BOOKS.

MR. STOPFORD I3ROOKE ON THE VOYS EY JUDGMENT.* THE ingenuity of the lawyers in discovering that the Purchas Judgment is directed ad personam, not ad rent, has probably pro- vided a more or less effectual eirenicon for troubles which at one time seemed likely to become very serious. Tho good feeling or even the indolence of ordinary congregations will save all but the most extravagant of the Ritualist performers from the exaction of penalties which it will require a separate process in each indi- vidual case to inflict. The Broad-Church clergy may apply to themselves with still better reason a similar solace, if they are dis- posed to be troubled by the condemnation of Mr. Voysey. Mr. Voysey, indeed, had made it impossible for himself to escape, if language was to retain any of its ordinary force. He caricatured, if we may say it without offence to a single-minded and courageous man, every liberty which any divine in any communion had claimed ; but those who have no wish to emulate his extrava- gancies, need not fear that their freedom will be curtailed. Any clergyman who may be proved to have stood at the wrong side of his communion-table will doubtless be condemned, if any one is earnest or spiteful enough to undertake the trouble and expense of pro- secuting him ; but heterodoxy is a less tangible offence ; and the Privy Council will doubtless in any case that may hereafter come before it be constant to its tradition of liberal interpretation, and even go to the length of explaining away or ignoring the ob- noxious clauses in its latest utterance.

It is evident that Mr. Stopford Brooke is not seriously affected by the difficulties or apprehensions which seem to have troubled some of his brethren among the Liberal clergy. With the obnoxious clauses in question he deals boldly. He maintains that they either are " unintentional errors," or are " intentionally modified by other phrases "; and be publishes these discourses because he thinks it necessary, and, we may suppose, does not think it incon- sistent with his legal status as a clergyman of the Church of England, " to openly claim the liberty we had hitherto enjoyed in quiet, and to deny that the Judgment really intended to abridge it." Into the details of this subject, which, 'indeed, has been fully discussed in these columns, there is no occasion at present to enter. Mr. Brooke puts the case as it bears on the " liberty of Biblical criticism," which is,

after all, the most questionable and apparently.the most reactionary part of the Judgment in his Aftti and sixth sermons. The dis-

course on " original sin " is equally-able, and was doubtless rightly included in the volume, though, indeed, it seems impossible to suppose for a moment that a phrase " children of the wrath of God," which has no support whatever beyond that of the individual

opinion of the compilers of the Judgment, can ever be held to have an authoritative force. But to us the most interesting part of the

volume is to be found in the second and third sermons, both of which deal with the subject of the Atonement. Here Mr. Brooke has no occasion to deal at length with the words of the judg- ment. That Judgment declared that it is not consistent with the Articles " to aver without any qualification that He did not bear the punishment duo to our sins nor suffer in our stead." The

sentence is ,objectionable, because, after the unhappy fashion adopted by the judges, it introduced words which are not found in our formularies, but it is harmless enough. To deny that " Christ bore the punishment due tto our sins or suffered in our stead," as that bearing of punishment and suffering are explained by the schoolinen, or set forth by the popular theology, or in any way that contradicts fundamental principles of justice and goodness, is not to deny " without any qualification." On the contrary, in each a most important and what would doubtless be a saving qualification is introduced. No one cer- tainly could assert that Mr. Brooke makes these denials without qualification. He must be distinguished, indeed, from many of those who would be included under the same descriptive title of "Liberal Churchmen" by the constructive nature of his theology. Take this passage, for instance He realized, through his own death, the sense of tho death and pain and woe of all the world, and with it the sin of all the world as their cause. lie lost all thought of self in awful realization of the sin of the whole world. Innocent himself, he felt the agouy and remorse of wan for sin, not in his own soul, God forbid! but through his horror of it as a righteous being, and by his infinite sympathy and pity with the misery of man on account of it. And just because he was sinless, and because he was untouched with remorse or penitence, and because ho was at ono with God in perfect purity, did the woo and wonder of our sin fall with unutterable hsavineas upon him in that awful hour. He bore through * Freedom in the Church of England: Six Sermons suggested by the Voysey Judgment. By the Hey. Btopford A. Brooke. London: Henry H. Xing and Co. 1871. this transference of himself, and in sympathy with us, the woo of the guilt of man, and though guiltless himself orioil to God, as the voice of all humanity, ' My God, my God, why hest thou forsaken mo, forsaken man ' It was thus he bore our sins ; it wee thus lie may bo said to have endured their punishment. But, remember, in this explanation the bearing of sins was coincident with perfect sinlessnoss ; indeed, it was only perfect and divine love which could have realized them in this manner. And the enduring of their punishment, or rather of their results, was not imposed upon him by his father in order to satisfy vin- dictive justice, as some theologies have said : it was voluntarily assumed inperfeet love to man. And, in distinction from the theory which says that ho bore his father's wrath in that dread hour, we, holding this view, believe that on him rooted at that moment the entire fullness of his father's love. God saw on earth the perfect image of his own life; and. at the very instant when some say he turned away his face from the inno- cent because he accounted him guilty, the Father behold the Son absolutely righteous ; and righteous especially in this, that he had then realized, through perfect sympathy and loss of self, the misery of the world's sin. God saw, in the absolute self-sacrifice which enabled Christ to lose himself in love of man, and to bear the burden of the sin of man in passionate sympathy with the awfulness of the burden, the highest reach of human virtue, the highest ideal of human sacrifice realized ; saw human nature in this especially at one with his own nature, and was well pleased with this imago of humanity ; united himself in perfect sympathy to it ; and as he took into himself, and into union with himself, the humanity of Christ, so he took into himself and into unity with him- self the humanity which Christ represented. This is the reconciliation of God to man, the forgiveness of man's sin by God. This is the objec- tive side of the Atonement."

This is widely different indeed from the forensic theory of the Atonement; an offended God accepting the punishment of the innocent as a legal satisfaction to himself for the punishment of the guilty," but it is not real, not loss affirmative, and, we may add, not less involving the supernatural. It implies the view of the Incarnation of Christ, a belief in his representative humanity, which are inconsistent with humanatarian theories of his per- sonality. It satisfies, as we believe, all the phrases in which Scripture details the doctrine, even the terms not in themselves always Scriptural, which have been commonly accepted and

employed by orthodox theology, satisfaction, propitiation, atone- ment, and the like.

Nevertheless, we must say that in our view he somewhat declines from the subject of his argument when he writes, oven though every word is beautifully true, as follows :-

" Many explanations have been given of the way in which the sacrifice of Christ acts on men as a redeeming power : mystical interpretations, logical schemes, things which require theologians to explain them. We will be content to find an explanation in that which lies around us, in the doings of our common life, falling back on the plain principle that the laws of Christ's life were the laws of human nature. If we look for it, we shall find the law of Redemption now and always at work. New in proclamation, it was not now in action. No man, no nation, has ever been rescued from degradation, except by the same kind of work as that by which God reeones the world. Take one example out of common life. A widowed mother had an only son. All her love, all that regret for the dead which transmutes itself into love of the living, centred in him. Her life had but one thought, and that made itself into service of him. Every day was a long self-devotion to win means for his education and enjoyment. But far away in the great city he wastes her substance in riotous living. Health makes him thoughtless, youth makes him cruel, and she is loft alone. Only returning when his purse or his health is exhausted, she forgives him again and again, and again and again he abandons her. At last she dies, and dies for him, still hoping, still believing in him, and leaving to him her blousing and her love. Her long self-sacrifice of life is over. And he returns to the country village, and in the quiet evening stands beside her grave. All his neglect folio upon his heart ; all her long patience and unbroken tender- ness. A spring of love gushes in his soul, and with it hatred of his sin, self-loathing, temptation to despair. But he remembers that she for- gave ; he feels himself still loved, and in a softening rush of penitence ho resolves that she shall be still alive to him. ' I will he worthy of her yet; with broken and contrite heart I will requite her love by being all sho wished me once to be. Wo may moot again, and I will fall at her feet and toll her all my sorrow, and show her my repentance.' A mighty love takes him out of self and makes the past hateful. He thinks no more of his own pleasure, but of what would have bean her pleasure. That hour has redeemed him. He enters on a now life."

Is there not an ignoring here of the objective side of atonement as a power over the individual hearts of men ? Must we not believe that every human will is potentially reconciled, and brought into

harmony with the Divine Will by the obedience of the Represen- tative man ?

There are other parts of Mr. Brooke's theology to which we might take exception. The view put forth, for instance, in the following sentence has something of an affinity with Ebionitisin :—

" I can conceive that though his union with God was from the moment of his birth potentially his, as the whole growth of the oak is in the acorn, yet that the communication of the Divine Word to the Man Christ Jesus was a gradual communication, that it went on stop by stop with the gradual perfecting of his humanity."

And is it not an error to interpret in this souse the words " made perfect through suffering " ? Surely "made perfect" (ireXsiwh) really means " initiated," means that he learnt sympathy by suffering. But, on the whole, we have to thank Mr. Brooke for a

very clear and courageous exposition of theological views with, which we are for the most part in full sympathy.