"You will be pleased to know we all are well, and that things are moving comfortably on. We have from time to time additions to the church, and the congregations are attentive. For the first time since I have been here I was out of my pulpit last Sunday, having exchanged for the evening service with the Independent minister at Kingston, about a mile away. I did not feel at home in his pulpit as in my own. It is astonishing how soon I have settled down among the people here; I feel as if I had known them and been their pastor many years. But Christians ought soon to get friends, though often there is some natural uncongeniality which keeps them apart.

"You must give my kindest regards . . . to Mrs. Shipley, senior, whose wonderful vitality keeps her still unmoved amid so many changes. Her only change, we trust, will be a very blessed one; she herself must surely be often more than waiting, even longing, for it. Yet tell her that sometimes to wait is a higher Christian effort than to long, for death; to be willing to live demanding more patience and self-denial than to be willing to die. Either as Christ shall choose, that should be our wish; to live is Christ and to die is gain. . . ."

"30th July, 1862.

"I should have written you much earlier to congratulate you on the birth of your son, my name-sake; but I have been away for my holiday, and altogether unsettled. Now I am in regular harness and regular habits once more, I have remembered you; and it gives me great pleasure to offer you my kindest regards and best wishes on the important occasion. I hope you will have much joy in the little man. Both to you and Mr. Shipley, this increasing family will not fail to suggest thoughts about increased responsibilities. To Christians, however, responsibility is always joy as well; for what is responsibility but the proof of Divine favour and regard, and He giveth strength Who gives the demand for it.

"I did not need anything to make me think of Branstone with interest and pleasure. Though sometimes the walk was a weary one, I always felt sure of a kind and hearty welcome, and I am not without hope that good of some sort followed my labours there. But the very name of your new son will make me think with even more interest of you all. . . .

"My holiday was spent in Jersey, and I enjoyed the sea-breezes and sea-views exceedingly. And I have come home to find work ready for me, and to an increased congregation. We are about enlarging the chapel, probably by means of an end gallery. I have not pressed it on the people, I did not even suggest it to them. . . ."

"5th March, 1868. "I am afraid just now it would be unwise to incur any expense in the extension of the new school-room. It is almost certain that Parliament will so decide about popular education as to render such efforts useless and impossible of continuance. A school for the village, undenominational and with perfect liberty of conscience for all, would not only be the best thing; it is the only thing that will be at all likely to continue. By all means continue your school. I am delighted to hear of its success. But don't involve yourself just now in anxiety and expense when the whole question of National Education is so exciting public interest and will soon lead to legislation.

"If a nationally helped school is introduced into the village, all dissenters must busy themselves to get the "Conscience clause " introduced into the trust-deed. . . .

"This so far about a day-school building. If you can get a Sunday school-room built, that of course is entirely unobjectionable; and you might use it as a day-school. But, in any case, I think the time for small village day-schools is coming to a speedy end. I regret it for many reasons, but the current of public feeling is very strong. . . ."

"27th June, 1882.

"I am very glad to hear of what you are doing at Branstone, and I enclose you a guinea towards the cost. It always gives me pleasure to look back on my work at Branstone, when I learnt to speak to country people. Now it is one of my greatest pleasures to stand up in a village pulpit and preach to a few folk. I have here four village churches; three of them are under the charge of resident evangelists, but all the four are branches of the Bowdon Church. It is a regret to me that I cannot personally visit them oftener, because the work at Bowdon is so heavy . . ."

CHAPTER III

SURBITON, 1862-1870

"Perhaps we are wrong in fearing, as we do, what the effect of popularity will be on young and earnest preachers, as if God could not preserve those whom He calls to eminent service.”—ALEXANDER MACKENNAL.

IN 1862 Mackennal left Burton for Surbiton, near Kingston, in Surrey, a Church which was then in the first ardour of growth. The Church's history had begun. in 1853 with the preaching of the Rev. Richard Henry Smith in his own parlour. A congregation had been gathered, a temporary wooden building had soon given place to a permanent hall-the Surbiton Park Halland there was every promise of rapid and prosperous development.

Mackennal made a brief and characteristic reference to his own feeling in undertaking work in this new sphere, at the recognition service held in the new church :-"I recognise God's guidance in my life, His call to repentance, to faith and to obedience, that it is He who put me into the ministry and brought me here. I magnify His grace this day, thanking Him because I know in whom I have believed.' With respect to the special circumstances that have led to my acceptance of this pastorate, I have not much to say. I cannot tell you how I have come to the conviction that it is His will that I should labour here. No man can make clear to any other the special process by which such conviction is produced. I must content myself with simply declaring, and you

must be content simply to receive the declaration, that I am deeply, thoroughly persuaded that I am now where I ought to be. I thank God for instruction in the truth and look for further light. I look for continued fitness for the work that may lie before me, I hope for usefulness in connection with this Church, and trust that every day may prove more fully that we are rightly united." He also took the occasion to make a long and interesting statement of his own belief as to the Atonement, which is, for a man of twenty-seven, unusually weighty and mature. It may be compared with a later and more mature account of his faith in "a Symposium on the Atonement," published in 1883.* In his contribution views which have since become explicit are suggested. He finds the reason for the progressive change in theories of the Atonement in the fact that the doctrine of the Atonement is ethical as well as theological; as the ethical consciousness of mankind develops, the study of ethics and of all ethical problems must be progressive also. He distinguishes between forgiveness and redemption, and holds that forgiveness is an act of God's love costing a true sacrifice; and that redemption is the work of Christ, and must be understood through the social constitution (or solidarity) of humanity and Christ's headship of His people; he suggests that when the whole transaction is thought out on the highest spiritual plane the idea which in the physical plane appears as substitution, in the spiritual plane reappears as the union of the members with the head. The only part of the essay which would need to be re-cast if re-written now from a similar point of view, would be its treatment of the symbolism of Leviticus; and some ideas which are only suggested might also be worked out more adequately; but the main argument is remarkably

* By Messrs. Nisbet & Co.

well stated that "the Atonement must be preached as the Divinely appointed means of salvation, an objective ground of the sinner's faith and forgiveness. . . . But we have no means of apprehending the reason of the Atonement apart from the work it accomplishes in the spiritual consciousness of the race."

At Surbiton the main lines of his statement were these:

"The Bible reveals God's grace. Everywhere else we trace the operation of law; divine wisdom, power, and love working through means of His own ordination. Here we see Him operating immediately, divine wisdom, power and love, working directly in human history, working directly on the human heart. Atonement and salvation; the one a fact recorded, the other a work perpetually being carried on, are the modes in which the grace of God proclaims itself. . . .

"The atoning grace of God is seen in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It becomes us to look with reverence into the meaning of Christ's death for sin, as into a subject far passing in its magnitude our feeble comprehension. That death was necessary for the pardon of sinners; so the Bible clearly tells us-but the absolute necessity that belongs to the dealings of infinite wisdom, is mysterious with all the mystery of God. Nevertheless, the language of the Bible invites us to reverent study of the meaning of the Cross, and some at least, of its bearings on the government of God may so be apprehended."

Then follows a closely reasoned argument to the effect that:(1) The fact of Atonement stands over against the fact of sin, and is to be understood through the meaning of sin :

(2) The nature of sin, as eternally offensive to God, makes an Atonement necessary :

(3) The Atonement must make manifest not only God's forgiveness, but also His abhorrence of sin. He continues :

(4) "The law, the word, the will, the character of God are vindicated in the sacrifice of His Son. . . . For if thus is proclaimed the sanctity of God's character, on the other hand, there is no more striking proof of His mercy than that in the suffering and death of Christ He did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.

"The death of Christ is thus a sacrifice for sin, which God provides and accepts as the mode whereby the sinner may draw near to Him; it is a propitiation for sin, for through it God is well-pleased to receive