ful babe. When we think of her, filled with the hopes that had so long agitated her people, overshadowed by the precious and pure influence of truth and love, steadily holding her thoughts and feelings in an atmosphere of purity and holiness, soothing every earthly passion to rest, exciting her imagination, awakening every impulse of worship, filling her whole body and soul with the divine elixir; with every mental, spiritual, and bodily faculty held by the power of the Highest; shall we say that his birth or his life was a miracle? "Blind unbelief is sure to err; " but God comes down to dwell with him of a lowly and contrite heart. He is forever revealing himself to us through the Holy Spirit of Truth. When we hear the divine Master saying to us across the centuries, as to them of old," Whom say ye that I am?" We answer: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," for God, by his spirit, was in thee reconciling the world unto himself. And yet we feel it no disloyalty to our Lord and Saviour, if, like Luke, we suppose him to be, according to nature, the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi.

ARTICLE VII.

New Defences of Endless Punishment.

WHAT IS OF FAITH as to Everlasting Punishment? In reply to Dr. Farrar's challenge in his "Eternal Hope," 1879. By the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D. D., Regins Professor of Hebrew, Canon of Christ Church. Second Edition. Oxford and London, 1880. 8vo, pp. 284.

EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT: Lectures delivered at St. James's Church, Picadilly, on the six first Sundays after Trinity, in the year 1880. By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D. D., Dean of Norwich. New Vork. 12mo. pp. xxx, 191.

CANON FARRAR's book, here professedly answered, imperfect and unsatisfactory as it is, has at least done good service in calling attention to the doctrine of endless punishment beyond any other work perhaps that ever appeared in Great Britain. It has not only aroused the advocates of that terri

ble dogma and fairly put them to their proofs, but has awakened multitudes in all classes of educated people to a consideration of what they had formerly held, without inquiry or any serious thought.

In the volume before us, we have an important contribution to the controversy going on upon the subject of which it treats, although it discusses no principles and dwells but a moment on the testimony of the Scriptures. Dr. Pusey's argument, as might perhaps be expected from his theological position, rests almost wholly on what the church has believed and taught, as if that were to be accepted as final. He begins by persuading his reader that the doctrine of endless punishment, in respect to its nature and the numbers who are to suffer it, is capable of being misrepresented, and made to appear worse than it is. As to its nature the church has settled nothing, though the great mass of Christians in all the ages of its glory have believed it is to consist of sensible pains, inflicted by fire and brimstone; while in respect to the number lost, he is quite indignant that anyone should think that a majority are to be included in that unfortunate class. True, it has been almost universally believed, but the church has decided nothing, and the kind-hearted doctor, by one means or another, manages to save, one would think, nearly every human soul.

That the Jews, or at least some of them, believed in endless punishment in the time of our Saviour is made plain by the testimony of various apocryphal books and Josephus. That this was the doctrine of the Pharisees, those eminent friends and persistent followers of Christ, has long been known and universally acknowledged, and its mild and gracious influence upon their character is a matter of history. The only surprise we feel in reading Dr. Pusey's book is that he did not stop a moment to tell us whence the Pharisees derived it. As Professor of Hebrew he ought to have shown where in the Old Testament this doctrine was found.

Our learned author fortifies the doctrine by showing how many martyrs were strengthened in their sufferings by the

fear of endless torments, and others comforted themselves by telling their persecutors to what a fate their er.mity against Christ and his saints was leading them; but he omits to mention the case of Stephen, who seems not to have been animated by this elevating spirit.

When he comes to the Church Fathers, Bishops, and Doctors, who taught this doctrine, he finds a most formidable series of them, and following in the footsteps of Dietelmair, leads us to conclude that Universalism found no advocates in ancient times, and that the testimony of the church in all its branches, Greek, Roman, and Protestant, has been practically unanimous in its belief of the doctrine of endless punishment. The work is worthy of a careful review, when some of his positions would be found to be false, and most of his proofs inconclusive. The advocates of this doctrine must find it clearly revealed in the Old Testament, or their whole superstructure will be without foundation.

This work of Dr. Goulburn is essentially apologetic. The object of the learned author is not so much to prove the doctrine of endless punishment, as to show that "it is not irreconcilable with the attributes and purpose of God," that is, to meet the objections which naturally arise in every thoughtful and reverent mind against so terrible a doctrine. In the endeavor to accomplish his design, Dr. Goulburn undertakes to show that endless punishment is consistent with the justice of God. He dare not say that sin is infinite and therefore deserves an endless punishment, but treats about that thought through a whole discourse, where Jonathan Edwards settles the business in a single paragraph. It is a piece of special pleading not highly creditable to the present year of grace. Let it be conceded that we cannot tell precisely how awful an evil sin is, or what punishment it deserves, does it thence follow that we are incompetent to say that a finite being like man cannot perform an act of infinite desert, good or bad? But the Dean of Norwich finds an evidence of the infinity of sin in the infinity of the atonement! He would undoubtedly

prove that the atonement must be infinite in order to meet the demands of an infinite sin, and thus go round the circle.

The second lecture treats upon the same topic, but here the learned preacher takes a new departure. It is no longer an infinite sin demanding an endless punishment, but we have a sinner sinning on through eternity! And surely no one can complain that a bad man should be punished as long as he persists in being bad. It is well for orthodoxy to have two strings to its bow. Yet here there is a slight difficulty; a being that can sin ought, if there is any truth in ethics, to be able to stop sinning. He is at least a moral being, and therefore free, and if free there is no necessity of his going on forever in a course of evil doing. But against this our Dean protests, and insists that death "fixes the main bias of the character so that it never alters afterwards in an opposite direction." And as this must be an ordinance of God, we may conclude that He has arranged matters so as to secure an abundant crop of sin through the ages of eternity, and, what is a little remarkable, sin that is absolutely necessary and as unavoidable on the part of the sinner as the falling of a stone or the movement of the planets!

After this demonstration that endless punishment is compatible with justice, it is hardly necessary to follow our author in his showing how beautifully it harmonizes with infinite love. It is evident that the Dean of Norwich has in mind some singular attributes attributes which he calls divine, and which certainly are not humau.

Dr. Goulburn is no doubt a very good dean, and may be a man of large learning and many virtues, but he is not prepared to discuss this subject. It is evidently new to him, wholly out of his line of thought, if not a little beyond his depth.

GENERAL REVIEW.

The Old Testament Apocrypha.

The Apocrypha of the Old Testament. With Historical Introductions, a Revised Translation. and Notes Critical and Explanatory. By Edward Cone Bissell, D. D. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5.00.

THE editor and publishers of Lange's Commentary have done a good and generous service to the public, by supplementing that work with this volume on the Old Testament Apocrypha; for, owing to the discussions among the Bible societies touching the propriety of printing these books with the canonical books of the Hebrew Scriptures, but few of the younger portion of this generation have ever seen them even, or known anything of their character and contents. We welcome this publication, therefore, as one likely to command the interested and inquiring attention of all intelligent students of the history and authority of the sacred writings.

It is a curious fact, that while the Jews rejected these Apocryphal works from their Canon, many of the Christians of the first centuries accepted them all, or in part, as belonging to the Old Testament. This remark needs some qualification on both sides, We cannot here enter into the story of the controversies and bitter antagonism between the Palestinian and Alexandrian theological schools of thought and belief; but it is necessary to say that these books of the Apocrypha make their first appearance in a collected form, in the Septuagint translation, made in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. And whoever the translators were, they evidently regarded them as of equal authority with the rest of the Old Testament; though they came into existence subsequent to the prophetic age, and after the Canon was, according to the Talmud, declared by the Great Council to be closed.

From the Septuagint, the only Old Testament in use among the first Gentile converts, these books passed into use in the early Christian churches, though not without protest from individual scholars and critics against their being regarded as authorative in doctrine. The titles of these books follow: I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to the Book of Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, The Song of the Three Holy Children, History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of