Page images
PDF
EPUB

of military service, no fewer than twenty members of this regiment are said to have failed, and become bankrupts, from the disorder brought into their affairs by their absence from home!

A third peril and source of suffering will soon follow. Now that the strife has actually commenced, it will not be easy to arrest its progress; yet in the months of July, August, and September no military operations can be carried on without the almost certain sacrifice of one half of the troops by the fevers of the summer season. Such are a few of the perils and miseries into which the people of the northern states are now rushing, merely because they have forgotten, or cast aside, Mr. Lowell's good counsel, given fifteen years ago, in the words which we again repeat:

"Ef I'd my way I had rather

We should go to work an' part;
They take one way, we take t'other,-
Guess it wouldn't break my heart;
Men hed ough' to put asunder
Them that God has no ways jined;

An' I shouldn't gretly wonder

Ef there's thousands o' my mind."

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

The Influence of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament upon the Progress of Christianity. By the Rev. Ralph Churton, B.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Macmillan. 1861.Perhaps there is no department of Church history which has been less explored than the subject of this Hulsean Prize Essay. We seldom remember that it was the influence of the Greek version of the Old Testament which prepared the Jewish proselyte to become the Christian believer. Amongst the nations mentioned as sending deputies to attend the day of Pentecost, there were at least nine amongst whom the Septuagint was more or less used in public worship. If Cyrus was the instrument employed for rebuilding the Jewish temple, "the heart of Ptolemy was stirred up," as our Biblical translators express it, to achieve that Alexandrian version, which was the door of the Gentiles (Ostium Gentilium) for entering the Christian church.

But the most distinguished privilege of this Version consists in the materials which it furnished for the style and phraseology of the New Testament. It is a plain and undeniable fact that all its doctrinal terms, Faith, Repentance, Conversion, Salvation, Justification, Redemption, Atonement, &c., are used to express the same ideas by the

LXX. translators, and that the great majority of quotations from the Old Testament are presented in their "ipsissima verba." Mr. Churton has with great elegance and learning illustrated this important truth. We rejoice to think that it has fallen to a Fellow of King's, who must have been an Etonian scholar, to show, that it is not from classical but Septuagintal authorities, that we must henceforth interpret the language and thoughts of the Evangelists and Apostles.

Such a work is peculiarly valuable at the present theological crisis. Mr. Jowett is a profound Septuagintal scholar, and constantly appeals to the LXX. in his comments on St. Paul's Epistles. But he deserts the LXX. in their illustration of sacrificial terms, and more especially in the light which they throw on the doctrines of the Atonement and of Justification by Faith. That they use the words dyiaopos, λúтpov, dikałów, &c., in the same radical signification as we find in the New Testament, and in a sense quite unknown to Pagan writers, is a fact which cannot be questioned. Yet here Mr. Jowett deserts them, not that their verbal authority is indecisive, but because he has laid down the maxim, that no authority can establish doctrines which seem contradictory to human reason. He allows that Philo and Josephus use the same language respecting the Jewish sacrifices and the Jewish high-priests; but he will not admit of a vicarious atonement for the sins of the world, because he rejects the theory of vicarious suffering, or of imputed righteousness, though enunciated by Isaiah and the Psalmist in the very same expressions as those of the Evangelists and Apostles. Habes confitentem reum.

If our readers would feel the full force of this observation, they must consult the pages of Mr. Churton; they will then see that, without mentioning Mr. Jowett by name, he has driven him into a cul de sac. If the authority of the LXX. be sufficient to interpret the language of the New Testament on other doctrinal subjects, it is sufficient to interpret its language on the subject of Atonement or Sacrifice. It becomes therefore not a question of the meaning of Scripture, but of the unwillingness of Mr. Jowett to submit to its authority.

The nature of the verbal Inspiration of the New Testament is thus brought to consist in its unceasing accordance with the phraseology of the Greek version, by its employment of "a language combining the phrases of various schools of philosophy with those of the Old Testa ment, which was suited to become the channel of revealed truth to all the world. Yet only so far as a language can be said to be the teacher of truths unknown and unrecognized before, which man could never have arrived at without the aid of revelation. In this sense, the Hellenistic dialect, in which the New Testament was written, was one of the chosen means by which God declares the truths of the gospel to man. (p. 21.) This is, indeed, assigning to verbal Inspiration, "a local habitation and a name," and as such we submit it to the serious consideration of our readers. It is remarkable that this same test has been proposed by the Edinburgh Reviewer in the article on The Essays, p. 483, which we reprint as a literary curiosity:"Amongst the many proposals which are floating about for Essays and Counter-Essays to vindicate the doctrines supposed to be combated in this volume, let us be allowed to suggest this one: The nature of

Biblical Inspiration, as tested by a careful examination of the Septuagint Version, with special reference to the sanction given to it by the Apostles, and to its variations, by way of addition and omission, from the received text of the Canonical Scriptures.' The conclusions of such an investigation would be worth a hundred eager declamations on one side or the other, and would be absolutely decisive of the chief questions at issue."

The Life of Mrs. Cameron: partly an Autobiography, and from her Private Journals, &c.; author of the "Two Lambs," "Margaret Whyle," &c. Edited by her eldest Son. London: Darton & Co.Mrs. Cameron was a pious gentlewoman, a clergyman's wife of the old school, which, in many important points, was by no means inferior to the new one. Clerical ladies were then much less useful in the parish, but perhaps more useful in the parsonage-house. There is an excèss on both sides; and we doubt whether many a clergyman does not suffer more in his family from the over-taxed devotion of his wife to schools, and district-visiting societies, and missionary-working parties, and clothing-clubs, and twenty other benevolent objects which are gliding from our pen, than the church will gain by the record of her use ful life, and premature, though, no doubt, very happy death; published in a volume after the most approved style, and set off with a preface by some excellent clergyman, who tells us he knew nothing of the dear deceased, but hopes the book will sell, since he is informed she was an excellent person, and the profits are to be given to an excellent charity.

To speak seriously; the work which an exacting religious public demands, not only from a clergyman, but from his wife too, is a serious evil. It is unscriptural. A clergyman's wife ought to find her most important pursuits at home, and there she ought chiefly to be found; or else St. Paul gave Timothy and Titus instructions on such matters no longer applicable. We do not mean to argue that all her labours are to be confined within these limits, but we do maintain that this is her world; and that when she steps beyond it to labour in a wider sphere, it should never be at the expense either of home duties neglected or health sacrificed. In short, we want a division of labour. Laymen and laywomen ought to do the work which is now thrown exclusively upon the overburdened pastor, and his often still more overburdened wife.

Mrs. Cameron lived in the remote days of King George III. She was the sister of Mrs. Sherwood, and we are told that "all Mrs. Sherwood's early books were sent in manuscript to her sister for correction and publication. Henry and his Bearer' came, beautifully written, in one letter, and owed much of its divinity to its English correction." It would have been well if Mrs. Sherwood had submitted her later writings also to her wiser sister's revision. They would probably have been free from some of those errors, both of taste and doctrine, which deface them, and make them worse than useless.

We meet with occasional passages in this little volume which show us that for some time after she became an earnest Christian Mrs. Cameron was not free from the bondage of the law. But her light shone more and more unto the perfect day. "I would lay hold," she

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors][ocr errors]

says, in one of the last pages of the volume, "of those texts which assure me that Christ will never let His sheep perish without regarding the inferences which some persons draw from them. I have certainly been deterred from doing this by the sad misrepresentations of some who take away all the responsibility of man in his rejection of Christ, and cast it upon God. An awful denial of my Father's name of love!" On the same page we meet with this remark, with which we conclude our notice of a very pleasant book: "On visiting a Tractarian church in Oxford, I confess that the monotonous reading of the Scriptures was not to be endured, because it really rendered the reading of the lessons almost a dead letter. The church was hung about with endless childish vanities, and the impression left on my mind was, that an effort was being made to change the simple character of the New Testament minister into the high priest of the old dispensation-and a very bad imitation, too."

Suggestions on Popular Education. By Nassau W. Senior, one of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of Popular Education in England. London: John Murray. 1861.- Our readers, like ourselves, are no doubt by this time heartily weary of "suggestions on popular education." A royal commission has sat; another blue book has been printed; a heavy expense has been incurred; a great number of facts and a great number of opinions, wise and unwise, have been collected; and having said this, we have said all that can be said. The royal commission is allowed to be a failure; its suggestions are, some of them, mischievous, some of them unimportant, some of them contradictory to the positions which the commissioners themselves lay down. If our readers think that we are dealing with the Report in too sweeping a manner, let them lay out a single sixpence on a pamphlet of eleven pages of which the title is this:"Remarks on some portions of the Report of the Royal Com mission on Education. London 1861." It emanates from a Committee appointed April 19th, 1860, "to watch proceedings in parliament in reference to the grants for national education." Of this committee the duke of Marlborough is chairman, and J. C. Colquhoun, Esq., deputy chairman.

Mr. Senior was one of the commissioners; and in this volume he gives us those of his own views in which he differed from his colleagues, as well as several papers which he submitted to them, some of which were adopted and others rejected. Mr. Senior's book appears to us the most valuable result which the public are likely to obtain from the appointment of this commission. Of education, however, we are not about to speak, except that we may quote a single sentence which we do in order to express our perfect concurrence. It is that which recommends that no child should be hired out for service of any kind until it is provided with a certificate from a schoolmaster duly licensed by government that it can both read and write, or that it has been at school for at least one hundred and seventy-four days during the previous year. How much this implies none can tell except those who have given attention to the subject of infant labour. Mr. Senior gives an array of cases of cruelty to children, mere infants, engaged in labour in our various manufactures, which is truly horrible. The recital is

sickening; and yet these are pages which ought to be read. That they may be read is one great reason why we draw attention to the volume:

[ocr errors]

'We look with shame and indignation upon the pictures of American slavery; but I firmly believe that the children on the worst managed plantations are less overworked, less tortured, better fed, and quite as well instructed as the unhappy infants, whose early and long-continued labour occasions the fabulous cheapness of our hardware and our lace, and whose wages feed the intemperance of their parents.................

"But the class of whom I am now speaking, the population which in infancy and from infancy works every day, and all day long, is necessarily uneducated. Those who were the children of 1843 are the parents of 1860. I will extract from the report of Mr. Horne, one of the assistant commissioners on the Children's Employment Commission, a portion of his description of the children in Wolverhampton and Willenhall :—

"Putting together all that I elicited from various witnesses, and all that fell under my own observation, I am obliged to come to the conclusion that the moral virtues of the great majority of the children are as few in number and as feeble in practice as can well be conceived of those who are born in a civilized country, surrounded by religious and educational institutions, and by individuals anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes.'" (pp. 212, 213.)

[merged small][ocr errors]

"I do not believe that the cruelties, which I have rather alluded to than described, can be repressed by any half measure. It is of no use to forbid undue or unmerited torture. Who is to be the judge, and to whom can the complaint be made? All bodily infliction on a child or a young person must be made a misdemeanor, and the remedy must be summary. Real offences on the part of the child or young person must be punishable by the magistrate.

"The Poor Law Board require the master to teach the apprentice his trade, and to allow him to attend some place of divine worship, and, if his parents require it, a Sunday-school. But they prescribe no other education, nor do they limit the hours of labour.

"These are, I think, omissions. In every apprenticeship, and in every hiring, except for the purposes of agricultural labour or mere domestic service, the hours of labour should be limited on the principle of the Factory Acts; so many for children under thirteen, so many for young persons under eighteen.

"I should like to add a provision that children under thirteen shall attend an inspected school, either every day, or at least for three days in every week. At present few apprentices or children engaged in trades or manufactures not under the Factory or Printworks Acts get any schooling whatever, except, in a few cases, that of the inefficient Sunday school.

"The 42 Geo. III. c. 73, introduced by one of our most eminent manufacturers, the first sir Robert Peel, contained, as will be recollected, a clause ordering every apprentice in a cotton or woollen factory to be instructed at the expense of his master in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

« PreviousContinue »