ceived doctrine of the Church," etc., is not offensively or exclusively made, nor the Thirty-nine Articles referred to oftener than good taste allows in such a pamphlet. It was written for Episcopalians. Any authority of the Articles is waived, indeed, though "Scripture is explained by the Articles." So wholesome and cogent a piece of criticism should belong to all the orthodox churches.

The theory of Dr. Waldenstroem, denying any efficacy toward God in the sacrifice of his Son, whether as to intent or as to result, falls under Dr. Goodwin's description, "the negative theory.". It sweeps away at a stroke what has been considered one-half, on the divine side, of a twofold salvation. It renders idle the inquiry of every soul convicted of sin, "How does God stand before me?" and bids it only ask-what indeed conviction answers-" How do I stand before God?" It forbids his looking to Christ's blood and cross with any view to pardon, but only with a view to subjective renewal, for which the evangelical doctrine bids him look to the Spirit. Indeed, it tranfers the work of the Third Person in the Trinity to the Second. It sums up salvation in this: "Confess your sin and believe in Him; the blood of Jesus cleanses" (internally), "thus you will be saved." Salvation is taken out of the hands of God as the All-Holy Administrator of a moral system, and becomes wholly "a personal relation to Jesus." This relation is purely subjective; nothing objective occurs. Forgiveness follows faith, and depends directly not at all on Christ's death. A renovated life is not only made necessary to it as condition, as all have taught, but it is all; nothing else is needed. Christ's blood is merely an instrument to cause repentance; it is repentance that saves, or rather is all of salvation, this sometimes being confounded with faith, as it is too often by more accurate thinkers. God set forth Christ as a propitiation only in the sense of a throne of grace for sinners. (Cf. Dr. L. Abbott on Rom. iii.) Not even in the sense always recognized as figurative, does Christ pay any moral

He simply

debt' or ransom or redemption price for us. pours his life from Calvary into our souls. The fact that the Swedish tongue has but one word for the three ideas atonement, propitiation, reconciliation, lends plausibility to his constant iteration of this. He treats the three ideas as identically one. Any general or conditional atonement he rejects. Everything is an individual as well as a personal transaction (p. 106, footnote). God sacrifices everything for man. No great interests of a moral system are recognized-only those of sinful creatures. He even goes so far as to assert that Christ "propitiates sinners from their sins, that is, He propitiates sinners so that they get rid of their sins." All satisfaction of God's moral nature and moral polity is ruled out.' His comment on Lev. x. 17, "atonement for the sins of men before the Lord," is, that this should mean "making satis

'Cf. Dr. Cochran's statement, Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xlvi. p. 481, and Waldenstroem's in “A Wind from the Holy Spirit," p. 108. The latter's terse objections: "A debt of money can be paid, but not a debt of sin; the debt of sin can be forgiven, but not paid," hold only vs. those who regard Christ's satisfaction as penal, and quantitatively equal to the eternal woes due to saved men. Cf. Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xlvi. pp. 496, 497. It goes without saying, that nothing like what Dr. Waldenstroem controverts is held among us.

'See pp. 5-8, 47-49, 74, notes by translator of "The Reconciliation."

With all the fine magnetism of the man and his grand work in Sweden in reforming the Lord's Supper, we are compelled to think, as we read his writings, of serving "the creature more than the Creator" as something possible in doctrine as well as in practice. His antagonism to the faith of our churches here is lost sight of in his useful mission to 'Independent Swedish" churches; should it be altogether? Much that is illogical in his teachings might be pointed out; e. g. he denies that punishment is anything but discipline by natural consequences "to produce repentance,” yet he proclaims God's wrath to come upon those who persist in sin-to" produce repentance " in them, of course, whence follows restoration inevitably. The only escape is, that some “cannot be received to repentance." God's wrath is simple hatred of sin, with love unchanged to the person sinning, yet he seems both to affirm and deny that moral anger can or should rest on the sinner. His continually occurring subreptions in using atonement and propitiation to mean a subjective change of mind in sinners will strike the attention of all evangelical readers.

faction unto the Lord for the sins of men before the Lord," if evangelical teaching is correct,-in which neither the learning nor the wit is very evident. From God's own word in Ezek. xvi. 62, 63, "when I am pacified toward thee," he expels all moral appeasing, substituting forgiveness minus satisfaction, though he can recognize pacifying the wrath of a king, and appeasing Esau, as scriptural expressions. His editor pronounces his writings "non-controversial,"-" he combats no theories by name, whether the moral, the vicarious, the governmental, or any other." Our readers can judge of this,such contention as we have sampled, fills almost every page. And he makes no distinction between the penal substitution theory and any other in his attacks. The third of Dr. Waldenstroem's works above mentioned, "The Lord is Right," is based on the theology of the other two; yet being really devotional and only slightly controversial, adds nothing to our knowledge of the author's exceptional views of the subject upon which they all bear, and calls for no additional comment. The first, "The Blood," sent out in advance as a pamphlet to ministers of the Interior, caused a natural expectation that the others would teach "nothing but the blood of Jesus" for propitiation instead of the contrary, denying divine propitiation in toto. Taken together, his books displace both the office-work of the Spirit and that of the Son. We profoundly doubt whether any evangelical air there is about them will successfully mislead our churches, and induce them to vacate the Spirit's work in begetting righteousness and pass it over to the Son, vacating also the Son's vicarious work and denying altogether that Christ immediately and meritoriously saves us from wrath, the curse of the law, and the "everlasting punishment" of sinful "deeds done in the body." It would be anything but the breath of the Holy Ghost which should blow away from Christian experience and thought this vital and formative element of all that is evangelical.

ARTICLE III.

THE BOOK OF JOB.

A LECTURE BY THE REV. PROFESSOR WM. G. BALLANTINE, oberlin
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

THE Whole Bible is so real a book in all its parts that it seems unnecessary to raise the preliminary question whether the incidents and characters of the book of Job are historical or merely the creations of the poet's fancy. We shall assume it as conceded that Job and his friends were real men, Satan a real devil, the property which Job lost real marketable wealth, the disease, the ashes, and the potsherd real, the thoughts and mental states historical, and only the presentation of the facts poetical.

The book of Job is, beyond question, the sublimest poem in all literature. Leaving out of view, for the moment, the fact of divine inspiration, looking at it simply as literature, as we look at the Iliad, the Prometheus, the Æneid, the Divine Comedy, King Lear, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, or Faust, it plainly surpasses all these masterpieces in the sublimity of its purpose, the consummate skill of its plot, the jewelled richness of its materials, the repose of its manner, the resistless rush of its thoughts, the consenting unity of all its parts.

There has been much shallow criticism of Hebrew poetry. Our literature took its rise in Greece. Ancient and Modern Italy, France, England, Germany, and America-all trace their letters back to Cadmus. Aristotle is the father of our systematic rhetoric. Because the poetry of the Bible does not fall readily into a Greek classification, the impression has gone abroad that Hebrew poetry

is of a nondescript character, lacking in artistic symmetry and perfection of type. Never was impression more unjust. The poetic types of the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and of Job are as perfect as the lyric and dramatic types of Attica.

The question has been debated whether Job is a tragedy. Perhaps not, if the word "tragedy" is defined in a narrow fashion, combining essential characteristics with the accidental developments or accessories of the Dionysiac stage of Athens. It is not adapted to be acted in a theatre. But all the fundamentals of tragedy are present in a striking degree. The plot, as in the best Greek tragedies, takes in God and man. The protagonist is of just that character which Aristotle has pronounced the best subject for tragedy-one not deeply guilty nor altogether innocent. In enlarging upon this canon, Barron says: "The proper characters for tragedy should be possessed of high virtues to interest the spectators in their happiness, but they should be exhibited as liable to errors and indiscretions arising from the weakness of human nature, the violence of passion, or the intemperate pursuit of objects. commendable and useful. The misfortunes of such persons properly painted take hold of the mind with irresistible effect. They engage every sympathetic feeling of the soul, and they make us tremble lest, by our indiscretion. in similar indulgence of our passions, we shall throw ourselves into similar distress."

The question of this drama is the one supreme question of humanity in all ages and places. What is the proper attitude of man toward the government of God? or, to change the phrase, In what mood should a good man accept the mysterious providences, the bitter disappointments, the sudden and heart-breaking calamities of life? The book answers this question by presenting in dramatic form what one great soul did pass through and did attain. There is an entanglement, a progress of action, and finally a surprising but self-evidently right solution. There is