THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
of thought was represented by men like Osiander, Sehwenckfeld, Franck, Weigel, Boohme. In the modern Church a new impulse was given to essentially the same mode of conception by Schleiermacher and his followers (e.g., C. I. Nitzsch, Rothe, Sehoberlein, Lange, Ma rtensen), among whom what is known as the " Mercersburg School " (see Mercerseurg Theology) will be particularly interesting to Americans (e.g., J. W Nevin, The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846). A very influential writer among English theologians of the same general class was F. D. Maurice (1805-72), although he added to his fundamental mystical conception of the work of Christ the further notions that Christ fully identified himself with us and, thus partaking of our sufferings, set us a perfect example of sacrifice of self to God (cf. especially Theological Essays, London, 1853; The Doctrine of Sacrifice, Cambridge, 1854; new ed., 1879). Here, too, must be classed the theory suggested in the writings of the late B. F. Westcott (The Victory of the Cross, London, 1888), which was based on a hypothesis of the efficacy of Christ's blood, borrowed apparently directly from William Milligan (cf . The Ascension and Heavenly High-priesthood of our Lord, London, 1892) though it goes back ultimately to the Socinians, to the effect that Christ's offering of himself is not to be identified with his sufferings and death, but rather with the presentation of his life (which is in his blood, set free by death for this purpose) in heaven. " Taking this blood as efficacious by virtue of the vitality which it contains, Dr. Westcott holds that it was set free from Christ's body that it might vitalize ours, as it were, by transfusion " (C. H. Waller, in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, ii, 1892, p. 656). Somewhat similarly H. Clay Trumbell (The Blood Covenant, New York, 1885) looks upon sacrifices as only a form of blood covenanting, i.e., of instituting blood-brotherhood between man and God by transfusion of blood; and explains the sacrifice of Christ as representing communing in blood, i.e., in the principle of life, between God and man, both of whom Christ represents. The theory which has been called " salvation by sample," or salvation " by gradually extirpated depravity," also has its affinities here. Something like it is as old as Felix of Urgel (d. 818; see Adoptionism), and it has been taught in its full development by Dippel (1673-1734), Swedenborg (1688-1772), Menken (1768-1831), and especially by Edward Irving (1792-1834), and, of course, by the modern followers of Swedenborg (e.g., B. F. Barrett). The essence of this theory is that what was assumed by our Lord was human nature as he found it, that is, as fallen; and that this human nature, as assumed by him, was by the power of his divine nature (or of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him beyond measure) not only kept from sinning, but purified from sin and presented perfect before God as the first-fruits of a saved humanity; men being saved as they become partakers (by faith) of this purified humanity, as they become leavened by this new leaven. Certain of the elements which the great German theologian J. C. K. von Hofmann built into his complicated and not altogether stable theory — a theory
which was the occasion of much discussion about the middle of the nineteenth century — reproduce some of the characteristic language of the theory of " salvation by sample."
3. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating on man, in the way of bringing to bear on him inducements to action; so affecting man as to lead him to a better knowledge of God, or to a more lively sense of his real relation to God, or to a revolutionary change of heart and life with reference to God; the so-called " moral in-
3. "Moral fluence theories." The essence of all
Influence these theories is that they transfer the
Theories." atoning fact from the work of Christ
The Essen- to the response of the human soul to
tial Thought, the influences or appeals proceeding from the work of Christ. Thfi_work of Christ takes immediate effect not on God but on man, leading him to a state of mind and heart which will be acceptable to God, through the medium of which alone can the work of Christ be said to affect God. At its highest level, this will mean that the work of Christ is directed to leading man to repentance and faith, which repentance and faith secure God's favor, an effect which can be attributed to Christ's work only mediately, that is, through the medium of the repentance and faith it produces in man. Accordingly, it has become quite common to say, in this school, that " it is faith and repentance which change the face of God ; " and advocates of this class of theories sometimes say with entire frankness, " There is no atonement other than repentance " (Auguste Sabatier, La Doctrine de V expiation et son evolution historique, Paris, 1903, Eng. transl., London, 1904, p. 127).
Theories of this general type differ from one another, according as, among the instrumentalities by means of which Christ affects the minds and hearts and actions of men, the stress is laid upon his teaching, or his example, or the impression made by his life of faith, or the manifestation of the infinite love of God afforded by his total mission. The most powerful presentation of the first of these conceptions ever made was probably that of the Socinians (followed later by the rationalists, both earlier and later, — Tollner, Bahrdt, Steinbart, Eberhard, Loffier, Henke, Wegscheider). They looked upon the work of Christ as summed
4. Various up in the proclamation of the willing- Forms of ness of God to forgive sin, on the sole
These condition of its abandonment; and Theories, explained his sufferings and death as merely those of a martyr in the cause of righteousness or in some other non-essential way. The theories which lay the stress of Christ's work on the example he has set us of a high and faithful life, or of a life of self-sacrificing love, have found popular representatives not only in the subtle theory with which F. D. Maurice pieced out his mystical view, and in the somewhat amorphous ideas with which the great preacher F. W Robertson clothed his conception of Christ's life as simply a long (and hopeless) battle against the evil of the world to which it at last succumbed; but more lately in writers like Auguste Sabatier, who does not stop short of transmuting Christianity into bald altru-