Contemporary Literature.

Theology.

The judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the "Essays and Reviews" cases completes in a most remarkable manner the judgment of Dr. Lushington in the court below:¹ the two documents dovetail into each other with singular precision, and taken together declare the existence of an amount of liberty in the Church of England which the public generally little dreamt of, and which, though an ancient right and one heretofore partially exercised, it has required no little courage and perseverance on the part of an unpopular minority to establish. Considering merely the numerous issues raised in the two cases of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, it has been a great forensic triumph for them and their counsel in the Arches Court to have defeated their prosecutors on every single point. Not a shred was ultimately left of eleven charges in the one case and of eight in the other. The repulse was complete even as to details of legal practice. Thus the appellants had mutually agreed that Mr. Wilson's case should be first heard before the Privy Council; partly we believe in order to show that the cases were really two and not one "Essays and Reviews" case, and partly to give Mr. Wilson a better opportunity of arguing his case more fully than had been possible in the court below, where judge and counsel were already wearied by the length of time which Dr. Williams's cause had occupied. In order to Mr. Wilson's cause being set down first on the list for hearing, it was necessary that he should press it on with all speed through the formal stages before the Surrogate in the Court of Appeals, Dr. Williams keeping a few weeks behind. Whether the prosecution was really mystified by this proceeding or whether their object was simply to raise difficulties, a technical objection was raised to Mr. Wilson's proctor appearing for him on the formal admission of his Libel of Appeal. The irregularity, if any, was cured by Mr. Wilson appearing in person; but it is probable the Canon under which this most frivolous objection was taken would not apply to proceedings in the Court of Appeals, only to the Ecclesiastical Court itself. Another objection, as to which the prosecution suffered a most signal defeat, was more formidable in appearance, being founded on the pretence, that the appellants, by reason of not having availed themselves of their option of appeal after the interlocutory judgment of June 25, 1862, were precluded from now being heard before the Privy Council on the merits (See Mr. Wilson's Speech before the Judicial Committee, pp. xx. xxi.). We have before us what the counsel for the respondents called a supplemental case, by which notice was given to the appellants, two or three days only, as we page 548 believe, before the hearing, of this attempt to prevent the discussion of the cases on their merits before the Privy Council.

It would, however, be idle to ignore that other and greater difficulties weighed upon the defendants in these causes. The amount of prejudice against them may be judged of, not so much from the tirades of religious periodicals as from the fact that while doing his duty as interpreter of the law, the judge of the Court of Arches threw out frequent obiter observations as to the "fearful consequences" to which some of the doctrines of the essayists might be carried—that the publication of the volume "might be an ecclesiastical offence" in any of the essayists, independently of the authorship, with much of a like kind; and even the calmer heads of the Judicial Committee, while ratifying the opinions of the two essayists to an extent far beyond what was necessary to their mere acquittal, thought it expedient to guard themselves in terms against being supposed to express any opinion as to the general tendency of the volume, or of the whole essays of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson. We think that no compositions could have been subjected to a severer test than these two: it is a marvellous result, of which the authors may well be proud, that the ingenuity of lawyers, quickened by the suggestions of the ablest members of the two great ecclesiastical parties, furious with the odium theologicum, should not have succeeded in detecting any weak point in their polemical armour. That the Judicial Committee should have thought it advisable to say that they expressed no opinion as to the general tendency of the volume or the effect and aim of the two essays is the more observable because in the case of Dr. Williams a Charge had been laid concerning the "tendency, object, and design" of the whole essay, and the Court below had decided it to be inadmissible; as throwing on the judge an impossible task; as without precedent; as inconsistent with the requisite precision of pleading. But although these extra-judicial observations may detract very slightly from the dignity of the judgment pronounced by the Privy Council, they rather add to its legal weight. It is evident there was no leaning to the defendants in either Court. They have extorted the decisions in their favour by mere force of law and logic. We apprehend that the extent of this success in the Court below was little appreciated by the general public, so long as it was supposed that the defendants were caught on some of the Charges. For it should be remembered that the Articles of Charge brought into the Arches Court were not counts of indictment laying the same offence under different forms, in which case a conviction upon any one would have been equivalent to a verdict of guilty upon the whole charge. But each Article of Charge laid a separate heresy or offence, and none of these were ultimately brought home: sometimes the prosecutors were found to have forced a meaning into the Formularies which they would not bear; sometimes to have interpreted unfairly the words of the authors; sometimes both. There was however one movement of the prosecution, on the success of which a great part of their case depended, and in which, if they had been successful, clergymen of the Church of England would have been tied down to the merest literalism in the interpretation of the Bible; but as the movement was defeated, the declared liberty of exposition is page 549 proportionately great. It was desired to convict Dr. Williams of an ecclesiastical offence by reason of his attempt to indicate beneath some of the Old Testament traditions—as of the sacrifice of Isaac and of the Exodus—some simple fact which would be consistent with human history; and an offence in like manner was to be brought home to Mr. Wilson for suggesting that the miracles of the New Testament might represent ideas rather than facts. Of course there is no commentary authorized by law in the Church of England, nor any exposition anywhere given of the meaning of particular texts and passages the Bible. But it was sought to cure this defect for the purpose of the prosecution, by charging that inasmuch as the scriptural passages; alluded to by the defendants were included in the Epistles, Gospels, and Lessons appointed to be read in the Prayer Book, it was an ecclesiastical offence against the Act of Uniformity which enforces the Prayer Book, to construe them otherwise than in a plain, literal sense. This would have been to constitute the ecclesiastical judge indirectly the interpreter of the whole of the Bible, with the exception of a few chapters, and to set him to reconcile no one knows what difficulties and discrepancies which may be found in it. And this [unclear: reductio] absurdum was complete when in opposition to some scores of passages from the Bible, produced for the prosecution, which the defendants were alleged to have contradicted, Dr. Deane put in on their part an equal list of texts in support of their views. Thus pelted on both sides, the judge of the Arches saw no safety but in ordering all reference to Scripture embodied in the Prayer Book to be struck out of the Articles of accusation. This at once reduced the case of the prosecution to fragments; but the importance of that part of the decision has been little noticed, either as to the magnitude of the danger which has been escaped, or the extent of liberty which has been affirmed.

Of particular decisions arrived at, the most important have been [unclear: the] opening of the interpretation of the prophetical writings, and the admitted lawfulness of eliminating from them all notion of historical prediction of facts. It appears to be open to a clergyman, for instance, to maintain, if he be so convinced, that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah does not contain a prediction of the actual events of the Lord's Passion. The authorship and date of books are also open questions. Daniel may not have been written by Daniel; nor the Second of Peter, by Peter; nor the Epistle to the Hebrews by St. Paul; and even this latter Epistle may be said to have been post-apostolic. Thus the way was made perfectly safe for the denial of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to which Bishop Colenso has been led. The lawfulness of affixing a figurative sense to any part of the Bible has been already mentioned. This liberty both of interpretation and of criticism so amply conceded by the Court below was, however, clogged with an abstract doctrine concerning. Inspiration of the Scriptures—for it was no more than that, and one conceived with remarkable clumsiness. Dr. Williams was found to have offended by not having distinguished the operation of the Spirit which suggested the essential parts of the Bible as different in kind, and not only in degree, from that which moves ordinary men to great and good works. Mr. Wilson was likewise condemned for denying page 550 a "special interposition of Almighty power" in the production of the Bible. But in the Privy Council, the distinction between "kind" and "degree" was ignored; and the phrase of the Bible "being the expression of devout reason," was held not to be inconsistent with its being the Word of God." Moreover it was laid down, that the Bible may well be denominated "Holy," and said to be the "Word of God," "God's Word written," although such terms "cannot be predicated of every statement contained in every part of the Old and New Testament;" that it is not a contradiction of the law of the Church, to affirm that some parts of the Scriptures were "not written under the inspiration the Holy Spirit:" and even as to those parts which were inspired, "nothing has been laid down as to the nature, extent, or limits of that operation of the Holy Spirit." Indeed, it is added, "the framers of the Articles have not used the word inspiration as applied to the Holy Scriptures;" and considering "the caution of the framers of Articles of Religion," their language must not be taken "as implying, more than is expressed," nor conclusions be drawn from it "touching minute and subtle matters of controversy." With respect to other subjects, the Privy Council thought it would be "a severe thing" to make Dr. Williams, as a reviewer or advocate, responsible for everything in Bunsen, "although not in conformity with the doctrines of the church of England." This point seems to have given no trouble to their lordships, though a great clamour had been raised about Dr. Williams fighting under the shield of Bunsen, and it caused great difficulty to the Court below. Again, the Evangelical party has now been told distinctly that in the 11th Article there is no doctrine "as to the merits of Jesus Christ being transferred to us," ordinarily known as the doctrine of imputation of Christ's merits. Nor will either of the extreme parties be pleased to learn, that to say, with Mr. Wilson, the distinction between covenanted and uncovenanted mercies is a distinction without a difference, is in no contradiction with the doctrine of the Church Lastly, we may add that the incubus of a fiery Hell, and of endless torment in the world to come, need no longer oppress religious hearts among us as a doctrine necessary to be believed on the authority of the Established Church of the country. We now learn from the highest tribunal that it never has been so since the year 1562, when the Article headed, All men shall not be saved at the length, was withdrawn from the standard of doctrine, under sanction of the Parliament and Convocation. Whether the clergy will use their now-ascertained liberty, and whether the laity will encourage and sustain them in doing so, remains to be seen.

The excellent little work of Miss Cobbe's, entitled "Broken Light," has in the present stage of theological discussion a twofold interest and a double use.² It discriminates in the happiest manner the several parties now engaged in the theological arena in this country, and undertakes to show that although the more conservative parties are doomed to inevitable defeat, the essential verities of religion will still page 551 survive as a ground of faith and a root of spiritual life for the humanity of the future. These essential verities are stated to be, Faith in the existence of a righteous God—faith in the eternal law of morality—I fifth in an immortal life. Dogmatists, whether of the Sacerdotalist or Evangelical parties, set on the same footing with these essential truths an immense mass of inference, of theory, of ancient history, or tradition. And so effectually have the essentials and non-essentials of religious faith been bound together in the concrete traditional Christianity, that many even of those who perceive some things believed without question by former generations to be doubtful or untenable, are fearful lest the fundamental truths of all religion should now be rendered doubtful faith them. After describing the hopeless position of the old parties relatively to advancing inquiries, Miss Cobbe passes in review the more modern schools. What is here called the first Broad Church School, of which Mr. Maurice and Prof. Kingsley may be taken as the representatives, is first criticized. Their signal failure in the attempt to harmonize Church and Bible with modern thought is well traced out. Each point of special difficulty is evaded by them; and though "the inquirer for bread receives, not an ordinary stone, but a diamond or a ruby," such treatment of the great difficulties of theology must prove unsatisfactory and fatal to the school which adopts it. We need those who will evade and cover up nothing, "who will put the new wine into new bottles." The very basis of the first Broad Church is incredible, for it supposes a special Revelation of Divine Truth and of the Divine Will to have been made enigmatically, in language which for many centuries those whom it was addressed were incapable of comprehending. The contained truth has in successive periods received light, instead of shedding it. The first Broad Church maintains that the Inspiration of the Bible differs in kind as well as degree from that of other books; the second Broad Church admits a difference in degree only, and acknowledges fallibility to attach to the human vehicles of Divine Truth. The con-feast between these two schools is exceedingly well drawn out by Miss Cobbe. As the two incriminated Essayists have made good the whole of their legal claims, some passages may require modification—especially a very important alteration will be necessary in any future edition is the note at pp. 68-69, concerning the endlessness of future punishment, which it is now decided is not a necessary doctrine in the Church of England. The effect of the movement of Bishop Colenso is then described, which will undoubtedly be carried forward into the New Testament. And the inferences which will follow from such investigations as his will be much more fatal to received beliefs than any theoretical or general statements of the second Broad Church School could possibly be. It was politic, no doubt, in the maintainers of the dogma as it is to fight the Bishop at the outworks, upon the numbers and quantities of the narrative of the Exodus. For they very well know that while the numbers of the Israelites at the Exodus would not be essential to be ascertained as a matter of fact in an ordinary historical inquiry, their accuracy and consistency are essential to the credibility of such a narrative purporting to be written by an eye-witness. [unclear: So], again, the clamour raised at the supposition of Samuel, instead of page 552 Moses, having been the real author of the history of the Exodus, indicates a profound apprehension that little reliance can be placed upon the history if transmitted only by tradition through a period of four hundred years. Would-be conciliators, who speak of its being unimportant whether 600,000 fighting men of Israel came out of Egypt or 600, and unimportant whether Moses or Samuel (who was equally inspired) composed the Pentateuch, do not touch the difficulty as it is secretly felt—that an immense gap will be made in the miraculous history of the Bible, if it shall appear that there is no contemporary evidence to the events of the Exodus as narrated.

The Bampton Lectures of Dr. Hannah present a noteworthy phase of the discussion concerning the Inspiration of the Bible.³ One one side he may be thought to make very considerable admissions and concessions to the critical spirit; on the other, to be a strict maintainer of orthodoxy. Indeed, his special object appears to be show that the human characteristics of the Biblical writings may be largely recognised with safety so long as the critic starts from a suppositions that they embody a Revelation, of which the central fact or doctrine is the Incarnation of God the Son. He quotes, for instance, from Dr. Moberly, the observation that, "it makes a wonderful difference in the apparent magnitude and importance of a difficulty, whether it be regarded as the possible entrance to an entire unbelief or an acknowledged perplexity on the fringe or edge of a strong and impregnable faith." And he adds that "setting forth from the firm foundation of such faith, we shall find that disputes on details have a growing tendency to settle themselves and disappear."—p. 140. We ought not to under value the candour which leads Dr. Hannah openly to reject the "all or none" and "every jot and tittle" theories of Inspiration, because he carries his concessions only to the point beyond which they would endanger the certitude of doctrines which he assumes to be true. And unless he had secured himself at the very outset against any supposition of weakness as to the received dogma, there are many parts of these lectures which would have excited serious apprehensions in the minds of many of his bearers. His purpose generally is to show the completeness of the divine and human elements in Scripture, but neither so to exalt the divine as to reduce the human author to a mere machine, nor so to insist on the human characteristics as to reduce the divine to the same spiritual influence, which may be said to preside over any great work of human genius. And Dr. Hannah seems to agree with the distinction which Dr. Lushington laid down between the inspiration of the Scriptural authors and that of other great and good men as one of kind and not of degree. The question that arises in what does this generic difference consist? Dr. Hannah think he answers the question by drawing first a distinction between Reve- page 553 lation and Inspiration, and then between Revelation and other knowledge which comes to man through natural and ordinary channels. Whence?, as ordinary literature is to ordinary knowledge in its various degrees, so is inspired Scripture to revealed knowledge. As a framework indeed, to the Revelation, properly so called, we have a history of thoughts, words, and deeds of men which required no special interposition in order to their observation or record. But a different order of facts could be known only by a miraculous inspiration—such as the commands and warnings of God, and mysterious truths concerning his nature. "And us all this is miraculous, we make no further demand on faith when we add that it was coupled with many other manifestations of miracle—prophecies which none but God could pronounce, direct interpositions of his sovereign will to alter or suspend his ordinary laws."—p. 28. It is, indeed, conceded that it is difficult to draw a line around that which is human history and observation necessary as framework to the record of the Revelation, though record of Revelation itself, and as to which consequently the human characteristics may be found to predominate. But the impossibility of drawing this line has not, we think, been sufficiently noticed by the lecture, nor the important consequence from it, that his argument or exposition is entirely valueless as addressed to those who do not start from the same doctrinal assumptions as he does himself. It is conceded that in matters of science or mere matters of history there may be errors in the Bible, while there can be none in those parts which belong to the Revelation properly so called. And the vehicle of the Revelation is human, while the Revelation itself is divine. Thus in the first chapter of Genesis it is the form or clothing of the doctrine of the creation of the world, and of man as the noblest work of God, which alone is, properly speaking, human, and which may not, therefore, he compatible with scientifically ascertained truth. The lecturer's lords are here worth transcribing:—

"If we are asked then, whether we resign the historic reality of the beginning of Genesis, we answer that we resign nothing but a deeply-seated misapprehension, which has confounded records of a different order, and obliterated the distinction between theology and history by transferring the traditions of the one to the other. The first step in what may be technically called the narrative of history is taken at the beginning of the fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis, in the words—'this is the book of the generations of Adam' . . . . With some minor exceptions the first four chapters are rather theological than historical; they belong to the head of pure revelation rather than to that of ordinary narrative. They embody matter which no conjecture could have reached, which no tradition could have furnished. They unfold in such order as God judged to be the fittest, the fundamental truths about God's purpose and God's work in creation, and about the innocence, the sin, and all fall of man. This, then, after all, is the sole residuum of so much 'confident rhetoric,' to which the Mosaic record has been exposed; the assailant has only succeeded in carrying a position which a deeper interpretation makes it needless to defend."—pp. 164—165.

Dr. Hannah must here find himself, we think, on slippery ground. How much is fundamental, how much is vehicle and accessory? Dr. Hannah does not take the descriptive part of the first chapter of page 554 Genesis as fundamental; nor does he consider the word "day" should be literally pressed, any more than such anthropomorphic expression as "finger" or "hand" of God. Have we then in the second and chapters of Genesis a real Eden, real trees of good and evil and of life; a real apple, a speaking serpent, a historical Adam and Eve? If how elicit Dr. Hannah's doctrine of a moral Fall?—how elicit it under any supposition? The doctrine of creation by One God is manifestly conveyed in the first chapter of Genesis, for it is set forth in terms as its very text; yet it does not follow that a miraculous revelation was employed in making it known. But unless one is predetermined to find in Gen. ii. iii. the "evangelical" doctrine of the "Fall," it appears on the face of it to be nothing more than a supposed account of the origin of certain physical conditions of humanity. The moral difficulties of the Old Testament are dealt with in a still less satisfactory manner. Dr. Hannah seems to solve them, as in the case of Deborah on the hypothesis that to the divine element of Revelation belongs such histories the declaration of the contrast between good and evil-true religion and false; to the human element, the relentless hatred of the Jews towards the foes who were arrayed against the chosen people, And we should remember, says Dr. Hannah, "the real wickedness the Canaanitish people." But really is there evidence that they were more "wicked" than their invaders? Nor does Dr. Hannah observe that the difficulty is twofold—partly belonging to what he would call the Revelation—partly to that which he terms Inspiration: partly, that is, that immoral things should be done by God's chosen special instruments—partly that the writers who record the facts, supposing them to have happened, pass no rectifying judgment upon them. Nor again, does he grapple with the inquiry whether such phrases as "God said," &c., as in the temptation of Abraham—in the command to slaughter the sons of Saul—in the approbation of the treachery of Jehu, are to be understood as implying an immediate divine communication, or a natural though erroneous imagination on the part of the agents, or a formula of the narrator. Do such phrases belong to the divine or to the human element, to the mere 'record of a sin,' or to 'its express approbation?' (p. 239). Are such phrases, when met with in the Hebrew records, to be interpreted as they would be, if they were met with in "any other book?" A general statement, that in many respects the Bible differs from any other book, and that so far as it differs the same rules of interpretation are not to be applied to it as to other books, will not solve such a difficulty as this when it arises in detail. On the whole, we cannot think that Dr. Hannah's distinction, as he puts it, between the Revelation and Inspiration of the Bible, its message and vehicle, its matter and form, would prove of any practical utility to an inquirer, though it may be convenient as a temporary shelter against troublesome criticisms to those who take trust a traditional scheme of doctrine.

Mr. Row's work on Inspiration is likewise directed to preserve the supernatural character of the Christian Revelation, by distinguishing between the divine and human elements in the Biblical writings.⁴ With page 555 both authors we have already left behind the platitudes of the Words-worths and the Burgons; but Mr. Row far surpasses Dr. Hannah in intellectual grasp and logical force. The question as to the nature of the inspiration of the New Testament, says Mr. Row, may be considered the great theological question of the day—it must be treated inductively from observation of the facts presented in the New Testament itself, lest we should attribute to the writers an inspiration which they may possibly disclaim, and which may then mislead us in the interpretation of the records. Mr. Row does not recur at all to the Old Testament. The inquiry proceeds indeed on the assumption that the Scriptures of the New Testament contain a Revelation sufficiently attested by miracle. Apart from the question whether the evidence for this attestation is complete or not, there are some good observations on the subject of miracle. The established laws of nature, as they are called, are in fact the mode in which God acts in conformity to His own Will. His energy is ever present and operative in the universe; so that a miracle or suspension of the laws of nature is only God ceasing to act in one way and acting in another (p. 108). Therefore—

"It will be admitted that a miracle is not more a divine act, nor more an exertion of divine power, than the ordinary laws of Providence are divine acts and exertions of divine power. No mistake is more common than to represent that a miracle is an extraordinary (i.e., extra great) exertion of a divine power. This error leads to an entire misapprehension of the true end and purpose of a miracle. The performance of a miracle is not intended to display power, but to afford proof of a special intervention of God."

The miracle is an attestation to the reality of the commission of a messenger from God. Mr. Row is of course perfectly justified, for the purpose of a special inquiry, in disentangling himself from an examination into the evidence whether this miraculous attestation has really been given. And his conclusions as to the phenomena actually presented by the New Testament writings, on the supposition of this miraculous attestation, are in many respects the more valuable. Not only because a miraculous attestation is taken for granted, but because the highest possible form of inspiration of which humanity is capable is involved the 'Incarnation,' which every orthodox person would acknowledge, it follows that the words and actions of Jesus are the results of the highest possible inspiration. The only object of any inspiration of those who wrote clown those words and actions would be to insure an adequate correctness in the report. And whether the writers of the gospels were themselves eye and ear-witnesses, or derived their information from pre-existing written material, or from oral tradition, the records could only present the results of that highest form of inspiration which had manifested itself in the person of Jesus Christ. Any delects attaching to those who were the channels of transmission would be supplemented, it is said, by the prophetic gift bringing all page 556 things necessary to the remembrance of the ultimate compilers according to the Lord's promise. The very remarkable phenomena which the gospels present are exceedingly well described by Mr. Row. On any hypothesis of the origin of the gospels, or of the order in which the Synoptics were written, or however the differences and agreements they present may be attempted to be accounted for, the theory of verbal inspiration is equally excluded. And so it is in a remarkable manner by the fact of the still more striking dissimilarity between the Synoptics generally and the fourth gospel. The author of this last must have conceived it his office to supply an element of divine truth in which the preceding narratives had been deficient. But could he have dared to undertake this, if those other authors had been through by him to have written under the pure dictation of the Spirit? On this subject one of the facts to which Mr. Row draws especial attention is the greater concurrence of the Synoptics when they narrate the Lord's words than when they report his actions. This is the reverse, he says, of what usually takes place. Witnesses generally agree rather in the report of what they see than of what they hear. And he attributes this peculiar unison to the fulfilment of the divine promise that the Spirit should bring all things to the remembrance of the Apostles, whatsoever their Master had said unto them. We would venture to suggest that the knot may be untied in a natural manner; that the actions were in many cases imagined in order to give occasion for the words. Mr. Row would seem to go, in a certain sense, as far as this, that there is more truth in the words than in the actions Now this would be accounted for if we suppose that when the real occasions on which the words were used had been forgotten, others were imagined for them, or that the real occasions were embellished with miraculous additions in order to exalt the character of the Master according to the conceptions of the second or third succession of His followers. The book is very full of matter, and there are several other points on which we should have liked to say something—but limits forbid. It is, however, evident from such a work as this, the two points on which theological discussion will now proximately turn, which are indeed intimately connected, are, the question of miracle and that of the composition of the gospels.

With respect to the order of composition of the gospels, Mr. Kenrick, is in accordance with a great consent of modern criticism in giving the priority to Mark over Matthew or Luke.⁵ It would be too much perhaps, to affirm this of Mark as we have it; but that the basis of Mark is anterior to the other two Gospels, or more strictly, stand on an even line with the , whatever they were, which formed as original of Matthew, does not admit of much dispute. And without doubt there are elements in the Gospels which it is impossible to monize both as to the words and actions of the Lord, and also as to the aspect in which his character is presented. All three Essays comprised in this volume show the ripe scholar and careful critic.

The Bishop of St. David's, as appears from his recent Charge, is shrewd enough to perceive that the question of Miracle is that which ties at the root of the debate raised by the Essayists.⁶ He sees evidence of it not only in the late Professor Powell's Essay, but in Dr. Williams's, and especially in Mr. Wilson's. But he seems to confound a denial of Miracle, or more strictly speaking, a denial of the sufficient proof Miracle, with a denial of the supernatural, or in fact, with Atheism. For he thinks Professor Powell's language would as aptly express the fundamental doctrine of Spinoza as that of any theist, and that "the argument employed to prove the impossibility of miraculous interposition moves wholly within the circle of a purely materialistic philosophy."—p. 26. Dr. Thirlwall, it is believed, was one of the very first with whom the Originator of the scheme of the Episcopal Manifest to conferred on that subject; and it is not too much to suppose, from the respect which his brethren entertain for his opinion, that if he had declined to co-operate in that design, it would have fallen through in the present Charge his lordship takes some pains to justify proceeding; but chiefly in reply to the objection that, before the Essayists were condemned by the bishops, they ought to have been refuted. He urges that they could not have been expected to Knowledge that they were refuted; but as the first question really was, under the circumstances of the persons, whether the doctrine of the Essayists was "in harmony with the teaching of the Church," he thinks Be bishops might properly declare that in their opinion the contents of the book were repugnant to the doctrine of the Church. Incidit in Seyllam. &c. Por the bishops personally are not competent to declare finally what is, and what is not, consentaneous to the doctrine of the Church. Their opinion was only that of highly-placed and influential individuals, the expression of which might be seriously damaging to the authors they censured in the event of legal proceedings, and in the like event seriously entangling to some of themselves, who might in the end have to act in a strictly judicial character in a matter whereon they had already committed themselves by an extra-judicial opinion. And as the event has shown, they must either damage the weight of their judicial opinion if it be in accordance with sentiments expressed out of Court, or damage their own character for consistency, or for understanding the doctrines of their Church, if they acquit in detail what they have condemned in the lump. It may be true, as Bishop Thirlwall says, that the secret history of the volume of "Essays and Reviews" may for some time be known only to a few; still more, we apprehended, may that be said of the secret history of the Manifesto. And Dr. Thirlwall's justification of the Manifesto is unsatisfactory precisely for want of a certain portion of this secret history. Whatever the intentions of some, it may have been the understanding of others, that the issuing the Manifesto would both stop page 558 all agitation for new enactments, and preclude the necessity for legal prosecutions. Apart, however, from these considerations, the Manifesto was substantially justified, the Bishop argues, as directed against doctrines of the Essayists—"not on nice and doubtful [unclear: questions]," "on such as lie at the root of all revealed religion." It was not indicated in that document itself whereabouts in the volume the of objectionable doctrines were to be found. From the Charge of the Bishop, we now learn that they are principally to be met with in Mr. Powell's, Dr. Williams's, and Mr. Wilson's Essays, and that they principally concern the miraculous character of the Christian Revelation; a denial of which, in Dr. Thirlwall's sense, he appears to as equivalent to a denial of any supernatural agency at all.—pp. 48-50. There was an observation of Dr. Thirlwall's, in a previous Charge (which we refer to by memory), to the effect that the recognising the human element in Scripture, or the saying that "the Bible is the Voice of the congregation," need not be understood as questioning the divine origin of the Revelation, but only the mode of its transmission. Now if this may be said rightly with respect to Inspiration, it is difficult to see why the same may not be said of supernatural agency generally.

We never could understand why, if the authors of the other Essays were to be answerable for Professor Powell's Essay, he should not have the benefit of theirs: why they should be held responsible for his supposed materialism, rather than he have the credit of their obvious theism. But so it has been; and Mr. Kennard⁷ shows the true courage of a Christian gentleman in vindicating the Professor's memory from the imputations thrown upon it in the Charge above mentioned. At the same time he claims for the clergy of the Church of England generally, the right to treat the whole question of supernatural agency as an open one. It is a question as to mode of operation in reference to an acknowledged Divine Origin or Source; it is a question as to more or less knowledge on the part of man.

"The solution which has obtained most general acceptance with philosophic divines, is perhaps some modification of that proposed by Bishop Butler namely—that the distinction popularly drawn between the natural and supernatural, exists only relatively to our partial and most imperfect insight into the nature and extent of that 'wonderful order' established from everlasting by Him who, in the magnificent language of the prophet, 'inhabiteth eternity.' Our notions of what is natural, will be enlarged in proportion to our greater Knowledge of the works of God, and the dispensations of His providence."—p 10.

Mr. Wratislaw is a very straightforward critic, who does not consider the duty of the illustrator of the New Testament writings to be adequately performed by repeating a mass of opinions and leaving, difficulties just as they were before.⁸ Although himself apparently page 559 throughly orthodox, he is not very complimentary to some orthodox contemporaries. Dr. Wordsworth, he thinks, has "employed himself rather in concealing than in coping with difficulties; "he cannot call to mind "any instance in which Bishop Ellicott has solved a difficulty which had not previously been solved by others;" and though Dean Alford has accomplished most in the critical field, he finds in him "many errors and inaccuracies." In one of the best dissertations, for instance, in the volume on Rom. viii. 18, sqq., he is not undeservedly severe on Dr. Alford for his statement, that "never is used of mankind alone," in the face of Mark xvi. 15. There is a very good dissertation included in this volume upon the Te Deum, which, when some interpolations are rejected, would correspond substantially with the [unclear: amœbæan] recited, according to Pliny, by the primitive Christians in honour of Christ (carmen dicere secum invicem Christo quasi Deo).

The passages in brackets belong throughout to the Translator. We cordially recommend this Manual for its truly religious spirit, clearness good sense, and practical utility.

The late Dr. Bernard was well known for many years as the authorized teacher of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, and as the author, in conjunction with his former pupil, the Rev. P. H. Mason of the only practical grammar enabling the student to learn Hebrew as he would learn any other language.¹⁰ He was of Jewish descent born at Uman, a small town in Southern Russia (then Poland in 1785. His father was a banker in wealthy circumstances. In 1825 Hermann came to England, apparently for the purpose of learning the language, but in consequence of his family having met with pecuniary reverses, he never returned to the continent. In 1830 he established himself at Cambridge, where he was soon appointed Hebrew teacher in the University. He retained this office till the time of his death, which took place suddenly, from heart disease, 15th November 1857. He had become totally blind from cataract since 1850, but thorough familiarity with the language enabled him to retain his pupils, with some assistance from his friend, Mr. Mason, in correcting their written exercises. The bulk of the present volume, which runs to more than 500 pages, is occupied with a thorough grammatical analysis of the Book of Job, which is followed by a new translation In the preliminary matter is given, both in Hebrew and English, the Preface of Ben Zev, presenting a good example of the better style of Rabbinical criticism. The learned Rabbi, for instance, discusses the question—"Whether the name of Job was [that of] a really existing man or not?" Various opinions, it is said, have prevailed among the learned men of old, whether Job was a real man, whether the events related actually took place, or whether the book was the creation of a writer who expressed in an allegory or parable the lesson he intended convey. The objections to the historical character of the book [unclear: are] 1. It is unlikely that in real life everything should tally [unclear: with] sacred numbers—seven sons, seven thousand sheep, three daughters, three thousand camels, &c. 2. It is very unlikely that in all in the page 561 catastrophes which befell Job's family, there should always be left one man no more to bring the tidings. 3. How could the writer learn what, passed in heaven respecting the sons of men and what Satan answered Jehovah, "except a ladder was set up on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and the writer was ascending and descending on it?" 4. How can it be supposed the controversy should be carried on between Job and his friends in lofty poetic language? 5. It would be strange that they should be all bards, all elegant speakers, and all adopt one style. 6. How can the narrator either have been present throughout to set down with pen and ink exactly what was said, or how could his memory have enabled him afterwards to record it? On the other hand—1. The particulars mentioned by the writer must be real because as they are not essential to the supposed allegory, there would otherwise have been no reason for the mention of them. 2. If job never lived, how comes Ezekiel to introduce him with Noah and Daniel? (ch. xiv). The learned Rabbi concluded that it was right to take a middle course between the extremes, and to suppose that there had lived a man named Job, celebrated for his dignity and possessions, and remarkable for his righteousness, who was tried with severe misfortune: "this man the writer selected for his subject; and, taking up some of the real facts, he fashioned him with the graving-tool of poetry and made of him an image according to the likeness and form of the man whom he wished to give life to in his allegory" (p. lv.). The Rabbi mentions also the various opinions concerning the date of the book, some placing it as late as the reign of Ahasuerus; he himself thinks it as ancient as the time of Moses—that it is, in fact, a translation from the Arabic as to the greater part, but that Moses himself wrote the the beginning and end of the book; for he observes in those portions the name of the Divine Essence is employed (Jehovah), with witch Moses was acquainted, but in the central poem the names [unclear: of] Eloah, Shaddai—except, indeed, as Mr. Chance notices, in xii. 9—perhaps Ben Zev had before him a copy with another reading. Mr. Chance, whose opinions are conservative, and who remarks, sometimes not without effect, upon the hastiness of other critics, guards himself against being supposed to participate even in the moderate [unclear: itudinarianism] of the learned Ben Zev.

The Essay of Dr. Ginsburg on the Essenes gives in a short compass a complete account of that remarkable sect or modification of [unclear: daisim]: with the more important ancient authorities, as Philo and Josephus especially, in extenso: to which is added a sketch of the modern literature of the subject continued to the latest date.¹¹ Dr. Ginsburg is sensible and cautious, and while pointing out the Essene element in primitive Christianity, he does not press too far the [unclear: infegences] from a comparison of the maxims of the Essenes with the precepts of Jesus Christ.

The title of Mr. Gurney's pamphlet sufficiently indicates its nature.¹² page 562 It consists principally of papers which originally appeared in the [unclear: Jo]Bull newspaper, and if any of our readers met with them there, they will not be desirous of perusing them again.

Mr. Girdlestone has long been a consistent advocate of liturgical revision as to those matters in which the Prayer Book is distasteful to Evangelical Churchmen.¹³ He observes in his present pamphlet that at the successive revisions which the Formularies have hitherto undergone, the alterations made have uniformly been reactionary and in the direction of quasi Roman opinions and practices. Strong as the case is which Mr. Girdle stone makes out, we very much doubt whether be and his friends would be able to carry through Convocation as well as Parliament the most moderate reform. But we think it possible that there might be passed through Parliament a permissive or relieving Act confined to a few particulars, and those of omission only instance, that no clergyman shall be subject to any penalties; 1. For omitting to read the Creed of Athanasius; 2. For substituting a lesson from the Bible for one from the Apocrypha. Mr. Girdlestone would perhaps not agree with us in adding, or of one Biblical lesson for another but to our minds there are chapters from the Bible appointed to be read in churches quite as unfit for that purpose as Bel and the Dragos, or Susannah and the Elders; 3. For the omission of the word "regenerate" in the Baptismal Service. We agree with Mr. Girdlestone that it would not answer to leave the omission of words in the [unclear: Burrid] Service to the discretion of the minister: that would therefore be a matter for revision properly so called, and could not be embraced in such a short relieving Act as we recommend for a practical beginning The relaxation also of the declaration of "assent and consent to all and everything," &c. of the Act of Uniformity must wait for a recommendation mendation from the Royal Commission.

The present volume of the late Rev. F. W. Robertson's [unclear: Serm] completes the series:¹⁴ the discourses contained in it are somewhat more fragmentary than those which have preceded, but will be read with the same interest. It is proposed shortly to publish a volume consisting of skeletons or notes, which will prove no doubt a [unclear: like] to some of the present generation of preachers to that which was supplied to the evangelical clergy many years ago by Simeon's skeletons.

The editor of the collected works of the celebrated Edward Irving proposes to select from his mass of material those discourses and [unclear: treaties] which are likely to prove of permanent interest.¹⁵ About one-half page 563 the collection has never hitherto been published. Glancing through a thick volume of more than six hundred pages, we find the discourses now printed to exhibit the great oratorical power pointed with [unclear: quaintness] for which the preacher was famous; there are included also a view of the history of the Church of Scotland previous to the Reformation, Ether with Irving's Notes on the Standards of the Church of Scotland, showing much independence of thought.

On the Colenso controversy, the feeblest of all the books we have to mention is that of Mr. Kingsley.¹⁶ It may be true, that in a series of sermons to a parochial congregation the author might not be expected to enter very deeply into the questions at issue. But he should not have so insulted any number of English people assembled to hear him give them proofs of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch as to "advise them to believe" that Moses wrote it. Mr. Kingsley seeks in vain to shelter himself under the example of Dr. Stanley. It is true th Dean of Westminster, by the consummate grace of his style and vigour of his descriptions, invites his readers to pay little attention to questions which he thinks would only puzzle them unprofitably; he draws them off from critical inquiries of which he sees no solution; he leads them to trace a providential order in human events, to observe historical analogies (at times, it may be, somewhat far-fetched and [unclear: fanciful]) to learn lessons from narratives wherein the matter-of-fact history cannot be distinguished from its embellishments. He might even say, whether Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, or to what extent, is not a matter of much moment; but, I advise you to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch, we think he never would. Mr. Kingsley has to a great extent mistaken his new master.

Mr. Arnold writes from the point of view of the German reaction and he thinks Colenso is doomed t, defeat, because Strauss, [unclear: pulsed] in his attack upon the Gospels by the Court-preacher, Hoffmann, married an actress." His present volume, of less than two hundred pages, consists of three chapters.¹⁷ The first treats of the [unclear: present] and its gravity, acknowledging that the fathers of Protestantism, and it might be said its sons too, "have jeopardized a good cause by a had theory, which cannot be supported," in their anxiety to oppose [Roman]" infallibility with [Scriptural] infallibility." The second chapter is chiefly occupied with an examination of the Jehovistic and Elohistic theory, which is rejected, yet with the admission, that even Kurtz and Delitzsch recognise a certain double current of authorship, and ultimately "repelling as presumptuous" the inquiry, whether the author of the Pentateuch as we have it, made use of pre-existent material? The third chapter undertakes to show that "the Pentateuch professes to have been written by Moses," and endeavours to explain away the signs of a later authorship; and it is contended, in spite of the page 564 remarkable silence of the subsequent literature, that the Thorah in its completeness is recognised throughout the subsequent history

The "Replies" of Mr. F. Parker¹⁸ turn chiefly upon the form which Bishop Colenso has given to his objections to the historical character of the Pentateuch; that is, in that he has confined himself to the internal inconsistencies of the narrative, without impugning the [unclear: miracul] of portion of it as such. Hence Mr. Parker's solution, that the miracles account for things which might otherwise have been impossibilities or have shown inconsistency. And that miracles were wrought is proved by the institutions of the passover and the Sabbath, which the [unclear: penteuch] itself relates, and which were always observed subsequently their institution.

Mr. Rogers's "Investigation," is the pleasantest written of these answers, but it is very far from being a "full" one.¹⁹ The solution of the chief difficulties is however attained by Mr. Rogers only by [unclear: appe] to miracle, even when the narrative itself says nothing about it. And it is remarkable, that while it was the favourite resource some times since to suppose a corruption in the numbers of the Israelites, [unclear: they] found, as Bishop Colenso states, so to run through and through the history that they cannot be torn out. Now, it is obviously no sufficient answer to an objection to the credibility of a narrative to say—it is true that it would be impossible to meet the material necessities of such numbers as are described unless by a continued successions of miracles, and therefore such miracles must have taken place. In other words, where the books mention miracles we appeal to the [unclear: book] evidence of the miracles; where they do not mention them we assume them, because the history will not stand without them. [unclear: Everything] tending to re-open the inquiry into the evidence for the scriptural miracles.

Belonging to the Renan controversy we have to notice the translation of the "Life of Jesus," published by Messrs. Trübner,²⁰ which will give the English reader some notion of the extreme beauty of the original, and enable him to understand the various critiques which have appeared upon that important work.

M. de Pressensé criticizes the book from the standing-point [unclear: of] orthodoxy which many consider very far from orthodox, of a Fall of Man and the Divinity of Jesus in some peculiar sense of his [unclear: own].²¹ page 565 recklessness in risking entire Christianity on an alternative may be judged of by the following passage:—

"If he [Jesus] be not the Man-God, his teaching, with the exception of a few ingenious parables and some maxims which were already known, but into which he infused a purer spirit, is nothing but a tissue of tiresome repetitions. If he be not the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the true Vine from which the branches draw the sap, if he be but an ordinary teacher, then there exists no book more absurd and empty than the Gospel."—p. 78.

The pamphlet of M. Réville²² is reprinted from the "Revue Germanique et Française," and may be taken as expressing the judgment of the liberal Protestant party, of which M. Réville himself, M. Colani of the "Nouvelle Revue de Théologie," and M. Athanase Coquerel fils, lately deprived of his coadjutorship by the intolerance of the Presbyteral Council of Paris, are principal ornaments. While exposing the narrowness of Father Larroque, and the inconsistency of M. de Pressensé, and giving M. Renan full credit for the sincerity of his aim, for the religiousness of his purpose, and the beauty of his construction, he finds much to remark on as unsound in philosophy and criticism, and shocking to the religious instinct. This pamphlet is especially worth reading by those who feel that they cannot accept M. Kenan's estimate of the character of Jesus Christ as implied in such words as these: "Jésus dut donc choisir entre ces deux partis, on renoncer à sa mission, ou devenir thaumaturge."

The sixth volume of Miss Cobbe's edition of "Theodore Parker's Works"²³ contains his discourses on Slavery and on the dangers to the American people from the development of the money-getting spirit already, he said, one-eightieth of the people was ruling the rest. The seventh volume comprises discourses on Social Science. Parker did not see any impiety in science, least of all in the science of human nature. Unless the human nature is understood it is impossible to act upon it for its benefit, and that was Parker's great work as a religious [unclear: acher]. Parker was not a popular man, but he did not expect it, El he has a better reward.