tinguished from the ens realissimum-are mere limitations of a greater and higher, and finally of the highest, reality. Consequently they presuppose this reality, and their whole significance and existence are derived from it. The manifoldness, the infinite variety of things is only the infinitely various mode of limiting the conception of the highest reality, which is their common substratum; just as all figures are possible only as different modes of limiting infinite space."

But, although the plenitude of his being thus includes all realities, and thereby all predicates, the absolute oneness or simplicity of our idea of him is not thereby negatived. A whole, which is a mere aggregate, indeed, presupposes the existence of all its parts, and is conditioned, as it is constituted by them; since without them it would not exist. But just the reverse holds true in respect to our idea of the absolute First Cause. As the source of all things, all realities and attributes presuppose his previous being, instead of constituting it. Unity is no longer incompatible with totality, when the one is the pre-existing source of the all.

Pure ideas, as such, it is admitted, can never have objective reality, as they represent a completeness and perfection to which no phenomenon of experience, existing under all the limitations of time and space, can possibly correspond. Thus, virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity can never be presented in the world of sense, but exist only in contemplation, as aims of effort or guiding stars pointing out directions of progress. But it is otherwise with ideals considered as actually existing not merely in the concrete, but as individual beings or entities, though determinable or determined by the idea alone which shines out through their acts. As the idea provides only a rule in the abstract, so the ideal serves as an archetype for the perfect determination of the copy. But here the Divine must be mingled with the human before there can be an adequate presentation of the great pattern and exemplar. The Saviour of the world is the only actual ideal that has ever appeared to human vision. And it is precisely on account of his divine character and mission,

because he is God manifest in man, that he is at once the perfect Archetype and the most real of beings. Pure ideas are abstractions, formed by throwing out attributes; such exclusion removing them from the world of realities into the world of pure thought. But God, considered as ens realissimum, as the source of being, containing in himself not only the sum, but the unity of all attributes, is the most real of all that the human mind can conceive of; he is the farthest removed from an abstraction; no predicate can be denied of him without defacing or breaking his image in the soul of man. He is not merely the Infinite and the Absolute (aliquid immensum infinitumque), but he is also the most real of all realities, the most personal of all conscious beings,a God who hears and answers prayer, who created and governs the universe.

I accept, therefore, the doctrine of Pascal and Hamilton and Mansel. There is an "absolute necessity, under any system of philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere of belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought. We must believe as actual much that we cannot positively conceive as even possible. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of the material universe form a common ground on which the theist, the pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and religious feelings of man-those facts of consciousness which have their direct source in the sense of personality and free-will-plead with overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man's relation to him as a person to a person. And by our ignorance of the Unconditioned we are led to the further belief that behind that moral and personal manifestation of God there lies concealed a mystery -the mystery of the Absolute and the Infinite; that our intellectual and moral qualities, though indicating the nearest approach to the Divine perfections which we are capable of conceiving, yet indicate them as analogous, not as identical; and that, consequently, we shall be liable to error in judging by human rules of the ways of God, whether manifested in nature or in revelation."

ARTICLE VII.

DALE ON THE ATONEMENT.1

BY DR. D. W. SIMON, SPRING HILL COLLEGE, ENGLAND.

THE Congregational Union of England and Wales has established, or as we may say, re-established, an annual lecture, or course of lectures, with a view to the promotion of biblical science and theological and ecclesiastical literature. Of these courses of lectures four have now been published: the one whose title is given above is the third. Most readers of the Bibliotheca Sacra will be already acquainted with Mr. Dale's name.

Like most that Mr. Dale has written, these lectures are very readable. A proof of this is that a fourth and cheap edition has just been published. The style is masculine, and ample use is made of good illustrations. We are inclined, however, to think that readableness has been secured at the expense of some scientific thoroughness, and especially of scientific completeness; and, after all, what we first look for in a scientific treatise is science. If Mr. Dale had held the reins of his rhetorical impulses tighter he would have left himself more space for the discussion of some branches of the subject which are but inadequately treated. Still the very defect to which we have referred will probably fit the book for awakening a wider interest in the subject, though it may prevent it from being of as much service to the theological student.

There are ten lectures and an appendix of notes. The lectures are headed as follows: Introductory; The History of our Lord Jesus Christ in relation to the Fact of the Atonement; the Fact of the Atonement the Testimony of our Lord; the Testimony of St. Peter; the Testimony of St. John and St. James; the Testimony of St. Paul; General Considerations confirmatory of the preceding Argument; the Remission of Sins; the Theory of the Atonement illustrated by the Relation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Eternal Law of Righteousness; the Theory of the Atonement illustrated by the Relation of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Human Race.

The introductory lecture is mainly devoted to a consideration of the necessity under which the Christian mind is laid of endeavoring to construct a theory or doctrine of the atonement. "It is very possible for our theory of the atonemont to be crude and incoherent; but it is hardly

1 The Atonement. The Congregational Lecture for 1875. By R. W. Dale, M.A., Birmingham. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

possible to have no theory at all. Some conception, however vague, of the relations between human sin and the death of Christ, and between the death of Christ and the divine forgiveness, will take form and substance in the mind of every man who believes that the teachings of Christ and his apostles reveal the thought of God...... To speculate is perilous; not to speculate may be more perilous still." It may seem strange that it should be necessary at this day to defend the effort to form an approximately adequate rationale of the fact of the death of Christ and its relation to sin and punishment; but it is due to the religious obscurantism which is being fostered by the Plymouth Brethren, and others of like mind, who literally know not what they are doing; who dream not that they are preparing the way for a new kind of papacy.

Lectures II. to VI. are occupied with ascertaining the teachings of the New Testament as regards the fact, in distinction from a doctrine or theory, of the atonement; or, perhaps, rather with showing that the atonement is taught as a matter of fact. In effecting his purpose Mr. Dale appeals rather to the indirect than to the direct evidence. As he observes, the passages directly bearing on the subject have been collected and classified with great completeness, especially by Dr. Crawford in his work on the Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the Atonement; he therefore adopts a different method, and, as we think, very wisely. We agree perfectly with the remark that "a mere scattered catalogue of texts in which any great truth is definitely taught can never give a just impression of the place which that truth held in the thought and faith of the apostles...... It might even be contended with considerable plausibility that the importance of a doctrine is likely to be in the inverse ratio of the number of passages in which it is directly taught; seeing that the Epistles were occasional writings, suggested by accidental circumstances, and that the central and most characteristic truths of the Christian faith are precisely those which the churches were least likely to abandon...... From the very nature of the apostolic writings those truths which belong to the essence of the Christian creed are for the most part implied rather than taught.” In fact we do not sufficiently remember that the method of Christ, at all events his primary method, was to evangelize by means of living men; not by books or letters. The latter were designed solely to confirm, encourage, correct, direct, and instruct those who already believed.

The second lecture deals with the evidence from what Christ himself was and did. The difference between him and prophets, apostles, nay all others, is thus described by Mr. Dale: "They were taught of God and they tell us what they have learnt. But the revelation is over when they cease to speak. Their personal character and history; their relations to their friends and to their enemies; their occupations, their sorrows and their joys—all these have only a secondary and human interest. It is not so with our Lord Jesus Christ. Far more of God was revealed in

what he was, in what he did, and in what he suffered, than in what he taught." Replying to a remark of the late Frederick Robertson, to the effect that if the atonement is so essential a part of the gospel, it seems very startling to say that in the most ealaborate of all his discourses Christ should omit to mention it, and that it is "absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who spoke of Christ should contain a more perfectly developed Christianity than is to be found in his own words." Mr. Dale well says: "The real truth is, that Christ's chief object in coming was that there might be a gospel to preach." Underlying, perhaps, most attacks on the Bible is the false or, at all events, twisted notion that its chief significance is due to the truths it reveals from God; whereas its chief significance is due to its recording what God has done in, for, and through men for the world's redemption. Primarily it is an historical, not a didactic, book. Mr. Dale brings this out well in relation to the one fact of the atoning death of Christ. To our mind this second lecture is the finest of the whole; concentrated, vigorous, and deeply impressive.

Many readers will be surprised, in reading the third lecture on our Lord's own teachings relatively to his death, to find how much there is in the Gospels bearing on the subject. The manner in which Mr. Dale gathers it up is as appropriate as it is effective. Two points alone can we touch upon. Referring to the notion that his death contributed to our redemption only by producing in us those dispositions which render it right and possible for God to forgive us, he well replies that, if this were so, his death would be no more intimately related to the remission of sins than every part of his public ministry. But how then did it happen that he never even incidentally, not even by implication, affirms that he wrought miracles or revealed truths for the remission of sins; whereas he does affirm that he died for that purpose? "He must have believed that the relation between his death and the remission of sins is different in kind from that which exists between his teaching or his example and the remission of sins." Again, how is the silence of our Lord in relation to such testimony as that of John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world," in view of the idea of the sin-offering which possessed the mind of the Jewish nation, to be explained, if he had not come to obtain by his death the remission of sin?

We must pass over the lectures on the teachings of Peter, John, James, and Paul, though we had noted many points deserving of attention, and, after touching briefly on that headed "General confirmatory Considerations," go on to deal with Mr. Dale's theory. "There are very many persons," says he, "who believe that the idea of an objective atonement was invented in order to satisfy the exigencies of rigid theories concerning the divine justice. ..... This is precisely the reverse of the truth. Theologians did not invent the idea of an objective atonement in order to complete the symmetry of their theological theories. They have invented