A whole generation must pass away before these evils can sensibly abate. We have to receive the South back with these evils; and the statesmanlike question, since we have determined to live together, is, Will these evils disappear soonest under the most liberal and trusting policy, — under a policy most scrupulously observant of our constitutional theory; or under the timid, self-saving, arm's-length policy, which has so many honest and able advocates in Congress and the country?

Just as we conclude our article, Mr. Bancroft's admirable survey, in his oration in the Capitol, of the situation in which the war has left the country, comes to aid our judgment. The country is fortunate in hearing the deliberate voice of its national historian in the Capitol, at so supreme an hour as that when the nation sits down in the shadow of its late President's tomb, to contemplate the work done under his leadership, in the fearful struggle for life through which the Union has passed. No orator ever had a more sublime theme, a more significant presence, a more difficult task. With the instinct of genius, Mr. Bancroft seizes the real subject by its heart-strings. Of his oration, it is enough to say, that it is worthy of the occasion, and worthy of himself. Full of knowledge, philosophy, and history, it is simple, frank, and sincere. Strong and calm, it has almost a judicial decisiveness in its tone. For the first time, Mr. Lincoln's real character has been publicly spoken of with discrimination, if we except some noteworthy observations upon it by his late law-partner at Springfield, in an address which attracted far less attention than it deserved. Mr. Bancroft, mindful of to-day, speaks also like a man conscious he shall be read fifty years hence; and says only what is true now, and will be true then. He treats the rise and the usurpations of slavery; the corruptions of Northern party spirit, and the defalcations of the Supreme Court under its blandishments; the necessity of the war to save liberty and the Union; of the wonderful providences by which an humble backwoodsman, born west of the Alleghanies,-a son of the soil, of the common people, and of the average American life, was brought

to the headship of the nation, to vindicate, under his most democratic presidency, the original impulse and purpose of our free institutions, - like another David, to slay this Goliath with a shepherd's sling; and to die a blessed martyr to his fidelity to the country's hope and trust.

ART. IX. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

HORACE BUSHNELL,* with the Beechers, represents very significantly the direction in which modern Orthodoxy, as a theological system, is silently and rapidly moving, preparatory to a downfall of old belief such as Christendom has never witnessed. The result of a careful study of the most widely welcomed utterances of the modern Evangelical pulpit, assisted by considerable observation of the course of things within the communion which sustains this pulpit, is the strong conviction, that events, in the Orthodox religious world, are rushing on to a catastrophe of the gravest character. Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor who deserved, as Professor of Didactic Theology at New Haven, to stand at the head of all the Orthodox divines New England had produced; a man of heroic figure, if only he could be rescued from the mean niche in which, as defender of Orthodoxy, he is doomed to stand - lamented, in his last days, the decline of the old faith of New England, in the strongest terms. He said, for example, "Things are growing worse and worse, and have been, since I have been on the stage, and are now going on faster and faster." The acceleration of events since the death of Dr. Taylor, in 1858, when he lamented, in some of the last words of his life, that ministers could not preach his new and revised edition of Orthodoxy, and thus would not long remain secure against the modern rationalistic spirit,— has been startling, even to those who trust most implicitly that the wise hand of God is in it. The question of the future is, undoubtedly, whether there shall be profound reformation, in which the spirit of sect and dogma shall be exorcised; or calamitous revolution, shaking the Christian faith to its foundations.

*The Vicarious Sacrifice, grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1866.

These remarks seem to us appropriate in a notice of Horace Bushnell's last and most remarkable utterance, because the work which contains this utterance is much more significant as a sign of the times, than as a contribution to theological discussion. Dr. Taylor used to say, in the rough fashion which was gladly tolerated in him, "Bushnell don't know any thing." This only meant, that Dr. Bushnell had no appreciation of his system. In this system, Dr. Taylor had adjusted the parts of Orthodoxy, correcting those which did not fit. Thus he revised the common notion of virtue, and put self-love for love as the fundamental principle of conduct. He did this to cut off the argument, that love would not permit the saint to consent to a "select heaven and general hell." Then he revised the New-England Divinity notion of justice. All his predecessors had taught, he said, a justice which logically involved universal salvation as the consequence of the atonement. To cut off this, he devised the

By this drama,
It is now made

notion of a justice peculiar to God as Governor, the aim of which should be to sanction positive law, and the nature of which should be punishment so adjusted as to avoid a reformatory effect, sometimes concurring with chastisement in the case of those saved under an atonement, but keeping clear of redeeming effect in all other cases. The atonement, in Dr. Taylor's corrected Orthodoxy, was a demonstration made by God upon Jesus, with his consent, for the purpose of showing his feelings about the law broken by man. The second person of God assumes the character and place of man. God the Father hides his face from him on the cross. God is understood to show how much he hates sin. possible to omit showing this, in the case of those who secure the advocacy of Christ, by the otherwise necessary infliction of eternal punishment. This system is too hard and dry for the modern pulpit, which is much stronger in imagination and sentiment than in intellect and speculation. The rational spirit has quickened the moral nature, and destroyed sympathy with these hard dogmas, though it has not yet corrected intellectual conviction. Calvinism is passing rapidly from existence, not because the new generation of Calvinists have become convinced that it is false, but because they have acquired from the humane spirit of the time a blessed distaste for the whole thing. They are not prepared to hear eternal punishment denied; but they are prepared to forget that it was ever asserted. Dr. Bushnell represents, in his new work, this transition from dogmatism to liberalism.

VOL. LXXX. -NEW SERIES, VOL. I. NO. II.

24

The scholar will regret that Dr. Bushnell has a great horror of definitions, and "does not propose to establish any article whatever in this treatise." But this was inevitable. Dr. Bushnell can save his article, even in his own mind, only by keeping to vague and unlogical conceptions. Yet he has an article; and, in his way, he urges it with all his might. This article has been presented in the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, and in Charles Beecher's "Redeemer and Redeemed,". a work of which Dr. Bushnell scems not to have heard. It is difficult to state this article of new Orthodoxy distinctly, and yet save it from manifest absurdity and blasphemy. It cannot be credited, that any one thinks that God feels our aguepains, sympathizes painfully with our dyspepsia, and equally groans under our mental burdens, shares our heavy disgusts, and sinks beneath our shame. And yet this is the theory, boldly and distinctly stated. The "true seed-principle of the Christian salvation" is thus stated by Dr. Bushnell, in connection with the announcement, that "the exact usus loguendi of all the vicarious and sacri- . ficial language of the New Testament" is found in the text, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses:"

"His heart accepts each one as a burden upon its feeling, and by that feeling he is inserted into the lot, the pain, the sickness, the sorrow, of each. . . . He bore our sicknesses, in the sense that he took them on his feeling, had his heart burdened by the sense of them, bore the disgusts of their loathsome decays, felt their pains over again, in the tenderness of his more than human sensibility. . . . He bore our sins in just the same sense that he bore our sicknesses."

This is said of Christ; but it is thereby said of God, since Christ is God living a human life, for the single purpose of showing men. that this suffering sympathy belongs to his life. Thus our author says:

"There is a cross in God before the wood is seen upon Calvary, hid in God's own virtue itself, struggling on heavily in burdened feeling through all the previous ages, and struggling as heavily now even in the throne of the ages."

Dr. Bushnell depicts the distress of God under the old dispensation, until "that moment of relief to him, so blessed probably, when he came to Mary with his 'all hail,' and broke into the world as God with us."

According to this view, the purpose of the incarnation was not to meet man's need, but God's. God could not reach man; therefore

he "broke into the world" to get at his last offspring. He came to acquire with man a character, and thus to secure the influence of character. Remark the following statements:

"The moral power of God, in the gospel of his Son, is a new kind of power the greatest and most sovereign power we know which God undertakes to have, by obtaining it under the human laws and methods. . . . He is constrained to institute a new movement on the world, in the incarnation of his Son. The undertaking is to obtain, through him and the facts and processes of his life, a new kind of power; viz., moral power."

It seems that God was unable to succeed in having, without the incarnation, any other than "a certain kind of power; viz., that which may be called attribute power, a kind of abstract excellence," in the conception of which we make him "thin and cold," and "feel him as a platitude more than as a person."

...

This theory hardly deserves to be criticised. Even Dr. Bushnell himself inadvertently gives it up, when he says, "I will not undertake to solve the mystery of these physical pains; for it must be admitted, that God is a being physically impassible." We should think so, decidedly; yet Dr. Bushnell does not see that this exposes his wild fancies about God's burdened heart and wounded sensibility. "More than human sensibility," he says; as if this did not mean more than humanly weak. Sympathy of the glad lover of men is one thing groaning sensibility is incident to human weakness. We advise Dr. Bushnell to study the end of John Brown, as a lesson in spiritual philosophy. He may be forced-which we should regret to do more than say what he now does of the apparent aspect of the life of Jesus: "The end of it so dark, if not weak, . . . stamped as another exploded pretender;" and, at least, he will appreciate our second objection to his theory, viz., that candid criticism does not. allow us to find in Jesus either the powers or virtues of Godhead. Dr. Bushnell rests the case of his gospel on "the look of capacity" displayed in the miracles of healing. "If these mighty works had not been wrought," he says, "nothing else that Christ could have done, in the sphere of truth and the spirit, would have had the necessary energy of a gospel. Not even his cross would have signified much beyond the proof of his weakness." Weakness it must be, then; for the works of healing have no "look of capacity" different from that seen in many other cases, as honestly reported, and some of them as veritably proved. And, for a third objection, it is only necessary to have a reasonable amount of faith in God to make this story of God's