the New England thinkers. It is interesting to note the workings of President Edwards' mind upon these topics. His treatise upon Original Sin is a very important work as illustrating the operations of his mind and the character of his theology in their relations to conservatism and progress. On the one hand he will have nothing to do with "treating men as" they are not; but on the other he cannot avoid a connection with Adam and a guilt for Adam's sin, and so he struggles with theories of identity and with ideas of divine constitution, till he makes us one with Adam in some sense, and yet declares that we are not guilty of Adam's sin by imputation till we are participators in it by "consent." But such efforts in behalf of imputation were in vain. Edwards' successors regarded the idea with more and more distrust, and the Universalist controversy put an end to every effort to retain it. At this time it became an evangelical interest which contended against the theory. Universalism and some forms of orthodoxy maintained that there was no grace in saving men, since the atonement had merited salvation for them, and the merits of Christ were directly imputed to believers. Hence eternal life was bestowed as a thing which had been duly bought by this infinite price. The New England thinkers found this too abhorrent to the gospel. We are saved by grace, they said, and they devoted a large part of those various discourses and treatises which we have been reviewing in this article, to proving that an atonement is consistent with the exercise of grace. Smalley protests against forms of expression which the revered Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, had once employed, as if the sinner could claim forgiveness from God. do we find," he asks, "our infallible Teacher instructing his disciples to make such challenges from the Father, even on his account, of deliverance from all evil and the bestowment of all good, as their just due?" Emmons answers the doctrine 1 Park's Discourses and Treatises, p. 52.

"Where

from the standpoint of the New England theory of the atonement, as when he says: "Though Christ suffered, the just for the unjust, though he made his soul an offering for sin, and though he suffered most excruciating pains in the garden and on the cross, yet he did not lay God under the least obligation, in point of justice, to pardon and save a single sinner.. By obeying and suffering in the room of sinners, he only rendered it consistent for God to renew or not renew, to pardon or not to pardon, to reward or not to reward, sinners; but did not lay him under the least obligation, in point of justice, to do either of these things for them."1 But he also appeals to our sense of the majesty of God, who "is above being bound by any being in the universe." And, in general, he rests upon the fundamental absurdity of teaching that the character of one man can be transferred to another, since a character consists in acts which, done by one man, cannot be also acts done by another. Burge is perhaps as pointed as any of these writers. He says: "The righteousness of Christ, like that of every other holy being, consists entirely in his actions, feelings, and attributes. Essentially it consists in his love to God and other beings, and is as unalienably his as is any other attribute of his nature. Is it even possible that the actions which Christ performed while here on earth, in which his righteousness in part consists, should be so transferred from him to believers as to become actions which they have performed?" He says trenchantly, in reference to the idea that believers receive the righteousness of Christ by faith: "It is confidently believed that neither Scripture nor reason affords any more warrant for the opinion that it is even possible for the believer's faith to receive Christ's faith, or love, than for the opinion that a believer's walking in the highway receives Christ's walking upon the water." When it is said that "God views and represents them [sinners] as righteous, by 1 Park's Discourses and Treatises, p. 121.

virtue of the righteousness of Christ; then the inquiry which arises is, Whether God do not view and represent things precisely as they are?"1 In all this, which is the style of remark pursued by later New England divines as well, it should be remembered that the antagonist had in mind was the ignorant Universalist preacher with his Rellyan doctrine of "union." But though the form of answer was thus determined, the New England divines held that the substance of their argument was valid also against the exaggerations of the Old School.

We have thus briefly and imperfectly sketched the course of the doctrine in the New England writers, have shown the determining influence of the doctrine of Edwards as to the nature of virtue, which furnishes the ideal side of the theory; the influence also of increasing light as to the freedom of the will; and the strong effect of the idea of individuality introduced into the school by its founder. We may now pass to the systematic statement of the theory from the starting point of love as the essence of virtue, by which it is hoped the theme may be placed in a light somewhat new. 1 Park's Discourses and Treatises, pp. 504-506. [To be concluded.]

ARTICLE IV.

THE REFORMATION OF CRIMINALS.

BY HASTINGS H. HART, SECRETARY OF THE MINNESOTA STATE BOARD OF CORRECTIONS AND CHARITIES.

THE Reformation of Criminals is a subject which to-day engages the attention of some of the best thinkers and some of the most efficient workers in the world. It is important because of its relation to the public welfare. There are about 75,000 persons in prison in the United States.1 There are at least as many more persons, out of prison, who belong to the criminal class, making 150,000 criminals, or one for every four hundred inhabitants. This army is recruited partly from the importation of vicious foreigners, partly from the dregs of our own society, but largely from the better elements of our population. A careful inquiry in the Minnesota State Reform School, some time ago, revealed the fact that the majority of the boys committed for crime had attended Sunday-school until near the time of their commit

Forty per cent of them came directly from homes; forty-eight per cent more had lived at home within one year of their commitment; and only twelve per cent were entirely homeless. The assistant superintendent of the new Minnesota Reformatory for young men, an experienced prison officer, remarked recently that he had never seen so intelligent and fine looking a body of convicts as the thirty-five young men who had been committed to the Reformatory by the courts.

1 See Tenth Census, Vol. xxii. p. 479, which shows 58,609 prisoners in 1880.

Crime is a contagious disease, and its spread is not confined to the debased classes. All authorities agree that crime is increasing in the United States faster than the population is increasing. It is manifest that popular education and the existing moral and religious agencies are not sufficient protection. If we are to check its spread, there must be improvement both in our preventive and remedial agencies. While crime is increasing here, there has been an extraordinary decrease in Great Britain; the number of convicts serving sentence of penal servitude having decreased1 from 10,500 in 1883 to 6,400 in 1889, a decrease of forty per cent in six years. It is claimed that this decrease represents a great diminution of crime, and is due largely to improved and reformatory methods of dealing with criminals. If this claim be true, the English prison system merits our careful study.

In addition to the interest which belongs to this subject as a study in social science and because of its relation to public morals and public economy, it has doubtless a personal interest to some of you who read, because you yourselves have at one time or another of your lives belonged to the criminal class. What is a criminal? According to Webster, it is "a person who has committed an offence against law." We are accustomed to apply the term to those who have been shown to be guilty of crime; but it is applicable to all violaters of the law, whether they have been publicly recognized as law-breakers or not. What is reformation? It is the reclaiming of a criminal so that he becomes established as a law-abiding member of society. It involves a correction of the outward conduct, but not, necessarily, a change of inward character: a bad man may reform and yet remain bad at heart.

1 Report of the Directors of Convict Prisons for 1888-89, Part I. p. vi. 2 Special report of Charleton T. Lewis and Richard A. McCurdy. Report of New York Prison Association for 1885, p. 89.

See