42 and Christ merely as the moral and personal image of God.

universal essence, who has no known existence except in His works, as an all-pervading power or principle not external to the created world, but in it, and developed through it. He goes on to say that Almighty God, who is thus illimitable and incomprehensible, is exhibited in personal attributes in Christ, as if all the laws and provisions in which He energizes in nature impersonally, were condensed and exemplified in a real personal being. Hence he calls our Lord by a strange term, the personification of God, i. e. (I suppose) the personal image, or the manifestation in a person. In other words God, whose person is unknown in nature, in spite of His works, is revealed in Christ, who is the express image of His person; and just in this, and (as I conceive) nothing more, would he conceive there was a difference between the manifestation of God in Christ and the Manifestation of Him in a plant or flower. Christ is a personal Manifestation. Whether there be any elements of truth in this theory, I do not concern myself to decide; thus much is evident, that he so applies it as utterly to explain away the real divinity of our Lord. The passages are as follow :—

"It is by Jesus Christ that we have access to the Father. This vivid exhibition of His character, this personification of His moral attributes, opens to us the way. Here we see a manifestation of divinity, an image of the Invisible God, which comes as it were down to us; it meets our feeble faculties with a personification," &c. p. 40.

"We accordingly commenced with His childhood, and were led at once into a train of reflection on the nature and the character of that eternal and invisible essence, whose attributes were personified in Him.” p. 192.

"The human mind. . . reaches forward for some vision of the Divinity, the great unseen and inconceivable essence. Jesus Christ is the personification of the divinity for us, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person." p. 200.

Next, as to his opinions concerning the doctrine of the Atonement. I will not deny that some of his general expressions are correct, and taken by themselves, would be satisfactory; but they are invalidated altogether by what he has at other times advanced. It may be recollected that Mr. E., in his treatise on Internal Evidence, lays such a stress upon the use of the Atonement as a Manifestation, as to throw the real doctrine itself into the shade.

Viewed in itself, Christ's death is, we believe, a sacrifice acting in some unknown way for the expiation of human sin; but Mr. E. views it, (as indeed it may well be viewed, but exclusively as it should not be viewed,) as a mark and pledge of God's love to us, which it would be, though it were not an Expiation. Even though Christ's incarnation issued in nothing more than His preaching to the world and sealing His doctrine with His blood, it would be a great sign of His love, and a pledge now of our receiving blessings through Him; for why should He die except He meant to be merciful to us? but this would not involve the necessity of an expiation. St. Paul died for the Church, and showed his love for it in this sense. When then the view of the Christian is limited, as Mr. E. would almost wish it to be, to the Manifestation of the Atonement, or the effect of the Atonement on our minds, no higher doctrine is of necessity elicited than that of its being a sign of God's mercy, as the rainbow might be, and a way is laid, by obscuring, to obliterate the true doctrine concerning it. So far Mr. E. proceeds, not denying it (far from it) but putting it aside in his philosophical evidence: Mr. A., upon the very same basis, is bolder in his language, and almost, if not altogether gets rid of it.

In the following passage he applies Mr. Erskine's doctrine of the moral lesson, taught in Christ's death, of the justice and mercy of God; and he will be found distinctly to assert that the virtue of it lay in this, viz. that it was a declaration of God's hatred of sin, the same in kind as the punishment of the sinner would have been, only more perfect, a means of impressing on us His hatred of sin; not as if it really reconciled us to an offended Creator.

"The balm for your wounded spirit is this, that the moral impression in respect to the nature and tendencies of sin, which is the only possible reason God can have in leaving you to suffer its penalties,"

one should think the reason might be that "the wages of sin is death,"

"is accomplished far better by the life and death of His Son ;

surely it is a greater balm to know that Christ has put away the wrath of God, as Scripture says, than to theorize about

"moral impressions" beyond the word of Scripture. Observe too he says "the life and death," excluding the proper idea of Atonement, which lies in the death of Christ, and so tending to resolve it into a Manifestation.

"God never could have wished to punish you for the sake of doing evil;"

how unspeakably bold; when God says he does punish the sinner, not indeed for the sake of evil, but as a just and holy God!

"and all the good which He could have accomplished by it, is already effected in another and a better way." p. 1791.

Here is the same assumption which was just now instanced from the writings of Mr. Scott, of Aston Sandford, that God cannot inflict punishment except for the sake of a greater good, or, (as Mr. A. himself has expressed it just before) "because the welfare of His government requires " it, which is an altogether gratuitous statement.

Again:

"A knowledge of the death of Christ, with the explanation of it given in the Scriptures, touches men's hearts, it shows the nature and tendencies of sin, it produces fear of God's displeasure, and resolution to return to duty; and thus produces effects by which justice is satisfied,"

observe, not by an expiation, but by the repentance of the offender in consequence of the "moral impression" attendant on the "Manifestation" of Christ's death,

"and the authority of the law sustained far better in fact, than it would be by the severest punishment of the guilty sinner." p. 174.

"Look at the moral effect of this great sacrifice, and feel that it takes off all the necessity of punishment, and all the burden of your guilt." p. 190.

The necessity of punishment is (according to Mr. A.) the well being of the Universe: and the virtue of the great sacrifice is, not expiation, atonement in God's sight, but the moral effect of Christ's death on those who believe in it. So again, in a passage lately quoted for another purpose:

"It is by Jesus Christ that we have access to the Father. This vivid exhibition of His character, this personification of His moral attributes, opens to us the way." p. 40.

1 Vide also p. 173.

Lastly, we have the same stress laid upon the facts of the Gospel as in Mr. Erskine's work, with this difference, that Mr. Erskine supposes the orthodox doctrine, or what he considers such, to be conveyed in the facts; Mr. Abbott, with the liberalism to which his predecessor leads, but which is more characteristic of this day than of fifteen years ago, seems to think that various theories may be raised about the facts, whether orthodox or otherwise, but that the facts alone are of consequence

to us.

"Such are the three great Manifestations of Himself to man, which the one Unseen All-pervading Essence has made, and exhibited to us in the Bible, and in our own experience and observation,"

-This sentence, be it observed in passing, savours strongly of Sabellianism; he has spoken of what he calls three Manifestations of Almighty God, as our natural Governor, as influencing the heart, and as in Jesus Christ, without there being any thing in his way of speaking to show, that he attributed these Manifestations respectively to Three Persons. He proceeds:

"Though there have been interminable disputes in the Christian Church about the language which has been employed to describe these facts, there has been comparatively little dispute among even nominal Christians about the facts themselves." p. 39.

Such is the theology to which Mr. E.'s principle is found to lead in the hands of Mr. Abbott; a theology, (so to name it,) which violently robs the Christian Creed of all it contains, except those outward historical facts through which its divine truths were fulfilled and revealed to man.

This brief explanation of Mr. Abbott's theological system may be fitly followed up by some specimens of the temper and tone of his religious sentiments. In this way we shall be able to ascertain the state of mind which such speculations presuppose and foster.

"Jesus Christ had a taste for beauty, both of nature and art; He admired the magnificent architecture of the Temple, and deeply lamented the necessity of its overthrow, and his dress was at least of such a character, that the disposal of it was a subject of importance to the well paid soldiers who crucified him." p. 50, 51.

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I put aside the utter unreasonableness of this last remark; but let us think seriously, is CHRIST GOD, or is He not? if so, can we dare talk of Him as having a taste for nature?" It is true Mr. A. does speak in this way of the Almighty Father also; so that it may be said rather to prove that He has a grovelling conception of God than of CHRIST. Perhaps it will be more truly said that his irreverence towards the Saviour, has led on to the other more direct profaneness. Yet a "taste for beauty of art!"

This of the Eternal Son of GOD, the Creator; will it be said that He is man also? true ;--but His personality is in His Godhead, if I may express myself in theological language. He did not undo what He was before, He did not cease to be the Infinite GOD, but He added to Him the substance of a man, and thus participated in human thoughts and feelings, yet without impairing (God forbid) His divine perfection. The Incarnation was not 66 a conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but a taking of the manhood into God." It seems there is need of the Athanasian creed in these dangerous times. A mystery, indeed, results from this view, for certain attributes of Divinity and of manhood seem incompatible; and there may be some revealed instances in our Lord's history on earth of less than divine thought and operation: but because of all this we never must speak, we have utterly no warrant to speak, of the Person of the Eternal Word as thinking and feeling like a mere man, like a child, or a boy, as simply ignorant, imperfect, and dependent on the creature, which is Mr. A.'s way. In saying this, I am quite aware that the sensitiveness of a Christian mind will at once, without argument, shrink from a passage such as that commented on, but I say it by way of accounting for its aversion, which, perhaps, it may not be able to justify to others. To proceed :—

"Jesus Christ was in some respects the most bold, energetic, decided, and courageous man that ever lived; but in others he was the most flexible, submissive, and yielding." p. 51.

The Son of God made flesh, though a man, is beyond comparison with other men ; His person is not human ; but to say "most of all men " is to compare.

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