The Atonement : a Clerical Symposium on "What is the
Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement?" (Nisbet and Co.)—The majority of the fourteen contributors to this Symposium uphold as Scriptural the expiatory yiew - of Christ's death, varying, .however, in the distinctness and ability with which they state their ideas. Three papers alone seem to us to call for distinctive notice,—No.. VII., by Mr. Barlow, as offering a mystical interpretation of the mystery, the outward being suggestive to the writer of the inward and veritable; No. IX., by Mr. Edward White, as expound- ing his own favourite doctrine of conditional immortality ; and No. XL, by Professor Abrahams, in which it is the writer's endeavour, to show that the Jewish sacrifices had no expiatory value, either in themselves, or regarded as typical of a necessary expiation to come. The other writers, with the exception of Dr. Littledale, Mr. Hoppe, and Archdeacon Farrar, adopt more or less broadly the view that the Atonement was necessary to set God right with his creatures; and are concerned chiefly with an endeavour to explain the anomaly which they are not slow to discover between this idea. and the statement that He is the author of the expiation, as well as its subject.
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