miraculous atonement as St. Paul has actually given them. For St. Paul, who so admirably seized the secret of Jesus, who preached Christ crucified,[1] but who placed salvation in being able to say, I am crucified with Christ![2]—St. Paul warns us clearly, that this word of the cross, as he calls it, is so simple, being neither miracle nor metaphysics, that it would be thought foolishness. The Jews want miracle, he says, and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I preach Christ crucified![3]—that is, the 'secret' of Jesus, as we call it. The Jews want miracle!—that is a warning against Dr. Marsh's or Mr. Spurgeon's doctrine, against Evangelical Protestantism's phantasmagories of the 'Contract in the Council of the Trinity,' the 'Atoning Blood,' and 'Imputed Righteousness.' The Greeks want metaphysics!—that is a warning against the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, with their Aryan genius (if so ill-sounding a word as Aryan, spell it how one may, can ever be properly applied to our bishops, and one ought not rather to say Indo-European), dressing the popular doctrine out with fine speculations about the Godhead of the Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality with the Father, and so on. But we preach, says St. Paul, Christ crucified!—to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion a stumbling-block, to the bishops and to learned religion foolishness; but, to them that are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. That is, we preach a doctrine, not thaumaturgical and not speculative, but practical and experimental; a doctrine which has no meaning except in positive application to conduct, but in this application is inexhaustible.
So false, so astoundingly false (thus one is inclined to say by the light which the 'Zeit-Geist' is beginning to hold
