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and unto dust shalt thou return," is the beginning and end, the source and destiny of the material part of our being. Death despoils us of all with which we were invested, terminates all the functions and feelings of life, resolves the body into its original particles, and scatters them over the face of the earth. But though to the eye of sense appearing a great loss, an unaccountable retrogression, it appears to the eye of faith, gifted with a keener and farther-reaching vision, a great, an immeasurable gain. The day of death is better than the day of birth, because death is a higher and nobler birth. The grave is an underground avenue to heaven, a triumphal arch through which spiritual heroes return from their fight to their reward, "made conquerors, and more than conquerors, through him that loved them," the dressing-chamber in which the believer puts off his sordid and polluted garments, and puts on his beautiful wedding robes, to arise and meet the Lord in the air. The attainments that have been made in this life will be carried forward to the illimitable future, the holiness and knowledge that have been acquired amid many an earthly scene of trial and sorrow will be transferred to heaven, and will form the starting-point, as it were, from whence the soul will commence anew its onward course towards infinite excellence and perfection. Nay, the continuity of the path will not be broken. It is no strange and unknown scene upon which the just are ushered at death. The sacred employments of life will continue without pause or interruption amid circumstances the most favourable and congenial. The river that hides itself for a time in the earth, and breaks forth at a distance with a greater volume and a wider channel, does not sever its connection with the former part of its course. The same fountains that poured their tribute into the parent stream continue to swell its prouder tide; the very flowers that were strewn on its surface are borne upon its waves through the temporary darkness, and wafted along through fairer valleys, and beneath brighter heavens. In the light of this consoling reflection, it is a matter, not of regret, but of congratulation, that life is rapidly rounding itself to its close. "What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death," wrote John Foster to a friend. "Without this radiant idea, this delightful morning star, indicating that the luminary of eternity is about to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. Oh! the expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die, thanks to that gospel which opens up the vista of an endless life, and thanks, above all, to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct all the faithful through the sacred trance of death into scenes of paradise and

everlasting delight." How soon, in the experience of every one, does the soul, too mighty for the perishable world in which it lives, become dissatisfied with everything here, and most of all with the wide disproportion between the attainments it makes and its capacities and desires. How soon does the heart weary of dragging itself round the same monotonous circle of desire and disappointment. Long before we have reached the assigned limits of life, we have looked around, like Monsieur Necker, and become familiar with the whole scene, and though we are not satisfied, we are sated. We feel our need of a new residence, and a new sphere of activity. We long to be placed on a higher vantage ground, to try the untried, to know the unknown, and death kindly comes to gratify this longing of the soul, to release us from the narrow, confined range of being here, to take us by the hand along the steep and narrow path that winds up the mountain side, and leads from our valley out into the golden West.

One more vision of retrogression, the sublimest and the most awful, reveals itself in dim outlines to our gaze from the pages of revelation. When the earth shall have served the purpose for which it was created, as a scene of circumstances and temptations for the education of the immortal spirit, it will be reduced, we are told, to the state of chaos from which it sprung. "The elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth, and all the works therein, shall be burnt up." When we consider what a highly organised and complicated system is formed by the various arrangements upon our earth, we are apt to suppose that the scheme of providence must have been so framed as to completely exclude all risk of such a catastrophe. To allow of the sudden undoing of all this fair scene, which it has taken thousands of years to bring out in its full proportions, seems “like a wanton destruction of valuable property," and we are not disposed to believe that such a thing could be permitted. And yet this sublime retrogression will be necessary as a step towards an improved system of things, the bringing in of a better world, where sin and sorrow shall be unknown, the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousThe scene of probation passing through this terrible ordeal will become the scene of enjoyment; and earth, purified by the baptism of fire, shall be transformed into heaven. Whether after this last and grandest act in the drama of time there shall be room or occasion for any more retrogressions, we know not. It may be that, in the physical arrangements of the eternal world, the law of circularity may be as necessary as it is in this world. But in the moral world of eternity we cannot think, without detracting from its perfection, that retrogression will be any more an essential element of progression. "All old

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things are passed away, and all things are become new." The regenerated and glorified creation will revolve as of old around. the throne of the Most High, and the saints in bliss will "pass into higher circles of service, as they dilate from within to larger capacities of blessedness;" but there will be no recoil, no backsliding, no retrogression. There will be no losing of present advantages to gain greater, no going back to the beginning in order to commence a new and nobler course. Joy will no more be purchased by suffering, victory through defeat, exaltation through humiliation, life through death. There will be no night with its rest and its relapses, no sun with its alternations. and vicissitudes, no sea with its changes and separations. The life of heaven, illumined and quickened continually by the immediate presence and power of the infinite Jehovah, shall flow on an unebbing tide, higher, stronger, farther on with every heave of the restless wave, never pausing to recover breath, never turning back to gain increased momentum, but, with resistless, uninterrupted, undiminished volume, filling all eternity with the beauty and the gladness of its perfection.

H. M.

ART. IV. Recent Literature on the Gospels.

An Introduction to the Gospels. By BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, M. A. Cambridge: M'Millan & Co. 1860.

Discussions on the Gospels, in Two Parts. By Rev. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, M.A. London: Nisbet & Co. 1862.

Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Von FREDERICH BLEEK. Berlin 1862. The New Testament for English Readers, &c. By HENRY ALFORD, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Part I. 1863.

Theologisch-Homiletische Bibelwerk. Von J. P. LANGE. Die Evangelien. 1857-60.

A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Gospels. By Rev. DAVID BROWN, D. D., Professor, Free Church College, Aberdeen. Glasgow Collins. 1863.

IT is a prominent and remarkable feature of the theological literature of our time, that it occupies itself so largely with the writings of the four canonical Evangelists. "Discussions on the Gospels," on their genuineness, their origin, their characteristics, their historic truth, and their chronology and harmony, were never so abundant as they have been of late years; and never has any period in the whole history of the church been so fruitful, both for good and evil, in "Lives of Christ," and dissertations upon his character and personal claims, as the last quarter-century. It would be interesting to investigate all

the causes of this phenomenon, but we have no intention of doing so at present. A German divine would, no doubt, have much to say of the influence of Schleiermacher in producing this state of things in both its aspects, and would point to Neander and Ullmann on the one side, and to Strauss and Baur on the other, as examples of the wonderful power which he exercised upon his disciples to make them either very much better or very much worse than himself, according as they attached themselves to the good or the evil elements which mingled so strangely in his epochal teaching. It was Schleiermacher unquestionably who first reclaimed for the person of Christ that central and supreme place in the organism both of Christian doctrine and Christian life which had long been denied to it in the Continental Protestant Churches. And though in our own country the need of returning to the personal Christ had begun to be felt as an instinct of spiritual life long before that centrality came to be clearly apprehended as a dogmatic and practical principle, yet it cannot be doubted that German demonstrations and elucidations of the principle have had much to do in quickening our movement in this direction, and as little, that German "Lives of Christ," whether conceived in the spirit of faith or of infidelity, have given an immense stimulus in this country, as well as in America and France, to the profound and earnest study of the Gospels. The ancient church gave a striking indication of the value and importance which she attached to these sacred records, by transferring to all four of them the name of the Gospel itself, a name which was at first confined to the oral message and testimony of the apostles. Some of the early liturgies gave expression to the same high estimate, by appointing that in the communion service, before the reading of the lection called "the holy gospel," the congregation should rise from their seats, and chant, "Glory be to thee, O God," as a special thanksgiving for so precious a gift to his church. It seems as if the church in our own day was better able to sympathise with the early church in this feeling and view than at any previous period of her modern history. She is returning in this matter to her first love. By many tokens she has evidently been brought to see and feel that her battle for the Gospels is truly a battle pro aris et focis, that here, after all, is the true vaos, the innermost shrine and altar of her heaven-given faith, and the true hearth and home of all the warmest affections and charities of her God-breathed life.

In these circumstances it is the duty of theological journalists to give a special degree of attention to the ever-increasing literature which consecrates itself to the elucidation of the four Gospels; and it will be an acceptable service, we trust, to our readers to bring under their notice, in this and subsequent articles,

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some of the latest productions which have appeared in this very fruitful portion of the theological field. We have no intention, of course, to review, in the ordinary sense, the somewhat numerous works which we shall have occasion to mention, or even to give any full report of their contents. Almost all we propose to do, is to state what contributions they have respectively made towards the settlement of the questions of which they treat, in what condition the several branches of New Testament literature to which they belong are left by them, and in what directions we have at present to look for further progress and improvement.

We begin with four of the most recent works in the department of "Historical Criticism of the Gospels," viz., Westcott's "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels," 1860; Roberts's "Discussions on the Gospels," 1862; Bleek's "Introduction to the New Testament," 1862, a posthumous work; and the Critical Introduction to Renan's "Vie de Jésus," 1863.

Of all the questions at present under discussion with regard to the canonical gospels, the most fundamental, in a critical point of view, is that which respects their age and genuineness. Are these records really as old as the church has always taken them to be? Were they written in the apostolic age? and were apostles and apostolic men their authors? It is universally acknowledged that their historical truth is in a high degree, if not entirely, dependent upon their literary genuineness. It is felt by all critics and scholars that if they were spurious in origin, and of a date so late as the second century, they would lose much of their authority and trustworthiness as histories of Christ. Even Strauss admitted that his mythological theory could not be maintained, if they could be proved to be the genuine productions of those whose names they bear. Now it is very satisfactory to find that all the four works before us are substantially at one upon this fundamental point. This, indeed, was to be expected from orthodox writers like Mr Westcott and Mr Roberts; but it is a remarkable testimony to come from a critic so dogmatically free, and so ecclesiastically unshackled in all his judgments as the late Professor Bleek of Bonn; and still more remarkable and unexpected as coming from the infidel author of "Vie de Jésus." The Introduction of Bleek has a very full and minute discussion on the criticism of the gospels; and remembering that he wrote in presence of the destructive criticism both of Strauss and the Tübingen school, and that, in fact, all his investigations in this field were conducted with a special respect to the theories and results put forward by the different schools of continental unbelief, we cannot but attach the highest value to his deliberate verdict on the side of the common faith of the Christian Church, in regard to VOL. XIII-NO. XLVII.

E