seem to promise more for the interests of the church, than that of the Hindûs. Besides, they are enthralled in such a system of religious faith and practice, as leaves no hope of their deliverance, except help come to them from without, from the Gospel. That marvellous combination of truth and error, of influences, which has held these millions in bondage through so long a succession of generations, will hold them still if left unresisted.

And now, my brethren, shall this state of things continue? The only remedy, we know, is that presented in the Bible. The application of this remedy must be made by means of Christian missions. But where are the missionaries? India, all open to the Gospel, and already moving and heaving as if in its transition stage-yes, India has long been stretching out her hands to our "schools of the prophets," saying, "Come YE, and help us." And never was this call more urgent than now, never enforced by more encouraging considerations; and yet how few respond to it! WHY is this so? Has this Society, in a Seminary so honored in the records of Christian missions, duly entertained this question? Has it either in fact, or in the plans and purposes of its members, its full and fair representation in that wide and whitened field men who shall speak for you among those teeming millions, and tell to those ready to perish, your love to Christ, and your sympathy for dying souls? Does not the command of Christ require this of you? Do not the best interests of this Seminary, do not the best interests of our country which we so much love, the best interests of our American Zion, yea, of all that is valuable in life, and precious in the kingdom of Christ; do not all these interests, so far as they depend on you, my brethren, demand that you do your duty, that you spread yourselves, in due proportions, through the whole field? I leave with you the question. I have time only to put it. Let each see to it, that he does his duty; let him so plan and labor, that he may make the most of life, in this eventful period of the world's history.

ARTICLE II.

THE GROTIAN THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT.

Translated from the German of Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Professor ordinarius of Evangelical Theology in the University of Tübingen, by Rev. Leonard Swain, Nashua, N. H.

[THE work from which the following extract is taken, is entitled: Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung; in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung von der älteste Zeit bis auf die neueste.]

It was a natural and almost necessary result, that two such opposite views as that of Socinus on the one hand, and that of the church on the other, should call forth a third one of intermediate character. And in this remark is indicated the place which Hugo Grotius and his well known treatise holds in the history of our doctrine; since, although it was his design in taking ground against the Socinian view, merely to defend the satisfaction-theory which was held by the church, the actual result was, that, instead of defending that theory, he substituted an entirely different one in its place.

The fundamental error of the Socinian view was found by Grotius to be this that Socinus regarded God in the work of redemption as holding the place merely of a creditor, or master, whose simple will was a sufficient discharge from the existing obligation.2 But as we have in the subject before us to deal with punishment and the remis sion of punishment, God cannot be looked upon as a creditor, or an injured party, since the act of inflicting punishment does not belong to an injured party as such. The right to punish is not one of the rights of an absolute master or of a creditor, these being merely personal in their character; it is the right of a ruler only. Hence God must be considered as a ruler, and the right to punish belongs to the ruler as such, since it exists not for the punisher's sake but for the sake of the commonwealth, to maintain its order and to promote the

1 Hence the title of the work: Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi. 2 De satisf. c. 2. § 3. p. 36. Vult Socinus partem omnem offensam esse poenae creditorem, atque in ea tale habere jus, quale alii creditores in rebus sibi debitis, quod jus saepe etiam dominii voce appellat, ideoque saepissime repetit, Deum hic spectandum ut partem offensam, ut creditorem, ut dominum, tria haec ponens tanquam tantundem valentia. Hic error Socini, per totam ipsius tractationem latissime diffusus — τὸ πρῶτον ψεῦδος.

public good. The act of atonement itself is defined in general as a judicial act, in accordance with which, one person is punished in order that another may be freed from punishment, or as an act of dispensation, by which the binding force of an existing law is suspended in respect to certain persons or things. The first question to be asked, therefore, is, whether such a dispensation or relaxing is possible in respect to the law of punishment. Grotius does not hesitate to answer this question in the affirmative, on the ground that all positive laws are relaxable. The threat of punishment in Gen. 2: 17, contains in itself, therefore, the implied right to dispense with the infliction of that punishment, and that too without supposing any essential change in God himself, since a law in relation to God and the divine will, is not something having an internal force and authority of its own (nichts Inneres) but is merely an operation or effect of the divine will. The objection that none but the guilty person himself can receive the punishment which is due to his crime, is answered by the distinction, that although every sinner as such, does, in accordance with the very idea of sin, deserve punishment, still, it is not a matter of absolute necessity that this punishment should be actually inflicted. As therefore the remission of punishment is a thing which is not in its own nature impossible, it must be left to the circumstances of each particular case to decide how far such remission shall really be admitted. If the authority of law is not to be dangerously weakened, it should be admitted only in cases of the greatest exigency. Such a case clearly, is that which is offered in the very instance which we are now contemplating, where, by the actual infliction of the punishment the entire race of man becomes devoted to death." And, as on the one side, the possibility of the remission of punishment cannot be denied, so on the other it cannot be shown to be absolutely unjust that one person should be punished for another's sin. The essential thing in punishment is that it should be inflicted in

1 Cap. 2. § 1. p. 34. Poenas infligere, aut a poenis aliquem liberare, quem punire possis, quod justificare vocat scriptura, non est nisi rectoris, qua talis, primo et per se, ut puta in familia patris, in republica regis, in universo Dei. — Unde sequitur, omnino hic Deum considerandum ut rectorem. — Cap. 2. § 9. p. 41. At jus puniendi non punientis causa, existit, sed causa communitatis alicujus. Poena enim omnis propositum habet bonum commune, ordinis nimirum conservationem et exemplum, ita quidem ut rationem expetibilis non habeat nisi ab hoc fine, cum jus dominii et crediti per se sint expetibilia.

2 Cap. 3. § 6. p. 51. Quia, si omnes peccatores morti eternae mancipandi fuissent, periissent funditus ex rerum natura duae res pulcherrimac, ex parte hominum, religio in Deum, ex parte Dei, praecipuae in homines beneficentiae

testatio.

consequence of sin, not that it should be inflicted upon the person who committed the sin. If now it admits of no doubt that a superior may properly inflict upon a subject, as the punishment of another's sin, whatever he might properly inflict upon him irrespectively of another's sin, then may God, without incurring the charge of injustice, permit Christ to suffer and die for the sins of men. This course, then, being in itself a permissible one, the only question is, why God actually determined to adopt it. As the Scripture says that Christ suffered and died for our sins, we are to infer that God purposed not to forgive sins so numerous and so great, without a striking penal example, in order to show his displeasure at sin by some act which should in strictest propriety be termed a penal act. And besides this inward reason, lying in the very nature of the Deity, and called in Scripture the wrath of God, there was the additional consideration that the less sin is punished, the more lightly it will be regarded. Prudence itself, therefore, must lead the Deity to exact the punishment, especially where such punishment has been expressly threatened beforehand. Thus in the penal example furnished by the death of Christ, there is exhibited at once the divine grace and the divine severity, the hatred of God against sin and his care for the maintenance of the law." And this is the mode of relaxing the laws which

1 Cap. 4. § 18. p. 63. Hoc proprie quaeritur: an actus, qui sit in potestate superioris, etiam citra considerationem delicti alieni possit ab ipso superiore ordinari in poenam alieni delicti. Hoc injustum esse negat scriptura, quae Deum hoc saepius fecisse ostendit, negat natura, quia vetare non probatur, negat aperte consensus gentium.... Nihil ergo iniquitatis in eo est, quod Deus, cujus est summa potestas, ad omnia per se non injusta, nulli ipse legi obnoxius cruciatibus et morte Christi uti voluit, ad statuendum exemplum grave adversus culpas immensas nostrum omnium, quibus Christus erat conjunctissimus natura, regno, vadimonio.

2 Cap. 5. § 8. p. 69. Hoc ipso Deus non tantum suum adversus peccata odium testatum fecit, ac proinde nos hoc facto a peccatis deterruit (facilis enim est collectio, si Deus ne resipiscentibus quidem peccata remittere voluit nisi Christo in poenas succedente, multo minus inultos sinet contumaces), verum insigni modo insuper patefecit summum erga nos amorem ac benevolentiam, quod ille scilicet nos pepercit cui non erat áðuάçopov (indifferens), punire peccata, sed qui tatiti id faciebat, ut potius quam impunita omnino dimitteret, filium suum unigenitum ob illa peccata poenis tradiderit. Cap. 5. § 11. p. 71. Justitiae rectoris pars est, servare leges, etiam positivas et a se latas, quod verum esse tam in universitate libera, quam in rege summo probant Jurisconsulti: cui illud est consequens, ut rectori relaxare legem talem non liceat nisi causa aliqua accedat si non necessaria, certe sufficiens: quae itidem recepta est a Jurisconsultis sententia. Ratio utriusque est, quod actus ferendi aut relaxandi legem, non sit actus absoluti dcminii, sed actus imperii, qui tendere debeat ad boni ordinis conservationem.

jurists themselves pronounce the best, viz. by commutation or compensation; because thereby the least injury is done to the authority of the law, and the design with which the law was made is effectually secured, as when one who is charged with the delivery of a thing is free from his liability on paying its full value. For, the same thing, and the same value, are terms very nearly related.1 Such a commutation may take place not only with respect to things, but also with respect to persons, where it can be done without injury to another.

In these few-statements is contained the entire theory of Hugo Grotius. What is essential to it lies in this main proposition: God neither would nor could forgive the sins of men without the setting up of a penal example. This is done by the death of Christ. Hence the death of Christ is the necessary condition of the forgiveness of sin, and what it always actually presupposes. The theory, therefore, hangs upon the idea of a penal example, and of its presupposed necessity, and the question for us now to consider, is, how, by means of that idea, it stands related on the one hand to the theory of the church which it would defend, and on the other, to the Socinian theory which it would confute.

As to its relation to the satisfaction-theory held by the church, it will be seen at once, that it asserts the necessity of the death of Christ in order to the forgiveness of sin, in a sense wholly different from that which the church intends. If the death of Christ is necessary only as a penal example, then its necessity is grounded, not in the very nature of God himself, not in the idea of absolute justice, by which sin, guilt, and punishment are inseparably bound together, but merely in that outward relation which God holds to men as a ruler. The real object of consideration is not past sin, but future. The guilt of past sin may be removed immediately, for God has the absolute right to remit punishment; and a penal example is necessary only for the purpose of maintaining the honor of the law, and guarding against sin in time to come. The connection, therefore, between sin and punishment is not an inherent, internal connection, founded in the very nature of sin; the design of punishment is merely to prevent sin; or, in other words, it is connected with sin only in consequence of a positive law emanating from God as the supreme Ruler. Hence the final ground upon which Grotius goes back to prove the necessity of instituting a penal example, is merely the penal sanction contained in Gen. 2:17. The advocates of the satisfaction-theory indeed go back to the same sentence, but only to remark in it a ne

1 P. 68. Proxima enim sunt idem et tantundem.