mercy did not admit a sense of justice.

God allowed His

wrath to visit Christ, not that the human race might be destroyed, as Satan hoped, but that it might live. Behind God's wrath was love. Satan's wrath seeks nothing but the destruc

tion of man.

Herein lies the weakness, or incompleteness, of the Anselmic theory of the atonement. Anselm very properly emphasizes the satisfaction required by the punishment of the sinner, but he stops short at the most gracious part, the love of God. Abelard emphasized the love of God until the object of Christ's death was lost to view. Abelard, whose views were followed by Duns Scotus and Socinus, is rightly regarded as the father of Socinianism. This is also the view that largely obtains in the new Theology. Böhl calls Ritschl "Socinus redivivus." This view is only possible where original sin is denied, where actual sins are regarded as faults and weaknesses, and where God is regarded as the moral governor of the universe.

Though Anselm's theory of the atonement is far more. acceptable in the light of God's word, it must be guarded against the view which he maintained-that Christ, as a stranger, came to save man. He was one of us, suffered and died as one of us. It must be remembered that Christ's atonement is effective only where the merits of redemption have been appropriated by faith.

The Active and Passive Obedience. The active obedience alone would not have been sufficient, because punishment for sins was necessary; the passive obedience alone would not have been sufficient, because if the sins were to be expiated, perfect obedience to each and every precept of the law was required; i. e., the passive obedience had to be that of one who had most fully met every demand of active obedience. In place of the terms active and passive, the term complete obedience will meet all the requirements of the case. By His complete obedience, Christ overcame death and hell, and destroyed the power of Satan. We that were afar off are made nigh in the blood of Christ. The death of Christ, violent as it was, was nevertheless voluntary. Man has part in this expiation

of Christ, just as he has part in Adam's transgression. The sacrifice is not of man, but for man, yet brought in our humanity.

case.

Because the Lutheran Church lays the stress upon the vicarious atonement, she is charged with indifference to holiness, of letting her adherents go to heaven on flowery beds of This is a false charge, and, as Vilmar says, amounts to blasphemy. The trouble lies in the fact that the opponents try to redeem themselves, and consequently ignore the means of grace, regarding them as relicts of superstition. Knowing the value of the means of grace because thereby we become partakers of the Redemption of Christ, we take our stand on the vicarious atonement of Christ; and if this is scriptural, which we confidently believe, we condemn the governmenta! theory, which sees in Christ's death only an upholding of the law; the moral influence theory, which sees in Christ's death an example of how men are to give up sin and return to God. The mystical theory, by which is meant that Christ, in the Incarnation, has entered into a mysterious union with men, assuming all that is ours, in order to give us a part in all that is His; and the sacrificial theory, which resolves all the divine attributes into benevolence. All minimize the baseness of sin, and lose sight of the paramount import of the death of Christ. Luther sternly rebukes the folly of those who philosophize about what God is able to do, when the Scriptures clearly tell us what God actually does and purposes to do. Can we do less? By the satisfaction theory of the atonement, as received and propounded in the Lutheran Church, God is shown to be just, yet the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. It has been shown that it is inconsistent with His justice to forgive sins by His benevolent will. It is inconsistent with His lov to let the sinner irremedially to perish. Because God did neither, the apparent contradiction between His justice and His love is removed. Christ's self-surrender to death was a confession of the world's guilt vicariously assumed, an acknowledgment and an experience of the just sentence pronounced upon mankind for its sins. He was made an offering for the sins of the world, and He bore the penalty.

In this view is included the whole theanthropic manifestation, the life, the activity and passive obedience of Christ. Therefore, Christ's complete obedience, which by deed and by suffering in life and in death, He rendered His heavenly Father for us, brings those who repent and believe God's forgiveness, righteousness and true holiness.

This mediatorial remedy of Christ is for the world. The grace of God goes as far as the curse. How man may have the benefit of the vicarious atonement of Christ is a subject that the dogmaticians treat under the head of Soteriology.

We conclude with Hase (Hutter redivivus), who, refe ring to the modern deviations from the church doctrine of the atonement, says: "The profoundest consciousness of our sinfulness, together with the highest confidence in the infinite. mercy of God, is expressed in the doctrine of the church. The modern objections to it rest chiefly on a superficial view of sin. He who has no true conception of his own guilt finds it easy to argue against the atonement. But he who is conscious of his utter inability to free himself from evil by his own power, gratefully accepts the merit of the Divine Redeemer."

P. A. LAURY.

Perkasie, Pa., April 22, 1903.

ARTICLE VII.

THE NEWSPAPER AND THE RELIGIOUS PRESS IN THEIR RELATION TO DOCTRINAL ERROR.

It will be necessary to distinguish between three forms. of the press as disseminators of doctrinal error,—the denominational, the secular-religious, and the secular press. The denominational press, while influenced deeply by current trends of thought, by the negative theology and by indifference to doctrine, is in the main true to the traditions it represents. It still holds fast to the distinctive tenets for which it stands and looks at various trends of belief through the glasses of those tencts. Its doctrinal errors are those which have been held with more or less consistency from the beginning, and hence need not here be taken into account. Of this denominational press, it may be said that it defends, with few exceptions (and we are speaking only of the press of the leading denominations), the formal principle of the Reformation, the doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and, with varying degrees of fidelity, the doctrine of total depravity, the necessity of regeneration, the supremacy of grace, as over agains work-righteousness, and, with modified accent, the final punishment of the wicked. On the whole, it may be said that it is fighting the encroachments of the more destructive criticism and of agnostic and rationalistic altruism. Leaving out the Lutheran press, it may be said that the Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist journals rank first in their loyalty to the leading doctrines of the Christian faith, and there are indications of a healthy reaction against the reigning indifference to doctrine and the wave of self-sufficing humanitarianism which is to-day bearing everything before it. As disseminators of false doctrine, the denominational press must not be classed with either the secular or the secularreligious press.

The secular-religious press has a different spirit, because its purpose is different. Its aim is to mediate between faith and reason, to reconcile religion and the latest claims of science. It looks at divine truth through the glasses of the negative criticism and the doctrine of evolution. It manifests little interest in throwing new light on old beliefs, but much in sacrificing old beliefs to the so-called new light. Facts, not beliefs; theories, not doctrines; ethics, not faith; practices, not principles, are uppermost in its thinking. The approach to the Scriptures is through the gateway of negative research, not through the door of tradition and history. Its method of dealing with it is inductive rather than deductive. The trend of thought in matters of faith is subjective, and proceeds on the rationalistic basis of intelligo ut credam and not on the scriptural basis of credo ut intelligam. Where there is not a formal or open denial of such doctrines as those of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement and the like, there is nevertheless apparent a subtle Unitarianism and a strong aversion to the older forms of doctrinal statement in the historic creeds. A constant tendency is to express the supernatural in terms of the natural, the spiritual in terms of the physical, and to bring the former into subjection to the latter. Historic Christianity is being resolved in large measure into legend, miracle into myth, and Christ is no longer the world's Priest and King, but is set forth chiefly as the greatest of the world's prophets. Here and there the New England Unitarianism asserts itself, and, while Christ is admitted to be divine and altogether unique in history, He is at times brought into dangerous juxtaposition to such names as Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, and even Goethe and Shakespere, from whom He is made to differ almost more in degree than in kind.

The two most widely circulating mediums of this school of thought are the Independent and the Outlook. They are the most influential moulders of religious belief among that portion of the more highly educated classes which has grown out of sympathy with the church and its traditionalism. The editor of the Independent, not long ago, laid much stress on the "recession of miracle," and the editor of the Outlook found