sinners cannot, on account of their depravity, make themselves new creatures, in what way, or by what powers, can they do it? And if they have no power by which they can do it, although they have all power for all duty, if this sinful and inexcusable inability were removed, why say that, so long as this remains, they have anything that really amounts to the power requisite and adequate to the doing of it? Dr Spring, in various phrase, states his belief in everything that we hold on this subject. And this seems to us inconsistent with anything that can properly be called ability in the sinner to anything spiritually good, or accompanying

salvation.

In regard to "principle and exercise," he prints inter alia, a letter from Dr Emmons, in which that acute reasoner says, "I suppose that perception, reason, conscience, memory, and volition, constitute the essence of the human mind; and I cannot conceive of any substratum in which these mental properties exist." In regard to this whole subject Dr Spring says very frankly and explicitly,

"I have never entered deeply into this question. That fallen man is responsible for his sinful nature as well as his sinful acts, I have not a doubt. Did I not believe this, I should be driven to the conclusion that God is the author of sin. As the judicial visitation for Adam's first sin, the native tendencies of the race are to evil and not to good. I never was an acute metaphysician, and I am too old to attempt to become so now. Yet I cannot help thinking, though I once thought otherwise, that there is something in man's moral character besides the acts of the will. Are not love, hatred, hope, fear, the spontaneous acts of the mind, instead of being produced by any efficient acts of the will? Is not their moral character derived from the character of the mind or heart from which they flow? The tree is known by its fruits. Is it not the heart that gives character to its exercises, rather than its exercises that gives character to the heart? Do effects produce their causes, or do causes produce their effects? Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' Evil things come from within, and good things come from within. My own consciousness teaches me that there is something that lies deeper than the acts of my will."-Id. pp. 158-9.

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Dr Spring says, that with respect to original sin, the difference between old Calvinists and Hopkinsians is twofold. Hopkinsians regard this arrangement in respect to the imputation of Adam's sin as simply a procedure of sovereignty, while the old Calvinists regard it as a measure of moral government. I once thought it was a procedure of mere sovereignty, but on more full examination of the language of the apostle, 'judgment was by one to condemna

His Doctrinal Views.

555

tion,' I became convinced that it was a procedure of moral government, and a judicial decision. Judgment and condemnation refer to judicial rather than to sovereign acts."

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The other point of difference relates to mediate or immediate imputation."-Vol. ii. pp. 7, 8. Dr Spring then goes on to argue at some length in favour of mediate imputation. We have no space to follow or examine his reasonings. The contrary view is so clearly asserted above, when he says, "as the judicial visitation for Adam's sin, the native tendencies of our race are to evil and not to good," that nothing more requires to be said on the subject.

The author, while discarding the offensive peculiarities of Hopkinsianism, quite naturally seeks to present the whole system (not for the errors, but for the great amount of scriptural and Calvinistic truth it contains), and especially its advocates, in a favourable light. Doubtless, estimates of it must vary according to the light in which it was viewed; first, according as it is viewed with reference to the errors, or the truths it contained; secondly, according to the degree in which its peculiarities were developed and pushed to extremes in the persons of its various adherents, embracing, as they did, men who, like Dr Woods and Dr Spring, never diverged widely from that old Calvinism which they more and more closely approximated through life, down to the school of Emmons, teaching that the soul is only a chain of exercises, and those exercises, alike the sinful and the holy, the immediate work of God. Says Dr Spring, "The late Dr Miller of Princeton once remarked to me, 'I should hesitate to lay hands on Dr Emmons; but though I do not approve of all Dr Hopkins has written, I would ordain any man, otherwise qualified, who could honestly say that he believed every word of Dr Hopkins's system.""-Id. p. 6.

Dr Spring was, as is well understood, opposed to the Dissolution of the Four Synods, and some other antecedent measures, which issued in the disruption of the Presbyterian Church. He belonged to the class who believed that the heresies and disorders which led to them, might have been surmounted with less violent remedies, while, as we have already seen, he, especially thirty years ago, adhered less closely than some to every one of the ipsissima verba of the Confession of Faith. His attitude on these subjects is sufficiently apparent in the following language:

"I love the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church, and always loved it. I have not altered in my preaching; my publications speak for themselves. I do not concur in all the peculiarities of old Calvinism, nor did I ever; nor do I with any of the New Haven Theology. If I must choose between old Calvinism and the New Haven

Theology, give me old Calvinism. Old-fashioned Calvinists and oldfashioned Hopkinsians are not far apart: the more closely they are united in opposing modern errors, the better. These sentiments were uttered more than thirty years ago.”—Vol. i. p. 271.

Dr Spring makes some noteworthy memoranda regarding the founding of Andover Seminary, in which his father had a leading part. Some letters from Dr Woods to his father, here first published, put it beyond doubt, that Dr Woods was a moderate Hopkinsian, and under pledges to the Hopkinsians when appointed to the Chair of Theology at Andover. He was to teach Hopkinsianism, but so prudently as not to alarm or rouse into opposition the old Calvinists. He, however, himself gradually, as he advanced in life, "sustained a change in favour of the Calvinism of the Westminster Assembly," as abundantly appears from his writings. It still further appears, that, according to the constitution of that Seminary, its professors as well as its students may be either Presbyterians or Congregationalists; while some of the more rigid Independents were at one time disposed to force their own ecclesiastical polity exclusively upon the institution.

Dr Spring has two chapters on the Southern rebellion, and its suppression. His indignant and eloquent denunciations of this mad and wicked insurrection are well known. It is unnecessary to repeat them, or to repeat the discussion concerning the propriety of making a declaration to that effect by the Assembly of 1861. But we wish to record on our pages his sentiments on two subjects growing out of the rebellion, which are now of deepest concern to us-sentiments which seem to us to be alike the dictates of Christian wisdom and love. The first respects the spirit to be cherished towards the conquered.

"But our nationality is saved, and we can afford to be magnanimous. While I hope that the leaders of the rebellion will be for ever disfranchised, I still hope that, in the exercise of a sound discretion, the Government will see fit to extend to them all the lenity which is consistent with the welfare of the nation. Times have altered; the South has altered; the spirit of the North has altered; there has been suffering enough; no man calls for blood now. Our 'erring sisters' have seen their error, and all we ask of them is to return to their first love. One thing is obvious, and that is, if we remain a prosperous, peaceful, and happy people, we must treat our Southern friends with kindness. The demon of secession cast out and purged of slavery, wè ask of them nothing but loyalty and confidence."-Vol. ii. p. 214.

He gives the following judgment as to the political status and franchises of the freedmen :

"There is one thought on the subject of slavery, which I may not

omit. Utterly rejecting the doc'rine of human servitude, or the right of property and ownership in man, I would not be in haste to elevate the coloured race to a position for which they are not fitted. I would not, from an enthusiastic attachment to 'liberty and equality,' violently thrust them into offices of trust and responsibility, or give them the elective franchise, until they are prepared for it. Their own welfare, and the safety of our own institutions, would, in my judgment, be imperilled by such a policy. I would make them free, but I would treat them as servants, and just as I would treat the white races from abroad, and in our own land, who seek and are fitted for no higher position. Let them go when and where they will, and enjoy all the protection of law; let them serve whom they will, and in the capacity which they themselves may select, and receive recompence for their labours; but let them not aspire to a seat in the bench, nor to the pulpit, until their intellectual culture and moral qualifications shall have futed them for these responsible positions. Wisdom is justified of her children: the results will shew that this is the true policy towards the coloured race. When Christian men and women are found among them, I would treat them with Christian love, which is without partiality and without hypocrisy.' I would treat them as 'Paul the aged' would have Philemon treat Onesimus, not as 'a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved.' I would not assign to them the lowest place at the communion table, nor the highest, but a place where they are acknowledged as brethren and sisters in Christ."-Vol. ii. pp. 202, 203.

We here take leave of the patriarchal counsels, records, and testimonies which the venerable author has embalmed in these volumes. Our remarks have necessarily been as discursive as the topics brought under review in such an autobiography. We sincerely rejoice that the author has been spared to prepare this memorial of himself, and these contributions to the ecclesiastical history of his times.

ART. VII.-Ecce Homo.

Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Third Edition, London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1866.

THIS

HIS is another of the many attempts which have been. made of yore and of late to account for the existence of Christianity, minus its supernatural origin. Christianity is a fact, thank Heaven, beyond all controversy. Gibbon found it lying in his path, and, like Paley's traveller finding the watch on the moor, he set himself to explain how it came to be there; hence his famous "five secondary causes."

Principal Robertson found it, and, emulous of his historical predecessor, though in a different spirit, he has furnished us, in the only sermon he ever published, with a philosophical survey of the various coincidences in the state of society favourable to the advent of Christ in "the fulness of time." Strauss found it, and with the help of such materials as suited his purpose, he accounted for it by supposing a series of myths. Rénan found it, and, out of the same materials, he has woven a French romance. The anonymous author of the present work has found the same wondrous fact; and, dissatisfied with all previous explanations, he accounts for the life and work of Christ in a way of his own. Setting aside the fourth Gospel, and confining his survey to the three remaining, he would have us, as he says in his preface, to "place ourselves in imagination at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but simply, as St Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the divine favour, and thus to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which church doctors or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant." The summary way in which the apostles are here turned out of court in company with "church doctors" is apt to beget a prejudice against the author at the very outset; nor, we must say, is the irreverence of the paragraph much mended by the reference to our blessed Lord as "a young man of promise," which must grate on the ears of all true Christian readers. But we are willing to take him on his own terms, and can see no possible objection to the selection of any of the Gospels as a startingpoint from which he may survey the life and work of the Saviour; reserving to ourselves the right to judge of the correctness of his delineation and conclusions by the wider standard, which we hold to be of equal authority, furnished by the pristine revelations of the Old Testament, which foretokened his advent, and the apostolic writings which unfold the doctrine of the evangelical narratives. To suppose that it is possible to construct a full-blown theory on Christ and Christianity, simply from a study of one or two of the gospels, is doubtless an assumption which casts discredit on the rest of holy Scripture. But on Newton's principle of first forming a theory, and then finding facts corresponding, our author may be allowed to try his hand at the solution of a problem which has already engaged the thoughts and pens of so many ingenious thinkers in the present day. How then does he proceed? and how far has he succeeded in his object?