OBITUARY. 1849. March 3, at Sidmouth, in her sickness were equal to the purity and 84th year, Mrs. HARRIET ROSE. April 1, at Stanningley, near Leeds, Mr. RICHARD VARLEY. Mr. Varley was born December 15, 1815, and was brought up as a Wesleyan Methodist. When he began to think and read for himself, he gradually discovered that the ordinary doctrines received in the religious connection to which he belonged, did not accord with the teachings and general spirit of the New Testament, and he was led to give up, seriatim, the doctrines of the Trinity, vicarious sacrifice, and eternal life in torments. There being, however, at that time no religious society in the village with which he held a nearer agreement, and his desire for religious fellowship being very earnest, he remained for many years united to this body. Mr. Barker's preaching led to the assembling together of several whose opinions on theological subjects he found to be very much in accordance with his own; and though they were all working men of little education, and he belonged to the great family of the village, he joined himself to them, and continued to death their adviser, friend, instructor and brother inquirer. It is to his steady excellence of character and piety of disposition, that the little society at Stanningley mainly owed the elements of their strength, and that they were not carried away by that mere love of debate and excitement which has led to the dispersion and overthrow of so many of the societies which originated in the same manner as their own. Mr. Varley was very anxious that it should be distinctly understood that he held firmly to his religious sentiments to the last hour of life. He said, within a day or two of his death, to his wife, who wrote down his words at the time"It is the general belief that my religion does not make people happy, but" (with great emphasis) "it does. There is one God, and one Mediator, Jesus Christ.' His thoughts had long been absorbingly turned in the direction whither his spirit has now fled; and his eager desire to penetrate the mystery of the future state, and to know of its nature and its employments, latterly seemed to occupy his whole mind. His resignation and devout piety in his last simplicity of his life. His funeral sermon was preached on the afternoon of Sunday, April 15, by the Rev. Charles Wicksteed, of Leeds, in the presence of the members of his family and a large and crowded audience of friends and neighbours of different persuasions. April 1, at Plymouth, aged 58, Miss SARAH LANG, sister of the late Samuel Lang, Esq., of Bristol, whose death we recently recorded. Miss Lang had for many years been a much-esteemed member of the Plymouth Unitarian congregation, always feeling and manifesting a deep interest in its prosperity, and desirous to aid the Sunday-school and other institutions. She sincerely valued the faith which she professed as a Unitarian Christian, and experienced its sustaining and salutary influence in many periods of sorrow and suffering, and in the prospect of death. In her regular and serious attendance on public worship, her example is well worthy the imitation of those who permit either indifference or some trifling obstacle to prevent their being present in the house of prayer. Worldly possessions were considered by her as talents and means of usefulness, for which an account will be required at the tribunal of the final judge. She was a warm-hearted and generous friend; and her memory is endeared to many by acts of kindness which will not soon be forgotten. When appealed to on behalf of any benevolent object or useful institution, the appeal was never made in vain. So long as her health and strength permitted, she was a teacher in the Sunday-school and a welcome visitor to the poor, who by her death are deprived of a sympathizing friend and kind benefactor. "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." April 8, at Widcombe, in the Isle of Wight, in her 29th year, ANNE LONG, the beloved wife of William HUGHES, Esq., and daughter of the late Alexander Kellet, Esq., of the 1st Royals. April 26th, at Framlingham, aged three years, THOMAS, the eldest child of Mr. SAMUEL KEER BARKER. He was, for a few years junior, and through the larger portion of nearly half a century, the surviving, partner in the very respectable firm of James Belcher and Son. Long before the elder Mr. Belcher engaged in trade as a Printer and Bookseller, the literary state of Birmingham had greatly improved upon what it was at a period when that busy town "did not contain a single regular shop where a Bible or an Almanac could be bought." With an increasing and better-educated population, the number of readers, and of authors likewise, had increased. The late Mr. Belcher, on coming of age, joined his father in the office and the shop, where he had served his apprenticeship; and here he sustained an hereditary reputation for skill, assiduity, intelligence, and yet higher qualities, by the exercise of which he won no ordinary regard, and secured extensive and honourable patronage.‡ There are those who delight in calling to mind his filial piety; his love and cultivation of the sweet charities of the parental home; his earnest and successful aim at fulfilling his obligations to those who, under God, were the authors of his being. Conscientious kindness and probity distinguished him in other walks of social intercourse; and, though his life was comparatively private and secluded-the more so be cause, during several years of it, he was Macaulay's Hist. of England, &c., Chap. iii. + Mon. Repos. for 1810, p. 148. Among the steadiest of his patrons and friends, Dr. Samuel Parr is to be specially noticed. prevented by deafness from receiving and communicating some of the best of pleasures-he by no means lived to himself. His talents and attainments would have adorned and blessed a yet wider circle than that in which he moved. His stores of knowledge were ample, various, and well considered and arranged his powers of memory, judgment and discrimination, strong, clear and exact, beyond what are commonly witnessed. In the days of his prime and vigour, ere he was incapable of joining freely in conversation, he imparted to others, ungrudgingly yet unostentatiously, the fruits of his careful thought and reading. But this he did with much deliberation and good sense: for he was extremely averse from discoursing on subjects which had not previously occupied his attention. I believe that, from youth to age, he acted upon the best and highest principles. He was just to his own convictions on themes of moment, and just also to the convictions of others; and habitually mindful of his fallibility, dependence and accountableness. Who can wonder that he was much honoured while he lived, and that he is proportionably lamented in death? The time, manner and circumstances of his removal from among us, were not under human control. Be the will of Heaven unreservedly obeyed in whatever it appoints: and be it the grand purpose of survivors to copy after whatever was truly good in the characters of their departed associates and friends! N. May 18, at Wolverhampton, in the 29th year of his age, of typhus fever, caught whilst engaged in his professional duties, Mr. WILLIAM GRUNDY, surgeon, of that place, and grandson of the late Rev. Thomas Grundy, fifty years Dissenting minister of Lutterworth and Ullesthorpe, in Leicestershire, and nephew of the late Rev. Thomas Mitchell, of Kingsdown, Bristol, many years minister at Leicester and Stoke Newington. This was sudden and unexpected; although he had, for many weeks, been a sufferer from complicated disease. THE CHRISTIAN REFORMER. No. LV.] JULY, 1849. [VOL. V. MR. BARLING ON THE ATONEMENT. [The article that follows is the substance of a lecture recently delivered to a crowded congregation at the Unitarian chapel, Halifax, by Rev. John Barling, who formerly exercised his ministry amongst a congregation of Independents in that town. It is sometimes alleged that Unitarians in controversy misstate and exaggerate the opinions of their 'orthodox' opponents. Mr. Barling is entitled from his past position to speak with authority concerning the opinions actually held in orthodox' churches on the subject of the Atonement. This circumstance gives peculiar value to his statements. We hope in a future No. to give a second article on the subject from the same able pen. ED. C. R.] 1 Pet. iii. 18: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God." THE subject announced for this evening's lecture, is the common doctrine of Atonement. I am glad to have an opportunity of giving some public account of the considerations which have led me to alter the views which I once held on this subject. That alteration has not been of sudden growth. When, fifteen years ago, I resigned my pastoral charge in this town, my mind, although disturbed on several points of Christian doctrine, was yet not so unsettled as to forbid a very sanguine hope that a short recess would restore me to my usual confidence. In this I was not altogether disappointed, and hence engaged freely in occasional labours for my brother ministers of the Independent denomination, though declining to accept a settled charge. But as I pursued my inquiries, and that with less restraint than was possible as the salaried advocate of the opinions I wished to examine, doubts again came over me, and with greater force than before, until, about six years ago, I felt I could no longer officiate in the pulpits of my brother ministers without giving offence, or exposing myself to the serious temptation of dishonest concealment. I have thus been debarred the opportunity of explaining myself in those places where it may be presumed explanation would have been the most interesting and useful. Should any of my former hearers be in the congregation of this evening, desirous of knowing what their pastor of fifteen and twenty years ago (for I can speak almost as an ancient) has to say on a doctrine which he has often handled before them under other auspices, I trust they will hear me with that attention and seriousness which the subject demands, and consider that forty years may not be less entitled to a hearing than thirty or twenty. The doctrine we are to examine is the following-that all mankind having broken the laws of God, it was incumbent on him, as the Moral 3 D VOL. V. Ruler of the universe, to put in execution the threatenings by which his laws had been guarded, which are supposed to have been no less than everlasting exclusion from his presence and favour, with all the untold and inconceivable miseries which must arise from such a loss, without hope of reparation. This frightful calamity overhung, as it is supposed, the whole race,-men of every clime and of every age, children as well as adults, infants who have never seen the light, as well as men who have grown old in sin. One indiscriminate doom awaited all; or, if discriminate in respect of the degree of suffering, yet indiscriminate in respect of duration-the one appalling feature which casts every other into the shade, and shuts up the whole human race to despair. In this extremity, divine mercy interposes with the following expedient-that Jesus Christ, who is held to be very God as very man, and pure in his human nature as in his divine, shall undergo certain grievous sufferings both of body and of mind, and yield up his human life on a cross; in consideration of which, the penalty overhanging the race (vast, horrible and inconceivable as it is) shall be revoked, and a free pardon issued to as many as shall repent and believe. It is allowed that between the redemptive sufferings and those averted no proper proportion exists in respect of magnitude. A feather weighed against a mountain or against the globe itself-aye, or the universe entire, would not sufficiently represent the infinite disparity which exists between them. But it is held, that what the former want in respect of magnitude, they gain, and more than gain, in respect of value and importance by the dignity of the sufferer. And therefore it has been argued that one drop of the Saviour's blood, or one pang, would have been sufficient to cancel the sins of all mankind, if it had appeared to Divine Wisdom that the ends of punishment could have been answered by such a modicum of suffering. As, however, it is supposed that the special design of the atonement was to produce an impression on the minds of creatures, it was judged expedient to subject him to great sufferings. Accordingly, it is usually held, that over and above the natural evils which befel our Saviour as a partaker with us of flesh and blood, and those which were brought on him by the malice of his enemies, and which issued in his cruel death, there was laid upon him, towards the close of life, an extraordinary and peculiar chastisement by the hand of God himself—a chastisement spiritual in its nature, but of so terrible a kind as utterly to eclipse all his other sufferings, and to have overwhelmed a mere creature. In this the satisfaction is supposed to have mainly centred. Let me give you a quotation or two from a sermon by the late R. Hall: "While we accompany the Saviour through the successive stages of his mortal sojourning, marked by a corresponding succession of trials, each of which was more severe than the former, till the scene darkened, and the clouds of wrath from heaven and from earth, pregnant with materials which nothing but a Divine hand could have collected, discharged themselves on him in a deluge of agony and of blood, under which he expired,-we see at once the sufficiency, I had almost said the redundancy, of the atonement." Again: "This is the mirror which reflects the true features and lineaments of moral evil, and displays more of its demerit than the most profound contemplation of the law, of the purity of its precepts or the terror of its sanctions, could have done. In pouring out its vials on the head of that innocent and adorable victim, it evinced its inflexible severity, its awful majesty, to an extent and in a form never conceived before."-Serm. on Substitution, I. 515, 522, 523. Against this doctrine I shall urge to-night two objections. This is all I can do conveniently in the compass of a single discourse. The subject will be continued in a subsequent lecture. I. The first objection is this-that Jesus is improperly spoken of as God in the absolute sense of the word. The reasons which have led me to alter my views on this point are already before the public, and I need do no more this evening than thus briefly refer to them. Jesus was a man; and though wonderfully endowed with divine power when on the earth, and now exalted to an elevated rank in the scale of being, yet is always to be distinguished from the Infinite Being who made him what he is, and gave him all the authority which he holds. His sufferings, therefore, must want that element of grandeur which is supposed to compensate for their essential insignificance, as contrasted with the eternal miseries from which they are supposed to deliver. This, you perceive, is a Unitarian objection; that is to say, an objection arising out of what I cannot but deem to be scriptural views of the unity of God and the person of Christ. But I believe it lies against the doctrine we are examining, even as held by many Trinitarians. And, first, let me speak of those who agree with the Unitarians in saying that there is but one Infinite Agent, as one Infinite Being, one Infinite Mind, one God, but who differ from them in holding that there is a certain triune distinction in the mysterious nature of this Great Being; of which, however, they say they can form no conception, and which, therefore, one would think, must be utterly devoid of every practical influence. The only idea they can form of the divinity of Jesus, is that of the indwelling (as it has been called) of this Great Being in the man Jesus. Whenever, therefore, they conceive of him as God absolute, they must identify him with that Being whom Unitarians unite with them in worshiping; and whenever they distinguish between him and this glorious Being, his Father and God (as the New Testament perpetually does, and the exigencies of their creed compel them to do too), he, i. e. Jesus, cannot be in their eyes any more than the agent, representative and servant of the Father; that is to say, they must conceive of him after the manner of Socinus and his friends. Now, as it is in his mediate capacity alone that he can be supposed to suffer and make atonement for our sins, these Trinitarians are as certainly debarred the plea of an infinite atonement as the Socinians themselves. The personality (as divines speak) must, on their principles, reside in the human nature. The person, the Jesus, that was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, &c., can only be, on their principles, a man, wonderfully endowed, it is true, but still a man, to whose actions and sufferings a truly divine grandeur cannot be supposed to appertain without annihilating his person, or confounding it with that of the Father, the old Patripassian belief, which has been condemned over and over again as heresy. perhaps done most to revive it. theology to countenance it. But if Swedenborg in modern times has There is also much in the Moravian any dependence at all is to be placed |