to call the attention of our readers to its contents. We are the more inclined to take this course, because the character of the work, and the peculiar circumstances of its origin, are likely to secure for it an extensive circulation. We hardly think, indeed, that it will produce the sensation which many seem to expect. Dr Bushnell says, "Some persons anticipate, in the publication of these 'Discourses,' the opening of another great religious controversy." This expectation he does not himself entertain, because he says, "I am quite resolved that I will be drawn into no reply, unless there is produced against me some argument of so great force, that I feel myself required, out of simple duty to the truth, either to surrender, or to make important modifications in, the views I have advanced. I anticipate, of course, no such necessity, though I do anticipate that arguments, and reviews, very much in the character of that which I just now gave myself, will be advanced-such as will show off my absurdities in a very glaring light, and such as many persons of acknowledged character will accept with applause, as conclusive, or even explosive refutations. Therefore I advertise it beforehand, to prevent a misconstruction of my silence, that I am silenced now, on the publication of my volume."

This passage clearly indicates that an effect is expected from these Discourses, such as few sermons have ever produced. We are disposed to doubt as to this point. We should be sorry to think that the public mind is in such an unhealthy state, as to be much affected by any thing contained in this volume. Every thing from Dr Bushnell has indeed a certain kind of power. His vigorous imagination, and his adventurous style, cannot fail to command attention. There is in this book a great deal of truth pungently presented; and there are passages of exquisite beauty of thought and expression. Still, with reverence be it spoken, we think the book a failure. In the first place, it settles nothing. It overturns, but it does not erect. Men do not like to be houseless; much less do they like to have the doctrines which overhang and surround their souls as a dwelling and refuge, pulled to pieces, that they may sit sentimentally on the ruins. If Dr Bushnell takes from us our God and our Redeemer, he is bound to provide some adequate substitute. He has done no such thing. He rejects the old doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation; but he has produced no other intelligible doctrine. He has not thought himself through. He is only half out of the shell. And therefore his attempt to soar is premature. He rejects the doctrine of three persons in one God. He "It seems to be agreed by the orthodox, that there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the Divine Nature." This he

says:

denies, and argues against.-(Pp. 130-136.) In opposition to such a Trinity, he presents and urges the doctrine of a historieal Trinity, a threefold revelation of God. But then, the old house down, and the new not keeping out the rain, and tottering under even the builder's solitary tread, he tries (though too late, except as an acknowledgment of failure) to reconstruct the old. What Trinitarian wishes more, or can say more than Dr Bushnell says on p. 174?" Neither is it any so great wisdom, as many theologians appear to fancy, to object to the word person; for, if any thing is clear, it is that the Three of Scripture do appear under the grammatic forms which are appropriate to person-I, Thou, He, We, and They; and, if it be so, I really do not perceive the very great licence taken our theology when they are called three persons. Besides, we practically need, for our own sake, to set them out as three persons before us, acting relatively towards each other, in order to ascend into the liveliest, fullest realization of God. We only need to abstain from assigning to these divine persons an interior, metaphysical nature, which we are nowise able to investigate, and which we may positively know to contradict the real unity of God." To all this we say, Amen. Then what becomes of his arguments against three persons in the divine nature? What becomes of his cheating mirage of a Trinity-a trinity of revelations? He takes away the doctrine on which the spiritual life of every Christian rests, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and gives us "a God historically three;" and then admits that the Scriptures teach, and that we need, a God personally three! Dr Bushnell cannot reasonably expect to convert others until he has completed the conversion of himself.

This half-ism is manifested also in what he says of the person of Christ.-(Pp. 158-167.) He presents all the usual objections against the assumption of a twofold nature in the Redeemer. He insists that it is God that appears under the limitations of humanity, and that of the divine nature is to be predicated the ignorance, subordination, and suffering ascribed to Christ. He commits himself fully to the Apollinarian view of Christ's person. And then his heart or his conscience smites him. His unsteady head again reels, and he gives it all up. When categorically demanded, whether he renounces the divine and life-giving doctrine of God and man, in two distinct natures and one person, he falters, and says: "It may be imagined that I intend, in holding this view of the incarnation, or of the person of Christ, to deny that he had a human soul, or any thing human but a human body. I only deny that his human soul, or nature, is to be spoken of, or looked upon, as having a distinct subsistence."-(P. 168.) But this we all

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deny. Who ever heard of "two distinct subsistences" in Christ? If Dr Bushnell has got no further than this, he has not got beyond his Catechism. For it is there taught there is but one subsistence, one suppositum intelligens, one person in Christ. He returns, however, to his owλov, to his Christ without a soul, a Christ who is no Christ, almost on the next page. We do not gain any thing, he says, "by supposing a distinct human soul in the person of Christ, connecting itself with what are called the humanities of Christ. Of what so great consequence to us are the humanities of a mere human soul?"—(P. 156.) This saying and unsaying betrays a man who is not sure of his ground. People will never confide in a leader who does not confide in himself. Dr Bushnell has undertaken a task for which he is entirely incompetent. He has not the learning, the knowledge of opinions or forms of doctrine, nor has he the philosophical culture, nor the constructive intellect, required to project a consistent and comprehensive theory on the great themes of God, the Incarnation and Redemption. We say this with no disrespect. We would say it with tenfold more readiness of ourselves. We have the advantage of our author, however, in having sense enough to know that our sphere is a much humbler one. Machiavelli was accustomed to say, there are three classes of men one who see things in their own light; another who see them when they are shown; and a third who cannot see them even then. We invite Dr Bushnell to resume his place with us in the second class. By a just judgment of God, those who uncalled aspire to the first, lapse into the third.

The characteristic to which we have referred is not so strongly marked in the Discourse on the Atonement. Here, alas! the writer has been able to emancipate himself more completely from the teachings of the nursery, the Bible, and the Spirit. Yet even here, there is that yearning after the old and scriptural, that desire to save something from the wreck of his former faith, which excites respectful commiseration. There are but three radical views of the atonement, properly so called: the scriptural doctrine, which represents it as a real propitiation; the governmental view, which makes it a method of teaching symbolically the justice of God; the Socinian view, which regards it as designed to produce a subjective effect, to impress men with a sense of God's love, &c. Dr Bushnell spurns the first, rejects the second, and adopts the third. But then he finds that he has lost every thing worth retaining, and therefore endeavours to regain the first, which he calls the "altar view." His "constructive logic" will not allow his holding it as truth, he therefore endeavours to hold it as "form." He cannot retain it as doctrine, but he clings to it as "art." He admits that it is the scriptural view; that the whole church

has adhered to it as to the source of life, and that it is the only effective view. "Christ," he says, "is a power for the moral renovation of the world, and as such is measured by what he expresses. How is this renovation effected? Not by his offering himself as a propitiation for our sins, and thus reconeiling us to God, and procuring for us the gift of the Holy Ghost, but "by his obedience, by the expense and painstaking of his suffering life, by yielding up his own sacred person to die, he has produced in us a sense of the eternal sanctity of God's law, that was needful to prevent the growth of licence or of indifference and insensibility to religious obligations, such as must be incurred, if the exactness and rigour of a law-system were wholly dissipated, by offers of pardon grounded in mere leniency." This is really what Christ does. This is his atoning work. He produces a sense of the sanctity of the law in us. This is full out the Socinian view of the doctrine. But, says Dr Bushnell, it has no power in this abstract form. "We must transfer this subjective state or impression, this ground of justification, and produce it outwardly, if possible, in some objective form; as if it had some effect on the law or on God. The Jew had done this before us, and we follow him; representing Christ as our sacrifice, sin-offering, atonement, sprinkling of blood. . . . . . These forms are the objective equivalents of our subjective impressions. Indeed, our impressions have their life and power in and under these forms. Neither let it be imagined that we only happen to seize upon these images of sacrifice, atonement, and blood, because they are at hand. They are prepared, as God's form of art, for the representation of Christ and his work; and if we refuse to let him pass into this form, we have no mould of thought which can fitly represent him. And when he is thus represented, we are to understand that he is our sacrifice and atonement, that by his blood we have remission, not in any speculative sense, but as in art.”—(P. 254.) The plain meaning of this is, that the actual thing done is the production of a certain subjective change or impression in us. This impression cannot be produced in any way so effectively as by what Christ has done. As a work of art produces an impression more powerful than a formula; so Christ, viewed as a sacrifice, as a ransom, as a propitiation, produces the impression of the sanctity of the law more powerfully than any didactic statement of its holiness could do. It is in this "artistic" form that the truth is effectually conveyed to the mind. This mode is admitted to be essential. Vicarious atonement, sacrifice, sin-offering, propitiation, is declared to be "the DIVINE FORM of Christianity, in distinction from all others, and is, in that view, substantial to it, or consubstantial with it." "It is obvious," he adds, "that

all the most earnest Christian feelings of the apostles are collected round this objective representation, the vicarious sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. They speak of it, not casually . . . . . but systematically, they live in it, their Christian feeling is measured by it, and shaped in the moulds it offers." (P. 259.) We do not consider this assertion of the absolute necessity of Christ's being presented as a sacrifice, or this admission that his work is set forth as a vicarious atonement in the Scriptures, as a formal retraction or contradiction of the author's speculative view of the real nature of the Redeemer's work; but we do consider it sufficient to convince any rational man, that that speculative view is an inanity, a lifeless notion, the bloodless progeny of a poetic imagination. Few persons will believe that the life and death of Christ was a mere liturgical service, a chant and a dirge, to move "the world's mind;" a pageant with a moral.

These Discourses, then, unless we are sadly deceived as to the amount of religious knowledge and principle in the public mind, must fail to produce any great impression. They lack the power of consistency. They say and unsay. They pull down and fail to rebuild. What they give is in no proportion to what they take away. Besides this, their power is greatly impaired by the mixture of incongruous elements in their composition. Rationalism, mysticism, and the new philosophy are shaken together, but refuse to combine. The staple of the book is rationalistic; the other elements are adventitious. They have been too recently imbibed to be properly assimilated. Either of these elements by itself has an aspect more or less respectable. It is the combination that is grotesque. A mystic Rationalist is very much like a Quaker dragoon. As, however, we prefer faith without knowledge to knowledge without faith, we think the mysticism an improvement. We rejoice to see that Dr Bushnell, even at the expense of consistency and congruity, sometimes lapses into the passive mood of a recipient of truth through some other channel than the discursive understanding.

The new philosophy, which gleams in lurid streaks through this volume, is still more out of place. We meet here and there with transcendental principles and expressions, which even "the deepest chemistry of thought" (the solvent by which he proposes to make all creeds agree, p. 82), must fail to bring into combination with the pervading Theism of the book. The proof of the presence of all these incongruous elements in these Discourses is patent to every one who reads them. In our subsequent remarks we hope to make it sufficiently plain even to those who read only this review. Our present object is merely to indicate this characteristic as a