Chapter XV: Part 15

In her new story, Mrs. Charles has ventured to tread the oft-trodden paths of the age of the Incarnation, and with a delicacy, grace, and devout tenderness that perhaps none of her predecessors have attained. The story opens in Rome in the year A.D. 17. Its personages are a captive German family, brought to Rome by Germanicus--slaves in his household, first becoming acquainted with the pagan life at Rome, then with the heaving Jewish life, which He who was Immanuel was stirring to its depths. Jew and Roman, Greek and Christian represent the various classes of contemporary life. Mrs. Charles is too refined and reverent an artist to bring us into the actual presence of him who taught in Capernaum; but we vividly feel and realize his life; and Siguna and her children, Seivord and Hilda, and Laon, the old Greek, and Cloelia Diodora, the Roman maiden, find its salvation. A more beautiful, pellucid, and tender story has rarely been written.

_Chips from a German Workshop._ By F. MAX MULLER, M.A., Foreign Member of the French Institute, &c. Vol. III., Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities. Longmans, Green, and Co.

The first and second volumes of Mr. Max Müller's occasional essays on the subject of comparative mythology, and on the so-called science of religious development, received the modest and quaint title of 'Chips from a German Workshop.' Our author has given the stress of his energy and the prime of his life to great undertakings. His edition of the 'Rig-Veda,' and now his elaborate translation and interpretation of its hymns, have not prevented his delivering important courses of lectures on the Science of Language. The great assistance he rendered to Baron Bunsen in his Oriental and philological speculations has been abundantly recognised by all students of the greater works of Bunsen. But scientific scholarship on this high scale has brought our author into contact with other and allied themes of literary research; and we find in the present volume a reprint of sixteen additional essays, of varied interest and merit, which greatly enhance our idea of the wide extent of Mr. Max Müller's scholarship, and are, moreover, of a class which may be safely commended to the general reader. Comparative grammar is clearly the key which this accomplished student of ancient and modern languages is tempted to use on all occasions, and for the solution of all puzzles, historical, theological, political, and even scientific. His keen and penetrating eye sees analogies, histories, reaches of civilization, bonds and bars of fellowship, in non-extant words, where one less trained to the business would utterly fail to discover them; and his linguistic omniscience makes us, in our ignorance, not seldom feel that he is too clever by half, and that his conclusions come almost too 'pat' upon his speculative theses. Be this as it may, we thank him very heartily for the exceeding refreshment and peculiar charm of this volume. The three articles on 'Cornish Antiquities,' on the question 'Are there Jews in Cornwall?' and on 'the Insulation of St. Michael's Mount,' which were written in 1867, form a trilogy of extreme interest. We have seldom read anything more perfect or complete in its way than his demolition of Mr. Pengelly's plausible theory, that the Cornish language was spoken before the insulation of St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, could have taken place; even though, geologically speaking, that event must be thrown back from 16,000 to 20,000 years. His learned refutation of the idea that Jews worked in the mines of Cornwall, in part effected by the discovery of the true etymology of the name of the town Marazion, on which so much had been built, and his instructive exposition of the nature and value of the Cornish antiquities and language, will well repay perusal.

The gem of the volume is the eloquent and affectionate tribute to the memory of Bunsen, in the form of a review of his memoirs. To these Max Müller has now added a valuable postscript, in a selection of some hundred letters addressed to himself by the great scholar and diplomatist. They are charged with kindly and generous feeling, and with noble enthusiasm; and they give fresh insight into Bunsen's astounding activity, far-reaching glance, and prodigious range of literary endeavour. They would many of them be more intelligible if they were read in their proper place in his biography; but the perusal of them recalls the zest with which three years ago the memoirs of this great man were devoured rather than read. We are not surprised that M. Müller should say, 'It has been my good fortune in life to have known many men whom the world calls great philosophers, statesmen, scholars, artists, and poets; but take it all in all, take the full humanity of the man, I have never seen, and I shall never see his like again.'

One of the essays to which we would direct special attention is that on the language and poetry of Schleswig-Holstein. The biographical articles on Schiller, and Wilhelm Müller, and some of the shorter 'chips' on 'Ye Schyppe of Fools,' 'Old German Love-songs,' and on 'A German Traveller in England, A.D. 1598,' are racy, and highly entertaining.

_The World of Moral and Religious Anecdote; Illustrations and Incidents gathered from the Words, Thoughts, and Deeds in the Lives of Men, Women, and Books_. By EDWIN PAXTON HOOD. Hodder and Stoughton.

Mr. Hood is a man who reads everything, and who, making allowance for such slight inaccuracies as are characteristic of voracious readers, forgets nothing that he has read. It would be difficult to name a man better qualified to compile a volume of anecdotes. We wish, however, he would not call Samuel Bailey, the thoughtful author of the 'Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,' Bail_lie_. Eccentricities of this kind are frequent in Mr. Hood's writings, and not easy to be accounted for.

The volume published by Mr. Hood, under the more general title 'The World of Anecdote,' has met with a reception so favourable, that he has published this companion volume, 'The World of Religious Anecdote,' filled with anecdotes of religious men or things, gathered from a very wide circle of religious biography and history, and from all imaginable miscellaneous sources--from a quarterly review to a newspaper. Mr. Hood does not exaggerate the importance and significance of anecdote, either in history or biography; if exactly told, such incidents as constitute anecdote, indicate the movement or the man, more truthfully than formal disquisition. We do not pretend to have read through Mr. Hood's volume--this would be a task, less arduous only than to read through a dictionary--but we have read enough of it cordially to commend it as a repertory of many things that are both new and good, and of some that are neither.

_The Essays of an Optimist_. By JOHN WILLIAM KAYE. Smith, Elder, and Co.

Mr. Kaye tells us that he had no particular design when writing these papers; no purpose, that is, of illustrating any special philosophy. They were not to him a serious work--they were 'holiday tasks, written by snatches, and sent off piece by piece as they were written; the loose thoughts of a loose thinker, desultory, discursive,' written away from books, 'in country inns, or sea-side lodgings, or other strange places far away from home.' Criticism is exonerated from dealing in any serious way with a book so produced. Literature is not thus achieved. Cameo-cutting should be as artistic and patient as _genre_ painting. Mr. Kaye is pleasantly garrulous, and intelligently superficial. He writes as one would write good letters; and what he writes is very pleasant to read. He throws the regulating good sense of a sober well-informed man upon such matters as Holidays, Work, Success, Growing Old, Toleration, &c. He has done and can do good work; therefore we accept with a certain degree of interest these 'chips.'

_A Book of Golden Thoughts_. By HENRY ATTWELL, Knight of the Order of the Oak Crown, &c. Macmillan and Co.

This is one of the most charming volumes of the Golden Treasury series. The author, with rare discernment and fine taste, has selected the richest, sweetest thoughts of our greatest and wisest teachers on a marvellous variety of themes, but all tending in the direction of high spiritual culture. The apothegms or longer passages extracted from French or German writers are translated with delicate tact and placed in an appendix. The words of Pascal--_J'ecrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: c'est le veritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même_--are placed at the head of the volume. It would take a long time to try and unravel the design of Mr. Attwell, but whoever wishes to have the choicest words of Bacon, Pascal, Montesquieu, Goethe, Ruskin, Helps, and many others, may find them here brought together into small compass, and presented in a very attractive form.

_Publications of the Early English Text Society_. 1870. Extra Series. Trübner and Co.

X.--_The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, made by Andrewe Boorde, of Physycke Doctor_.

_A Compendyus Regyment, or a Dyetary of Helth_. By the same Author.

_Barnes in Defence of the Berde_.

XI.--_The Bruce_. By Master JOHN BARLOWE, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, A.D. 1375.

These issues are not quite according to the Society's programme in their report of January last, which, stated that three or four other works besides the first part of the 'Bruce' were in the press for their extra series of 1870, and made no mention of the volume which Mr. Furnivall has edited. Indeed, the opportunity for his undertaking this work did not, he tells us, occur until February, when he purchased an early copy of the Dyetary at Mr. Corser's sale.

Dr. Andrew Boorde or Borde, was a Carthusian monk of Henry the Eighth's time, who 'was dyspensyd of the religion,' whatever that may mean--a point obscure to Mr. Furnivall--travelled over a great part of Europe, and returned to practise as a physician, having for his patient the Duke of Norfolk, when that great noble was in the Royal favour. Of several works which the Doctor wrote, Mr. Furnivall has printed two; in a preface and epilogue which he is pleased to style 'Forewords and Hindwords,' are collected many particulars of the author's life, and long extracts from others of his writings. 'The Introduction of Knowledge' is a book of travel, partly in rhyme, giving characteristics and specimens of the languages of the several countries the author had visited. The Dyetary is a book of hygiène, containing many prescriptions which modern physicians would approve. Both tracts abound in quaint, curious, and shrewd remarks. One of the Doctor's last works was a treatise on beards, which he seems to have condemned, and to have advocated shaving. For this Mr. Furnivall, who 'left off the absurdity some three years before his neighbours,' thinks him 'a noodle,' as it seems did 'Barnes, whoever he may be,' whose defence of the Berde is here printed. There is, however, some reason to suppose that the learned editor thinks Barnes was a noodle also. The subject is clearly a pet with him.

The 'Bruce' is well-known, and has been frequently reprinted, editions having appeared as lately as 1856 and 1869. The last was issued after Mr. Skeat had begun his labours; but its character was not such as to lead the Society to desire less the completion of their own edition. About half the poem is now printed. Mr. Skeat's preface and glossarial index await the publication of the second part. John Barlowe was the contemporary of Wycliffe, Chaucer, and Gower, and his poem is a worthy member of the group of noble works which were the first fruits of English literature. It may be called English, now that Scotland and England have a common inheritance, though it is a Scot's story of his countrymen's resistance to the dictation and encroachment of the English king, and the Archdeacon would doubtless have scorned and repudiated the epithet. The subject-matter of the poem is a great one. It tells how, on the death of King Alexander, a doubt arose, whether, according to the true law of inheritance, the Bruce or the Baliol ought to succeed to the throne; how the dispute was referred to the arbitration of the English Edward,--

'For that the king of Ingland
Held swylk freyndship and company
To thar king, that was swa worthy
Thai trowyt that he as gud nychtbur,
And as freyndsome compositur
Wald have Iugyt in lawtes;'

how, instead of judging loyally, he seized the opportunity for insisting on his own claim to a feudal superiority over the Scottish crown, deciding for the Balliol because he 'Assentyt till him in all his will,' while the Bruce replied,--

Schyr, said he, sa God me save,
The kynryk zham I nocht to have,
Bot gyff it full off rycht to me:
And gyff God will that it sa be,
I sall as frely in all thing
Hald it, as it afferis to king;
Or as myn eldris foronch me
Held it in freyast reawte;'

how English invasion and Scottish insurrection followed, and how the long-baffled Bruce fought out his triumph. The story is told with archaic simplicity, but with much grace of diction.

_The Riches of Chaucer, &c._ By CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. Second Edition, carefully Revised. Lockwood and Co.

_Tales from Chaucer in Prose, designed chiefly for the use of Young Persons_. By CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. Second Edition, carefully Revised. Lockwood and Co.

Mr. Clarke is a veteran in the field of Shakespearian literature; although this is not necessarily a qualification for the exposition of Chaucer, who lived two centuries and a quarter earlier, and at the very dawn of our literature: the scholarly character of his Shakespearian work, however, is a presumption in favour of a worthy presentation of Chaucer. The work itself justifies this presumption. The first of these volumes is an expurgated, modernized, and accentuated edition of Chaucer. Scholars, or perhaps we should say, pedants, will likely enough turn up their noses at this, and pour upon Mr. Clarke the ridicule that has been the meed of Bowdler; but Chaucer and Shakespeare stand in different relations to modern popular readers. To such the archaic language of Chaucer makes him simply unintelligible, while his coarseness absolutely excludes him _puerisque virginibus_. No idolatry of English literature can warrant a parent in putting Chaucer as he is into the hands of his children. Nor can much moral benefit accrue to anyone from his perusal. If, therefore, Chaucer is to be a popular book at all, to be read by any but scholars, both processes are essential. Mr. Clarke has every desirable qualification for the work, which demands both a scholar and an artist. The accentuation of the rhythm too will be a great help to unpractised readers. This edition of Chaucer may be put into the hands of young people and modest women, with the assurance also that it will be easily understood and thoroughly enjoyed. We trust that through it our first and one of our greatest poets will be introduced into schools and homes, and win a popularity hitherto denied him.

The second volume is an attempt to reproduce the Tales of Chaucer in modern prose after the manner of Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare.' This is a far more arduous undertaking. Mr. Clarke tells us that he has endeavoured to render the poetry in as easy prose as he could, without at the same time destroying the poetical description and strong natural expressions of the author. Some of the long discussions are omitted, as of course is all that is offensive in coarse expression or allusion. The task has been difficult. 'I was,' Mr. Clarke says, 'to be at one and the same time modernly antique, prosaically poetic, and comprehensively concise.' That he has succeeded in so large a degree is very high merit. We trust his little volume will be widely read.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY.

_The Origin, and Development of Religious Belief._ By S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. Part II.--Christianity. Rivingtons.

We have already called the attention of our readers to the first part of this remarkable work, in which the writer, taking the standpoint of positive science and the facts of human nature, endeavoured to account for the developments of religious belief in all ages and places, and uttered his conviction that they all correspond to some necessity and quality of human nature. He then hazarded the opinion that the true and absolute religion would take account of, and embody, and satisfy, the cravings expressed in the strange worship and religious ideas of all peoples. He has now pursued his inquiry into the positive dicta of Christian theology, and seeks to show that they rest on facts anterior both to the text of Scripture and the very existence of the Divine Society. Revelation, if it exists at all, must take up into itself all the varieties not only of Mosaism or heathenism, but of polytheism, of idolatry, fetishism, and mysticism, because these and many others are facts of human nature, and have had a great part to play in the development and progress of human thought. Christianity, to our author, is true--and by Christianity he appears to mean the whole dogmatic and hierarchical and social edifice of Catholicism, because it contains in itself the utterance of all truths. All other religions and all sects and schism of the one Church, so far as they hold positive truth, hold only what the Church holds; their negations are to his mind 'nothing,' and are destitute, therefore, of all vital power. The Quaker, the Lutheran, the Anglican, the Greek, the Presbyterian, the modern Christian philosopher, not to say the Pagan, the Arian, the Pelagian, the Donatist, grasped severally and forcibly some one truth; perhaps one-half of the antinomy presenting itself in some great synthesis. Let this be granted, and, according to Mr. B. Gould, Catholicism held the same great truth. It may be found embedded in her system, taught with greater explicitness there than by the sectary; but each of these has _denied_ some truth or placitum of Catholicism, and its negation has been nothing, has added nothing to the value of belief as positive truth. Yet with all this, the author falls foul of Rome at a hundred points. The union between the Church and the temporal power is denounced with unmeasured terms; the Papacy is a violation and a 'negation' of the _oecumenicity_ of the Church, and the encyclical of Pius IX. comes in for a series of terrific blows. The Inquisition and the persecuting spirit which arose in Rome under the union of sacred and secular powers, is treated with as sincere a condemnation as is every form of Protestantism. Still further, when the author comes to deal with the evidence for the Incarnation, on which his whole theory turns, he disposes of every vestige of proof which may be supposed to linger in the New Testament in favour of this stupendous mystery of grace, and this 'conciliation of all antinomies.' The chapter on 'The Evidence of the Incarnation' is a feeble _rechauffé_ of the most ultra type of modern scepticism. Miracles and prophecy, the inspiration, authenticity, and genuineness of the Gospels, the evidential value of specific occurrences in the life of Christ, all go to the wall. Much is made of discrepancies and contradictions, of the silence of contemporary historians, and all the rest of it, with which we are so familiar; and our author's conclusion is, that there is no evidence worthy of the name for the chief fact on which the whole of the religious development of Christianity turns. Relinquishing every proof of the divinity of Christ derivable from the New Testament as less than useless, the grounds on which he calls for a belief in the incarnation of God in Christ (who, by the way, need not ever have existed as an historical character at all) are, that 'such a union of divinity and humanity is necessary to me, that my nature may find its complete religious satisfaction;' 'such a dogma alone supplies an adequate basis for morals, establishes the rights of man on a secure foundation, enables man to distinguish between authority and force, conciliates my double nature, rational and sentimental, and my double duties, egoistic and altruistic, and supplies an adequate incentive to progress.'

These several points furnish the matter of several chapters; and while it must be observed here that Mr. Baring-Gould's 'negations,' as well as those of other sectaries, are 'nothing,' and his condemnations and denials of many positions for which the Catholic Christian would be prepared to die, put him, in spite of himself, among the most extreme left of the Hegelian school, yet his arguments on the worth of the dogma of Incarnation, from his own point of view, deserve serious consideration. After his numerous indications of a negative criticism and spirit as hardy and audacious as could be well imagined, he sets to work with a will, to blaspheme Protestantism as the negation of moral truths. His monstrous perversions of Luther's and Calvin's position merit severe castigation. Thus, 'Calvin denied free-will, and therefore denied duty.' Can he have read the 'Institutes?' The statement 'that Reformers denied the holiness of God,' with Jewel's 'Apology,' or any of the Protestant symbols in his hand, is too flagrant a violation of common fairness. The charge in this chapter against Protestants, that they deny or negative the Personal Christ, and in a later chapter, that they have only a dead Christ and not a present Christ to worship or love, comes with a bad grace from one who has thrown away the evidence of the existence or divinity of Christ as an historical fact. He appears to glory in the sacramental system of the Romanist, and assures us that the Protestant sacraments are reduced to two, and these are not baptism and the Lord's Supper, but the 'Ministry' and the 'Bible;' the latter of which, in its sacramental character, he pleasingly describes for his purpose, as just so much 'washed-up rags and black treacle stains,' an euphuism for the printed page, which is the _matériel_ for the communication of such truth and reality as we poor destitute beings possess. We are content. The mighty Word itself, with all its power to kindle life and instruct intelligence, to stir the affections, and discern even the thoughts and intents of the heart, is graciously communicated to us by the printed page, and by the living voice of men charged with the Holy Ghost; and for an actual communication of the living Christ to our true nature, it is on an infinitely higher level than that which can only reach our emotional nature through the medium of our alimentary canal and gastric juices. When our author holds up to heartless Protestants certain acts of special worship which Cardinal Wiseman described so feelingly and poetically, we can hardly refrain from telling him that such Cremorne splendours of religious awe, such blendings of fetishism and wax-candles with the stupendous conception of the ever-present Christ, will have little effect upon those whose intellectual, moral, and sensuous nature have been brought into their due relation with each other, who know the Christ, who love Him and could die for him.

There is much that is worthy of profound consideration in Mr. Baring-Gould's positive assertions with reference to the Incarnation and the Atonement, the dogma of immortality and the Christian sacrifice; but he has a strange habit of putting a few transcendental propositions one after the other, mounting up from a 'positive' basis to something like 'Catholic doctrine,' and then calling his string of dogmas, demonstration. He appears perfectly rabid in his hatred of Protestantism and Protestants, in his dislike of the doctrine of the Atonement, as expounded in every phase of evangelical Christianity; and he never wearies of accusing Protestants of worshipping a dead Christ, because they cannot, after his Hegelian fashion, accept the Tridentine dogma of transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice. With all his rapturous admiration of the Church and denunciation of Protestants, it is sufficiently amusing to find him perpetually--when he wants to give high utterance to his most enthusiastic dream--driven to quote the poetry of Sectaries; and once he is so far left to himself as actually to make that heretic, Isaac Watts, do him some service, and say for him one of his sweetest thoughts. After all said and done, we find him still outside the Roman Church, and the next thing we may hear is, that his interesting, eloquent, and original book is placed in the 'Index.' There is surely scarcely a position of high importance adopted by him which would not be repudiated by a Catholic theologian.

_The Athanasian Creed, and its usage in the English Church: an Investigation, as to the General Object of the Creed, and the Growth of prevailing Misconceptions concerning it._ A Letter to Very Rev. W. F. HOOK, D.D., from C. A. SWAINSON, D.D. Rivingtons.

This letter is extremely interesting, coming, as it does, on the morrow after the publication of the Report of the Ritual Commissioners, and following the courageous articles of Dean Stanley and Professor Maurice in the _Contemporary Review_, and the long discussion of the subject in the _Guardian_. Dr. Swainson is well entitled, by his prolonged studies in this department of ecclesiastical literature, to be heard in defence of the symbol of Athanasius. The upshot of his argument is, that it is a 'hymn,' and not a 'creed.' Here he does but re-echo the language of Dr. J. H. Newman, Mr. Maurice, and others. He conceives, however, that he has proved that it was in the first instance used to prepare candidates for baptism, and that the damnatory clauses do not belong to it in essence, and have not the same authenticity or value as the exposition given in it of the Catholic faith; that their meaning is not intended to cover every individual clause of the exposition, but to refer to the Catholic faith as a whole; that they merely assert the grand distinction which faith makes between those that are being saved and those that are perishing for ever in the darkness of unbelief; that the inaccuracies of the English translation are due to the influence of the Greek translation of Bryling, and to the obscurity introduced by Luther's version of it into German; that it ought to be 'sung,' in a true translation, as an addition to the psalmody, and not in place of the Apostles' Creed; that as 'the articles were never intended originally to be made a test to be subscribed or enlarged from that point of view,' the reference to the Athanasian Creed in the Articles does not bind us to believe that every clause in it is agreeable to the word of God, any more than a multitude of other propositions in the Articles, about which it would be absurd to make a similar assertion. These various refinements will not avail to reconcile the Anglican clergy to continue much longer the use of a formulary which, though certain portions of it may, by antiquarian scholars, be severed in thought from the rest, does yet assume to the majority of those that are called to 'sing' or 'say' it, the appearance of a homogeneous whole. Dr. Newman's description of it as a war-song of the Church, is unquestionably true; if so, it does condemn, in the language of triumphant dogmatism, the opinions of Arian, Sabellian, and Apollinarian, as well as those who repudiate the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit; and it declares that, without doubt, those who hold such opinions shall perish for ever. Scarcely one in a thousand of the Anglican clergy can believe in the obvious literal interpretation of the symbol as a whole.

_The History and Literature of the Israelites, according to the Old Testament and the Apocrypha._ By C. DE ROTHSCHILD and A. DE ROTHSCHILD. Two vols. Longmans, Green and Co.

The first element of interest to us in this work is, that it is a history of the Jewish people and their literature, by members of their own nation and faith. It must ever be of great interest and of great importance to Christian students of the Old Testament to see the views of it taken by Jews, who certainly do not bring to it the Christian preconceptions which so often overlay and perplex its interpretation. If, as we think, the interpretation of the modern Jew errs through his refusal to see the relations of its predictions and types to Jesus of Nazareth, it is certain that the interpretation of Christians often errs through the excess of Christian allusion which they imagine themselves to find there. One way of correcting the latter is to see how intelligent, pious, and conscientious Jewish interpreters look at it. Many things are placed by them in natural lights, which are not the less artificial in Christian hands, because Christian thought and meaning are imported into them. The Messrs. Rothschild, who claim the conjoint authorship of the book, are accomplished and devout men, and are remarkably free from polemical one-sidedness. A chaste and gentle elegance of style, illumined with quiet lights of a poetic but restrained imagination, make the volumes very pleasant to read. The work, moreover, is popular in form. Its critical power is not great, and the criticism that there is, is latent rather than formal, and is exhibited in its results rather than in its processes. It is sufficient, if not to determine great controverted questions, yet to give intelligence to the quiet assumption of conclusions. Nothing is debated, everything is assumed and affirmed as unquestionable truth, although there are indications that the writers are aware of the positions of modern criticism.

The first volume is a simple recast of the Old Testament story; the ordinary conclusions of popular orthodoxy are accepted. It makes no pretensions to the rectification and reconstruction of Ewald or Stanley; Ewald, indeed, is not once referred to. This volume, therefore, which completes the history, calls for no remark, except that it is written freshly and pleasantly. The second volume, which deals with Hebrew literature, presents many more points for criticism. The writers have arrived at conclusions, some of which are warranted by the most authoritative judgments of modern scholarship; others of which are so far from this, that it was almost incumbent upon the authors to justify their assumption of them. They are such as these,--that there were two Isaiahs, the first living down to the time of Josiah, the second a hundred and fifty years later in the time of Cyrus--the one the prophet of prosperity, the other of adversity; that the Messianic prophecies of the latter, those contained in the fifty-third chapter for instance, had reference to contemporary martyrs; that the traditions of Jonah, the fretful prophet, were handed down through many generations, until they were embodied in their Biblical form by some able writer of the Babylonian period; the writers, however, repudiate the idea of its being a legend, and contend for its historical character--that the book of Daniel was written about the year B.C. 160; that the canonical book of Psalms was ever used or intended to be used 'as a kind of liturgy of the Jewish Church,' and 'that the poems were made to serve this purpose, however different their original object might have been;' that the book of Job was an imaginative drama, or dialogue, written about the Babylonian period, constructed to prove the true doctrine of human calamity; that the book of Ecclesiastes was written 'in the Persian, if not in the Macedonian period,' and that the author 'put his ideas very appropriately into the mouth of King Solomon;' that the 'Song of Solomon' was 'written not long after the death of Solomon, by a poet living in the Northern Kingdom,' was supposed to be the production of Solomon himself, and 'naturally believed to have a religious tendency,' and that through this misconception it obtained its place in the Canon.

As the writers give no reasons for their assumptions, it is impossible to indicate the reasons of our agreement with them or difference from them; we content ourselves with remarking, that the absence of reasons in matters so greatly controverted, deprives the volume of scholarly character and critical value. We can only say that, taking it for what it is, it is an intelligently and agreeably written book. Although making no pretensions to the ability or historical power of Stanley's 'Jewish Church,' it does not fall into any of his great assumptions. The general remarks on the office and character of the Prophets, and on the schools of the Prophets, are very meagre and feeble compared with the chapters of Dr. Payne Smith, or of Dean Stanley. The work, indeed, must be commended as simply a popular and uncritical reproduction from a Jewish point of view of the Old Testament story.

_Present Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology._ Edited by the Right Reverend ALEXANDER EWING, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. Strahan and Co.

These pamphlets have been published separately, and subsequently collected into a volume. The first bears the title 'The Atonement,' by the Rev. Wm. Law, a reprint of that great writer's 'Dialogue on the Atonement,' with an elaborate introduction; the second, by the editor, is on 'the Eucharist;' the third to the sixth are anonymous, under the titles 'The Rule of Faith,' 'The Present Unbelief,' 'Words for Things,' and 'Meditations and Prayers;' the seventh is a translation of Luther's theses on 'Justification by Faith,' by the Rev. J. Wace. It is impossible to deal with these papers separately in the compass of a brief notice. One strong spirit pervades almost the whole of them. The burden of several is to charge upon Evangelical doctrine the entire blame of the 'present unbelief,' to represent that which we hold to be the essence of the Gospel of Christ as little better than blasphemous misunderstanding of God, as immoral, as defamatory to the true nature of God and the work of Christ. It is urged that Socinians and infidels would have had their deadliest weapon wrenched from their hands, if schoolmen and theologians had not perverted the Gospel by representing the Atonement of Christ as a means adopted to reconcile the Father to his rebellious children, propitiate His wrath, or satisfy His justice. We quite agree so far as this with Mr. Law, and with the spirit of several of the pamphleteers. If the Church of Christ had been converted to the view of Christ's work held by the Socini and their followers, such disbelievers would have gained a great victory. The doctrine of 'substitution' is the _bête noire_ of these writers. Whatever else they attempt to explain away or refute or repudiate, this hated doctrine comes in for condemnation. The editor, in his paper on the Eucharist, devotes great space to show that the 'basis of morality is overthrown by the idea of a substituted or equivalent righteousness, ... all true conception of the righteousness and holiness of God is lost, and we are only saved from profanity ... by our non-observance of its real nature.' To 'accept the sacrifice of the Son' in lieu of man's righteousness, or in place of man's punishment, 'is a terrible misconception,' changing 'all that we naturally know and believe about God, as good and right, into darkness.' The paper on the 'Present Unbelief,' which turns on man's indisposition to recognise the self-evidencing revelation of God, and propounds much wise and true remark on the undue reverence paid by men and Churches to the logical processes once needed for special combat with evil, but now no longer useful, tells us that 'the definitions of God too often among ourselves, of God under the name of Christ Jesus, or the anointed Saviour, have been too similar to the heathen--to Saturn devouring his children, painted, no doubt, in milder colours, and clothed in decent cloud, but very near the old heathen conception, the old pictures of the Greeks.' 'God was not only in danger, but lost by such a belief.' The author of the paper on 'the Rule of Faith,' after much vague declamation and mystical enthronement of the inner life, says what is very excellent on the fact 'that the proof of revelation being true from the character of its operation, is the highest kind of proof, and is not liable to the accidents which affect other or external evidence.' He lays great emphasis on that inner verification of revealed truth which also makes it to be revelation to each man. 'The God of another is not my God; He is not my God by authority; I must be the authority myself.' After developing the older 'rule of faith,' as understood by the writer, and saying some useful though not very satisfactory or clear things about the canon of Scripture, he endeavours to show that the old 'rule of faith and practice in Christ has been essentially altered.' The climax of the offence of modern theology is represented here and elsewhere in these papers as a transformation of the statements, 'God so loved the world that He gave His Son for it,' into 'God so loved his Son as to give the world for Him.' What the writer means we are at a loss to understand, but he actually tells us, with a very grave and solemn look, that 'in the theology of substitution the way is turned into the end,' 'darkness is brought in at the centre,' God's 'love for man, as such, and individuals, as such, was lost sight of, and the soul left to a conventional relationship with Him which left it entirely outside, and from whence it could draw no nourishment.' All we can say here is, that the author does not understand the alphabet of the doctrine of substitution, or has wilfully misrepresented it. The introduction to the reprint of William Law's dialogue is full of these misconceptions, and seems utterly blind to the mighty powers of the new life which, in the reformed theology, are the direct form in which the justification of the soul by faith in Christ's sacrifice becomes a matter of experience or consciousness. The paper on 'Words for Things' is largely occupied with the same theme. That man should not suffer to the full the consequences of his sins in this world and the next seems, we suppose, to these writers a fearful violation of order; that the work of Christ should be adapted to save a man from his sins by guaranteeing and assuring him of the Father's forgiveness is incomprehensible to them. To us this state of mind is only explicable on the supposition that these writers cannot have felt the awfulness, hideousness and peril of sin against the irresistible order in the midst of which we are placed. Christianity seems to us a very worthless thing if this key-note of its melody, this key-stone of its masonry be abstracted. From Confucius to Marcus Antoninus, from Seneca to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, from English Deists to French Positivists, we are _told_ by sages and philosophers of all kinds to be good and self-sacrificing, to love God and our neighbour, and do justice and love mercy, and that all will be well. Leave out of Christianity the 'grace' that, to a broken heart and to a mind conscious of guilt, comes not only with the Divine life that makes a man a new creature, but with the assured conviction that the order of God's universe, the will of the Father, the justice of His rule, are manifested in His infinite love to the world through the death of His Son; leave out the sublime truth that pervades the whole revelation, and then the Bible and the Christ have little more to tell us than we can find in enlightened heathenism and pagan philosophy. There is much in these papers of which we cordially approve, and for which we feel grateful; but this dead-set at what seems to us the heart of Christianity wounds and distresses us. Mr. Wace's translation of Luther's theses is pitched in another key, and deserves separate treatment.

_The Theology of the New Testament._ A Handbook for Bible Students. By the Rev. J. J. VAN OOSTERZEE, D.D. Translated from the Dutch by MAURICE J. EVANS, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

_Biblical Theology of the New Testament._ By CHRISTIAN FRIEDEREK SCHMID, D.D., late Professor of Theology, Tübingen. Translated from the Fourth German Edition. Edited by C. WEIZÄCKER, D.D. By G. H. VENABLES. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.

_The Theology of Christ from His own Words._ By JOSEPH P. THOMPSON. New York: Charles Scribner.

We anticipate great advantage from the translation of these two excellent manuals. We are learning in this country to value 'historical theology' and the genesis and development of Christian ideas. Many efforts have been made to present to the student the first stages and earliest forms of this wondrous element of religious thought. Neander in his 'History of the Planting of the Christian Church,' Reuss in his 'Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne,' and Dr. Bernard in his Bampton Lecture, have made us familiar with the fact that the teaching of the New Testament, though resulting in glorious harmony, is yet not homogeneous, and reveals throughout a progress from less to more--from germinant seeds to rich efflorescence, from mysterious reticence to open secrets, from fundamental principles to elaborate and systematic detail. The peculiar type of doctrine conspicuous in the Synoptic Gospels differs from the spirit and burden of the fourth gospel. The Petrine doctrine is not identical either with Pauline or Johannine theology. We are, perhaps, too apt to explain the language of James by that of Paul, or both by that of John, without sufficiently taking into account the specific teaching of each Evangelist and each Apostle. Dr. Oosterzee's 'Biblical Theology' presents, in small compass, the results of much careful study, and seeks, at each stage of the inquiry, to place the student in relation with the authors of the New Testament respectively, and with them alone for the time being. The references to literature are ample, and various points of stimulating inquiry are suggested. The author does not go very deeply into the separate positions, nor does he attempt any elaborate exegesis of the Scriptures cited in proof of the induction he makes. The Evangelical bias of the inquiry is not concealed, and his summaries of doctrine and the higher unity which he claims for the somewhat divergent forms, reveal very clearly the dogmatic tendencies of his own investigations. We can most cordially commend this work--especially to those who have not access to larger and more voluminous treatises--as an admirable compendium of Biblical theology, and a valuable preliminary to all honest study of scientific and dogmatic theology.

The second work mentioned above pursues the same general theme, and contrasts the Biblical theology of the New Testament with exegesis on the one hand and systematic divinity on the other. This manual is a translation by Mr. G. H. Venables of the fourth German edition of the late Dr. Schmid's work as edited by Dr. Weizäcker, and is a far more elaborate treatise than that of Dr. Oosterzee. It is divided into two parts, the one a development of the teaching of Jesus, and the other an exposition of the teaching of the Apostles. The first part is preceded by an historical review of the life of Jesus, and the second by a fruitful and suggestive sketch of the lives of the Apostles. The strength of learning and high analytical powers of the author are reserved for the doctrinal review, and very beautifully does he bring forth the teaching of our Lord under the three divisions--(_a_) the glorification of the Father in the Son, involving the full sublime teaching of Christ with reference to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (_b_) the redemption of man, including the object of redemption, man and the world, and the subject of redemption in all His relations; and (_c_) the whole teaching of Christ about the kingdom of God, which is identified with the Church; there the author reveals his sacramentarian proclivities, and his high idea of the function of the Church and development of the kingdom both in this world, and that which is to come. In developing the teaching of the Apostles, his chief point is that that of James and Peter presents Christianity as in living unity with the Old Testament, and that of Paul and John in its fundamental distinction from the Old Testament. Great care and skill are shown in showing how the teaching of Paul and John roots itself in the previous teaching of Jesus, and the result of the entire discussion affords high subsidiary proof of the unity of the New Testament, the authenticity of the later as well as the earlier of Paul's Epistles, and the fundamental identity of doctrine in the Apocalypse and fourth Gospel.

Dr. J. P. Thompson of New York, in the third work mentioned above, has confined himself to the high, grand, noble theme of illustrating the 'theology of Christ.' He takes, as we think, higher and broader ground in his illustration of the 'kingdom of God' than either Dr. Oosterzee or Dr. Schmid, and admirably states the truth when he represents the Church as a form of the kingdom of God, embracing the whole 'commonwealth of believing souls who, through all diversities of race, language, and ecclesiastical institution, fraternise in the love of Christ.' Dr. Thompson developes the teaching of Christ under a great variety of themes which are not concatenated in any such classification as Dr. Schmid's, though they traverse much of the same ground. Such topics as 'prayer,' 'providence,' and 'eschatology,' occupy much of the space. The exposition is wise, candid, and eloquent.

_A Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology._ Edited by the Rev. JOHN HENRY BLUNT, M.A., F.S.A. L--Z. Rivingtons.

We see no reason for modifying the judgment of Mr. Blunt's Dictionary which we ventured to pronounce upon the first section of it. His extensive knowledge is beyond all doubt, and his indefatigable industry beyond all praise. We give him all credit for both painstaking and conscientiousness; but he sorely lacks the scholarly faculty of using his knowledge in a dispassionate way. Rash assertion, hasty generalization, partial and illogical inference, disfigure every page of his Dictionary. Mr. Blunt is fairly carried away by his sacramentarian theories; they possess him like a fever, and affect both his vision and his judgment. Above most of his brethren even, and that is saying very much, he infuses a polemic into every scrap of antiquarian fact that he can collect, and into every particle of reasoning that his ingenuity can devise. We are aware that a statement like this is a very grave accusation, and that it can be substantiated only by a patient induction such as a brief notice will not permit; but we pledge our critical judgment to the assertion that there is not a page in which statements do not occur, which no judicial mind can accept. Thus, on the very first page, _sub voce_, 'Laity,' Mr. Blunt chooses to interpret the Hebrew word [Hebrew character], which Gesenius and all lexicographers render 'people'--in the sense of nations--by the ecclesiastical word 'laity,' _i.e._, the people as distinguished from the priests. This enables him to give to a number of instances in which the word occurs just the twist of interpretation that his theory demands. Surely a conscientious scholar would refrain from giving a general term such a special significance for the sake of sustaining an ecclesiastical theory. It matters not that the term is sometimes used in this sense, and is applied to the people as distinguished from the priests--Mr. Blunt treats it as the generic sense. Under the word 'Latitudinarianism,' among much prejudiced statement, we meet this astounding assumption, 'this article (the 18th of the Church of England) is somewhat loosely worded; but by comparison of the language used with the use of similar language in the New Testament, it will be plainly seen to amount to a statement that salvation is only to be obtained within the boundaries of the Church.' Under the word 'Lay-Co-operation' we have this unscholarly, and must we not say spiteful, assumption: 'Puritanism confounded the idea of the [Greek: klêros] and the [Greek: laos], and if the phrase "co-operation of the laity" had been known to it, the theory of such co-operation, as well as the practice, would have been resolved into a substitution of the laity for the clergy, by setting the former to do those works chiefly or solely which especially belong to the office of the latter.' Is it the function of a theological dictionary to utter hypothetical prophecies founded upon rash and gratuitous statements, and conceived in a spirit of theological malice like this? Under the head 'Lay Priesthood' we read: 'This sacerdotal function of the Christian laity is a consequence of the anointing which they receive from God the Holy Ghost in baptism and confirmation.... The Holy Eucharist is offered at the altar by the priest ordained for that purpose, and the lay priest co-operates with him by saying "Amen" at the giving of thanks.' Will Mr. Blunt permit us to say that no lay scholar could possibly have been guilty of such desperate assertions?

Passing over the word 'Limbo,' and some regrets that it cannot be used on account of prejudice, although perfectly unobjectionable in itself, we find under the word 'Liturgy' the usual assumptions of men of Mr. Blunt's school, _e.g._, 'the circumstances under which, the Holy Eucharist was instituted, make it absolutely certain that the Apostles celebrated it from the first with a considerable amount of ritual preciseness, and the same circumstances make it probable that they also used from the beginning some liturgical form. It seems to be unnecessary to prove that the Apostles used some set form of liturgy in celebrating the memorial of their Lord.' And yet if Mr. Blunt would condescend to furnish such proof, it would convert to his views of things one-half of Protestant Christendom.

Under the word 'Lollards,' Mr. Blunt is disingenuous enough to cite against Wickliffe the articles prepared for his indictment in the trial before Archbishop Courtenay; among them, '7. That God ought to obey the devil;' and then to say, 'Such was the teaching initiated by Wickliffe, and assiduously promulgated by his followers.' It is surely a new thing to adduce an indictment of enemies as a witness to character. Does Mr. Blunt really believe that this was Wickliffe's teaching? If he does, what are we to think of his scholarship? If he does not, what are we to think of his candour?

This brings us only to 'Ló,' under the first letter in this division of Mr. Blunt's work. We need not say that these are fair samples of the whole. We protest against such gross assumptions and perversions in the name of simple scholarship. We greatly regret that so much labour and knowledge are thus perverted to the aims of the fanatical polemic. His book is not without its value, but it sorely tries the patience of a simple inquirer after fact and truth. Mr. Blunt has done his best to make worthless a work that might have been a valuable contribution to popular ecclesiastical knowledge.

_The Leading Christian Evidences, &c._ By GILBERT WARDLAW, M.A. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark.

_The Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century._ By ALBERT BARNES. Blackie and Son.