of cleansing, purification, and moral virtue, as is afforded in the sacrifice of Jesus, Saviour of men.

We, for our part, are inclined to think that modern philosophy of redemption does not always sufficiently realise what a strongly natural basis mediation has a basis bringing it within the scope of Natural Religion-as, in fact, the natural outcome of one of the deepest spiritual desires of men. Some effort after mediation is met wherever religion enshrines a Personal Deity. And surely the human need has grown always more manifest to us of means whereby the conditions of moral and spiritual recuperation shall be maintained, and this need is plainly one not to be met by theory of any sort, but by deep-seated atoning fact. Yes; and so not merely the need, but the Divine meeting of that need, have grown always more conspicuous under the developing disclosures of Love Divine, so that a philosophy of atonement is now possible and justifiable.

The Christian philosophy of religion rejoices in the greater stress on the historical and ethical aspects of Christ's redemptive work which recent years have witnessed, without, however, succumbing to the Ritschlian tendencies to sit loosely to the relation of that redemptive work to sin. We can surely say so much in agreement with Frank's recent Geschichte und Kritik' without needing to commit ourselves to all his inveighing against the sterility of Ritschlianism. For he is in our view a

CRITICISM OF RITSCHLIANISM.

47I

strange thinker who can find in Ritschl a satisfying attitude towards the Divine displeasure in view of sin as present, as palpable, and as perfectly real, fact. We may maintain the ethical emphasis in Christianity, may uphold the importance of mystical union with God, and may yet feel that sin is not a matter to be lightly passed over, nor Christ's relation to it a vague and unimportant thing, nor the most exalted communion with God that can possibly be depicted a secure possession and undoubted possibility, until some radical and thoroughgoing solution of sin and guilt has been furnished from the redemptive work of the historic Christ. The historic basis need be no occasion of stumbling, as being but the point d'appui on which our speculative and ethical philosophy must of necessity rest, in virtue of Christianity being essentially redemption from sin through the man Christ Jesus, and of its revelation having a continual tendency to become inward and natural.

In its individual operation, the redemption proceeds from the sphere of the inner spirit-from the psychological into the ethical, and, in certain ways and degree, into the physical also. To this last, to wit, the redemption of the body, belongs, in an institutional sense, the redemption of the Church, which is His Body,-a redemption whose need is deeply realised in Christian philosophy, if the Church, as loyal to her risen and living Head, is to become unworldly and spiritual. All these are

but parts of the one great redemptive process, and the grace of God is here for the healing of all that is rent and broken. It is here to impart energy to the spirit in that warfare against the flesh from which there is no sign of discharge to time, enlightenment, or culture. Still does the alien flesh continue to show that resistance to the Spirit which recalls the lines of Goethe

"Dem Herrlichsten, was auch der Geist empfangen
Drängt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an."

This conflict calls to a positing of reason, spirit, God, rather than body, flesh, nature. For still those two, flesh and spirit-borne, as said Plato, as by steeds in opposite directions-meet and clash amid the quivering of our whole being. What man is he who does not know how powerless in those supreme hours of life is anything short of the grace of Jesus Christ to enable us to triumph, and—like the poet's warrior-" through the heat of conflict' keep "the law in calmness made"?

The Christian philosophy of religion is wise enough to see very clearly how the notion of those who take God's historical action in redemption to have been put forth for the purpose of creating moral power is a notion which simply destroys itself. It puts into the action what should be put into the Divine reason, character, and mind revealed to us in and through the action. It fails to do justice to the Godward aspect--for such there is and must certainly be-of the sacrificial work by which

In

THE MEDIATIONAL ASPECTS OF REDEMPTION. 473 the Redeemer frees us from our enthralment. the mediational work of redemption it is God Whom we see in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and in the very principles of the atonement He must be just as really present as He was in its original spring or motive, so that into the mediation shall enter nothing which "would only distress and insult Him." For all that, there has been no lack in our time of a deep entering-with Schleiermacher, Rothe, Macleod Campbell, Edwards, and others— into a sense of the fellow-feeling (Mitgefühl) with sinful men shown by Christ as humanity's Centre and Representative-a sympathetically vicarious apprehension of sin on His part nothing short of perfect. Like Dante, when he saw the two complementary natures of Christ-human and Divine-in the eyes of Beatrice, we, under His moving power, at once worship and follow Him Who, one coherent Personality to us, is both ideal Man and "strong Son of God."

"Come in lo specchio il Sol, non altrimenti

La doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava,

Or con uni or con altri reggimenti."

Of which for the present we shall adopt Dugdale's rendering," Like the Sun shining on a mirror, so the double-natured creature threw its beams through those eyes, now with the acts of one nature, now with those of the other."

And the uniqueness of Christ as the sin-bearer our late Christian philosophy of religion has found to be as real and striking a phenomenon as ever it

was to saint or thinker of an earlier time. Only, His redemption is less mechanically conceived: the redemptive process, by which forgiveness is achieved, is thought of in a less arbitrary and juridical fashion, and forgiveness itself is conceived as but the gateway to life-the life in God of which we have spoken. Our religious philosophy and our spiritual life have surely found courage enough whole-heartedly to accept both facts or ends of the redemptive process as brought out in the couplet,—

"He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good."

Without being careful to theorise overmuch, we are with such acceptance pretty well content. Such vicariousness as is implied in His suffering is seen to be no arbitrary enactment, but part of a universal necessity or law that marks every step of spiritual advance. Our world of to-day has no more spiritual principle than that of redemption by sacrifice- no principle of greater potency and promise. On that principle, the principle of sacrifice-gateway to larger life—the God who "gave His only begotten Son for us has set His seal, and the purity, energy, fruitfulness, and attractiveness of our lives can be derived from no other source than this fount of sacrifice. It is that these ends of life may be realised in us that the mighty consecrations of God are upon us, and we bear in our bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus. But who does not know