nations from barbarism to something better, than to lead them from one form of civilization to another. Civilizations are almost as indigenous to the countries in which you find them as are the plants which grow there, and can rarely be transplanted with much success. The Hindoos and the Chinese, including more than half the human race, are civilized already; and the preacher of Positivism may hope to see the Scythian and the New Zealander enter into his kingdom of heaven sooner than such Pharisees.

Dr. Temple is desirous his contemporaries should use their more advanced knowledge in a more intelligent study of the Bible. He does not seem to be aware that the doctrine he is expounding is a favourite doctrine with men who claim, on this ground, to be much wiser than the Bible, and who accordingly have done with it. In their estimation, the Bible is an old world story, which the new world has outgrown. Such men say they should as soon think of taking their chemistry or their astronomy from men who lived eighteen centuries since, as their religion. True, the analogy thus assumed is fallacious. It is not borne in mind by these persons, that physics and metaphysics do not stand in the same relation to history. Eighteen centuries ago, theoretical ethics were nearly everything they are now; and the age which saw maturity in the principles of taste and morals may have left little to be done, even by the wise men of our own age, towards maturing the principles of religious truth, or the elements of religious life. We are believers in the destined education of the colossal man, but we should see very little way in that direction, had we nothing beyond the lights supplied by naturalism to guide us. We say not that there is no truth in Dr. Temple's theory, but we repeat, that the natural tendencies he has enumerated furnish no adequate basis for the speculations he would found upon them. The destiny of the world is not to outgrow Christianity, but to become wise enough to understand it. The second paper is from the pen of' Rowland Williams, D.D., Vice Principal and Professor of Hebrew, St. David's College, Lampeter; Vicar of Broad Chalke, Wilts.' It belongs, we presume, to the class of Reviews,' for it is devoted almost exclusively to a setting forth of the opinions and conclusions of Baron Bunsen on biblical matters. These command Dr. Williams's profoundest admiration. His paper, indeed, is the production not so much of an admiring disciple as of one who has listened to an oracle, and feels constrained to proclaim to the world with wonder and reverence what he has heard. In the judgment of Dr. Williams, Christian Carl Josias von Bunsen is the great reli

Dr. Williams's Bunsen-Worship.

gious luminary of the present age, and the hope of Christianity for that which is to succeed. He is the man who in our darkest 'perplexity has reared again the banner of truth, and uttered 'thoughts which give courage to the weak, and sight to the blind.' If,' continues Dr. Williams, Protestant Europe is to escape 'those shadows of the twelfth century, which, with ominous recurrence, are closing round us, to Baron Bunsen will belong a 'foremost place among the champions of light and right.' His paper concludes with the half-mournful, half-exulting exclamation, Our little survey has not traversed his vast field, nor our plummet sounded his depth; and then, as if the language of prose was too tame for the occasion, he bursts into verse, and goes off in a rhapsody such as we believe was never before uttered either in prose or rhyme. Now all this seems to us exceedingly absurd, in the worst possible taste, and anything but calculated to draw towards the object of such extravagant adulation the sympathies of the intelligent British public. We can fancy, too, the smile with which it will be received at Berlin or Halle by the countrymen of the learned Baron. While with the rest of the world, rendering due respect to his great learning, his indomitable diligence, his boundless ingenuity, his high and honourable intentions, they will be somewhat astounded and considerably amused, we suspect, to find him held up as a luminary of the first rank in biblical learning, and a guide to be all but implicitly followed in archæology, exegesis, and theology. Dr. Williams says, that had the Baron, when he undertook to write on the Bible, ignored all that the destructive criticism of Germany believes itself to have effected in reference to that book, 'his countrymen 'would have raised a storm of ridicule, at which he must have 'drowned himself in the Neckar.' Perhaps so; but we rather think his countrymen would have thought fully more of him, had he shown some respectable acquaintance with, or due regard for, the labours of those who for the last thirty years have been seeking to build up what the reckless rationalism of a preceding generation had aimed to throw down, and had shown himself less blindly set upon resuscitating opinions and methods which have received the suffrage of hardly one among the eminent living scholars and theologians of Germany. As it is, we do not find that his return to his native country, after his protracted residence in this, has been hailed by his compatriots as a blessing for which they cannot be sufficiently grateful, nor do his biblical researches appear to have kindled in them any such enthusiasm as Dr. Williams would evoke for them here.

The style of Dr. Williams's paper is, on the whole, good; he

writes purely, and in a manner which makes what he has written easy and pleasant to read. Occasionally we come upon an utterance which is somewhat obscure, and reminds us of the author's Teutonic predilections; but on the whole he has, in respect of style, rendered good service to the object of his admiration, whose own productions, whether in German or English, are certainly not very attractive in this respect. We wish we could say as much for the spirit and temper by which Dr. Williams's paper is characterized.

To represent all who hold orthodox opinions as timid or ignorant, if not positively dishonest, and all who come out against them as learned, honest, and courageous, is a favourite ruse of the rationalistic school, to which both Bunsen and his English expositor have not refused to stoop. For those in this country who decline to accept his treatment of the Word of God, the learned Baron has such choice and scholarly names as 'fools, wiseacres, and boys,' whilst he never fails to applaud the courage, scientific accuracy, and honourable candour of those who follow in the same course with himself. In this particular Dr. Williams follows his leader passibus æquis.' While he covers Bunsen with praise, and speaks of a pathway streaming with light from Eichhorn to Ewald,' he does not scruple to allude to those who hold by the ancient belief in the historical veracity of Scripture as 'hirelings,' to stigmatize orthodox divines as 'those whose theology consists of invidious terms,' and to announce that even with those in our 'Universities who no longer repeat fully the required Shibboleths, 'the explicitness of truth is rare;' adding that he who assents most, committing himself least to baseness, is reckoned wisest.' As we do not remember ever to have heard of Dr. Williams before in connexion with any distinction either literary or theological, it is somewhat amusing to hear him thus pronounce ex cathedrá sentence of condemnation upon the vast majority of the clergy, not of his own church merely, but of every church in the kingdom. To a man of ordinary good feeling and candour it might have occurred that, as in Germany there are undoubtedly very many thoroughly learned and honest men who have renounced rationalism after having tested its merits in the fairest and fullest manner, it might be that in this country some of a similar class are to be found-some who, without any interest of a worldly kind to induce them to cling to orthodoxy, and fully able to avail themselves of the benefit of the luminous pathway which, he says, has been followed by the scholars of Germany, have, after long and anxious and searching examination, arrived at the conclusion that to walk in 'the old paths' of biblical research and belief is

Philology and Common Sense.

11

the course which reason and experience alike recommend, if men are to find rest for their souls;' and even with regard to the mass of the clergy it would have been no great stretch of charity had he allowed that they have reasons solid and satisfactory for their beliefs, even though the intelligence that has been streaming' in flashes of light from Eichhorn to Ewald' may not have found its way to their minds.

Closely connected with this disposition to depreciate and denounce all who abide by ancient and accredited opinions in religion, is the pretence which is constantly put forth by writers of the school to which Dr. Williams belongs, that questions affecting the claims of the sacred books, and the respective provinces of reason and revelation in religion, can be discussed only by those who have made large attainments in biblical philology, and are much versed in the most approved methods of exegesis. Now the value of such attainments and such discipline we are far from undervaluing; but when the attempt is made to shut the mouths of men who bring only sound common sense and right reason to bear on such questions, and to claim for proficient Hebraists an exclusive right to deal with them, we are constrained to resist it, and denounce it as a mere piece of affectation and pedantry. Of the questions which Dr. Williams has raised in this paper not one in ten, we venture to believe, depends for its solution on a profound acquaintance with sacred philology. Even where the question is one depending on linguistic usages, philology can but supply the materials on which the conclusion is to be built; and for the soundness of that conclusion far more depends on the good sense, candour, and logical accuracy of the inquirer than upon his philological attainments. We again repeat, we set a high value on such attainments in reference to the interpretation of Scripture; but we count it wholly absurd to say that a man of good sense, and accustomed to weigh evidence, cannot arrive at a well-founded conclusion as to whether, for instance, Moses wrote the Pentateuch; or as to whether the suffering servant of Jehovah in Is. liii. is the prophet Jeremiah, or the Jewish people, or the Messiah; or as to whether the doctrine of our Lord's deity and atonement is taught in Scripture, without a profound acquaintance with the Shemitic dialects and Hellenistic Greek.*

'Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures,' says Dr. Williams, must make even those who value his argument regret, that to his acknowledged dialectical ability he has not added the rudiments of biblical criticism.' What Mr. Mansel's attainments in biblical criticism may be we do not know, though we presume that in such a scholar they are rather more than rudimentary. But supposing he had been as great in biblical criticism as Dr. Williams himself, what difference would that have

But enough of mere general stricture; our space is precious, and we must now hasten to examine the materials of which Dr. Williams's paper is composed, These, for convenience sake, we shall consider under the four heads of Historical, Isogogical, Exegetical, and Doctrinal.

I. The first of these embraces those portions of the review which have been drawn chiefly from Bunsen's great work on Egypt. As a copious notice of this work appeared in the last number of this journal, we shall not enter so fully into this part of the subject as we otherwise might have done. Referring our readers to the article just indicated, we shall confine ourselves to Dr. Williams's treatment of one or two points of interest.

Dr. Williams accepts with a slight hesitation Bunsen's demand of 20,000 years as the lowest possible period that can be assigned for man's duration on the earth since his first appearance; and though he reluctantly gives up the fragment of pottery found in the mud of the Nile, of which a short while ago we heard so much, as 'proving little,' its tendency,' he contends, may agree with that of the discovery of very ancient prehistoric ' remains in many parts of the world. We are not quite sure that we understand this; but take the author to mean that the discovery of the pottery, though not worth much in itself, becomes of some value when it forms one of a multitude of similar discoveries. But where are they? We are not aware of any but this one that can at all be put in the same class with it. And as for its proving little,' we submit that the pottery referred to either proves everything or it proves nothing. If, as was at first alleged, the only way of accounting for its being found where it was, is by supposing it to have been originally on the surface, and successive strata of mud to have been deposited upon it, and if these depositions advanced at the rate at which fluvial deposits usually advance, the proof thereby furnished of the immense antiquity of the human race is very strong. But if the presence of the pottery in the mud can be accounted for by the operation of causes which have been at work within historical memory, and if other phenomena show that it must be so accounted for, the power of the pottery to prove the antiquity of the race is utterly extinguished; it has not become 'little,' it has become absolutely null.

made in the argument of his book? Will Dr. Williams specify a single instance in which an improved translation of a passage would have required Mr. Mansel to modify or alter any of his conclusions? And if not, what is his remark on Mr. Mansel's ignorance of biblical criticism but a piece of what Mr. Burchell pronounced the high-flown talk of Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs to be-fudge!