universally admitted to be inherent in the subject, begins, are questions upon which there is the widest difference of opinion. It may, however, be stated with some confidence, that in all the controversies upon this subject, which so much abound in the present day, no assertion is more frequently met with, especially amongst those who are most in earnest upon the subject, than the following,-that no such doctrine can be true unless it asserts a substantial and not merely a legal or formal atonement. It is certainly not a fanatical or a bigoted party which maintains that an arrangement which gives a technical regularity and consistency with certain legal conceptions of justice, to the proceeding by which sinners are pardoned, is, even if wanted at all, totally incomplete unless it also goes on to free the individual man from sin itself, as well as from the consequences of sin. This belief is certainly embodied to a very considerable extent in the doctrine of particular redemption; at any rate it is consistent with and illustrative of it. Let it be assumed that the ultimate fruit and consequence of redemption is, as Mr. Spurgeon would probably express it, the accomplishment of a great work in the soul-the reclamation, that is, of the man from a state of enmity to a state of peace with God, whereby externally and internally the whole man becomes good; and it will follow that redemption, whether it be regarded as one step in a process or as an act complete in itself, must apply to individuals;-that A, B, and C, must be able to say, not merely "a technical obstacle to the redemption of any man whatever-which would have affected me as well as others--has been removed," but, "I, A, B, or C, have been and am personally and individually redeemed." The belief that redemption is substantial, and not merely formal, involves the notion that it is individual or particular. Mr. Maurice, Mr. Jowett, or Mr. Campbell would probably go thus far with Mr. Spurgeon, however vehemently they would repudiate the system into which he weaves this opinion.

The difference between Mr. Spurgeon's system and the great doctrines which it caricatures is, that it uniformly treats as exceptions what they treat as rules, and vice versa. It makes God an exceptional being in his own universe, creating a world, and being defeated by the devil in its fate. It makes reprobation the rule, and election the exception. It makes evil, not the corruption and depravity of man, but his normal condition, and in a vast preponderance of cases his final doom. Finally, it substitutes general damnation for particular salvation. On the other hand, it is intelligible; it involves only the most inexact conceptions of justice and mercy; and it is capable of being made apparently self-consistent by a number of logical artifices of more or less ingenuity. One of these may be mentioned as a specimen. It con

sists, as they all do, in playing fast and loose with language; and like all the rest, it involves an entirely anthropomorphic conception of the divine character. It is not unjust, it is said, in God to give no grace to the wicked, and then to punish them for the sins which are the consequence of an absence of grace; for he never promised to give it, and is not bound to do more than he promised. Or, to use Mr. Spurgeon's language, which we do not blame for being lively and plain-spoken, but which conveys thoughts too audacious, we should have thought, for any human being to conceive, "But," says the objector, "is it not unjust for God to manifest himself to one and not the other?" God replies, "Dost thou charge me with injustice? In what respect? Do I owe thee any thing? Bring the bill, and I will pay it. Do I owe you grace? Then grace would not be grace; it would be a debt. If I owe you grace, you shall have it." "But why should my brother have it? he is equally as bad as I." Surely," replies the King, "I may give as I please. Thou hast two beggars at thy door: hast thou not a right to turn one away and give the other something? And can I not do as I will with my own? I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and to whom I will I give it."... "If I have fifty men on a scaffold to be hung, have I not a right to pardon which I will, and give the punishment to all the rest?" If any one is absurd enough to suppose that God has made a contract with men which he has failed to perform, this might be a not unfair answer; but the objection to be answered is, that the arrangement is unfair in itself; that it implies that God reaps where he has not sown, and gathers where he has not strewed; and it is surely no virtue to enforce a hard bargain. Mr. Spurgeon's illustration about the fifty men on the scaffold is a curious instance of the narrow conceptions which he forms of justice as between God and man. He seems to consider that the relations between them are not only merely legal, but are regulated exclusively by the most technical and objectionable rules of English law. No doubt the Queen has by law a right to pardon A and to hang B, who is in precisely the same position; that is, she has a power to do so, which the law of England will respect, and, if necessary, enforce; but if the Home Secretary advised her to do so, he would be subject to the severest parliamentary censure, because the act would be in the last degree unjust and arbitrary. Yet Mr. Spurgeon seems to think that what would be an iniquity in the Queen is a perfection in God.

It may perhaps be acknowledged that the system to which we are referring owes its attractiveness to the definite view which it affords of the fundamental doctrines of theology, from which it entirely eliminates all mystery and incompleteness, and to its semblance of logical consistency. But it may be asked, How

can any human being pay the price demanded for these advantages? How can any one bear to believe what is involved in the doctrines of preterition and reprobation? The answer is twofold. In the first place, no one can deny that life, however it may be considered, has an awfully stern side. Set aside Christianity altogether, put the very existence of God out of the question, and still the passage of all the multitudes from the darkness which shrouded one end of the bridge of Mirza to the stream which flowed past the broken arches at the other end, cannot be called an altogether cheerful or hopeful one. The conviction that life is in itself a blessing, is by no means so obvious or universal as it appears to persons accustomed only to Christian and European forms of thought and feeling. One of the best sermons of a great. living divine-Mr. Maurice-powerfully contrasts the Christian sentiment that the last enemy which shall be subdued is death with Strauss's emendation, that the last enemy which shall be subdued is the dread of immortality. "It is better to walk than to run; better to stand than to walk; better to sit than to stand; better to lie down than to sit; better to sleep than to lie down, and better to die than to sleep"-is still a proverb, which expresses the highest conviction of a great proportion of the human race. Admit into the mind the belief in a just and holy God, and whatever hopes that doctrine may excite are hopes largely tempered by awe. Death may ultimately be swallowed up in victory; but the victory must be preceded by an awful combat. It is no doubt a malignant falsehood to deny that in almost every man's life there is much that is good. To most men it must be, we should think, cheering to see how much good remains even in the vilest criminals. When the miserable Burke was convicted of the most atrocious series of crimes committed in modern times, he threw his arms round the neck of his fellow-prisoner who was acquitted, kissed her, and exclaimed, "Thank God, Mary, you are saved." Though the man who did this had committed at least sixteen murders in cold blood for the sake of selling the bodies of his victims, some good feeling must have still remained in him. On the other hand, he had committed sixteen murders; and surely such a fact, which is by no means a solitary one, discloses a state of things sufficiently awful. Can any thing be a true account of God's dealings with men which slurs over the whole class of facts of which this is a single instance? Does the analogy either of nature or of human law warrant us in believing that the Judge of all the earth would do right if such crimes went unpunished? on the other hand, does experience teach us that men are always reformed by punishment? At the * Alison's History of the French Revolution, iv. 301, note. Sir A. Alison was counsel for the Crown in Burke's case.

end of the second apocalyptic woe, it is written, that "the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven;" but after the pouring out of the fifth vial, "they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds." A man must be more bold than wise who can find, either in his own observations or in the Bible, authority for looking upon the present condition and future prospects of mankind as altogether cheerful. It is perfectly true that the New Testament claims to be an announcement of good tidings of great joy, and that a system which makes it a message of bad tidings is bad on the face of it; but it is equally true that the good news was not brought before it was wanted, and that much of the evil which it denounced and condemned still subsists. To persons deeply impressed with these views of life, a theology without a hell is a mere mockery. Men will always look upon God as a God to whom vengeance belongeth. No one who has a really strong perception of the difference between good and evil, can wish to see the sores of life skinned over. Thoughts of this kind are natural to the mind, and to stifle them is to degrade a man into a brute; but, on the other hand, to attempt to ascertain their exact value, to assume the balance and the rod, to arrange them in a system, to affect to apportion punishments, and to set up tests for the detection of criminals, is nothing less than to attempt to exalt man into a god-an attempt which has not unfrequently ended in debasing him into a devil.

A second explanation of the adoption of a system which involves consequences so frightful is less intellectually creditable to those who accept them. It consists simply in this, that they shrink from and evade their own conclusions. It would be hard to find a more systematic and plain-spoken advocate than Mr. Spurgeon; but even he recoils before the frightful consequences of his own theory. It is obvious that the two doctrines of particular-by which Mr. Spurgeon understands not only individual but also exclusive-redemption, and effectual calling, taken together, limit the benefits of the gospel to a very small number of persons indeed-to those, namely, who have experienced certain peculiar states of mind. Now the whole of the theory which Mr. Spurgeon propounds rests on the notion that the glory of God is the ultimate purpose of the whole Christian dispensation; and if the vast majority of mankind are created only to be damned, the devil has got the best of the struggle. Mr. Spurgeon feels the difficulty, and states it as follows: "How often do I hear people say, 'Ah, strait is the gate, and narrow the way; and few there be that find it. There will be very few in heaven; there will be most lost.' My friend, I differ from you. Do you think that

Christ will let the devil beat him? that he will let the devil have more in hell than there will be in heaven?-No; it is impossible. For then Satan would laugh at Christ. There will be more in heaven than there are among the lost. God says that there will be a number that no man can number that will be saved ;' but he never says that there will be a number that no man can number that will be lost. There will be a host beyond all count that will get into heaven." And elsewhere he accounts for this by saying that all who die in childhood, and the large number of persons who will be born during the millennium, will turn the balance. This is no doubt puerile enough; for it only amounts to this-that wherever the experiment is fairly tried, the devil gets the best of it; but a clearer proof could hardly be given of the fact, that the harsher doctrines of the system which Mr. Spurgeon and those who agree with him preach are accepted rather because they embody the general impression that there is a dark and fearful side to life than from any definite belief in their truth. If it were otherwise, could any honest man play with the doctrines of election and conversion so far as to assert, first, that every carnal mind in the world is at enmity against God," and that "this does not exclude even infants at the mother's breast" (p. 152); and afterwards (p. 349) that all those who die in infancy are doubtless elect, and do each of them ascend to heaven? Surely the doctrine of reprobation is not more harsh or less well founded as against infants than as against grown men; but from this consequence Mr. Spurgeon shrinks. The author, whoever he was, of that fearful poem "The last Judgment," which Sir C. Lyell found still in use in parts of New England, was more consistent :

They urge their innocence de facto; but are met with the reply that Adam was their federal head; that if he had not sinned, they would have claimed heaven on the ground of his righteousness; and that as he has, they must suffer the penalty of his sin. They acknowledge the justice of the reply, and are taken away to the pit with much lamentation:

"The wrath of God doth feed the flame

With store of wood and brimstone flood,
That none should quench the same."

This, no doubt, is the most consistent view of the doctrine; but we prefer Mr. Spurgeon's not discreditable inconsistency to the frame of mind of the man who "passed an hour in comfortable reflection on the infinite mercy of God in damning little children"

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