forgiveness of her child's offence, possesses an element which is inexplicable by the mere reason. A child who has offended and feels his fault and his mother's anger, is grieved and mournful; he 'goes heavily,' his faculties of life are checked. With forgiveness, complete and accepted forgiveness, there comes a change that we can only describe as regenerative, lifegiving: the offender passes from death into life, the offence is forgotten, the load is lifted from him. Can this change be explained? Is it not rather a mystery, incomprehensible to anyone who has not experienced it, but a fact to anyone who has known forgiveness? The objection. might easily be made to this restorative effect-as it is often made to the assurance of forgiveness received from the Atonement-that it destroys personal responsibility, and by another's action sets a man free, not only from the external results of his act, but from the guilt itself. Nothing, it may be said, can relieve a man from the burden of his sin, no assurance of forgiveness can do more than convince him that others have forgotten his offence. But the simple answer is, that forgiveness, in our own experience, does effect more than this. As Dr. Westcott, though in a somewhat different connection, observes, 'we can even see in some degree how this outflow of regenerating love transforms the consequences of the past. A feeling of freedom and life, of fresh and instinctive happiness, is the result, in human experience, of complete forgiveness; the only requisites are, first, the thorough consciousness of sin, and then the certainty that the forgiveness is complete and absolute. The Atonement, the Cross of Christ, as has often been said, both stimulates the consciousness of sin, by its awful revelation of the results of sin, and also conveys-as no word, no other act could convey-the assurance that the forgiveness of Him against Whom we have offended is unbounded and complete.

These two considerations then, taken together, seem to throw as much light as human analogies can throw upon the mystery of the Atonement. The analogy of a leader's share in the acts and in the punishment of his people shows that the injustice, if injustice it be, is not confined to the theological account of the Death of Christ, but results from the 'solidarity of mankind, and may be met with in our daily experience; the analogy of human forgiveness tells us that Redemption through the Cross of Christ has its image in the commonest relations of man to man. Of course, there are other and deeper mysteries in the Atonement, and perhaps man's intellect will never be able to pass beyond Dr. Westcott's

confession of ignorance: How His life and death avails with the Father for us is a question which we have no power to answer.' We have only tried to illustrate the human aspect of the Atonement: its justice, and the restorative power of its assurance of forgiveness. But whether our analogies are valid or not, we would plead for some such method of expounding theological truths. The regions of human life and experience that supply the counterparts of these truths need not be strange and remote; they need not be confined to the discoveries of the learned, but may lie open to the thoughts and perceptions of the simple and ignorant. One thing is certain, that a religious system which cannot be explained, which cannot be brought into the common experience of men, will, even if accepted in theory, remain fruitless in practice; it will have no bearings on life.

This brings us to the third mode in which we have said all theological doctrines should be treated. After being stated and explained by analogy, they should lastly be shown in their practical results, in their relations to life and conduct. Here, fortunately, we need not spend much time; for this mode of treatment is admirably illustrated by Dr. Westcott in the present work. We are not thinking so much of the moral and practical results of Christianity as they are usually considered, of the actual improvement it has wrought in men's conduct and in social life, for this is now a well-worn subject; but we are thinking of the results of Christian doctrines upon the inner life and upon the mental character. There is room for a systematic exposition of the alteration which the articles of faith have produced and ought to produce in our thoughts about the world and life. In these days, when men are giving up the doctrines, but are unconsciously clinging to the intellectual results and accompaniments of those doctrines-because they cannot shake off the atmosphere in which they and their fathers have lived and breathed-it is very important that they should be shown the immense and far-reaching results of what they think are abstract dogmas. Such, for example, is the influence of the doctrine of the Church upon our conception of human society, the transformation of Jewish and Pagan exclusiveness and individualism into the modern idea of the brotherhood of man by S. Paul's analogical exposition of our membership one with another. Another instance we will give, in Dr. Westcott's own words about the final coming of Christ :

'It is a Judgment universal and personal. In its universal aspect it is the supreme declaration of the truth that there is an end, a goal

for creation, a purpose to be fulfilled, a will to be accomplished. We, who see but small fragments of social movement which distract and engross us, are apt to regard history as an aimless succession of changes. Such would be the judgment which a being of narrower faculties might form from observing a few days or hours of our individual lives. But from time to time revolutions, which are seen to be the intelligible results of the past, reveal the reality of a law of progress in the life of humanity. By the revelation of the final Judgment we are enabled to see that for mankind, as for men, there is an appointed close to earthly work.'

This 'judgment of the world,' which is something infinitely more, though it includes this, than the just retribution of individuals,' must, if we accept it as a truth, colour our whole conception of history, and enter into all our speculations as to the future course of society.

It is not necessary, were it even possible in our space, to develop this method at greater length. The Incarnation, and its elevation of all human life and conditions into the sphere of the Divine and Eternal; the doctrine of the Trinity, with its profound bearings upon our conceptions of family life, and its substitution, so to speak, of Love for Power as the central thought of the universe; the consistency and reality given by the doctrines of Original Sin and of the Fall to our theories of human nature, are instances of the way in which such a method might be worked, and will suggest the value of a systematic development of it. For, as in the case of analogies, these thoughts lie scattered about us in many forms, and many of them only need to be put together to impress any thoughtful student with the profound importance of Christianity, and its complete harmony with our deepest needs, our loftiest thoughts, and our most varied destinies. Without some such demonstration of the far-reaching consequences of Christian dogmas men tend to fall into the state of mind that Dr. Westcott describes in solemn words: 'Our eyes are dim and our hearts are cold. We fancy that that is far off which is about our feet. We treat as a thought almost indifferent that which is a revelation of the issues of life.'

ART. IV.-A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE MIRACLE AT BETH-HORON.

1. The Speaker's Commentary, vol. ii. Canon Espin on Joshua. (London, 1872.)

2. Commentary on Old Testament. Edited by Bishop ELLICOTT, vol. ii. Rev. C. H. Waller on Joshua. (London,

1883.)

3. Commentary on Joshua. By Dr. KEIL. (Edinburgh, 1857.) 4. Can we Believe in Miracles? By GEORGE WARINGTON.

(London.)

IN this article we propose to submit to a critical examination the miraculous event recorded in the Book of Joshua, chap. x. 12-14:

'Then spake Joshua to the Lord, in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.'

The first thing that strikes us on reading this passage is that the miracle here indicated is unique of its kind. Nothing else like it is to be found in the pages of Scripture. At the command of Joshua, or perhaps rather we should say his prayer, the sun stood still in the heavens while he took vengeance on his foes. Let us see what is involved by this occurrence as literally and popularly understood. The apparent motion of the sun from east to west, we now know, is produced by the earth revolving on its axis. The appearance, therefore, of the sun standing still in the sky would be produced by a cessation for a time of the rotation of the earth; and the immediate consequence of such a sudden stoppage would be that everything which rests or moves on the face of the earth would be violently projected into space with a velocity considerably greater than that of a cannon ball, just as a stone is projected from a catapult. To avert this disastrous result the law of centrifugal force must have been temporarily suspended, and by Divine intervention every

separate pebble and grain of sand must miraculously have been held in its place. And that this could be done by the bare fiat of the Almighty nobody will have the hardihood to deny. Only believe that the God of nature is indeed omnipotent, and it follows there is for Him no distinction of difficult and easy. By the mere exercise of His will He can lay His finger on the great 'wheel of nature' (S. James, iii. 6) and arrest the revolutions of the planets, suspending the laws of motion and gravitation, which at first He imparted to matter, by the higher law of His direct providential interference. And this amazing breach in the uniformity of His universe we believe He might conceivably vouchsafe to produce, in order that a little army of His chosen people might, at a critical moment, be enabled to win a more complete victory over their enemies in the fields of Palestine.1 But the thought will occur, even to those who have no desire to minimize the miraculous element in the Sacred Records, Is this in keeping with what we know of the Divine Economy? Is it not God's way of working always to work out the greatest possible results by the simplest possible means-to ensure the grandest issues by the least intricate machinery? In human affairs we use the contemptuous phrase, 'To break a butterfly on the wheel,' for a disproportionate expenditure of effort in punishing a puny offender; but with God there is never a waste of power, nor inadequacy of result.

Have we, then, no alternative but to believe that Almighty God secured the overthrow of the Amorites by deranging the solar system, viz. by arresting the revolution of the earth, and counteracting in millions of instances the disruption and devastation which would otherwise have inevitably followed? For all this is involved in the popular interpretation. We do not shrink from believing in this miracle to the fullest extent, if indeed this is the literal meaning, and the only meaning, which the language of the original text will bear. If the inspired record expressly declares that this stupendous thing really came to pass, speaking for the great majority of Christian men, we do not hesitate to say that we are ready to bow implicitly to its authority. The question for us then is, not whether we are bound to believe what the Word of God says, but what in fact it does say. It is a matter essentially of interpretation. The true meaning of the original words we must therefore set ourselves carefully and reverently to investigate.

Some of the old divines thought it worth their while to adduce parallels to the sun staying his course from the heathen mythology; e.g. Bishop Patrick, in loco; Thomas Jackson, Works, 1673, vol. i. p. 54.