cal system as well, it will not stand examination for a moment. It is with sincere grief that we say it, but we are constrained to say, that Dr Young's view of the work of Christ is nothing but the lowest and barest Socinianism. He goes much further than Maurice and Kingsley in the Church of England; for he regards the work of Campbell on the Atonement, which they, we believe, recommend as a good statement of their views, as adhering to the central idea of the scholastic atonement, and, consequently, as being, with all the beauty he allows to it, a mere illusion. (See his note at p. 312.) We fancy his meaning is, that the central idea of the scholastic atonement, as he calls it, is that of Christ having rendered or offered something to God, and his work and death having had some effect on his relations and dealings with us as well as on ours with him. The less extreme of the Broad Church party in the Church of England, amid much that is obscure and hazy in their language, seem to hold, or at least to wish to hold, so much of the old doctrine as to ascribe some such purpose and effect to the work of Christ, however difficult they find it to bring out what it is; our author has no scruple in repudiating the idea, as entirely as did Socinus, and ascribing even less to the death of Christ than that great heresiarch did. The only purpose of the incarnation and life and death of Jesus was, according to Dr Young, to destroy sin in the souls of men, to turn men from sin and bring them back to God. It was not a sacrifice offered to God by the man Christ Jesus, as the one Mediator between God and men, it was a sacrifice "made by God for men, wholly and solely made by God for men, and for sin, in order that sin might be for ever put down and rooted out of human nature. This stupendous act of divine sacrifice was God's instrument of reconciliation and redemption, God's method of conquering the human heart, and of subduing a revolted world and attaching it to his throne-pure love, self-sacrificing love, crucified, dying love!" (p. 313). No doubt he can clothe his view with a great deal of eloquent and impressive language, and with a great deal of beautiful sentiment, more perhaps than the old Socinians were wont to display; yet, after all, we question very much whether his opinions of the work of Christ are really a whit more elevated than theirs; nay, in some respects they appear to us to be even less so. Socinians are wont to dwell much on the mercy of God as manifested in the free forgiveness of sins, and in this they certainly do assert a great and vital truth, though they have not, as they imagine, an exclusive possession of it. But our author's theory of spiritual laws seems to us really to leave no room for forgiveness at all in

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549

the divine government. He argues that satisfaction to God's law and justice is not needed, not on the ground on which the Socinians put it, that the law need not be enforced and that the penalty may be remitted as freely as a creditor may forgive a debtor, but on the ground that the law executes itself, and cannot be altered or evaded. The claims of justice, he says, "cannot be set aside for a moment, and precisely for this reason, they never require and never can admit of a supplementary satisfaction from any quarter whatever. The righteous verdict of Heaven against all moral evil is in every instance carried out inexorably. As surely as a soul sins, in that moment it dies morally, that is, it begins to die, and in the degree in which it sins, it begins to die. Even where a new divine life has afterwards been enkindled within it, and has proved itself the stronger power, so long as sin remains, and to the extent to which it remains, death, moral death, never ceases to mingle its poison with the breath of a higher life. There is no possibility of defrauding and dishonouring eternal justice, no possibility of setting aside its unalterable sentence " (p. 137). When sin ceases, according to this view, punishment ceases, and justice ceases to have any further claim against the sinner. But if this be so, where is the grace of forgiveness, what mercy, what favour, what goodness is there in it if it be an act of pure justice? If the moment the prodigal returned, or rather the moment he came to himself and resolved to return, justice ceased to have any claim upon him for his departure and estrangement from his father's home, then his father could not but receive him as an act of simple justice; there could be no grace in overlooking and pardoning past offences which he could not justly resent and punish had he pleased. In fact, Dr Young's theory really leaves no room for forgiveness at all. All that God does or can do for the salvation of men, is to strike a death-blow at sin in their hearts, and turn and attach them in love to himself and his law; and to secure this end is the great and only purpose of the incarnation and life and death of Christ. There is, doubtless, here, abundant scope for enlarging, as Dr Young delights to do, on the infinite love of God, but there is no room for what is properly called mercy; for while God is. regarded as turning man to himself, and so saving him from his sin, he is not represented as in any true sense forgiving him. Of this our author seems to be half conscious himself, for when he says, (p. 140) "we have already proved, that in the divine redemption sin is not forgiven merely, but is literally, though gradually, killed in the soul"; as if sensible that he has hardly a right to that merely, he goes on to

correct or improve his statement as follows:-"It would be strictly true to say that it is always first struck at in order that it may be thoroughly destroyed, and that only in so far as it is killed and cast out of the nature, is it ever really done with and passed by;" thus explaining away into vagueness the idea of forgiveness. We accept the latter statement as the more correct expression of his theory; and we claim the former as the rightful property of the evangelical system alone. For we not only admit, but strongly assert all that Dr Young has said of the necessity of sin being destroyed in the soul, and the sinner turned to God; and of the power and influence and design of the work of Christ to effect this, we think we can hold these at least as fully as he can; we only demur to this being represented as the sole and exclusive purpose of the work of Christ. We would welcome Dr Young with all our heart, as a defender of truth, and helper to a right improvement and advance of theology, if he would be content to devote his energies and powers to deepen the foundations. and enlarge the compass of this side of the edifice of divine truth; but how can we do so if he insists, in the first place, in pulling down every other part of the building? With almost everything positive in his book, with the exception of his theory of spiritual laws, we cordially agree; it is only from his negations that we feel ourselves constrained to differ. This is indeed almost universally the case with teachers of error, as is very well put by Dr Hodge, with whose words we close:-"All error, and especially all effective and therefore dangerous error, is partial truth. The human mind was formed for truth, and so constituted that only truth can exert permanent influence upon it. But the truth revealed in the Scriptures is so many-sided in its aspects, and so vast in its relations, and our habits of thought because of sin are so one-sided and narrow, that, as a general fact, the mind of any church in any single age fails to take in practically and sharply more than one side of a truth at a time, while other aspects and relations are either denied or neglected. A habit of unduly exalting any subordinate view of the truth, at the expense of that which is more important, or of over-looking, on the other hand, some secondary aspect of it altogether, is certain, after a time, to lead to a reactionary tendency, in which that which had been too much exalted shall be brought low, and that which has been abased shall be exalted. This principle is abundantly illustrated throughout the entire history of theological speculation, as in the ever repeated oscillations between the extremes of Sabellianism and Tritheism as to the Trinity, of Eutychianism and Nestorianism as to the person of Christ,

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and in the history of speculations on the doctrine of redemption. Every prominent heresy as to the nature of the Atonement, . . . embraces and emphasises on its positive side an important truth. The power, and hence the danger of the heresy, resides in that fact. But, on the other hand, it is a heresy, and hence an evil to be resisted unto death, because it either puts a subordinate principle into the place of that which is central and fundamental, or because it puts one side of the truth for the whole, denying or ignoring all besides the fractional truth presented. It is plainly the policy as well as the duty of the defenders of the whole truth, not only to acknowledge the truth held on the side of their opponents, but to vindicate the rights of the perfect system as a whole, by demonstrating the true position and relation of the partial truth admitted, in the larger system of truth denied. By these means we double the defences of orthodoxy, by bringing into contribution all that is true, and therefore all that is of force in the apologies of error."-(The Atonement, pp. 17, 18.) For a full discussion of the subject, with reference to the views of Dr Young among other modern writers, we refer our readers to the work of Dr Hodge.

J. S. C.

ART. VI.-Tischendorf on the Gospels.

Origin of the Four Gospels. By CONSTANTINE TISCHENDORF, Professor of Theology in the University of Leipsig. Translated under the Author's sanction, by WILLIAM L. GAGE. From the Fourth German Edition, Revised and greatly Enlarged. London: Jackson, Walford, & Hodder. 1868.

Ν

IN this little volume, we have another" chip from a Ger

man workshop," on a question which appears to be interminable. The amount of literature suggested to the mind of the Biblical scholar by its title, is so varied and voluminous, as to defy enumeration. Names such as those of Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, and many others nearer our own day, at once occur to him as those of men who have laboured at the solution of this problem; while behind these again, there are multitudes of earlier scholars, such as Michaëlis and Griesbach, who struggled, with might and main, on the same arena. The Gospel question has indeed been a perfect godsend to the theologians of Germany. It has furnished them with an exhaustless subject for that

learned, hazy, and often utterly inconclusive wrangling in which, above all others, they delight. Were the controversy once finally settled, one of the great objects of existence would, in their case, have disappeared. But, as matters stand, the stream of publications on the subject flows on from generation to generation, and it seems as if we might say regarding it, as of the Horatian river

"Labitur et labctur in omne volubilis œvum."

This work of Tischendorf, however, does not deal with the problem of the Gospels in the manner or for the purpose apt to be suggested by its English title. The translator has adopted that title on his own responsibility, and by doing so, he has excited expectations which the work was never intended to fulfil. The original German title, "Wann wurden unsere kanonische Evangelien verfasst ?" (When were our canonical Gospels composed ?) really sets forth the one aim and object of Tischendorf in this volume. It takes no account of the relations of the Gospels to each other. It makes no attempt to explain the striking coincidences and equally striking diversities of the synoptics. It says not a word as to the marked contrast between both the style and matter of St John's Gospel, and those of the first three Evangelists. Its one purpose is to fix the comparatively early date of all the four Gospels, in opposition to those critics who would project them into the second century. And this being so, we cannot but regret that the English translator has given a title to the work which suggests a far more comprehensive and exhaustive treatment of the Gospel problem than is attempted, or than was at all designed, by the learned and distinguished author.

Restricting our view, then, to the one object at which Tischendorf professes to aim in this work, we have to inquire how far it has been accomplished. And we need have no hesitation in saying, that abundantly satisfactory evidence is produced to shew that the Gospels could have been no product of the second century. In fact, this has been demonstrated so often, that to do it over again, seems little better than a work of supererogation. Nor can we say that Tischendorf has succeeded in setting the matter in any very new or striking light. His method is strangely confused. In the opening pages, we are presented with quotations from Irenæus and Tertullian; further on, we find the reasoning directed to the writings of the Apostolic Fathers; then we are confronted with the heretical literature of the second century; and last of all, we get back again to Barnabas, Papias, and other early writers. The style, too, is heavy,