the ingratitude of my heart to Jehovah for all his good'ness to me, the law permits me to bring no sacrifice. If my

Page 438.

† Outlines of Christian Theology,' p. 531.

What a Jew would Think.

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'lesser offences can only be forgiven when the priest has atoned 'for them, these greater sins must surely need atonement too. My case is that of the whole nation. We have all sinned and 'done wickedly; and though we have expiated involuntary 'transgressions, for our worst crimes no expiation has been made. But, year by year, we call to mind all our iniquities ' and we "afflict our souls." We assemble before the holy place, and sacrifices are slain for us all. They are called “sin'offerings "the very name which is given to the atonements 'for our inferior transgressions of the law. We cannot, indeed, believe that if one man must bring a goat to expiate an unin⚫tentional breach of God's lighter precepts, these two goats can expiate all the great offences of which all the people have been guilty; and yet these two goats are also a "sin-offering;" over the head of one of them the high priest confesses "all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgres"sions in all their sins." Surely I am to think of the sacri'fices offered for the nation as I think of the sacrifices which I have offered for myself; when the annual atonement is made, 'I may look to God to pardon me. God means me to think of

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< all my sins as expiated by the death of the goat that is slain, and as removed from me, "far as the east is from the west," by the goat that is driven into the wilderness. No promise, indeed, is given that when the day is over, all our iniquities 'shall be forgiven;† and in this the law of the Great Day of 'Atonement is unlike the laws which direct us how to atone individually for our ceremonial offences. The reason of the 'difference is plain, for in other cases a full expiation is made, in this case, there is only the form of an expiation. But it is just 'because I see on this great day what exactly corresponds to the common atonements for ceremonial transgressions, that I dare 'to trust in the Divine mercy, and to hope that God will pardon 'all my sins. It is only a form; it has no real atoning power; and this prevents me sometimes from finding perfect peace;‡ 'but God means that I should think of my worst sins as expiated, ' and though sometimes "heart and flesh fail" when I remember my transgressions, I will believe that He is willing to forgive 'them all.'

* Lev. xvi. 21.

† No Jew was likely to confound the cleansing' which was to follow the annual atonement with the Divine forgiveness. The conspicuous absence of the formula, it shall be forgiven him,' from Leviticus xvi., was very suggestive.

The law can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.' Heb. x. 1.

Our imaginary Jew's account is, we think, truer to the genius of the Levitical institutions and to the ritual of the Day of Atonement itself than Dr. Bushnell's; nor would the Jew be at all perplexed by the suggestion that the goat by which the 'people are to be personally cleansed themselves, suffers no death or dying pain at all, as their substitute, but having their sins all put upon his head by the priest's confession, is turned loose alive, and driven off into the wilderness; so to signify the deportation or clean removal of their guiltiness.' It is expressly said that the two goats constituted the sin-offering; they cannot be severed. The one is sent off into the wilderness as a visible sign that the sins confessed over him are utterly removed, because the other has first been put to death.

The idea of a real expiation cannot be separated from the sinofferings for individual and ceremonial offences; the idea of a symbolic expiation cannot be separated from the sacrifices annually offered for the sins of the whole people. The institutions of Judaism, as well as the explicit teaching of Christ and the Apostles, protest against the theory of an Atonement from which the expiatory idea is excluded.

We regard with serious apprehension the silent but rapid advance of the theological tendencies which we have combated in these pages. It will not be supposed that we are inclined to under-estimate the infinite importance of the confession that our Lord Jesus Christ is the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person,' the Eternal Word who 'was with God' and 'was God.' The whole structure of Christian theology rests on this stupendous fact; and the most urgent practical questions affecting man's religious life and destiny are answered when it is determined that he who hath seen Christ hath seen the Father. Nor is it wonderful if, in the present chaotic condition of European thought, many who themselves believe in the old doctrine of Expiation, sometimes speak as though everything important in the Christian Faith is secure while the Divinity of our Lord is firmly maintained. At a moment when among the foremost nations of Christendom the foundations of all religious faith are shaken by the portentous triumphs of a philosophy which treats as obsolete and insoluble all the questions which have agitated past ages in relation to the higher life of our race, and the mysteries of the invisible and spiritual world; a philosophy which paralyses the noblest energies of human nature and robs it of all its glory; which ignores rather than denies-and to deny is less insolent than to ignore Page 395.

The Incarnation and the Atonement.

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-the existence of a Personal Deity, and proclaims that whether there be a 'High and Lofty One inhabiting Eternity' or not, is practically unimportant to mankind,-it is natural that the fact of the Incarnation-the supreme witness to the moral freedom of God and to the immortal dignity of man-should be asserted with a passionate and exclusive devotion. We thought that the Materialistic Philosophy of the last century had rotted back to corruption, but out of its tomb,' to avail ourselves of the magnificent imagery of Edmund Burke, has arisen ‘a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre,' overpowering the imagination, and subduing the fortitude of the most devout and courageous souls. They find that in the presence of the Incarnate God, the evil power of this terrific vision is baffled and broken: and, grateful for a Divine security and peace, they care to know nothing more than that in Jesus Christ our Lord, God was manifest in the flesh.

It must also be remembered that both in Europe and America, the whole system of Christian doctrine is passing into new forms and undergoing complete reconstruction; and it may be, that as the Incarnation was the first truth which was elaborated and defined by the scientific thought of the early Church, the Person of Christ, which many theologians regard as the solitary problem of modern theology, must, for a time, again absorb the chief thought and strength of Christendom. But the theory of the Christian Faith will be ignominiously impoverished, and the power of the Gospel over the moral and religious life of mankind injuriously diminished, if the expiatory value of the death of Christ is finally rejected. The doctrine of the Atonement cannot be eliminated from the Christian system without imperilling the authority of its inspired teachers; contradicting some of the strongest and deepest instincts of man's moral nature, and undermining the noblest theory of God's moral government; repudiating communion with the religious life and faith of the nineteen Christian centuries, and impeaching the wisdom and worth of the characteristic institutions of that earlier revelation, which for fifteen centuries before the coming of Christ, testified to the Unity of God, and sustained the hope of human redemption. The issues of this controversy are infinitely momentous, Ab actu ad posse valet illatio. For a time, those who refuse to acknowledge that Christ has redeemed us with His 'precious blood,' may still confess that He is 'the King of glory,' and 'the everlasting Son of the Father,' may cling to Him with enthusiastic love, may adore His bright perfections, and, from the depths of their spiritual nature, may confess that in Christ are treasured up the immortal hopes of our race. While

this Faith lasts, their hearts will be true to Him, and in Him they will find 'eternal life.' But with the new generation this theology must either return to the ancient creed of the Church, or drift away into mortal heresy. For eighteen hundred years, the Divinity of our Lord's person and the Expiation effected by His death for human sin, have stood and fallen together; the rejection of either has been always followed by the rejection of both. The doctrine of expiation, profoundly true in itself and of transcendent value to the religious development of the soul, is the surest defence of the only Christian truth which can claim to be of still higher worth to the spiritual life of our race-the personal manifestation of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

ART. V.-Report of the Jamaica Royal Commission. 1866.

TOWARDS the end of last October the people of England were startled by the arrival of a telegram announcing that the island of Jamaica was in a state of insurrection, and that troops and ships of war had been hurriedly summoned from our North American and other adjacent colonies. In the interval, before the detailed news arrived, the greatest anxiety was felt in this country to know how or why the insurrection had arisen. Ere long the detailed account of the outbreak arrived, in the form of a lengthy despatch from Governor Eyre, accompanied by several numbers of the Colonial Standard, to which he referred Mr. Cardwell for additional information. It appears that, on Saturday, October 7th, a Court of Petty Sessions had been held at Morant Bay, and whilst a black man was being brought up for trial before the Justices, a large number of the peasantry, armed with bludgeons, entered the town, openly expressing their determination to rescue the man about to be tried, should he be convicted. One of their party having created a disturbance in the court-house was taken into custody; whereupon the mob rushed in, rescued the prisoner, and maltreated the policeman in attendance. But so little,' says Mr. Eyre, did the magistrates think of the occurrence that no 'steps were taken to communicate with the Executive.' Two days afterwards the magistrates issued a warrant for the apprehension of twenty-eight of the persons principally concerned in