human race into the abyss of death?" Is it an historical fact, that he had arrived at the necessity, and possessed the power, of raising an army,—whether of angels or of men, and setting up a dominion of force: and that, to evade this, he took measures for being put to death? Is it true, that his living presence made converts "by compulsion," while his absent influence drew them "by cords of love?" The contrast seems to us purely fictitious. Our author has incongruously mixed a philosophical idea of Christianity, as discipleship to a godlike man, with the Israelitish theocratical tradition. He has encumbered himself with the vague and scarcely intelligible proposition, that "Jesus was the Messiah;" the said Messiah not being a real personage, but an imaginary object, an indeterminate mythological creation, whose identity with any living individual could never be established on any definite and rational grounds. The nodus which the death of Christ is supposed to have resolved,-the dilemma and the extrication, the danger and the redemption,-are mere results of the Messianic theory, having as little relation with realities as Justin's apocalyptic architecture of the new Jerusalem, or the Millenarian grapes of Papias.

The real truth contained in the great doctrine of justification by faith appears to us to have escaped our author's view, in consequence of his adherence to the rationalising rather than the evangelical use of the word "faith." Though he claims for it more than a mere equivalence with belief, the additional ingredient amounts only to practical confidence in the thing believed as a reality. It stands opposed to Sense, and denotes the assurance which the Reason affords of invisible existences. Hence it is treated as if destitute of any moral and affectionate element; and is separated, as a lower and introductory state, from love, to the agency of which a later chapter is devoted. Mr. Solly is indeed conscious that a feeling of reliance is implied in the word: had it occurred to him that belief is directed to propositions, trust to persons, he would probably have felt that it is impossible to keep faith and love apart; and that the former, so far from being the intellectual antecedent, is the highest moral consequent, of the latter. Instead of defining "justification by faith," the act of "turning towards God at the bidding of Christ by an effort

of Will," he would feel, with Paul, that Faith is the direct antithesis of Will, and denotes the free movement of a reverential heart towards an object of supreme reliance. While Law addresses itself to the voluntary power, and appeals in part to interest, in part to the sense of obligation, Faith seizes the involuntary impulses, not parleying with the Will, but carrying it fairly away. While the one often laboriously fails, the other springs to a happy success: bringing to the mind's strength, not the depressing weight of prohibition, but the renovating force of love. Thus justification by faith, translated into other language, simply means the emancipating power of disinterested and reverential affections; which render, unasked, an obedience rarely obtained by precept and exaction. A profound sense of this great truth appears to us to be the grand permanent result of the Pauline Christianity, infused thence into all the Lutheran Protestantism. While the authority of Divine Law over the Will has been represented by the Romish and the Arminian Churches, the energy of a Divine Love, in transforming and sanctifying the whole nature has been proclaimed by the Evangelical sects. A scheme that shall blend and conciliate these opposite truths, and make each the supplement rather than the antagonist of the other, will be co-extensive with the religious wants of men, will gather into one communion the tranquil worker and the enthusiastic thinker, and present the world with a genuine Catholicism.

We have already adverted to the fact, that among the affections illustrated by our author as affecting our union with God, the moral sentiments have no place. This is not the only mark of a low relative estimate of them, strangely at variance with the high doctrine of free-will which pervades the work. "Justice" is dis

respectfully described as "a principle that is designed to govern man in the earlier stages of his moral being." -P. 112. And the whole doctrine of Punishment is indiscriminately condemned, as a product of human vindictiveness, and receiving no sanction from even so "carnal" a principle as justice.-P. 113. All use of 'pain for the repression of evil" is represented as a criminal"retaliation:" and States as well as individuals are required to treat offenders with "forgiving love."

66

In

his overflowing tenderness towards wrong-doers, our author unconsciously slips into the Necessarian apology for evil passions, and calls them the " disease of the soul,” requiring the medicaments of soft affection, not the reproaches of indignant goodness. This is inconsiderate language. In popular sects and among philanthropic enthusiasts, called into existence by the vehement reaction of social cruelty and abuse, exaggeration of this kind must be expected but in a writer whose sympathies should not be without some regulation from philosophy, it fills us with surprise and regret. We protest against the arrangement which subordinates justice to love, and degrades Conscience into the servitor of Pity. We cannot allow that retribution is the product of "animal passion," or is tainted with the wickedness of revenge. The fallacies involved in our author's exposition of this matter are not new. He confounds moral disapprobation with personal vindictiveness; and overlooks the distinction, that, while the former contemplates with impartial displeasure all wrong-doing, simply as such, the latter is determined in its anger by the direction of injury towards one's self. Forgiveness is the direct contrary of vengeance; it may relinquish all claims of personal reparation: but it can do no more: it cannot cancel either the fact of past wickedness, or the feeling which the contemplation of it must excite. No man has the right or the power to forgive offences against others or against the will of Heaven. Disapprobation then must remain; with disapprobation, remorse; and so long as these sentiments are right, punishment cannot be wrong: for, define them as you will, they imply demerit; and demerit is ill-desert; and ill-desert means just liability to penal suffering. To expunge the retributory sentiments would be to repeal the whole moral law.

We are far from denying,—still further from depreciating, the noble instances of Christian forbearance afforded by the Society of Friends and others who have made it a point of conscience either to succumb to evil or to overcome it with good. But when these stock-examples are pressed upon us for universal imitation, and urged upon the attention of States as reasons for dispensing with a peual code, and embracing their criminal population in

the arms of political love, their whole power is exhausted by such excessive and absurd demands,-like the river which may fertilise a thread of the desert, but if employed to reclaim the Sahara, is instantly swallowed in the sands. True, clemency is often a mighty instrument for subduing the hardened heart But what is the secret of its power?its unexpectedness, touching the offender with grateful surprise. Its influence therefore betrays the natural anticipations of the guilty; shows what they think of their own deserts; and proclaims that the law of retribution has an eternal seat in the human heart. Except upon the ground of this fundamental law, mercy can have no operation, no existence: the very word is without a meaning. Not more impossible is reaction without action, or a lifted shadow without intercepted light, than a triumph of forgiveness over a nature not fitted for punishment. The apostles of Love may preach against the severities of human judgment: but did they not live in a world of Justice, their occupation would be gone; their doctrine, by becoming universal, would declare itself impossible; and, by simple diffusion, be indistinguishable from the inane.

Mr. Solly esteems it "most unnatural" to claim, on behalf of retributory justice, any sanction from the doctrines or example of Christ. We cannot honestly escape his condemnation. When the question is put to us, whether the all-subduing power of love on the alienated heart "was not exemplified in the history of Jesus ;"-whether it " was not thus that he came unto those who would not approach him, until by his disinterested labours and sufferings he won the deepest affections of their hearts;"-we feel constrained to answer with a distinction. To oppressed poverty, to repulsed childhood, to despised goodness, to insulted shame, his tenderness and patience were inexhaustible. For those who

injured him, "not knowing what they did," the divine prayer was ready to his lips. But, in the presence of those who were hardened against him by evil prejudice, interest, or passion, of sacerdotal spies and sanctimonious Pharisees, his deportment, it strikes us, was marked by invariable severity. He maintains a position of uniform antagonism, aud rids himself of them by devices perfectly

just, but not peculiarly affectionate. He parries their blows; evades their snares; perplexes their theology: and, not content with the attitude of defence, assails them with impassioned invective and damaging exposures, rising to a terrible pitch of minatory defiance. What reproach was too austere to find utterance with him? What punishment too appalling for him to name? What judgment too fearful for him to predict as the decree of his own tribunal? Who has not shuddered at that periodic knell of his discourse, the "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth," and listened in dread of its returning ring upon the heart? That any one, with these things before him, should say that Christ came to show us how "purely animal" is "the tendency" "to inflict punishment on an offender either by word or deed, by altered behaviour or threat," and to exemplify the treatment of wrong-doers without the use of penal fears, is one of the most astonishing delusions to which the misuse of Scripture has given rise.

On the whole, this work of Mr. Solly's, while frequently awakening a hearty admiration, has presented us with a series of perplexing surprises. In his own mind there must no doubt be some mediating ideas, capable of "at-oning" its various parts: but, for want of these, we confess to an insuperable difficulty in harmonizing the opinions scattered over his pages. He maintains the highest doctrine of Freewill; yet claims the tenderest nursing for guilty beings, as if they were not Agents but Patients, lying sick of a "disease of the soul." He vindicates responsibility, yet objects to retribution. He explains away the dogma of perdition, yet retains the correlative language of "Salvation." He believes only in an Atonement by sentiments never in any age absent from the human heart; yet speaks of the great scheme of Atonement as projected and executed by the historical prophet of Nazareth. He approves of interpreting Paul by reference to the obsolete and mistaken doctrine of a theocratic Messiah; yet appeals to this very language as if expressing eternal truth. He explains the imperfect notions with which portions of the Scriptures are pervaded; yet speaks of the whole Bible, "from Genesis to Revelation," as the "revealed will of God," the "explicit and express declaration" of the Most