and operation; or any statement of the Trinity itself, as consisting of love, wisdom, and power; of Divinity, Humanity, and Divine proceeding. The lecturer tells us that "It is one of the inexcusable mistakes of a silly kind of scepticism that there are in the Trinity three persons, in the literal or colloquial sense of that word." He also says: "I will resist, in the name of the mass of scholarship for the last one thousand five hundred years, the proposition that there are in God three persons, in the strict, colloquial, literal, modern, English, American, Boston sense." What did Dr. Adam Clarke mean when he said: "That there is a Trinity of persons,' in the most proper sense of the word, is proved by what happened at the baptism of our Lord (Matt. iii. 16, 17), when we find that He, the Son, was baptized, the Holy Ghost, in a bodily form like a dove, lighted upon Him, and a voice from God the Father was heard out of heaven, declaring that this was His beloved Son. Here it is evident that there were three distinct persons occupying three distinct places"? What the lecturer imputes as a misrepresentation of the enemies of the doctrine could not be expressed more plainly and broadly than is here done by one of the orthodox, not deficient in scholarship. But even supposing scholars are able to avoid the gross idea of three Divine persons in the most proper sense of the word, what is a doctrine worth if the great mass of believers must so understand it? But, indeed, how can scholarship itself shut out the notion when the whole scheme of salvation requires one to demand satisfaction and another to give it; one to plead and another to pardon? However, with all the inconsistency that attends such a scheme, we are glad to find a distinct disavowal, in the name of science and scholarship, of a doctrine of three persons in the Godhead, and an attempt to explain the Trinity in agreement with the doctrine that God is one in person as well as in essence. The lecturer maintains the doctrine of Atonement, but we cannot ascertain what are his own views as distinguished from the vulgar opinion. He discards the idea that Christ was punished in our stead; but he maintains that He was chastised in our stead. What, some may ask, is the difference? Punishment is the reward of the guilty; chastisement may be awarded to the innocent. "Christianity," says the lecturer, "does not teach that personal demerit is taken off from us and put upon our Lord. Such a transference is an impossibility in the nature of things. But I hold that Christianity, with the atonement as its central truth, matches the nature of things and turns exactly the wards of the human soul. It has, as a theory of religious truth, a scientific beauty absolutely beyond all comment. The returned deserter, knowing his own permanent and unremovable demerit, may yet be allowed to escape the penalty of the law by the substitution of the king's chastisement for the deserter's punishment; and then the deserter, looking on his king as both his saviour and lord, needs no other motive to loyalty than the memory of his unspeakable condescension, justice, and love." If we are to be scientific, we should illustrate our views, not by theory, but by practice. But where do we find this theory reduced to practice? We well know that its practical adoption is impossible. And yet if the theory, or the principle, is worth anything as an illustration of God's fixed and universal mode of dealing with sinners, it ought to be the best mode of a nation's dealing with its criminals. When a Christian king can supply the illustration of a deserter needing no other motive to loyalty than the memory of his condescension, justice, and love, in chastising another instead of punishing him, we may be induced to look more favourably upon this view of the atonement. But the lecturer proceeds to prove it axiomatically. "With God is no liberty to do what is not fitting. It is not fitting that sin be forgiven without atonement." It is, of course, assumed that to atone for sin is to make amends for it. It might be asked, On what scientific principle can it be maintained that amends made for sin by a sinless being can procure pardon for the guilty? Bishop Butler, who undertook to prove revealed religion from science, could find no analogy in nature for this view of atonement. What is atonement? What is pardon? Atonement is reconciliation; the pardon of sin is its removal. It is strange, at least it seems strange to us who are blest with the light of the New Jerusalem,— that men cannot see that the Atonement, which means reconciliation, is, in relation to Christ, the reconciliation which He effected between the sinful nature of man and the sinless nature of God in His own person. This was indeed an atonement or reconciliation, and the great cause of reconciliation of man to God. Here is a work in which all the attributes of an infinitely good and wise Being could conspire, and which we can see to be perfectly adapted to the state and necessities of man. It is also the true means of pardon, when the pardon of sin is understood to mean and to be the removal of sin. Connected with the idea that God would not or could not forgive, without full satisfaction to His offended justice and outraged law, the common doctrine of atonement is quite consistent; but if there is no pardon without repentance, and no happiness without holiness, it is not at all obvious how such a satisfaction can advance or secure these results. Yet this is emphatically taught in these lectures. "He cannot give pardon previous to repentance." So we have these two propositions: "Sin cannot be given without an atonement; sin cannot be forgiven without repentance." We suppose that the atonement satisfies God, and that the repentance benefits man; or, the atonement enables God to give, and repentance enables man to receive, pardon. Has the atonement any power to produce repentance? We can see how the atonement, as a reconciliation of the hostile nature of man to the loving nature of God, can produce repentance, because we can see that the Lord's reconciled and glorified humanity is a power that is ever present with us, to work in us reconciliation to God, and thus to bring us to glory. The nearest idea to this we have observed in these lectures is the remark, that "the possibilities of human nature are exhibited in the human nature of our Lord." This is true in a far more exact scientific sense than the lecturer seems to be aware of. The Lord's glorification has made possible our regeneration. Not merely by seeing what the Lord has done may we see what man can do. What the Lord has done in Himself He can do in us. He has reconciled in Himself the human nature to the Divine; therefore He can reconcile in us the human nature to Himself. This is the possibility which has been produced by the Incarnation and Atonement. We have dwelt on these subjects much longer than we intended; and our remarks may give a less favourable idea of the lectures than we could wish to convey. There is great need for right views on the subject of the Atonement; and we could wish to lend some aid to others to place it in its true light. The lecturer's labours will help to refine, at least, the ideas of the orthodox on the subject, and still more perhaps in others. Before concluding, we must allow the lecturer to say some of his good things - "God punishes sin no longer than it endures. Many of the evils of disloyalty may continue even after the soul becomes loyal, as many of the evils of secession persist even after a State has returned allegiance. But, so far as possible, the forces which were punitive to the disloyal commonwealth become healing to the loyal; and those that are healing to the loyal become punitive to the disloyal. A personal will has proclaimed an unbending enactment, which we call the law of causation; and out of the free, holy law arise all the blessings and all the pains in the universe. Sin's punishment is sin's effect. It is far more wise, therefore, to ask how long sin may endure than to inquire how long its punishment may last. "If there is eternal sin, there will be eternal punishment." "Put the question here and now whether we, in our characters as they stand at this moment, should be happy if we were in heaven with our characters unchanged? God's omnipotence cannot force blessedness on a soul that has lost the predominant desire to be holy. Omniscience cannot make happy a man who loves what God hates, and hates what God loves. If you fall into predominant dissimilarity of feeling with God, it is out of His power to give you blessedness. "In the nature of things, to work for good is to work against evil. In the nature of things, God cannot work for good without working against evil. I am assuming that God cannot deny Himself. That cannot is one of the most terrible and the most alarming certainties in the world. He cannot deny the demands of His own perfection." DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. IN the July number are two excellent articles, The Supernatural and The ancient faith of Egypt. The first is a review of the work entitled Supernatural Religion, and is a fair vindication of revealed religion from the attack made upon it by its new assailant. The view presented of the religion of ancient Egypt is exceedingly interesting. It shows how much there is in the ancient records which have been brought to light by Egyptologists that entitles it to be the symbol of science, not merely natural but spiritual. The faith of ancient Egypt can be seen to have had considerable influence on the faith of the Hebrew nation. When we know that the Egyptian, like every other ancient religion, had a common origin in the faith of the ancient Church, we can see both the reasonableness and the propriety of the children of Israel being brought into Egypt, as a preparatory stage in their journey to Canaan. The Egyptian worship was formerly known to us only as a degrading idolatry; but under all their animal worship, which no doubt sprung up from the lost or perverted correspondence of living creatures, there was the central doctrine of the reality and unity of God. The object of Egyptian worship was a plurality in unity, the ignorant catching sight only of the exterior plurality, the seer penetrating deeper to the interior unity." A Nile hymn, which bears a remarkable likeness to some passages from the Psalms, the translator deems" a relic of primeval Monotheism." The immortality of the soul was also a doctrine of the ancient Egyptians; and very minute descriptions are contained in what is called their mythology, of the soul's entrance into the spiritual world, and the process through which it passes to separate from it the earthly impurities which adhere to it, with its judgment, and entrance into Elysium. The grounds of the soul's acceptance by the gods of the lower heaven are similar to those found in the gospel : "He hath given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked. He is favoured among the faithful (or living), and divinized among the perfected." The ritual which was performed over the mummy, answering to our funeral service, contains a representation of the judgment. "This vivid ceremony," says the writer, "with its emblematic signs of good and evil, its scales in which the heart of the deceased is weighed against truth, its impartial judgment, its kindly mediators, must have been in itself a more impressive sermon than mere words." be so. 436 Miscellaneous. GENERAL CONFERENCE.-The Seventieth General Conference of the New Church commenced its annual session in the Church at Wretham Road, Birmingham, on Monday evening, August 13th. Introductory religious services were held on the Sunday preceding. The Rev. C. H. Wilkins, of Nottingham, preached in the morning from Psalm lxxviii, 41, "They limited the Holy One of Israel." The preacher said that God could not be limited in Himself, but in the creature he could God's merciful and infinite designs were limited by man in his creeds and in his character. Creeds, though frequently disparaged, were necessary in religion, not less than in science and politics. The modern cry against creeds was only good so far as it was directed against those which perplexed the intellect and vexed the heart. God's providence was limited in man, both by perverted and undeveloped faculties, as the silent members of a vast orchestra caused the music to be marred only in degree less than those The New who produced discord. Church aimed to develop all human faculties; and those only did not "limit the Holy One of Israel," in whom God was free to work out His own divine purposes. In the evening the Rev. Dr. R. L. Tafel, of London gave an able discourse from Matt. xii. 24-38. 66 which I shared) of nominating for this year the Rev. Mr. Bruce-one of the most estimable and deserving of the ministers of the New Church. I should have sat with extreme satisfaction under the presidency of my friend Mr. Bruce, and still hope that we may have his services before he finishes his work among us. The highest privilege of this world is to occupy a place, however humble, in the Church of God; and I esteem it the highest honour to occupy the chair of the General Conference of the New Church. My gratitude is first due to the great Head of the Church for the gifts, however humble, with which He has mercifully endowed me; and next, it is due to you, my brethren, for the generous confidence with which you have regarded the very humble services I have been able to render the Churcha confidence which is heightened when I consider that this is the sixth time I have been asked to occupy the honourable and responsible position to which I am this morning elected. 66 "I may congratulate the members of the General Conference on their assembling this year in this very elegant and commodious church. I remember, in the year 1851, reading a critique on the effects of New Church teaching, in which the writer said the Church had produced nothing in poetry or in art. This remark struck me at the time as a manifestation of very great ignorance. The Conference was attended by If the writer had gone into the British 22 ministers and 67 representatives, Museum he would have found, at the making a total number of 89 mem- head of the Arts Department, the bers. The service on Monday evening model of Flaxman's Shield of Achilles, was confined to the enrolment of the work of a well-known New Churchthe members. The business of the session commenced on Tuesday morning, and continued until the Saturday following. Each day's session was opened and closed by readings from the Word and the repetition by the Conference of the Lord's Prayer. man. And if he had visited the Great Exhibition of that year, he would have found, at the head of the Fine Arts Department, the Statue of the Greek Slave, by Hiram Powers, an earnest and exemplary member of the New Church. And I am glad to find our friends at Birmingham, with their usual good taste and earnest zeal, introducing the principles of art into the architecture "MY CHRISTIAN BRETHREN.-It will and adornment of their place of worship. be in the recollection of those who In this they have rendered the services attended the last session of our Confer- of their church more attractive, and ence, that we had the attention (in surrounded their public worship with The Rev. Richard Storry was appointed President, and addressed the members as follows: the most appropriate associations; and they have also presented an example which may stimulate other churches to follow in their wake. pointed Vice-President, and the Rev. Eli Whitehead, Secretary. The Conference is to be held next year at Salford, the Rev. Mr. Bruce being nominated for President. "I may congratulate you also on the presence this year of three estimable The Rev. J. Presland, the ex-presi members of the Church from America. dent, then read his presidential report :In them we welcome gentlemen who All the Minutes of the last Session are known to us, and beloved by us,- requiring his attention had received who have placed us under obligations consideration. The questions respectby their works, which are known in ing the Sacrament inserted in the England as they are in America, and President's Circular by direction of whose good service to the Church we Minute 67 had elicited numerous replies, warmly and sincerely appreciate. I carefully tabulated, from which it apneed say nothing in regard to the order peared that less than half the members of our business; the diligent zeal of our of the Church had received the Holy Secretary has rendered this unnecessary Supper during the past year. Very by the publication of the order of our complete returns were also received from proceedings. I trust that this order the ministers and leaders and also from will provide for a full discussion of the the Societies, on the subject of the more important matters which must proposed Order of Confirmation. These come before us. I refer more particu- replies manifesting considerable diverlarly to the Sustentation Fund, which gence of opinion, the President recomis at present occupying the attention of mended that the entire subject of the Church, and will need careful con- Confirmation should be referred to a sideration. Much of the business of Conference necessarily refers to the externals of the Church. We need, however, as members of the New Church, to keep in mind that all external things are to be controlled and governed by internal things. A church that lacks piety, or is wanting in charity, is sure in the end to perish. Its machinery may be perfect, and its rules unexceptional, but if it lacks the spirit of charity and the fervour of piety it will not succeed in building up the Church, and establishing the Kingdom of God in the world. We must bear in mind, in all our discussion, that we are members of the New Church, the first great principles of which are charity and brotherly kindness, and we must seek, therefore, to exercise forbearance, and tolerance of individual opinion, to speak with courtesy, and kindness one towards another, and to be prepared generously to surrender our own views of external matters when we find that the general opinion of our brethren does not run in the same current as our own thoughts. I pray fervently, that the great Head of the Church may stimulate our affections as well as enlighten our intellects, and that, at the end of the Conference, we may be knit together by a stronger bond of mutual affection than even at the commencement.' دو The Rev. John Presland was ap Committee to report to the present Session. The reports of the various Institutions and Day Schools showed a healthful amount of progress, alike in the efforts made to extend a knowledge of New Church doctrines, and in the disposition of the public and the religious world to accept them. Particular attention was directed to the noble schools at Peter Street, Manchester, which are the admiration of all who visit them, and a glory to the entire Church. These schools having been founded in June 1827, have this year attained their jubilee, and, with their present total of 890 scholars, and their efficient and energetic staff of teachers, they bid fair to continue in prosperous existence for another fifty years. In illustration of the eminent position of these schools it was remarked that, out of fourteen scholarships awarded during the past year by the Manchester School Board, eight, of the gross value of £600, which if the winners become pupil teachers, will be increased to £720, were obtained in competitive examination by Peter Street pupils. The Secretary reported that there were sixty-four societies in connection with the Conference, having a total of 4,765 registered members, this being an increase of eighty members during the year. Fifty-five societies reported that they required the usual declaration of faith |