Will the

the part of man, an "after-thought of theology." Professor tell us from what point he dates his theology? Is theology a novelty in the world? Was Divine truth never intellectually and reflectively realized till after the reformation in the sixteenth century? Is not theology as old as religion? Is not religion coeval with man? And was there ever a religion out of paradise, in which the fact of sacrifice and propitiation was not fundamental and essential? Has the "afterthought of theology" no existence in Scripture? And if all the fathers were silent on the point of an imputed righteousness, would not the testimony of Scripture outweigh their authority? Mr. Hebert depends on no such "catena of authorities." The Bible is independent of all human authority. It can give strength and weight to such authority, but the authority can lend nothing to it. While it demands every knee to bow before its shrine, it bends before none. Its voice is final; and the appeal to it is ultimate. Mr. Hebert is right therefore when he says,

"I believe the age of Catena Patrum is gone; for people know pretty well that doctrinal opinions in the early church were far from being reduced ad normam on points which had not been brought before councils for settlement; imperfect and often discordant as those courts of final appeal were. But I believe that the opinions which I have been advocating, have been the generally-received doctrines among the most earnest and spiritually instructed of the fathers."

At the basis of this imputed righteousness lies the doctrine of substitution and atonement. If Christ was not, in the true and proper sense of the word, a substitute for man, and if His death was not a vicarious offering for the sins of the world, then indeed it would be more than trifling to speak of a righteousness transferred from Him to us, in virtue of which we are received into the favour and family of God. If there be nothing meritorious either in the life or death of Christ-if both are to be resolved into only a perfect example-then, having lost our own original righteousness, we are left without a righteousness, and consequently without any ground of hope. For to speak of a communion or participation of God's inherent righteousness, is nothing less than absurd, since it is impossible to partake that righteousness without becoming possessed of God's infinite and incommunicable nature. His righteousness is not something distinct and separate from His nature, but is one of the properties or characteristics of that nature; and to partake this nature is impossible. There can be no such thing as an infinite rectitude in a finite existence-an absolute and unchangeable perfection in a derived and dependent being. Such an idea is unknown to the Bible, which teaches us that He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the

righteousness of God in Him:-that of God he is made unto us righteousness; and that to be found in Him, not having our own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, is the highest point of holy attainment, and touches on the perfection of future glory. Mr. Hebert therefore has done wisely to bring the weight of his argument to bear on the defence of the doctrine of the atonement. This is the keystone of the arch with which every other revealed truth stands or falls. Mr. Davies, who is the neologian authority assailed, "denies altogether that Christ suffered and died as a propitiatory sacrifice on our behalf." On the contrary, he affirms, that Christ's death is simply a wondrous exhibition of God's love to sinners, in order that they may be brought to love God. He denies that any offering instead of sinful man was necessary; for he asserts that God is able, in perfect consistency with His own nature, to grant full forgiveness of sin, without the payment of any penalty, or the exaction of any condition whatsoever.

"This is the gist of the whole; that God can freely forgive without requiring any punishment on account of the breach of His law. As to His threatenings, God can, as it were, retract them, and pardon without making His word good. In fact, God's work in the gospel is no more than to persuade man to believe in His love, and to love Him in return. Thus the death of Christ becomes simply a wonderful manifestation of the Father's compassion, by the display of which He influences our hearts to believe how easy a thing it is to be reconciled to Him, who is already in pure pity reconciled to us."

In other words, the penalty of violated law can in every instance, if God only so will it, be remitted. Though the fact of transgression carry with it the fact of death, yet He who has connected death with transgression, can at the same moment sever the effect from the cause. His forgiving love is irrespective of, and rises infinitely above, all the conditions and requirements of His moral government! And to convince our fallen race of this, He has recourse to a scheme which is wholly out of proportion and out of character with the end to be insured. Seizing upon this anomaly in our modern theology, Mr. Hebert says with great pertinence ::

"The unexplained marvel in this system is, why Christ died at all. For, if God can freely, and of mere pity, forgive without a propitiation, and if there was no need of Christ's suffering to do away the wrath of God, why was that mysterious and inconceivable suffering appointed? Why did not God forgive, without giving up His own Son to bleed and to die? On this theory, God amazes men and angels with a wonder of wonders without adequate cause.

*

"In this system the very death of Christ has lost its power. It is

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stripped of its inestimable worth; for it subsides into one of the common deaths of all men, though it was that of the Son of God. There is no wrath of God upon Him, no pressure of the weight of a world's iniquities. And why, on this system, was He forsaken by the Father? All the course of sympathy with man which the Son had travelled along, all the self-denying subjection of Himself to degradation and suffering for the sake of winning man's love and confidence, could not but have been a series of acts most pleasing to the Father; and the love of the Father must in consequence have rested on Him with peculiar complacency and affection and oneness, as He went down lower and lower into the valley of the shadow of weakness and death. From what cause, then, can Mr. Davies draw the sudden desertion of the beloved one, just when one would have looked for the utmost sympathy and support? Whence can he fetch the explanation of those mysterious inward agonies, revealed by those darksome words, and followed by a premature decease? The very phenomena of nature, the earthquake and the darkness, lose half their significance. Gethsemane, too, is no slight difficulty; for why such overwhelming agonies of fear, if no more than an ordinary death on the cruel cross impended over Him?

"To us there seems but one solution of this chain of wonders, the solution advocated by a thousand Christian minds, of high poets, sound divines, and eminent private Christians, whose pages burn with love chastened by adoring awe. Why was it a midnight nature shuddered to behold'? Because it was a midnight new from the Creator's frown' because of that enormous load of human guilt that bowed His blessed head.' Any other supposition robs the Divine sufferer of His peculiar glory, tears the heart from Christianity, and takes away the crown and glory from the whole inward experience of the Christian."

Our limited space forbids us to enter upon the final summary of doctrine. It is sometimes said, that polemics are not polite; but in the present instance it is just the reverse. Mr. Hebert is an able opponent, whether in attack or in defence; yet he has displayed the spirit and bearing of a Christian gentleman. Astute in argument, his is a gentle and loving nature. Strong as are his denunciations of error, his sympathies and his solicitudes on behalf of those who have been misled, are eminently of the school of Christ; and if the victory be his, the glory is Christ's. The result is, that he has produced one of the most experimental treatises which has yet appeared in the course of the present controversy. It is an epitome of the subject, and will make its readers familiar with the leading features of the whole question. The hour is coming when neutrality will be impossible; or, if possible, when it will be itself a crime. Another reformation has to be effected; and the battle must be fought within the church itself.

We can heartily recommend Mr. Hebert's treatise to our readers, but especially to the clergy and to studen'ts of divinity.

The doctrine which he so ably advocates, is the soul of the Christian ministry. If, in the deepest sense which can be given to the words, the Saviour did not bear the punishment due to sin, then no atonement has been made; and in the absence of this true and perfect expiation, we are left without a key by which to interpret the contents of the word of God.

LITURGICAL MUSIC.-No. IV.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR,-Conversing lately with two professional musicians, one of them observed, that he was a short time since in the cathedral, and that when the anthem was over, a gentleman complained that "that was not the sort of music he had come to hear." "And so," said my professional friend, "people will allow themselves to talk about what they don't understand."

Now, Sir, as this allegation, whether put, as here, in an accusatory form, they," -or as it is more common in the confessional, "I,"--stands at the very door, foundation, and root of all I have been attempting, and may yet attempt, towards the reformation of our liturgical music; I will even take this little story by way of motto for this present letter, and entreat the serious attention of all your readers to what involves no mere question of constitutional prerogative, but the very sanctities of the place where God's honour dwelleth, and of the exercises in which we are to teach and admonish one another "in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs."

Of course, I do not intend anything unkind, whether to my worthy friend, or other members of his profession. I have loved art and honoured artists as long as I have loved and honoured anything; and I would be, I trust, the last man in the world to wound, even by inad vertency, any honourable professional feeling. But we must speak the truth when the truth demands it. I am compelled, therefore, to assert, that it may be just the professional, and not the non-professional, who is speaking of what he does not understand.

Strange, then, as it may sound, nothing is more practically clear, than that artists are, in many cases, the least qualified, and not the best, to discern the real objects and ultimate principles of their own art; and for the very simple reason, that they are always of necessity looking from, instead of to, it. This side of the question needs, indeed, but little comment. That those whose whole professional life is devoted to the means, should become entangled, and get to mistake them, more or less, for the end, is in the nature of things. You meet it at every step. It is in all the history of art. It is the obverse side of the medal that demands our present attention. It seems taken for granted, that in order to know if the end be really answered, a

man must first have mastered the means by which that end is to be brought about. Is it possible to conceive a bolder fallacy?

What would be thought of a man being forbidden to say his shoe pinched him, till he had served apprenticeship to Father Crispin! What of his observing that the church clock had stopped, and being interrupted by "Pardon me, Sir, but are you a watchmaker?" What even of his complaining of a drowsy rambling speech, and a neighbour whispering, "Perhaps, Sir, you have not studied Quintilian?"

"Ah! but it requires only the natural possession of a foot, an eye, and common sense, for all such cases; whilst in music, there are constructive laws that lie beyond all ordinary intelligence."

Let us look the matter in the face. There are, I suppose, constructive laws involved in all the cases I have been adducing; yet there is a natural sense of substance we call feeling; and a natural sense of objects we call seeing; and a natural inner perception which, however, in its proper exercise, uncommon, we call common sense. Is there not also a natural sense of sounds we call an 66 ear for music ?"

I almost hesitate to put seriously what should seem so purely obvious; but it is indispensable to a very serious purpose, and it is virtually denied.

One thing, at least, is certain. If musical common sense be incompetent to speak of music, then music, by inevitable sequence, is incompetent to speak to it. But, then, if it be thus,-if music be indeed this cabalistic something of which a man born with musical sensibilities must, till scientifically instructed, be purely ignorant,-what can plain men and women have to do with it in the house of God? And how dare we Protestants force an unknown language on innocent people?

I do not, of course, imply, that because the musical faculty is innate, it must not have its senses exercised. It is in the analogy of other faculties. There is a science of optics, and a science of perspective; yet it was a pleasant thing to behold the sun" before Newton ever told us of the prism; and I am pretty sure that infants still distinguish distances without thinking of converging lines and vanishing points; I suspect, also, that none would pin it to its mother's apron till it had learned the theory of gravitation.

I have heard it said, indeed, that since music is a language, we need direct instruction here as in other languages. Perhaps we do; but how? All mother tongues—and music is a mother tongue-is learned, I had almost said, without learning. There are no more rules-as rules for learning to speak than for learning to see or to walk. The child hears, repeats, asks questions, answers-yes, and argues very shrewdly, too-without the remotest conception that there are such things in all the world as logic, rhetoric, or even grammar.

But there is something further. Language, however acquired, is, after all, an affair of convention. Music is something more even than mother tongue. It is native language. It precedes words. The child responds to tones and sounds long ere he can repeat words. He imitates the "moo" before he adds the "cow." Music is, if I may reverently say it, God's language, speaking as naturally to our natural feelings as light and air to our natural organs. We no more want the