tent of this list of books, pamphlets, tracts and other published matter upon this subject which Dr. Eddy has gathered up. In favor of this great doctrine and against it he enumerates nearly 2300 separate books, treatises, etc., ctc. The amount of labor required in the performance of this task is something formidable to contemplate, but to one who wishes to make himself acquainted with the controversy in its current form through these seven or eight generations, it is simply invaluable. It would be surprising if it were not incomplete, but here is enough to give the most earnest inquirer all the light he needs. Indeed, the very titles which Dr. Eddy has carefully exhibited in full with date and place of publication, would give one a pretty good conception of the temper of the times and the animus of the writers. We owe the author a debt of gratitude for this labor of love, which, though it appears as an appendix, is hardly surpassed in interest or value by any other part of the work. I am sensible how imperfect a conception of the work itself any thing I have said or can say must necessarily give; but if it shall excite in the reader a desire to see the volume here noticed, my purpose will be reached. The work is creditable in every way to the industry, the patience, the candor of the author, and an honor to the denomination whose history it so faithfully and vividly sketches. It traces the growth of our cause and organization from the smallest beginnings, in the midst of opposition and strife, through difficulties and dangers, to their present enviable and commanding position; and whatever the world may think of the faith we hold, the doctrine we preach, it will be obliged to confess that we have never been ashamed of it, never faltered in our allegiance to it, and never sought by unworthy means to win the favor or fellowship of our neighbors. As a denomination we were born to no inheritance of church edifices and funds and seats of learning. At the beginning we had only our own hands and the truth of God. What we are to-day we have under divine providence made ourselves. What we possess we have earned. Our temples of worship, our institutions of 18 NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV learning, our religious press, all our present means of communication and progress we have ourselves created. The religious world about us has not only lent us no aid, encouraged us by no sympathy, but has with rare exceptions frowned upon us, opposed us, traduced us, and by all the means in its power sought to resist our progress and counteract our influence. Yet it is no egotism to say that the Universalist Church has been teaching the Orthodox world some truths it never knew before. Its better views of God, its larger hopes in respect to the extent of Christ's salvation, the glimpses it catches now and then of the benign reign of a Father, a wider heaven and a narrower hell, reduced even by Professor Shedd to a mere corner of the universe," " a covered up hole "— what is all this but the effect of the great truth we preach, and that Christ and his apostles preached so long before us, that " God is Love?" 66 Throughout our history Universalists have stood for the Bible and revealed religion and stand there still. To swerve from this position would be to cut the nerve of our power and blast all our hopes of success. Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. In hoc vinces, is our motto, and by this we shall conquer. Our history shows, too, that while we have maintained order and not been remiss above others in good works we have been ready to do our part in all the re forms of the age, which promised the improvement of society. In conclusion let me say that "Universalism in America " is a work which, while it may have some interest for religious people of every sect, has special claims upon the members of our own denomination. No intelligent Universalist should be ignorant of the history of his own Church, and this applies with double force to our ministers. No preacher of our blessed faith can afford to be ignorant of the history of the denomination of which he is a professed teacher, and nowhere else is this history to be found but in the volumes before us. Our young ministers, above all, need to make themselves acquainted with this work. They should know what it has cost, what self sacrifice and suffering, to build up our Church as they now see it. It will teach them to reverence the faithful who in earlier times labored under so many difficulties and yet so well, and into whose labors amidst so many advantages they have entered. T. J. Sawyer, D.D. ARTICLE XVII. A Study of the Atonement. THE poet Young, in the last of his seven "Satires on the Love of Fame," promised his readers "Some future strain, in which the Muse shall tell And hold their farthing candle to the sun; How tortured texts to speak our sense are made, and although his language was confessedly satirical, it was barbed with sufficient truthfulness to make it stick in the public mind, where, like a well-aimed and strongly driven shaft, it still holds lodgment, and to some extent serves its original end. For notwithstanding the patent fact that science in general has not dwindled, but increased, within the last hundred years, and that, together with the other sciences, that of Biblical interpretatien has made notable gains, it is still true that many commentators and representatives of the various exegetical schools are prone to shun those Scriptural passages which cannot be explained in the light of their views, or to twist and pervert them as ingeniously as possible to bring them into seeming harmony with the dogmas which they fondly cherish, and to which they have pledged themselves beforehand. I bring no railing accusation against any particular set of interpreters. I simply call attention to a prevalent tendency, which is limited to no one sect, but from which, probably, no sect is entirely free. I make bold to say that in my opinion our own sect is not entirely beyond some suspicion of being influenced by that tendency, in respect to its treatment of certain passages which bear upon disputed questions. Not so much in regard to the foremost question upon which it has differed, and differs still, from the most of the other great bodies of Christians, as in regard to some lesser and subordinate questions, do I think that 1 see that this suspicion is true. No one can justly charge the Universalist Church with having shunned any of the passages which bear, or are supposed to bear, on the pre-eminently important question of the destiny of human kind. Far from it, this Church has made a specialty of the interpretation of those passages, and has dealt no less frequently and openly with such of them as are commonly claimed by the Partialist Churches in support of the doctrine of endless punishment, than with those which support in the plainest manner the great doctrine of the final salvation of all men. Universalist preachers and commentators, instead of shunning the passages which relate to the punishment of impenitent people, have sometimes been charged, on the other hand, with treating those passages too exclusively, to the neglect of other portions of God's word to mankind. They have been charged with an excess of controversialism. Whether this charge be true or not, it exonerates them from the counter charge of refusing to consider those parts of the Bible. As a matter of fact, they have not only considered them, but have rescued them from the darkness in which the Partialistic interpretation involved them. They have been the pioneers in throwing light upon those passages and showing what they really mean. That they have made them all entirely clear is perhaps more than can be fairly claimed. think it is; and for my own part, I am still waiting for a thoroughly satisfactory explanation of those passages which refer to the second death. But in the main the Universalist exegesis of those portions of Scripture which bear on the subject of human destiny, is clear, and rational, and convincing. Every year it makes converts among scholars and thinkers, and in the end it will surely prevail as the truth. I I am not sure that the same can be said, however, in regard to a certain class of passages which relate to the method, or to the moral and spiritual processes, by which the result is to be accomplished. To speak more directly, I doubt the correctness, in one important particular, of the ordinary Universalist idea of the atonement, and the ordinary Universalist man er of dealing with some of the passages which bear upon it. As a sample of the class of passages to which I refer, let me instance the first and second verses of the second chapter of the first general epistle of John: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." I am not satisfied with the manner in which our Church has treated this passage; for while it has properly laid great stress upon the evidence which the passage furnishes as to the extensiveness of the work which Christ does for mankind, it has failed, in my opinion, to give due recognition to the character of that work, or the nature of that atonement, as indicated by the language of which the apostle makes use. It has failed to give a clear and satisfactory explanation of the statement that Jesus Christ is our advocate with the Father, and the propitiation for our sins. Indeed, so far as I know, it has hardly given any explanation at all, but has contented itself with denying and disproving the interpretation which is given by the Partialist Churches. I say the interpretation, rather than the interpretations, of the Partialist Churches, because, notwithstanding the variations to which it is subjected by them, they all hold to the same fundamental theory, basing their various modifications upon essentially the same premises which they assume to begin with. What their theory is may be briefly told; viz., that sin is an infinite offence against God, on account of which He was infinitely angry at us, and had justly condemned us to infinite punishment or, in other words, to be excluded from His presence, and to be consigned, at the death of our bodies, to a place or condition of outer darkness, in common language known as hell, |