an undutiful child, to expose them. This is both unfilial and ungallant, though probably all necessary for the "reconstruction of biblical theories." It is some comfort, however, to think that Adam was only a "stock man," and Eve only a "stock woman." Sarah is made to suffer in the same unchivalric way. The story of Abraham's denying her as his wife is thus discredited: "A man might deem it prudent to deny a beautiful wife of thirty, or even fifty; but a wife ninety years old is a little too far advanced to have exposed her husband to any danger on her account."-p. 139. So Abraham's truthfulness and Sarah's fair looks are sacrificed to an improved theology. Sarah is the only woman whose age is recorded in the Scriptures. If it was made known through her agency, she suffers deeply for her communicativeness, even at this late day, and her fate may well excuse female silence on this delicate point.

We have spoken of the apostasy. The new views presented on this cardinal fact in human and scriptural history are among the choicest criticisms of the volume. We condense the new theory.

-

After an

Adam was at first but an animal of the upper class, without reason or moral sense an elevated gorilla. "Adam is a forest animal, living on the fruits of trees, .. without marriage, without agriculture, without horticulture." unknown period of centuries this "stock man for the first time understands that he wants a wife; that his animal mode of life is not the best, and does not meet his necessities, or those of his children." God gives Adam a wife, but the account of the creation of Eve is "puerile and ridiculous." "It cannot be admitted as a fact." All this biblical account of her creation is an oriental and allegorical way of saying that the Adamic race, having lived promiscuously as animals for unknown centuries, now adopted the marriage institution. By the creation of Eve is only meant that God providentially led the race upward to this better mode of life. Now we approach the "fall." As in all low stages of civilization, the labor of providing food is put on Eve. Only perishable fruits had thus far been used. Eve feels the inconvenience of such uncertain supplies, and wishes something more abiding. In her search she finds the cereals the bread-stuffs. But she is afraid of this

new food; so the allegorist introduces the serpent as trying it for her, and showing that it not only is not poisonous, but is wholesome and nutritious. "Animals still talk in reason's ear, and teach us many valuable lessons." "Eve, perhaps, had a pet of this kind, on which she may purposely have tried the new food." She was satisfied with the experiment, and so "added it to her stores, set it on her tables, and ate it, and gave it to her husband." "The soul as well as the body thrived on it." "The divine gift of reason comes, and moral agency is attained; and this is conditioned, as it ought to be, on food, the first demand of the race." Thus our first parents came to be as gods, knowing good and evil. As gods - Alohim deified heroes, or demigods, and not Jehovah the Divine.

The race were but animals while they lived on fruits only. Eating the cereals developed in them reason and the moral sense. Leaving the forest for an agricultural life Adam finds to be a tax on him. Farming and raising the grain is harder than foraging for wild fruits; while "in the improved modes of living Eve is more prolific than before, and has a hard task with her children." This is the "punishment"- the "sweat" of Adam, and the "sorrow" of Eve. So have we the new view of what has been called the apostasy. The old view "has done immense harm to Christianity and to the human race. The grandest step of progress in the history of the race has been stigmatized as its foulest blot, and the source of all subsequent evils; coming up with labor and iron determination from the condition of a beast has been regarded as an ignominious and disastrous fall from the happy state of the gods." "The leaving of the forest [Eden] is a grand old picture, and hangs with few rivals in the chambers of art among the productions of the old masters." -"We are not a fallen race under the wrath of the Creator, but a rising and climbing race under his fostering care, and making our way to His own happy and blessed immortality."

This is indeed "reconstruction." The apostasy is a question not in morals, but in dietetics, and the "fall" was a rising from an animal to a man. This is, indeed, a discovery, that feeding animals on wheat, and rye, and maize, and oats, is liable to develop in them reason and conscience, and turn them into men.

Probably Balaam's ass had had extra provender. We are at liberty now to have our suspicions that some men have been confined too rigidly to a fruit diet. We would suggest the cereals as the exclusive food for our institutions of learning, and propose to our government to put some politicians on a strict bread-and-water diet, as an experiment on Mr. Sawyer's theory, and see if it will not develop in them a moral sense.

It seems that other families of animals may overtake us in this progress from the forest heavenward. "Man leaves the beast, and by one step more puts himself at an infinite distance from the whole brute creation. Can they overtake him? Not unless they follow in his step of progressive improvement; his elevation has been gained by many steps of progress. But in the ages of eternity some of them may pursue after him."— pp. 52-69. Is there not danger that the asses may overtake some of us this side of Eternity?

If the views we have been presenting are to be found in the old Hebrew, we indeed think it time to have a new translation of the Scriptures. Sure we are that such a "reconstruction of biblical theories" cannot be made out of the plain English of King James's translation.

But what of the New Testament. Under the principles laid down by our author how can it escape the general ruin that he has brought on the Old Testament? He tells us that the New has adopted a loose method of interpreting the Old that is not admissible. He says the Septuagint made a mistake in interpreting the sacrifices of Cain and Abel as acts of divine worship, and that this mistake was adopted into the Epistle to the Hebrews. Moreover, the New Testament is constantly assuming as historic fact in the Old what Mr. Sawyer denies to be fact. The New Testament derives the human race from "one blood"; he from many Adams. The New Testament traces the fallen state of the race to the disobedience of one man, while he pretends that there were many heads. He denies that we are a fallen race, while the New Testament declares the fact, and specifies the time and mode of falling. He denies that there was any sin in that act in Eden, while the New Testament calls it a "transgression" by which sin entered the world. He says that at first, for centuries, man and woman

mere names to

Νο

took and left whom they would as companions, like the brutes, while the New Testament says that "from the beginning it was not so." Marriage was from the first, and divorce was not tolerated. All the leading men, till we pass Esau and Jacob, he regards as not persons, but stock men indicate families, tribes, races, pursuits or cities, while the New Testament makes them as truly persons as Solomon or Isaiah. But we need not multiply instances to make the point. While, therefore, the New so generally assumes as true and real in the Old what Mr. Sawyer denies, how can he save the New as a book prepared under plenary inspiration and free from errors and mistakes? If, having destroyed the Old, he saves the New, he will do what no man has done before him. But he has promised us a volume on the New Testament, and we wait. We marvel at the assumption, the audacity of this man. one, it would seem, has paid any proper attention to biblical studies before. Sacred antiquities, and hermeneutics, and comparative philology, as auxiliary to an understanding of the Scriptures, all appear to have been trifled with or ignored by the long list of worthies running back from Robinson, Bunsen, and the Alexanders, to Philo, and him who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. No one receives the personal compliment of even being mistaken. Neither preface, note, nor body of this work, gives any one credit or discredit. Our author walks under the arches and along the galleries and alcoves of the Astor Library, our own and the English Cambridge, the Vatican, the Petersburg Imperial, the Munich and the Bibliothéque Royal, and the dusty and ponderous tomes to stir which stirs the condensed theological thought of thirty centuries — are to him but primers for the juvenile days of the race. He writes over the shelves of the fathers, "absurd," "ridiculous," "puerile," and then changes Adam from an animal to a man, and develops in him reason and conscience by a simple change of diet.

Of course we confess to some difficulties in the old theories of biblical science. These, undoubtedly, Mr. Sawyer escapes; but he does it like avoiding Scylla and Charybdis in a trip to Constantinople, by doubling Cape Good Hope, and then making an overland route by the head-waters of the Euphrates.

In the preface to this volume, the author informs us that he

has reconstructed the theories of the New Testament, and will publish them as soon as may be. "But he deems the points embraced in the discussions of the present volume quite sufficient for a first lesson." We fully concur in this judgment. The principles here promulgated, and the changes here proposed, will be quite enough for the present. We cannot now make up our minds to leave any more of revealed religion behind than he proposes to throw out by his first lesson. It may not seem to be much to a man so profound and wide-sweeping in his views, and so progressive in his movements, to abandon at one step the continent of the ancients for his floating Delos of yesterday. Before embarking fully, however, we crave time, like the sailors of Columbus, to attend divine service once more in the church of our fathers, make our confessions and our wills.

ARTICLE VIII.

SHORT SERMONS.

"And they feared as they entered into the cloud.” — Luke ix. 34.

MAN loves the sunshine. It gives him a clearer vision, and a gladder heart. It is full of blessings and benedictions for him, and the more he sees of it the richer is his heart. So he dreads to have the sky overcast, and its deep, clear blue shut out. Cloud and storm and darkness are not welcome to him.

So it is with him in the moral and religious world. No cloud is welcome, no shadow. In view of it, man is often the sport of his ignorance, the slave of his fear, and the victim of his unbelief. The three favored disciples had ungrounded and sinful fears. They did not know what a heavenly tabernacle and tent of glory that cloud was about to form for them. They had no eye of faith to foresee the light and brightness for the world that would soon burst out of it, and so they feared to enter it. They resembled in this several classes of men: 1. Those whose ill-boding fancy fills the future with trials and sorTrue, things are well enough now with them. They stand in the sunshine, but can see only clouds and shadows ahead. So they

rows.