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of the early disciples of Socinus, in his advocacy of that theory, defends the opinion, that the reconciliation spoken of here and elsewhere in Scripture, means nothing more than man being reconciled to God, and not God being reconciled to man, and the point has been argued over and over again since his day. It is enough for our present purpose to say, that we think these positions can easily and satisfactorily be defended by an appeal to the Word of God: First, the Scripture delineation of the character of God as a Righteous Ruler and Judge in his moral government of this world, necessarily implies that there is cause of offence on His part towards sin and sinners, which needs to be removed before friendship can be restored. Second, the Scriptural account of the ancient sacrifices, embodies in type and prophecy, a promise of satisfaction to be made to God for sin with a view of removing this offence. Third, the Scripture statements, in regard to the death of Christ, represent it as an "atonement made,”—a "propitiation rendered,"-a "ransom paid," in order to remove the offence and restore friendship. Fourth, the death of Christ is spoken of in the language of a substitution, and His sufferings can be accounted for in no other reasonable way than as actually being a substitution in place of sinners. And, Fifthly, this word "reconciliation," according to Scripture usage in other passages, implies the removal, on both sides, and not merely on one, of the obstacles to friendship between God and man. The discussion of such general Scripture positions as these, plainly opens up a very wide field of theological argument, and yet is all necessary satisfactorily to determine the nature of the reconciliation of which the passage speaks.

Now let any one read the free and easy style in which Mr Stanley interprets the words of the Apostle and comments on them :

:

"Their sense may be thus summed up :-The world had been in a long estrangement from God; His dealings had awakened in the hearts of mankind a sense of hostility and offence. Suddenly a great manifestation of Divine love was announced, which, wherever the tidings were brought, awakened feelings never before known. These feelings resolved themselves into two kinds. The present was felt to be parted from the past by a separation so complete as to be compared by the Apostle to a new creation. The whole world, not Jewish only, but Gentile, was called, after long absence, to return to God. The Jewish nation was by this one word delivered from the yoke of the Levitical ritual. So even in times of great human sorrow or joy, the burdensome ceremonial of social life is dissolved by a stronger and more universal sense of brotherhood: "If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why are ye subject to ordinances?" "Touch not, taste not, handle not." The Jewish and Gentile classes were reconciled to each other by the sight of His common

love exhibited by Christ to both: 'He hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.' And finally, the great mass of the Gentile world were delivered by this Divine act of love, from the slavery of the sins of their age and country and long contamination of false morals and worship: You that were sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death."

"The apostles view of Christ's death, as throughout the New Testament, represents it as the effect and manifestation, not of the wrath or vengeance of God, but of His love; of the love not only of Christ, but in the most emphatic sense, of God also. It was not God that was reconciled and man that thereby was induced to love; but God that showed His love, and thereby brought back mankind from its long enmity to Him. It was not God that was to be appeased, and Christ that was to appease, but God was in Christ. Man is not described as seeking after God, but God as seeking after man-be ye reconciled to God. He says not (thus writes Chrysostom on this passage) reconcile God to yourselves, for it is not God who is an enemy to you, but you who are enemies to God."

We have no right to quarrel with Mr Stanley because he adopts the Socinian view of the atonement, and of the passages of Scripture that bear upon it, if he really believes and is ready to show that there is a sufficient ground for his doing so. Neither do we stop to complain of the misrepresentation in the above extract, of the views of orthodox divines. But we simply say, that after the array of theological learning and exegetical skill, from the Reformation downward, that have been marshalled on the side of the evangelical doctrine on this point, we cannot but regard his attempt to reintroduce the exploded views of the Socinian school without a single allusion to the arguments of their opponents, or a single reason, critical or dogmatic, against them, as discreditable to his pretensions as a scholar, and still more so to his knowledge as a theologian.

But if Mr Stanley descends to the level of the Socinian school, in connection with the doctrine of atonement and reconciliation, he occupies a position lower still on the subject of the Lord's Supper. The account given of it in 1 Cor. xi., may be variously understood, but it could scarcely be interpreted in a sense that more completely divested it of all theological or even Christian ideas, than that in which it has been explained by him. According to the Romish theory, the bread and wine of the Supper are actually the substance of the "body and blood" of the Lord; according to the Calvinistic theory, they are the sign and the seal of 'Stanley, p. 454-6.

Meaning of the Lord's Supper.

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them; according to the Socinian theory, they are the sign. But according to the theory of Mr Stanley, they neither constitute nor seal nor exhibit, literally or spiritually, the body and blood of the Redeemer." The body of Christ," we are told by him, "here as is elsewhere in the apostle's language, is not the literal frame of our Lord, but the body which He has left behind Him on the earth in the human race-the Christian society, or its members severally. If this truth were recognised, then the Lord's Supper would be properly celebrated; but if Christians regarded themselves as having no connection with their brethren, the Supper would be profaned and turned into a common meal.”1

In short, it is a social meal, where Christians may meet in company and enjoy themselves in fellowship together, and unite to commemorate their Master in the same way as the members of some political club or party may dine together to proclaim their own principles, and to commemorate their leader; but it is not an ordinance having, in the true sense of the words, any sacramental character or virtue. It is thus that he paraphrases the account of it by the apostle :

"You remember the account of its original institution, as I communicated it to you from Christ Himself; you remember how He called the bread His body, and the cup the covenant sealed by His blood, and how He spoke of it as continuing for a memorial of His death until His return. Every unworthy celebration of this meal, therefore, is a sin against His body and blood. His body is the whole Christian society; it is in yourselves, if you will but look for it there. To partake of the Supper without this consciousness of solemn communion with Him, and with each other, is to provoke those judgments of sickness and death which have in fact been so frequent among you.""

In the work by Dr Hodge, mentioned at the head of this article, we have an interpretation of the inspired account, by a divine of a very different school and calibre,-one who, with erudition and scholarship quite equal to Mr Stanley's, and with a logical and comprehensive grasp of the apostle's thoughts, and a mastery over theology, to which he can make no pretensions, has given us in his "Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians," one of the very best examples of biblical interpretation recently published, and which is as rich and full in Scriptural truth as it is trustworthy and penetrating in Exegetical analysis. We would desire to put in contrast the two Expositions. Referring to the expression-this is My body, Dr Hodge says:

"Probably the history of the world does not furnish a parallel to the controversies occasioned by these simple words. The ordinary * Stanley, p. 214.

1 Stanley, p. 212.

and natural interpretation of them is, that the pronoun this, refers to the bread. This bread, which I hold in My hand, and which I give to you, is My body;'—that is, is the symbol of My body; precisely as we say of a statue, it is the person which it represents; or, as the Scriptures say, that the sign is the thing of which it is the symbol; or, as the Saviour says, 'I am the vine, ye are the branches'-'I am the door;' or as in the preceding chapter, it was said, 'that rock was Christ;' or as in John, the dove is said to be the Holy Ghost-or as baptism is said to be regeneration. This is a usage so familiar to all languages, that no one disputes that the words in question will bear this interpretation. That they must bear this interpretation would seem to be plain,-(1.) From the impossibility of the bread in Christ's hand being His literal body, then seated at the table, and the wine the blood, then flowing in His veins. (2.) From the still more obvious impossibility of taking the words, this cup is the New Testament,' in a literal sense. In Matt. xxvi. 28, it is said, This (cup) is My blood.' But Romanists do not hold to a transubstantiation of the cup, but only of the wine. But if the words are to be taken literally, they necessitated the belief of the one as well as the other. (3.) From the utter subversion of all the rules of evidence and laws of belief necessarily involved in the assumption that the bread in the Lord's Supper is literally the crucified body of Christ. (4.) From the infidelity on the one hand, and the superstitious idolatry on the other, which are the unavoidable consequence of calling upon men to believe so glaring a contradiction. It is only by denying all distinction between matter and spirit, and confounding all our ideas of substance and qualities, that we can believe that wine is blood, or bread flesh. The Romish interpretation of these words is, that the bread is the body of Christ, because its whole substance is changed into the substance of His body. The Lutherans say it is His body, because the body is present in and with the bread. Calvin says it is His body in the same sense that the dove is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost appeared under the form of a dove, which was the pledge of His presence. So the bread is the symbol of Christ's body, because with the one we receive the other. What is received, however, and what Calvin calls Christ's body, and sometimes the substance of His body, is not the body itself, which he admits is in heaven only, but a life-giving power (vim vivificam) which flows to us from the glorified body of our Lord. The only presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, admitted by Calvin, was this presence of power. The Reformed Churches teach that the bread is called the body of Christ in the same sense that the cup is called the New Covenant. He who in faith receives the cup, receives the covenant of which it was the pledge; and he who in faith receives the bread, receives the benefits of Christ's body as broken for him. The one is the symbol and pledge of the other. The body of Christ cannot mean the Church, because His blood is mentioned in the same connection, and because in the institution of the Lord's Supper the bread is the symbol of Christ's literal, and not of

Principles of Interpretation Peculiar to Scripture.

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His mystical body. To partake of His body, is to partake of the benefits of His body as broken for us."1

The contrast between these two specimens of interpretation markedly exhibits the difference between the two interpreters.

We have spoken hitherto of the use and abuse of those hermeneutical principles that are common to the Bible with other books. But before bringing this article to a close, we would wish in two or three sentences to advert to a few of those principles of interpretation that are peculiar to Scripture, and must be regarded as limiting or modifying the general doctrine,—true in the main, though not true to its full extent,-that the Bible is to be expounded precisely in the same way as any human composition. There are peculiarities about the Bible that, to some extent, necessitate a limitation of that canon, and demand that the treatment it receives, when we proceed to interpret it, shall be somewhat different.

First, the very fact that it is the inspired record of a supernatural revelation, obviously requires that we deal with it differently from the way in which we would deal with a purely human composition. As the record of supernatural events, we must accept them as beyond the reach of that historical criticism which we would warrantably apply to similar events recorded by a profane historian; and especially as the inspired record of such events, we must be prepared to deal with them upon different principles. Take the earlier pages of history,-such, for example, as the narrative by Livy of the pre-historic period of the Roman State, and we deal with the legends and prodigies which it records as events not trustworthy, and with the historian as mistaken. The mythical theory of interpretation, which reduces such histories to the level of unhistoric legends, or the naturalist theory of interpretation, which brings its supernatural events within the circle of common things, and the range of common criticism, may, in such cases, each assert its claims to a hearing and be allowed. Indeed, with regard to any human book, however authentic and credible it may be, criticism must proceed upon the principle of at least the possibility (however small the chances may be) of unintentional error in the facts recorded, and of unconscious mistake in the author. But these sources of fallacy are shut out if it is granted that the book to be interpreted is the inspired record of a supernatural revelation. In such a case there must be superhuman events embraced in the narrative, which are not to be dealt with in the

1 Hodge's Exposition of First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 189, p. 224-5. VOL. XXIX. NO. LVII.

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