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This doctrine is, indeed, deplorably defective; and there is much more in the same strain in this sermon, in which, contrary to the tenor of some former quotations, the death of Christ is regarded as merely the crowning act of his life, displaying, as in a grand symbolic reality, that which had ever been the inner principle of his life, and having a moral power, in connexion with the grace of the Holy Ghost, to exercise a transforming influence upon the character and course of all who rightly regard it; "becoming thus," to quote Hare's words, "the teeming parent of countless works of the same kind, the first in an endless chain that should girdle the earth, and stretch through all ages."

On the whole, we can come to no conclusion, but that Hare was decidedly non-evangelical on this grand doctrine of atonement, though we rejoice in believing that the faith of his heart was often better than the doctrine of his head. If we have seemed to labour this point, it has been because, in his own country, Hare is not unfrequently claimed by evangelical Church of England journals, (The Christian Observer and Church of England Quarterly, for example,) as belonging to their party; is counted as such by many of the clergy of his own Church, and by other parties has been generally held to occupy at least a doubtful position. His expressions, indeed, often approach to evangelical orthodoxy-he had strong sympathies in favour of the old-fashioned evangelical truths-but fundamentally and intellectually he was, we grieve to repeat, not orthodox in his evangelical creed.

There exists an intimate connexion between the doctrine of a vicarious atonement for sin, and that of justification by faith. Hare, indeed, disbelieved the former, and yet, in a sense, believed the latter. But we must distinguish in what sense Christian faith, according to him, signifies a general persuasion of God's good will to man, as manifested in the incarnation, the life, and death of his Son. When a sinner becomes persuaded of this, his own attitude toward God becomes that of gratitude and trust; his affections are set right; and at the same time that the sinner thus trusts and believes in God the Father, through Christ, he becomes an actual recipient of his pardoning love, and of a growing influence of the Holy Spirit. He has put away his rebellion and his unbelief, and God at once puts away his anger. The sinner is now justified; he is set right with God. From this time forth he is in process of sanctification. All this Hare seems to call the work of regeneration, nor does he draw the distinction anywhere, so far as we have noted it, between regeneration and sanctification.

Such a doctrine is rather one of regeneration by faith, than of justi

fication by faith, in the ordinary Protestant sense. Faith is supposed to bring the sinner into appropriate spiritual dispositions toward God, as his Maker, Judge, and Redeemer; and thereupon God is represented as sending down upon the sinner, both the light of his countenance and the hallowing influences of his Spirit. Faith, in fact, operates morally upon the believer, producing in him such a state of feeling as is congruous to the Father's purposes of love, and to the operation of the indwelling, hallowing Spirit. Whereas, according to the true Reformation doctrine, such as it is taught, for example, in the Homilies of the Church of England, justifying faith is understood to be exercised specifically in Christ, as by his death making expiation and satisfaction for the sinner's guilt, or (to put the same idea in another light) in God's covenant with mankind in Christ, as offering them pardon for the sake of Christ's death; and this faith, whatever may be its congruity as a condition, is yet viewed merely as a condition of justification.

Justification, again, according to the same doctrine, the doctrine of the Reformation, is viewed as a change, primarily and properly, not of disposition or principle on man's part, but merely of relation, as "a relative, not a real, change," to use the established phraseology. Only, coinstantaneously with this exercise of justifying faith on the part of the sinner, and the correspondent act of pardon or justification on the part of God, there is believed to be conveyed the special and covenanted gift of the Holy Ghost, whereby the sinner becomes "a new creature."

Hare talks much, indeed, about Christ as the sinner's righteousness; but with him this seems to be but a compendious expression, which must be taken to signify, that the faith in the life, and especially in the death, of Christ, the Son of God, is the origin of the sinner's righteousness; and, further, that the righteousness of Christ, as the God-Man, becomes both the standard and source of the believer's growing righteousness; or, in a word, that the righteousness which was manifested in Christ, as God-Incarnate, and the righteousness which is derived from him, constitute the only ground and source of righteousness to the sinner. Christ is thus his righteousness; and his only trust and hope must be in that. In this sense, to quote Hare's words, the believer is "to seck, through faith, to be justified by the blood of Christ," [that is, he is to be brought to right feelings toward God, and a sense of acceptance before him, through a contemplation of the love of God to man, particularly as shown in the death of Christ, the God-Man, for sinners,]" and casting off all pretensions to any righteousness of his own," [as if his mere unhelped and isolated nature could bring forth righteousness,] he is FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.-22

"to put on his perfect righteousness;" [that is, to gain, by his faith, and love, and the help of the Holy Spirit, a growing conformity to that righteousness of Christ, which is the standard of perfection for humanity.]-Mission of the Comforter, p. 30, cf.

It might be inferred from this, as was, in fact, the case, that Hare was no believer in instantaneous conversion or regeneration. A grand central fact not being presented as the one object for the faith of the penitent sinner to fix upon, and an act of hearty affiance in the blood of Christ as our expiatory sacrifice not being made the immediate condition of justification, and antecedent of regeneration, there is not the same critical hinge on which the whole work of salvation turns. The faith required is rather passive and receptive, than active and appropriating, and, therefore, the operation is less a matter of distinct consciousness, and the crisis less marked. A certain act of faith, a particular exercise of affiance, is not made epochal, vital, determinative. Faith is rather a disposition which is induced, a habit which is formed, and which respects the whole revelation of God in Christ. It does, indeed, view the death of Christ as the crowning act of his life, and that in which he most fully showed forth the nature and love of the Father, and as therefore demanding a more reverent and grateful regard than any other fact in the history of Christ; yet it does not look upon this event as standing toward the sin and guilt of mankind in a relation altogether peculiar and unique. This habit of faith is therefore gradually acquired. There is, indeed, a season of conviction and repentance, during which the habit of a grateful, confiding faith is but in process of formation; and when, in its darker character of guilty fear, this has passed away, through the prevalence of faith, there is then realized a "peace and joy through believing," and the abiding indwelling of the Holy Ghost; but still the seasons and experiences, thus distinguished, melt and pass into each other. In some souls, indeed, the crisis of conviction may be much keener than in others, and the contrast between the different stages and seasons more marked. This, in a fine passage, Hare describes to have been the case with Luther, and to be ordinarily the experience of "spirits of a peculiar depth and earnestness." "The conscience," he says, "thus stirred and shaken, in its agony and bloody sweat, will often, for a while, reject all consolation, and is unable to discern the angel coming to strengthen it through the thickness of the surrounding night." But still this admission does not alter his view of the principles and process involved in justification and regeneration. Most strongly does he lay it down in his Parish Sermons, that those who assert " that they received Christ at such or

such a moment, contradict our Lord's declaration that the kingdom of God cometh not with observation." We need scarcely add that in this point he agreed with Coleridge.*

It is pleasing to find, notwithstanding Hare's particular views on this point, two cases delightfully narrated in the first volume of his Parish Sermons, which are evidently instances of genuine conversion and of blessed religious experience, although the reflection of a hazy doctrine may be observed in the character of some portion of the experience in both instances.

We know not whether it is much to the purpose to observe, that in one place, in his notes to the "Mission of the Comforter," Hare seems disposed to defend, and almost to identify himself with, the " evangelicals," any more than to note, on the contrary, that in his "Contest with Rome," he aims against the same party a significant sneer at "Exeter Hall," and in another place, in the notes already named, tells Mr. Ward, that for him to boast as if he had damaged the reputation of Luther, when he has only hit certain peculiarities of the modern evangelicals, was much as if "Thersites had boasted of having run his spear through Hector, because he had spit at his Lycian auxiliaries." It is certain, that while Hare, with his large heart and devout feeling, saw much to agree with in the doctrine, spirit, and purpose of the evangelical Low Church party in the Church of England, there was also not a little in their creed, prejudices, and tendencies, as a party, with which it could not be expected that he would sympathize. We fear he did not sympathize with all in them which was sound and right; we feel sure, that some part of that which he must have disliked in them was wrong, the result of a narrow and somewhat superficial theology, for the most part highly Calvinistic and enthusiastically pre-millenarian, and of very defective knowledge and training in Biblical criticism.†

Hare's views on the subject of inspiration are the next, and the only other main point to which we shall refer. It is well known how lax were the teachings of Coleridge on this subject, and it is to be feared that Hare's views differed from his rather in degree than in kind. Though we have not found reason for believing that Hare adopted, to the full extent, the views held by Coleridge, and many others of the same school, as to the power and authority of the intuitive reason, yet, on the whole, he is disposed to magnify the intuitive power and faculty of the soul in comparison with the capa

See the "Victory of Faith," passim, but particularly the last sermon in the course; Mission of the Comforter, vol. ii, pp. 25, 30, 102-3, 106-7, 137, 508; "Parish Sermons," vol. i, pp. 34, 35, 75, 76, 142, 449.

† Mission, &c., pp. 557, 731. Contest with Rome, p. 230.

bilities and functions of the understanding. This tendency naturally, if not inevitably, leads to the depression of the authority of the Bible, considered as an exact revelation and standard of objective truth. Its spirit, and the main purport of its teaching, are recognised by the reason as true and divine, and constrain the allegiance of the conscience; but if salvation and sanctification were made to depend, in any important degree, upon the letter and precise statements of the word of God, then the understanding, with its logical processes and discussions, would come to hold too important a relation to the believer's spiritual development. In fact, it will be seen at once, that a logical and systematic theology, constituted out of a number of definite objective truths, upon which a Christian must anchor his faith and hope, becomes a necessity, if the strict doctrine of inspiration, which holds every part of the word of God to be fully and exactly true, is maintained. This doctrine, therefore, will not accord with the theology of those who make faith to be, to repeat the language we recently used, rather passive and receptive, than active and appropriating, and sanctification rather to be, from first to last, an unconscious spiritual process wrought by the progressive assimilation (so to speak) of certain grand ideas, than dependent, at any time, upon the hearty and active reception and appropriation of certain objective truths and distinct utterances of grace and love. Hare, indeed, as he admits more objectiveness into his theology of faith than most others of his school, seems, in like manner, to deal more reverently with the word of God. Whatever may have been his theory on the case, he was a diligent and loving student of the sacred text, and delighted himself in its explicit revelations of truth and promise. Still there are indications, that his views in regard to inspiration were far from sound. We do not find fault with his severe handling of the theory of verbal dictation; for so it ought to be called, and not verbal inspiration; though we have a right to complain that he, as well as Maurice, follows Coleridge in ignoring any other view, as opposed to their own, besides this. But we do deplore, that while he denounces this theory as if it were the only one known in England, he nowhere condescends to even hint at the outline of a better. We are yet more I concerned to observe, that in his "Life of Sterling," he refers to Coleridge's "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," in such a way as, while no caveat is entered against any part of it, to intimate a general approval of its purport; and that, in consistency with this, he makes light, in his "Letter to the Editor of the English Review," of such matters as discrepances in the Evangelists, "which may, indeed, perplex those who cling to the vulgar notion of literal

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