warrant one in asserting that any seventeenth century Confession must be obsolete.

This inference, however, fell to the ground, if one accepted the claims of revivalism. If religious life is summed up in the miracle of regeneration, then God is 'sovereign' indeed, and the moralities of life are the small dust of the balance. Hence I found it necessary to argue, that even the revivalist form of Calvinism, though the only form of Calvinism possessing much vitality at the present day, does not hold the field as a system which generates an adequate religious experience. And I may here remark, that few persons seem to me to realise the 'vigour and rigour' of the revivalist theory. It is an antisocial system; and if we go on playing with edged tools, we are likely to get ugly wounds.

Those who read the following essays will, I trust, grant the premises which the pamphlets were meant to make good,that neither orthodoxy nor revivalism furnishes us with a tenable theology.

Readers must not, however, assume that I use 'new theology' in Delitzsch's sense, as meaning 'Ritschlianism.'1 I thankfully admit my obligations to Ritschl, but yet feel it necessary to make my own essays' towards a more fully Christian theology. Another writer to whom I owe much is -M'Leod Campbell. And he has curious affinities with Ritschl. Any one acquainted with Ritschl's brilliant revision of the doctrine of Christ's 'two estates and three offices' will be almost startled, on looking into the Table of Contents of Campbell on the Atonement, to see how the same thought operates there-Christ's dealing with man on the part of God' being distinguished from Christ's dealing with God on behalf of men,' in regard to both the retrospective and the prospective

1 See below, p. 166.

aspects of the Atonement.1 So too Campbell's doctrine of
faith (p. 333: Faith is the right attitude of the human spirit
towards God-the due response to His revelation of Himself
to us, in rendering which our hearts are right with God.
"Justification by faith alone" means that in pronouncing us
just God regards only and exclusively the attitude of our
spirits towards Himself. What elements will be present in
the response of faith must depend on the elements present in
the revelation of God to which it is a response')—this comes
very near Ritschl's view (Rechtfertigung, ed. 1. iii. p. 92:
"When the faith, which corresponds to justification, is put in
exercise, it terminates upon God only; and, as it is called out
by God through the Atonement, it does not justify us by
means of its independent value, as an act of the human mind,
but as the act, by which man's entire dependence on God
in the matter of justification is religiously acknowledged and
practically acted upon'). Finally, Campbell's proposition,
that the Atonement is a development of the Incarnation'
(p. 122), corresponds-with significant differences-to Ritschl's
'doctrine of Christ's person or work' (p. 362). Campbell
has not raised the question, whether the doctrine of Christ's
person is exactly what it ought to be if the Atonement is its
interpretation. Ritschl has raised the question; but his re-
statement of Christology is unsatisfying. I am bound to add,
that Campbell's defective analysis (if so we may regard it)
leads him into opposition to Ritschl's abstract dualism (if we
may so describe Ritschl's views) of the religious and the moral
aspects of Christianity. Campbell writes as follows (p. 193):
"The freedom from condemnation, in other words, the justi-
fication through being in Christ Jesus, spoken of [in Rom.

1 These last terms are more peculiar to Campbell. In my copy (fifth edition) of the Nature of the Atonement the first phrase quoted from Campbell-line 1, under chapter vi.—is misprinted in the Table of Contents.

viii. 1], is clearly one with that cleansing by the blood of Christ, that purging of the conscience, on which I have dwelt so much; nor can it be at all separated from that "fulfilment of the righteousness of the law" in those "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," which the apostle goes on to mention as the direct end which God has contemplated in sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sacrifice for sin, and so condemning sin in the flesh.' This is to Ritschl a 'quite apocryphal teleology' (p. 433)— the properly direct purpose, which God has in view in justifying sinners, being to grant them [the religious blessing of] eternal life, or a victory over the world. I have tried, in Chapters VII. and VIII. of Essay I., to introduce Ritschl's dis tinction without raising it to the level of an ultimate dualism.

The titles of the several Essays explain the connection in which they were studied. But, while this is so, I find that Essay II.-where there has had to be produced a sort of rapid sketch of Biblical Theology, from the point of view of eschatological doctrine-contains much discussion of the outside, or apologetic and critical aspects, of questions, with the heart of which one has been dealing in Essay I. If Essay I. seems to be too slight in its treatment of certain questions regarding the Gospels, may I hope that Essay II. will supply its deficiencies?

As a whole, the book is what its title indicates. It consists of endeavours after truth, not of mature disquisitions. Many books and much criticism will be needed to produce a new system of theology. But, when the Church is preparing to undertake creed revision, it is the right and duty of students of Scripture to offer such help as they can to the Christian thought of their time. I trust these Essays may prove of some service. And I think it will be admitted that they are fairly dominated by one point of view.

Let me supply an omission, and subjoin a correction. On

page 140-third line from foot-a reference should have been

appended to Rechtfertigung, (iii. p. 524, § 60). And the view

attributed (on p. 41, note 1) to Erskine's Brazen Serpent is

far more plainly stated in his Doctrine of Election (1837; six

years later).

R. M.

EDINBURGH, October 1889.