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dispute between Arius and Athanasius? There must be a criterion; and, if any one thing is demonstrated by logic, it is that Protestantism has none. Let us escape, then, to individual liberty; that is to say, to Fancy: or let us take the principle of Authority; behold us in Catholicism!

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"Happy, then, the minds, bold and blind, who stand at the extremes of the intellectual and moral world, and are not afraid to say, with equal assurance, these, that matter, with its brute forces, is the principle of every thing; those, that all liberty is folly, and that there is somewhere on earth an infallible Sovereign before whom every creature must bow. Unhappy the clear spirits, unwilling to be dispossessed of the right of thinking for themselves, who have not ceased to believe that the moral world has a guide and a judge. Between Atheism and the servitude of conscience and thought the alternative is not pleasant. Nevertheless to this alternative are we brought by the excesses of that logical process which is the disease of our times."

H. G. S.

SIMULTANEOUS with the numerous carefully prepared essays in English which Professor Evans's translation of Stahr's "Life of Lessing" has brought out, comes the French "Study" of Fontanès,* which, in suggestiveness and finish, is equal to any of them. The French writer confines himself to the theological labors of the prophet of reform, aud measures the way and the extent of the heresy of the pioneer of liberal faith in Germany. By skilful quotation from the writings of Lessing, the polemic tracts against Goetze, "Nathan the Wise," and the "Education of the Human Race," he manages to set forth the ideas of the rationalist of the eighteenth century, on most of the questions which interest inquirers in this nineteenth century; he gives in short compass, but very clearly, Lessing's view of the Bible, of Revelation, of the essence of Christianity, and of the functions of the Church and priesthood. He vindicates Lessing most successfully from the charge of teaching Pantheism or materialism, and shows how widely he differed from Spinoza and Voltaire. The Lessing of this volume is not a scoffing sceptic or a vague dreamer, but a wise, enlightened, and reverent thinker; a purifier, but not a destroyer; a liberal, but yet a sincere Christian. He is rather the successor of Pascal than of Reimarus; and he has no scorn even for the legends which he rejects.

"Faithful to the apologetic style of the seventeenth century, which demonstrates the truth of Christianity by the miracles, the prophecies, and the resur

Le Christianisme Moderne, Étude sur Lessing. Par ERNEST FONTANES. Paris: Baillière, 1867. 18mo. pp. viii, 214.

rection, Reimarus was led to conclude that Christianity is the fruit of an imposture, of which he has proved that the grounds on which its defenders rely will not bear examination. This conclusion is inevitable for a man of the eighteenth century; but here is one of the points on which Lessing does not belong to his age. He will not shut himself up along with orthodoxy in this ruined citadel, to be buried along with Christianity under the ruins of these superannuated arguments. He founds his demonstration of Christianity on the inner witness,' which is not a fact of ancient story, but is constantly reproduced in the soul of every one to whom the Christian religion is brought. He created a new apologetic style, of which Pascal had already drawn the outlines. The Fragmentist, under the blows of his criticism, prostrates Christianity, with all its proofs from tradition. Lessing always proved his right to be counted among the defenders of Christianity. He sacrificed the outposts only to save the fortress."

No nobler words have ever been written in polemic discussions than those which Lessing wrote about the Bible and practical religion. He recognized the influence of Christianity as purest and best where there was least of the theological spirit. "I wish to separate," he says, "religion from the history of religion. I refuse to think that the historical knowledge of the birth and development of the Christian religion is an indispensable thing. I declare that all objections which can be brought against the historical part of the religion are of small moment, whether they can be refuted or not. I am not willing to admit, that the weak sides of the Bible are the weak sides of the religion. I have no patience with the boastings of the theologian, who assures the simple believer that all these objections have been long ago refuted. And I despise this short-sighted hermeneutics, which piles one possibility upon another, to maintain that it is possible that those weak points are not perhaps weak points, which cannot stop one breach that the enemy has made, without going on to make another larger still."

There is a wonderful fascination in the works of this great writer. The honest, noble nature of the man shines through all his thoughts. In our judgment, the finest statement of gospel liberality and charity, in all modern literature, is found in Lessing's drama of "Nathan the Wise."

C. H. B.

WHETHER Positivism "prays and is religious," as has been denied of Theism, we have no means of knowing. That it can preach very excellent and instructive sermons, must be owned by any one who has had the good fortune to read a volume of admirable dis

*

a book Mr. Cran

courses by the Rev. James Cranbrook, of Edinburgh, which some American firm would do well to republish. brook is no believer in the view of Professor Shedd, that " a masculine and vigorous rhetoric is the great want of the Church." Rhetorical log-rolling and metaphysical hair-splitting are equally foreign to the purpose of this sturdy Scot, who is satisfied, and, what is better, satisfies his readers, with setting forth the truth he has to tell in a plain and intelligible manner. The key-note of the volume before us is given in a single sentence of the Preface; viz., that "it is possible to found our religious beliefs upon the living facts of our own daily experience." That such a principle, applied to the topics commonly treated in the pulpit, should lead sometimes to conclusions widely at variance with traditional theology, is not surprising, especially when we consider how seldom such theology is in accordance with those conceptions of truth which our best thinking and the surest results of science and criticism enable us to form. Yet Mr. Cranbrook would be fully justified in claiming for himself the Christian name. The facts of religious experience, from which he reasons, are not hostile to Christian faith; while the actual influence in the world of the person and character of Christ is fully recognized as a fact of profoundest significance.

In the opening discourse, entitled "Where God is found," Mr. Cranbrook says, "This, therefore, is my message of grace to those crying out for the living God, 'Go and contemplate Christ, as depicted in the Gospels. It will awaken, not by your effort, but by the touch of God's hand, your devout feelings; you will in the feeling find the presence of your God." And again, in the sermon on "Love to the Unseen Christ," "Let what will come in the future, let criticism do what it will to the sacred history and literature, it can never deprive us of this wonderful ideal. It is stamped on every page of the Church's history; it is interwoven with all the Church's devotions; it has formed the thoughts of men down to the present day. It must, therefore, irrespective of outward circumstances, enter into our thoughts and mould our conceptions of the divine in humanity. . . . And thus, whether Colani and Strauss be victorious or defeated, still will every great and noble and holy soul be able to declare of Christ, Whom having not seen, we love.""

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* Credibilia; or, Discourses on Christian Faith. By the Rev. JAMES CRANBROOK, Edinburgh. London and Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co.

In the sermon entitled "What is Sin?" utilitarian morals are very plainly inculcated. Yet, looking only at what is practical, we can find little fault with Mr. Cranbrook's application of this ethical doctrine. The aim of all preaching should be to awaken the divine life in the soul. If a philosophy allied with Positivism can make God's presence felt,- create a healthful sense of the sinfulness there is in all transgression of the divine laws, and teach the sacred meanings of our common, every-day pursuits of business and study, of work and play, let us gladly accept the fruit of such preaching, and cease our foolish complaints about the shape of the tree. Positivism may be a poor philosophy wherewith to explain religion; but, whenever any believer in this philosophy sets forth the facts of religious experience with the clearness and force which characterize Mr. Cranbrook's "Credibilia," we shall bid him God-speed. The "Church of the Future," so often projected, so slow in building, will be a mighty cathedral, in whose construction many builders of many generations and of many beliefs shall labor. If we cannot agree with those who think that Positivism will be its Michael Angelo, we are yet willing to let the work go on as the Great Architect shall order, confident that he will accept every offering which is made "in spirit and in truth."

H. G. S.

HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES.

THIS book has a certain interest in connection with the article which we publish this month, condensing the result of Bunsen's inquiry as to Egypt's place in history. Its main theory is, that the great pyramid at Ghizeh was built as a standard of mensuration, which standard was determined for the ancients by the diameter and circumference of the globe, the secret of its spherical shape having been already discovered. The azimuth of the entrance-passage coincides with the astronomical meridian of the place; and, that the standard of dry-measure might never be lost, the porphyry coffer of Cheops was built in to the sealed structure. Mr. Taylor proceeds to his statements, without the least regard to the inscriptions already deciphered in the pyramids themselves, and apparently ignorant that a building, erected in conformity to the ritual of an astral faith, would of necessity preserve such measures, whether erected for the purpose or not! What

*The Great Pyramid: Why was it Built? By JOHN TAYLOR. London Longman, Green, & Longman, 1859; 2d edition, 1864.

ever we may think of the theory, the book is full of original suggestion, which the favorable mention of Herschel and Piazzi Smith forbid the scholar to ignore. We proceed to extract the pith from his pages.

The early world bore traces of an antediluvian measure, in a certain sacred or double cubit, the cubit of Karnak, estimated by Gardner Wilkinson, and which Taylor finds to be the basis of every sort of mensuration in the great pyramid. A proof of the existence of the double cubit is preserved in Herodotus. The priests told him, that, in the reign of Moeris, the Nile overflowed all the land when it rose to the height of eight cubits; but, in the time of Herodotus, it had to rise to the height of sixteen cubits to overflow the same land. Eight cubits of Karnak, in use fifteen hundred years before Christ, were equal to sixteen cubits in use a thousand years later. Scripture is quoted (2 Chron. iii. 3) to show the use among the Hebrews of a double measure. The height of Solomon's temple, in 2 Chron. called a hundred and twenty, is represented in 1 Kings as equal to thirty cubits of the first measure. The fourth of the cubit of Karnak was a span. Taylor believes this cubic-measure, derived from the earth's belt, to have had a relation to the mensuration of time. "There was signified on the pyramid," says Herodotus, "by means of Egyptian characters, "how much was expended on radishes, onions, and garlic for the laborers; and, as I well remember, the interpreter, reading over, said it amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver." Egyptian characters were generally pictorial, and he believes the inscription to have been a measure of the earth's radius or diameter, indicated by the signs still in use, as degrees (°), minutes ('), and seconds ("); these, cut in the stone, being not unlike vegetables. "The second of the diameter," he says, "is sixteen inches, of which measure there are three hundred and sixty in the 5,760 inches at present called a second."

"When the new earth was first measured after the Deluge [or Edenic convulsions, as Bunsen would say], it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the old earth by a distance equal to 36.868 miles." This change produced a change in all measures.

The porphyry coffer, or "tomb of Cheops," the pyramid having been built to preserve the sacred antediluvian measure, - is then considered. The coffer stands in the chamber, in the meridian, north and south, but only half the distance from the east wall that it is from the west. In this coffer we find the old measure of the chaldron (Latin, caldarium, or hot-bath), not used by us as a liquid measure, but naturally enough taking that name if measures were shaped like

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