Borgia acquired a share in it, and lay less deep within the shadow of God's disapproval, is to contradict the inalienableness of all moral trusts, and make character vicarious. As well might you say, conversely, that the guilt of Judas Iscariot was the guilt of "human nature," and must have made us all odious in the sight of heaven. There are some departments of thought in which, we believe, Mr. Maurice's Platonic Realism has a just application. But against its entrance on the region of the Conscience and gathering up our infinitely distributed trusts into an incarnate eldos of humanity, we must earnestly protest. Obligation cannot be discharged by deputy; cannot be met but in the concrete. Christ, as obedient and holy in his humanity, was one man and we are other men: and no "propitiation for our sins" can be got out of his righteousness, without removing the essence of all moral distinctions whatsoever.

In our authors' doctrine, then, on this ancient subject, we find the old phenomenon repeated: it is clear and sound in what it removes; confused and incomprehensible in what it retains. It is no wonder. Theological literature is one protracted testimony to the unmanageableness of this favourite topic. It seems to have a fatal fascination in it;-doubtless because to people who think at all it can never offer any real repose. One divine after another of powerful intellect approaches it, with the same invariable result; that either his Logic or his Ethics go to pieces at once. When Butler resorted to the plea that, notwithstanding the ill-look of the doctrine, there were uglier things to be found in the real world; when Jonathan Edwards, with his inexorable reasoning, had to define Moral relations in a way to secure their absence from his path; when Magee could only browbeat his opponents, and, as Mr. Garden observes, evade the knot of the whole question; when a writer who could so well expound the principles of reasoning as Dr. Thomson in his Outlines of the Laws of Thought, could so ill exemplify them in his Bampton Lectures on the Atonement; we may be excused perhaps for suggesting that the solution is still missing; not for want of genius to work it out, but because the problem is imaginary, and the answer impossible. The doctrine arose out of a picture or programme of the universe and human life which, though still hung up on many a church-wall, has no real truth for the modern understanding, no daily presence to the inward eye. The human sense of sin and consciousness of moral infirmity have assumed, if a less passionate, perhaps a deeper and a truer form; in which a more discriminating measure is taken of guilt, and its purely personal nature is felt to remove it from possibilities of exchange. Theories of salvation are always cor

relative with theories of perdition: and since the vision of eternal ruin, as the rule for the human race, has passed from among credible realities and descended to the rank of ecclesiastical scene-painting, the scheme for exceptional rescue, constructed by divines out of misinterpreted Scripture, is felt to be artificial too. So long as men believed themselves helplessly sold and made over to some one who meant to torture them, -whether to the Devil, as the ancient Church supposed, or to a judicial God unable to remit, as modern theology pretends,so long as, in their view, some one's rights over them had to be bought off ere they could be set free for true obedience and hope, the language which described "Salvation," "Redemption," "Satisfaction," "Propitiation," as an objective arrangement or supernatural "expedient" devised on their behalf, had an exact and congenial meaning. But now the disciple is told, with infinitely deeper truth, that the terrible claimant from whom he needs deliverance is himself: and to this inner thraldom, the old programme of an outer rescue negotiated for him has no proper application. All that can be said in harmony with it is this;-that he cannot, by any act of volition, be his own deliverer; that, to take him out of himself, he needs a real object, better than himself, as well as an inner power higher than his will; and that, if ever he is to know the law of selfsurrender, as the sole reconciliation of the human spirit with the Divine, it can only be by the appeal of a realised self-sacrifice, in which life becomes the simple organ giving the Will of God a conscious way. As in the case of the "Incarnation," so in this of the "Atonement," the truth which remains on hand is not special to the person of Christ, but human and universal, revealed to us through its perfect embodiment in him. For our humanity there is no way of reconciliation and Divine peace, but the path of self-sacrifice: the glory of its sorrows and the opening lights at its end, we see in him who entered it for us and all in every age who have faith to follow him refresh the emblem of the cross with new meanings, and "fill up what remains of the sufferings of Christ."

We have followed our Tractarians chiefly in their discussion of the interior of Christian doctrine; because it is here alone that their characteristics, as a distinct class of theologians, come into view. The grand prior question, however,of the possibility and fact of supernatural revelation at all,—is treated in two of the Tracts; with especial reference to the credibility of Miracles, by Mr. Davies; and to the atheistic conception of Natural Laws, by Mr. Ludlow. The main positions taken up by the former appear to us wisely chosen and well defended: that to minds unprepared by faith in a living God,

and sympathy with the spiritual elements of the religion of Christ, miracles must remain now, what Scripture shows them to have been at first, unconvincing prodigies that when the order of persuasion is reversed, and they issue from one already recognised, on higher grounds, as Founder of a "Kingdom of Heaven," they cease to encounter any formidable resistance, but are left in their place as outer "signs" of that kingdom: that instead, therefore, of setting them as the base, they should rather come in as the crown of faith, not so much supporting, as showing conspicuously and far, the form and structure of the Divine government to which they belong. The theologian who disputes this principle, and insists on the logical cogency of the miracles as proofs, ought to explain how it is that they do not practically exercise this force,-that they are the difficulty rather than the resource of the "Christian advocate" in dealing with doubt,-and that they have come to be no longer a real power for aggression, but the chief object of defence, even with writers on "the Evidences." Mr. Davies, in common with two or three of his coadjutors, attributes the alienation of scientific men from the idea of miracle to a false definition of it as a violation or suspension of law; and claims back their allegiance on the plea that, instead of violating, it fulfils law, and reveals an order higher than that which it seems to break. He regards the "mighty works" of Christ as no less natural to his place in the scale of being, and no more wonderful except to observers at a lower point, than the brilliant marvels which a Faraday might display before an assembly of astonished savages. And were it even to prove within the resources of future science to repeat at will the very acts recorded in the gospels, their Divine character and function would in no way be affected. This answer seems to us, we must confess, to miss the point of the objector's scruple: and, in order to render the miracles credible, to deprive them of all religious value. If they are merely the exercise of a higher art, the anticipation of a skill to be learned hereafter by those who marvel at it now, they manifest nothing but superior knowledge and such command of the methods of Nature as might be attainable in a godless world. The proper treatment of them in that case would be a close scrutiny of the scientific conditions of their performance, till the rules were detected by which they gained their end: and, the moment this was done, their characteristic impression would be lost, and rationalism would have established its case. In proportion as the Agent himself was of truthful and earnest mind,―a Faraday, or such as a Faraday would revere, he would be eager for this result, eager to explain and impart the method of his procedure, and take the seeming mystery and magic away.

He would never use his power as an instrument of persuasion and authority in matters moral and spiritual with which it had no inner connexion. In short, a miracle by scientific process is self-condemned; for the whole religious meaning of miracle consists in this, that it is an immediate creation of Will, as distinguished from the mediate elaborations of method: the latter being the beaten track of docile intelligence adapting itself to the given usages of nature; the former the exercise of a personal causality transcending those usages, such as the Author of them could alone impart. Take away this meaning; and how can it any longer be said, that miracles startle and refresh the earth with the recovered sense of living Divine Power? That they do this is due to their acceptance as direct products of lordly and originating Will, as opposed to the procured results of obedient and sequacious intelligence.

Whether the phenomena thus issued are properly described as exceptions to "natural law," or examples of it, must depend on the range of definition given to the word "Natural," and separating it from "Supernatural." The word is not of stationary and absolute significance, but always has tacit reference to some "Nature," adopted for the moment as a standard: and means agreeable to the nature,-it may be of GOD, or of the perceptible UNIVERSE, or of MAN. With the last of these the present question has no concern. To God, as all-comprehending, the miraculous and the ordinary are no doubt "natural" alike, determined into existence conformably with the supreme order of his mind, and the spontaneous rules of a Will which excludes confusion and caprice. In reference, then, to this, the ultimate home of reality, it is perfectly true that miracles (assuming their occurrence) must be instances, and not violations, of "natural law." Nobody, we suppose, ever imagined the contrary, or sanctioned the idea that God issued them on no rule or principle at all. It is not usual, except in pantheistic speculation, to carry the word "Nature" up to that height and not till we limit it to the physical Universe, can we reasonably ask what is, and what is not, in conformity with "Natural Law,"-i. e. with the method constituted for the given class of cases. There is no way of solving such a question except by comparing the phenomenon with the ascertained rule for its usual production, and seeing how far it is en règle. By this test, a miracle is surely irreducible to natural law. Its very essence is, to be exceptional to the event's own proper law and whoever affirms it to fall under another, which, however, he cannot find and name, does but whisper its supernatural character away by a gratuitous surmise. He may still, it is true, regard it as a Divine act; because he may look

on all that happens, in the orderly vicissitude of things, as the immediate product of God's living Will, and may regard the "laws" of the world as only the rules, and its alleged "forces" as only the types, of his single Power. But, in thus abolishing the distinction between pretended Secondary Causes and the one Primary, he leaves unremoved the difference between the usual and the exceptional mode of Divine activity. The former is what we mean by natural law; the latter, by miracle. In the one, God proceeds in fidelity to a method laid down as a basis for human expectations: in the other. we conceive him to act, pro re nata, out of those moral affections which are the real background of all the order of the world, but which the custom of things is apt to hide from our dull eye. This free agency, straight out of the ultimate springs of the Spirit, unhindered by pledged usage, seems to us to give the true conception of the "Supernatural." Nature is the sphere and system of God's self-prescribed methods of reliable evolution of phenomena: but above and beyond nature He is Spirit; including nature indeed as part of its expression; but, instead of being all committed to nature, transcending it on every side, and opening a life of communion with the spirits that can reflect himself. All is thus his agency: Nature, his fixed Will; Spirit, his free Will. To take miracle from the latter, and hand it over to the former, is to strip it of its special interest as an expression of character, while setting up for it an inferior claim which cannot possibly be substantiated. We know the law to which the act of walking on the sea would present an indisputable exception. We know of none which it would exemplify; and indulge an unauthorised fancy in supposing it.

The anxiety, then, to draw past miracle into the domain of future science appears to us mistaken. And after all, it is beyond the reach of any philosophical revision of theory to touch the real difficulties of this question. Its decision is practically reserved, not for the metaphysician, but for the historical critic; and must arise, not sweepingly by the adjustment of an idea, but in detail, by patient estimate of narratives, taken one by one. "Signs and wonders," however related to nature and to God, are not self-evidencing things ;-but reported facts, whose intrinsic credibility, even at the strongest, is liable to be forfeited by testimonial defects. It is not when we sit at a vague distance, but when we go into the interior detail of Scripture, that the real elements of this inquiry present themselves. Who are our informants? What were their sources of knowledge? Do they agree? Are they free from distorting media of observation? Are they all of equal value? or must discrimination be exercised upon their mixed material?—such are the ques