The Story of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, the Serampore Missionaries. By JOHN CLARK MARSHMAN. Popular Edition. London: A Strachan & Co. 1864.

In the present edition of this work, the author has considerably curtailed its dimensions, by omitting, among other things, his vindication of the Serampore missionaries from the aspersions cast on their character, during the melancholy controversy in which they were involved with their brethren of the Baptist Missionary Society. The narrative of their life and labours has thus been brought within the reach of a larger class of readers. Few can peruse without interest a story fraught with such a variety of striking incidents, scenes, and characters. Nothing is more remarkable than the difficulties with which these earnest and self-devoted men had to struggle from the commencement of their enterprise. The Baptists certainly now occupy a distinguished place among the pioneers of Christianity, a place which they may owe, in some degree, to that peculiarity in their creed which adapts itself more specially to the incipient stage of the Church, when adult baptism is, of course, the main object of every missionary, and the number of believing converts, as in the Acts of the Apostles, is the only result deemed worthy of notice in reporting his progress. But small praise was due to them as a body at the outset of the undertaking. When Carey first broached the idea of a mission to India, and offered to go out as the first missionary, his proposal was received by the brethren of the Baptist association in his neighbourhood with apathy, and even with scorn. But for his personal exertions and indomitable perseverance, even the small sum collected for his outfit would never have been realised, and the scheme would have dropped to the ground. The obstacles he had to encounter through the coldness of friends almost equalled those thrown in his way through the hostility of the East India Company; and we know not a more humiliating chapter in the history of missions than that which records the mode in which the good man, after scraping together as much as barely to pay a steerage passage, was smuggled aboard a foreign vessel to the place of his destination. There, being joined by his trusty associates Ward and Marshman, they commenced that career of disinterested labour in their college at Serampore, in the course of which they met with so little encouragement from their friends at home, and which at length-thanks to the petty jealousies of "committeeism," they were compelled to abandon. Mr Marshman has succeeded in completely clearing the character of these worthy men, and has done so with praiseworthy charity and candour, though the public probably have learned for the first time the character and amount of the aspersions cast upon them from the vindication which he has produced. We need hardly recommend to the friends of missions a volume which, from its very title, all of them must be desirous to possess, and which they cannot fail to peruse with profound interest.

Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of Dr William Bedell, Lord Bishop of Kilmore. By his Son-in-law, the Rev. ALEXANDER CLOGY, M.A., Minister of Cavan. London: Wertheim, Macintosh, & Hunt. 1862. (Printed for the first time, with Illustrative Notes, from the original MS., in the Harleian Collection, British Museum.)

It does not redound much to the honour of the Church of England, that to this day "a satisfactory Life of Bedell, personal and literary, is still a desideratum." The only authentic notice we have of this amiable and eminent prelate, is that of Bishop Burnet. There is no excuse for this neglect in the want of materials, for these exist in considerable abundance. More particularly, two curious accounts of his life were written not long after his death, by persons who had every means of information; one being sup

posed to be the production of the bishop's own son, and the other being that of his son-in-law, Alexander Clogy. And yet, strange to say, both of these accounts, which Burnet seems to have consulted, remained in manuscript till the other day, when the last-mentioned memoir was, as the title of this work informs us, “printed for the first time!" As to the other account, supposed to have been drawn up by the bishop's son, and which lies in the Bodleian Library, the present editor says that he has “neither read nor seen it!" We feel under no small obligations to Mr W. Walter Wilkins, for rescuing one of these documents at least from obscurity, if not from oblivion; but we cannot sufficiently express our surprise that, in a day when so much has been done by individuals and by societies to preserve the treasures of the past, when our libraries are overflowing with AngloCatholic and other antiquarian lumber, no effort should have been made to revive the memory and reproduce the works of one of the brightest ornaments of the Church of England. Such we hold to have been the character of Bishop Bedell, not indeed as a man of genius and learning, but as a Christian bishop, as one who did more in his day for the evangelisation of Ireland than has been done by hundreds of bishops before and since, and whose labours, had they been carried out in the spirit in which he commenced them, might have floated the English church long ere now over the dark sea of ignorance, faction, and fanaticism which threatens to submerge it. The impression produced on us, many years ago, by reading Burnet's account of this worthy bishop, dry and meagre as it is, has never been effaced. Above all, his wise and holy zeal to put the Irish in possession of the gospel, by translating the Bible, the Catechism, and the prayers of the Church into their native tongue, and his efforts to substitute a clergy able to preach in the same language to the benighted natives, instead of a class of Englishmen who, as he expressed it, "have not the tongue of the people, nor can perform any divine offices or converse with them, which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in Popery still," ought to endear his memory to every Christian heart, and entitle him to the highest niche in the temple of Christian worthies.

The present volume is got up with considerable care. At the same time, this reprint of the "Speculum Episcoporum; or the Apostolique Bishop, in its antique dress, can only be hailed as the precursor of a modern production worthy of the name of Bedell.

The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Criticism: Lectures on M. Renan's "Vie de Jesus." By JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., Principal of the College of St Mary, in the University of St Andrews, Author of "Theism,' ""Leaders of the Reformation," &c. London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co. 1864.

Once

We have perused these lectures with the most cordial satisfaction. They contain as good an answer, and furnish as good an antidote to the superficial philosophy, the self-destructive theory, and the sophistical but seductive eloquence of M. Renan, as anything of the kind we have seen. in the grasp of his Caledonian antagonist, the vivacious Frenchman has no chance whatever. He is laid on his back, and subjected to the manipulation of a merciless logic; while, at the same time, he is treated with the utmost personal civility. In vain does he attempt to shift his position. In vain does he try to parry a deadly thrust aimed at one piece of sophistry, by dexterously betaking himself to another. The doughty Principal coolly postpones dealing with the second, till he has despatched the first. Inch by inch, all life and pith are crushed out of the book, till at length it is held up to contempt as a piece of inflated fiction-a blasphemous travestie. Take the following as a specimen :

"Not to insist upon the total lack of evidence for such an account of

Christ's miracles, or rather the abounding evidence against it, such a character as M. Renan thus attributes to Jesus, is plainly self-contradictory. It is impossible to conceive such a union of moral excellence with such thaumaturgic imposture as he attributes to him. Men of the highest goodness may no doubt fall into grave mistakes. Pascal may believe in the miracle of the Holy Thorn; and a St Bernard and St Francis may delude themselves, in special moments of spiritual access, with the possession of miraculous powers. But there is nothing really parallel in such cases to the miraculous career of Jesus. None of these men claimed, in the sense that he did, a supernatural mission. Even assuming their own point of view, the miraculous was at the most an accident in their lives. But it was the characteristic life of Jesus; no after-thought, no concession forced upon him, but the primary and appropriate manifestation of his Messianic mission, and the self-constituted vindication of the divinity which he claimed. It is impossible to apologise for such a miraculous career,-for such miraculous claims, supposing them to have been factitious and assumed. If Jesus was, according to M. Renan, a mere wonder-worker, a thaumaturgist, like Apollonius of Tyana, he could not be the noble and beautiful character which he describes. The preacher on the mount would cry shame upon the thaumaturgist in Capernaum, in Cana, in Nain. Character, in this strange world of ours, is often mysteriously complex; the good and the evil lying side by side, in startling and perplexing combination; but the mournfullest contradictions of character that the world has ever witnessed, would be outrivalled by the contradiction which the character of Christ would thus present. The highest consciousness of God that has ever existed in the bosom of humanity,' allied to the tricks of the wonder-worker, the impos tures of the exorcist-who does not feel his spirit shudder at such a thought? who does not feel, at such a suggestion, the shadows of the world's mystery to darken over him, and the idea of the divine to go out of his heart in the blackness of an inexplicable confusion? Mixed as are the representations of human history, and strangely combined as are the possibilities of good and evil in many a soul, such an association as that of imposture with the name of Jesus, exceeds all the limits of human credibility." Pp. 197-199.

We cannot conclude our notice of this book without expressing our admiration of the beauty of its typology. The type is so large, that it must be quite a pleasure, even to the weakest eyes, to peruse it.

The Redeemer; Discourses by EDMOND DE PRESSENSE, D.D. With Introduction by WILLIAM LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1864.

In his judicious introduction to this treatise, Dr Alexander makes the following remarks:-"To all who take an interest in the state of religion on the continent, the name of Edmond de Pressensé is well known. He stands forth as one of the most zealous, fearless, and eloquent defenders of evangelical truths and the claims of the Bible, alike against the influence of traditionalism on the one hand, and the assaults of neologianism on the other. A man of high culture and large intellectual resources; intimately acquainted as well with the history of the church in past ages, as with the current of religious speculation, the state of religious life, and the tendencies of prevailing opinions and habits among those immediately around him; gifted with remarkable powers of clear, pointed, and eloquent discourse; and possessing this unusual means of rendering aid to any cause whose side he may espouse, he has shewn himself ready, by tongue or pen, to consecrate his best energies to the defence and propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the most eloquent preachers in Paris, he has also earned for himself no mean place among the few who, in modern French literature, have brought genius, learning, and philosophy,

to the service of genuine and intelligent piety." In the present work, Dr De Pressensé appears to have aimed at giving his work both an apologetic and a practical character; and Dr Alexander thinks he has presented both these aspects with great ability, force, and eloquence. At the same time, he adds: "Addressing persons not much addicted to theological disquisition, and desirous of producing an impression in favour of Christianity, upon a community unhappily not imbued with any just acquaintance with its principles and doctrines, the author has wisely, I think, sought to present the truth in a free and popular, rather than a scientific manner; and indeed has apparently been careful to avoid those technical formula in which the truths of Christianity are generally presented in this country. It is necessary to keep this in mind in reading his work, otherwise he might be suspected of defective statement of the truth, when in reality the only thing wanting is the ordinary vehicle in which the truths of the Bible are wont to be presented." This estimate we are disposed, on the whole, to indorse. We agree, too, with Dr Alexander in thinking that that portion of the work in which De Pressensé argues for the purely Mosaic character of the Sabbath, had been better wanting. We have observed, indeed, in perusing the treatise, that, in other instances besides this, the author betrays deficiency in logical precision. What he states is, in one sense, quite true, but in order to bring out the whole truth in its manysidedness, distinctions must be drawn which tend very much to qualify the strong statements in which he indulges. There are other expressions which we do not profess to comprehend, such, for example, as the following: "His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, has re-established the harmony between the human and the divine will which the fall had destroyed for he was slain as the Son of man. He is the real representative of humanity" (p. 287). Such phraseology may be capable of explanation; but it conveys no distinct ideas to our mind, and looks as if it had come from the cloud-land of Germany. Apart from such mystic utterances, the book is full of excellent matter, clothed in the most attractive style, and fitted to prove extensively useful.

:

A Memorial Sketch of the late Rev. George Bannerman Blake, M.A., Junior Minister of St George's Presbyterian Church, Sunderland. With a selection from his Sermons. London: James Nisbet & Co. 1864.

We have here a memorial of one of the most amiable and promising ministers of the Presbyterian Church in England. The reader has only to look at the strikingly faithful likeness prefixed to the volume, to give us credit when we say, from personal acquaintance with the original, that a gentler and more genial spirit, a sprightlier genius, and a kindlier nature, than once animated that beaming countenance, and indwelt that graceful but fragile frame, are seldom to be found. In him the modesty and manliness of the true gentleman, and the loveable temper of the true Christian, shone out unalloyed by those disadvantages in feature and address, which, in some cases, conceal half their beauty. His sun, alas! went down when it was yet day, or rather in the very morning of life, when all was fresh and hopeful. It would have been a sad addition to the disappointment of these hopes, had there been nothing left to remind us of one whose loss is so much lamented. The present volume furnishes, in a brief but cordial memoir, and a selection from his discourses, a memento which will be much prized by all who knew George Blake as a friend, a brother, and a pastor.

Theological and Homiletical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, specially designed and adapted for the use of Ministers and Students. From the German of G. V. LECHLER, D.D., and K. GEROK, Edited by J. P. LANGE, D.D. Translated by Rev. P. J. GLOAG. Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1864.

The plan of Dr Lange's Bibelwerk, of which the above forms a volume, is too well known to our readers to require any description. We need only say that the present is one of the most valuable and successful volumes of the series. It is emphatically what it professes to be a work for ministers and students. The sacred text is very carefully expounded, and the groundthoughts are brought out with much unction and power. On several points of a critical character, such as the explanation given of the terms Hebrews and Hellenists, we do not agree with the views here expressed, but we are at the same time very deeply persuaded of the value of the work. We must add that the volume has been translated in a very superior manner, and we cordially recommend it to the attention especially of our clerical readers.

END OF VOL. XIII.