negative results of the investigation are valuable in showing what the doctrine is not, it has also its positive value in educing from the consentient voice of Fathers and doctors what they are agreed in regarding as essential to a right understanding of it. Controversy, as a rule, irritates more opponents than it convinces; whereas truth, if it is fairly stated, is more persuasive than the ablest of its advocates. It was impossible to steer clear of controversial discussion altogether in dealing with the divines of the Reformation; but even there I have chiefly confined myself to an exposition of the rival theories, and allowed the contrast to speak for itself. And where, as in the first and final chapters, I have had occasion to speak more directly in my own name, I have studied rather to suggest matter for thought or cautions against error than to be aggressive. Indeed, the nature of the subject would alone disincline one from controversy, whenever it can be avoided. It is the scandal of Christendom that the Atonement should have been turned into a war-cry, that the professed disciples of the Crucified should meet to wrangle beneath the shadow of His Cross. But it is also certain that, if ever the wounds of Christendom are to be healed, and the scornful or unbelieving millions within and with

out its visible precincts to be re-united to one another, and to Him who died to reconcile all unto God in one body by the Cross, that union can only be consummated through the great attraction of His atoning love, who was lifted up that He might draw all things to Himself. If this little work shall in any degree have tended, however imperfectly or remotely, to subserve that end, it will have abundantly fulfilled the desire which first suggested it.

And here I gladly recognise a certain community of aim in another work on the Atonement emanating from a different quarter, and approaching the subject from a very different stand-point, which it becomes necessary, for special reasons, to notice here. It is devoted to working out the author's conception of the doctrine in accordance with the testimony of conscience and of Scripture, especially of conscience, and with some reference to leading Protestant systems. It is not an exegetical treatise, though the view maintained is of course supported from Scripture; and it is a remarkable view, as coming from a writer nurtured on the traditions of Scotch Presbyterianism. My immediate concern, however, is only with such portions of the volume as come into contact or collision with my own.

When the former Edition of this work was published, I had not seen Mr. Campbell's,' to which my attention was first directed by the review of my own in the Guardian. I read it carefully and with great interest, and have since had an opportunity of consulting the Second Edition, which contains some comments on my own book, through the courtesy of the author, who sent me a copy of it. I have referred to it as occasion served in the following pages. Mr. Campbell's method of treatment is different from mine, consisting mainly of an exposition of his own belief on the Atonement; and, so far as he examines the opinions of others, he does not go further back than the Reformation. For the most part, therefore, his line of argument does not traverse mine. While approaching the subject from a Protestant stand-point, and betraying in some respects strong Protestant sympathies, his work is remarkable for its emphatic rejection of the ordinary Protestant views of vicarious punishment, substitution, and imputation. He manifests throughout a keen appreciation of the fundamental connection between the Atonement and the Incarnation, and insists on the inner reality of that

The Nature of the Atonement. By J. M. Campbell. Macmillan.

justification, which is its result, as no mere fictitious imputation of an alien righteousness, but the actual implanting of righteousness in our natures through union with our incarnate Lord. The former point is prominently brought out in the Introduction to the Second Edition, which starts from the principle that "the faith of the Atonement pre-supposes the faith of the Incarnation," and proceeds to discuss the question, first raised by the Scotists, whether the Incarnation sprung out of the necessity for Atonement, or is to be regarded as itself "the primary and highest fact in the history of God's relation to man," the Atonement becoming necessary to the fulfilment of the divine purpose on account of sin. The writer expresses, if I rightly understand him,' a decided preference for the latter (Scotist) view; but the main object of the introduction is to vindicate faith in the Atonement for fallen man, as distinct from faith in the Incarnation only, from certain sceptical tendencies of the present day, which must not be confounded with that view. "To trace redemption to its ultimate root in the Divine Fatherliness, and to regard that Fatherliness as leaving no room for redemption, are altogether

'This seems to be distinctly stated at p. xiii., yet his language in p. xviii would point in an opposite direction.

opposite apprehensions of the grace of God." The second theory is indeed practically to fall back on natural religion.

Mr. Campbell has devoted a chapter to the teaching of Luther, and two more to the Calvinist theology, as taught by some of its leading adherents in this country and in America, which he strongly condemns. His censure is just, but does not call for any special comment here. I have no acquaintance with the modern writers referred to, but they appear, from the extracts given, to have faithfully adhered to the system of their Master. The modifications introduced by the spirit of the age into the later Calvinism, have done more to mar its intellectual symmetry than to improve its moral and spiritual character. In his account of Luther's teaching the author seems to me to have insensibly interpreted the Reformer's opinions by his own.1 Luther had not, like Calvin, the mind of a theologian. He wrote quite as much under the guidance of impulse as of deliberate judgment, and, as he also wrote a great deal, it is not wonderful that he is not always consistent with himself. Considering that

1 Mr. Campbell, moreover, confines himself to Luther's Commentary on the Galatians. No examination of his teaching which leaves unnoticed the por tentous treatise De Servo Arbitrio can pretend to do justice to it.