moral example is as philosophical as the proposed cure of consumption by a rubefacient, or of cancer by a smelling-bottle. Atonement, deep enough to eradicate the cancer of sin and to heal the tubercles of depravity, broad enough to cover the spiritual needs of human nature, must strike down deeper than sin; must be stronger than sin; must have more than the element of philanthropy; must be more than human. Perhaps an unhappy and sometimes misleading use has been made of the phrase "total depravity." The phrase is nowhere used in Scripture, though, rightly interpreted, the doctrine contained in it is fundamental in the Scripture. Man is not totally depraved in the sense that he is a fiend; though he may grow to be such by the downward trend of transgression; nor is he as bad as he can be, and bad in all respects, though this is the tendency. Possibly "universal degeneracy" would be to some minds a phrase more expressive of biblical statement and human experience; but, call it what you will, there is an abounding in sin and a frightful power, which call for more than a lackadaisical sentimentalism. The influence of moral example is good as far as it goes, and we could not have atonement without it; but soteriology demands sterner things in dealing with such a stern outlaw as sin-it calls for suffering, for blood, for death.

2. As the Atonement is for holiness, it must rise to a superabounding pre-eminence above the abounding amplitude and power of sin, and give adequate motive, sufficient help and ample resources for a clean heart and a holy life. This cannot be done by any mere humanitarian appeals. Still less can it be done by any alleged capriciousness and arbitrary discrimination on the part of God, doing all for some, nothing for others, and setting forth a rule of conduct calculated to make us partial and unlovely. If I believed Calvinism true and myself one of the elect, I might fear God, but I hardly see how I could love such an arbitrary being; and if I regarded myself as one of the reprobate, not included in the Satisfaction Theory in which Christ died for the elect, I should feel it a sort of virtue to hate a being guilty of such outrageous enormity. A true theory of atonement sets before both saint and sinner an example of Fatherhood, of Brotherhood, of rigid justice, of compassionate love, of infinite magnanimity, which appeal with

constraining power to all that is manly, magnanimous, and responsive to truth in natures which, though wrecked, have enough salvage to keep on the voyage of accountable probation. Holiness has its stern as well as gentle traits. Holiness is practical goodness; and goodness in its practical achievements, in a world of sin, whatever may be the case in a world where there is none, has rigid, stern, and severe attributes. The Atonement is to cultivate many-sided, symmetrical, manly character, tender, gentle, sweet, and pure-feminine in the loveliness of embodied love, masculine in the strength of embodied justice and righteousness.

3. As the Atonement is the highest exhibition of the glory and symmetry of the Divine Nature, it must have nothing ignoble or calculated to challenge the criticism of generous minds, and it must have an affluence pre-eminently worthy of God. Moses never rose to a point of greater sublimity of conduct than when he declined the guidance of a mere angel and stood ready to resign his high office if God himself did not go with the people. Strangely in contrast with the spirit of Moses is that theology which insists that the leadership of a mere man is sufficient for us. If Jesus is a mere Man, redemption is not the chief exhibition of divine glory and power. Creation towers above it; for God created the heavens and the earth. But as that big little word "so" in the sixteenth of the third chapter of John, and all the logic of the entire tenor of Scripture, and the progressiveness of the works of God, render the Atonement superlatively exalted as a Divine Manifestation, a true theory must see in Jesus supreme and superlative Godhead in his highest and divinest functions. If angels have been baffled students of the redemptive plan for thousands of years, with all the helps to knowledge which they possess, it must certainly have more than a finite element in it; and if such noble and generous beings bend with such zest of inquiry, it must be more than a piece of bargain and sale of so much for so many.

4. As the Atonement is for man's sin, it is for the sin of every man; and as every man has sinned, it is for every man not in a public, ostensible, but insincere and ineffective sense, as if "the world," "every creature," "all men," were used in an exoteric sense for common consistency's sake; but the ex

oteric and esoteric declarations of divine provision and purpose are the same; the secret and the published decree of the divine counsel are identical, and the Atonement is not limited but universal; it is not for the elect only, but for the entire human family.

5. As the Atonement is for man, it is for man as he is, with all his power of volition. Material things come to us conditionally. Intellectual things come in the same way. Why should not spiritual and eternal things, with which the Atonement specially has to do? The true theory of man's relation to both Nature and Providence is synergism, and not monergism. Atonement is out of analogy with all the works and ways of God, if it involves a different arrangement.

6. As the Atonement is from sin unto holiness, as it is the chief display of divine glory, and for all men, though realized in its saving efficiency by those only who comply with the conditions, it is full, complete, and perfect; full, because not fragmentary; complete, because not defective; perfect, because it is free from all inadequacy to meet the sublime ends for which as a plan it was achieved. It is adequate to save from all sin; to rescue from the deepest degeneracy; to uplift the chief and vilest of transgressors; to impart an entire justification, a complete sanctification, a victory over every foe, and the endless and ever-augmenting beatitudes of an eternal heaven in a word, to make us like Jesus here, and endlessly and ever-increasingly like him in glory.

And, 7. As the Atonement is by suffering, Christ having once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, in this vicarious substitution, and as the whole line of truth indicates it as an infinite achievement, the suffering involved was nothing less than infinite. Dr. Miley argues this conclusively:

Nor have we the truest, deepest sense of the sufferings of Christ, except in the fact that he endured them as the Theanthropos. With the doctrine of a union of the divine and human natures in a unity of personality in Christ, and that in the incarnation he was truly the God-man, we know not either the theology or philosophy which may limit his sufferings to a mere human consciousness. And with the impassivity of his divine nature in the incarnation and atonement, many texts of Scripture, fraught with infinite treasures of grace and love, would be little more than meaningless words. On such a principle their

exegesis would be superficial and false to their infinitely deeper meaning. The divine Son incarnate, and so incarnate in human nature as to unite it with himself in personal unity, could suffer, and did suffer, in the redemption of the world.

Redemption from suffering by suffering involves the element of infinity. If sin has its course, and ultimates in the penal death which violated law threatens, there is the element of infinity in it; for such suffering our Lord says is "everlasting" or eternal; and eternity is infinity. If our Atoning Substitute saves even one sinner from the ultimate consequences of sin, he does it by suffering, and this vicarious suffering must have the element of infinity in it. That element is not eternity, for Christ suffered "once," to suffer no more; he died "once," to die no more; but the element of infinity is to be sought in sufferings endured in finite time. How could this be except as it was endured by an Infinite Nature? If Christ suffered, the divine nature suffered, for Christ is divine as well as human. And if the divine nature suffered, the infinite element is introduced into the atoning sufferings in finite time.

It has long been a favorite view of theologians that God is impassible; that he is incapable of suffering. But do the Scriptures anywhere teach this? Is it not a venturing in theologic dogma beyond the bounds of revelation? Is it not a substitution of a deduction from human reasoning for a "thus saith the Lord?" Is it not a limiting of the Holy One of Israel? Is it not a contradiction of what God says concerning himself? Dr. Miley cites many passages of Scripture bearing on this vital issue.

On psychological grounds, apart from revelation, we do not question that ability to suffer is the complement and correlate of ability to enjoy. Where there is no ability to enjoy, there is none to suffer; but wherever there is ability to enjoy, there always is, and, from the nature of the case, there must be, ability to suffer; and the ability in one direction is the measure of the ability in the other. As God is undeniably capable of enjoyment, and enjoyment that is infinite, it is a reckless declaration, violative of psychological facts, as well as out of harmony with the word of God, for any one to affirm that he is incapable of suffering. To say the least, it is very immodest for men to speak dogmatically concerning what is impossi

ble in a nature as illimitable as God's, when they cannot tell what is the limit of possibility in their own. More than that, it is impious, and a familiarity which God has taken occasion to resent on more occasions than one. If God has established the great law, which we see contradicted nowhere, but asserted every-where in the whole compass of sentient being, that ability to suffer invariably and necessarily accompanies ability to enjoy, it would certainly require a very explicit divine revelation on the subject to make it possible for us to believe that he violated in his own nature his own law.

The Atonement is an infinite transaction. It is the highest divine achievement. It is the sublimest and divinest visible manifestation of the heart of God. It may prove the central event in all history. Its primary applications are to our lost but redeemed world; its wider, ultimate, and eternal applications are "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eph. iii, 10–11.

ART. VII.—A HARMONY OF THE EGYPTIAN AND MOSAIC RECORDS.

WE give from the London (Wesleyan) Quarterly Review for January, 1880, part of an article on Egyptian Chronology, which furnishes a remarkably clear view of its accord with the Hebrew chronology. Its identification of Menes with Mizraim is as good as any other account of Menes; that is, pretty much good for nothing. Such identification supposes but a brief period for the founding of a kingdom of Egypt; and thus perhaps demands the Septuagint chronology at that era. It furnishes no room for the legendary slow growth and mature grandeur of the empire of Menes; but it furnishes other legends quite as authentic, namely, that Abraham, 2,000 years before Christ, taught arithmetic to the Egyptians! The more rational supposition seems, perhaps, to be that Mizraim or Menes led the first immigration to Egypt, and occupied the ground whence the kingdom of Egypt rose, and so was the essential founder.