wards be used to far better purpose in any effective conflict with scepticism, than can even the most plausible reassertion of dogmas or traditions that have come under a wide-spread distrust.

The volume is edited by Dr. Thompson, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who himself contributes, under the title “The Death of Christ," an essay on the Atonement. He addresses his argument to those recent writers, who, instead of denying the doctrine of the Church on this point, have avowed a desire to preserve the tenet itself, while they insist upon heightening and spiritualizing it by relieving it of what they regard as unscriptural and irrational terms in its statement. loyally Dr. Thompson stands out even for the most objectionable of these terms, may be inferred from this single sentence from his own pen,-"The clouds of God's anger gathered thick over the whole human race; they discharged themselves on Jesus only." Such reasoning as an acute and earnest believer can offer for this view is given by the writer, but his aim was hopeless at the start.

How

The other contents and contributors to the "Aids to Faith" are as follows: On Miracles as Evidences of Christianity, by Professor Mansel; On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity, by Bishop Fitzgerald; Prophecy, and The Mosaic Record of Creation, both by Professor McCaul; Ideology and Subscription, by Rev. F. C. Cook; On the Genuineness and Authenticity of the Pentateuch, by Professor Rawlinson; On Inspiration, by Professor Browne of Cambridge; and on Scripture and its Interpretation, by Professor Ellicott. There is real scholarship, sound learning, cogent argument, earnest and intelligent Christian piety, in most of these pieces. The circumstances which have called them forth have given them a vigor of tone and a freshness of style quite unlike those which generally characterize even the apologetic literature of the old school of Christian divines. The Essayists and Reviewers must themselves rejoice at their success in this direction, in having infused such liveliness and directness of spirit and method into some themes for which they began by demanding a "free handling." The occasional querulousness and bigotry, with here and there an appeal in terrorem and a denunciatory

paragraph, which we meet with, are exceptions to the general character of the contents of the book. There are concessions made in it, of by no means insignificant amount or importance, in the direction towards which the more substantial of the pleas and arguments of the Essayists and Reviewers point. Indeed, as we have carefully read the pages before us, we have been convinced that it would be quite easy to arrange in parallelisms of extracts, from this and from the heretical volume, passages of the same tenor and substance, as they demand in the earlier book, and yield in the later one, certain modifications of opinion or belief on subjects of a most vital significance in the popular creed. The reading of the two books in this way of parallelism and comparison would be a good exercise for any one who would realize the very different effects produced by two different ways of saying substantially the same thing. Many of the writers of " Aids to Faith" advance statements which must be exceedingly offensive to a portion of their constituency, and they do so in tones often more positive than came from those whom they are understood to be answering. Occasionally, too, we find that cursorily and quietly, as if by the way, in a parenthesis, or a clause, or a qualification of some general assertion, they yield the substance of a point of chief stress in the allegation of heresy against the Essayists and Reviewers. There is undoubtedly a difference between them; and we must candidly own that we approve the cautions and qualifications and guarded concêssions by which flaws and errors are admitted to attach to matters of sacred belief. We love to have the truth, the positive and unharmed and undisputed remainder of truth, in such matters made all the more prominent when any abatement from the grounds or the substance of a reverent belief concerning them is to be demanded of us. It was, in our opinion, an occasion of just censure against the Essayists and Reviewers, considering their position, that two or three of them announced in an offensive, and even a defiant and reckless tone, some of the most irritating or alarming of all their supposed admissions to the discredit of the creed of their communion.

With the reservation just made, we do not hesitate to say VOL. LXXIII. 5TH S. VOL. XI. NO. I.

5

that the ablest and most satisfactory portions of both the collections contributed against the Essayists and Reviewers, are those which approximate most nearly to the substance of the views on test matters advanced by themselves. We must, however, make one exception, and sharply too, to any general commendation of the two volumes before us. The noblest of all the Essays in the offending book was that by Professor Jowett on the Interpretation of Scripture. Though we dissent from some of its incidental criticisms, and differ widely from him on his leading canon,- that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book, we must again express our exalted tribute to the writer for that matchless Essay. The very poorest of the corresponding Essays in both the books before us are those which undertake to deal with his. Their associates are brought into grievous discredit by their fellowship. It was a shame to leave so scholarly, candid, and high-souled a writer as Jowett to such unworthy and incompetent handling. The good portion of what Dr. Ellicott has given us in his article is almost identified with what is urged by Jowett; beyond that it is insipid trash and fustian. Dr. Wordsworth, besides writing in an execrably bad spirit, undertakes a task for which he is utterly incompetent.

Turning from these fair matters for fault-finding, we have better things to add, though briefly. What has Mr. Wilson said more censoriously about the Established Church, and the way in which earnest freedom of investigation and discussion is treated by it, than is urged even more forcibly by the Bishop of Cork, in the following passage? He says, that if the Church had faithfully done its duty, especially to the lower orders, "the Christian religion would then come before them as a religion manifestly subserving no interested temporal ends,

encumbered by no artifices of priestcraft, notoriously based from the first upon the ground of rational evidence, and maintaining itself through all generations upon that ground alone, open to all challengers, and ready at all times to give a reason of its hope to every one demanding it; and can it be said that this would not be good evidence to them of its truth, and evidence of the same kind as that on which they must rely, from their circumstances, for the truth of almost

everything of importance at all removed beyond the sphere of their own immediate experience? It is the putting of Christianity on other grounds; it is the claim of authority to silence doubt; it is the discouragement of inquiry, the contempt of reason, the depreciation of intellect in religious matters; it is the shrinking from light and correction, the suffering pure truth to be encrusted with prejudices and mistakes for fear of unsettling men's minds; it is the borrowing of the arts and language that are the common signs of imposture by the friends of truth, and leaving its own bold speech and open ways to its enemies; it is these unworthy methods that deprive the lower classes of the safeguards which, with such a religion, they might and ought to have for the security of their faith." It were something to the credit of the Essayists and Reviewers to have called out such an honest utterance from a prelate.

Professor Rawlinson's Essay on the Genuineness and Authenticity of the Pentateuch is one of marked ability, and though not wholly free from forced constructions and special pleadings, it is, on the whole, eminently fair and candid. It furnishes very striking evidences in illustration of what we have already referred to, as to the different effect of saying the same thing in different ways, and of the wisdom of making the positive grounds or matters of faith more prominent than one's negations or abatements from them. Two of the writers in the volumes before us have, directly or impliedly, insisted upon claims for the Pentateuch which Mr. Rawlinson discreetly yields up. These inconsistencies are not infrequent among the writers, and were of course to have been expected. Mr. Rawlinson shows his wisdom by not attempting too much. He concedes that the Book of Genesis was in part a compilation by Moses from several previously existing documents, though the existence of such documents and their digestion by Moses are strenuously denied by some of his colleagues in both volumes. He also admits that the whole Pentateuch was revised and re-edited, with alterations, by Ezra. He prefers to construct his arguments and to parry objections by relying upon the Greek and Samaritan translations, rather than upon. the inspired Hebrew original; not pausing to account for the

fact that the variations of the two former, which make them, especially in their chronology and notation, more available for his purpose, depreciate them in authority below their alleged Divine standard. More than this, even, Professor Rawlinson allows that what he regards as originally the word of God has been subject to risks in its transmission and transcription, against which it has not been miraculously secured; and that Scripture may also have been corrupted, before it came to our hands, by men who sought to conform it to their own views. The writer then sets himself deliberately, and with much acuteness, to answer, under six specifications, the chief objections and damaging criticisms brought to bear against the Mosaic authorship, and the authenticity of the contents of the Pentateuch. This is a very serious and exacting task. It is enough to say that the Professor has performed it as well as any one who has undertaken it before him. We were especially gratified by the skill and coolness with which he exposes that bugbear imposition of some of the Egyptologers, who pretend to find historic records and monuments of dynasties extending over twenty, thirty, and even forty thousand years. The Pyramids are the oldest known monuments. Their age does not date back beyond twenty-five centuries before Christ.

We may speak almost in the same terms of praise, and for the same reasons, of the Essay on Inspiration, by Professor Browne. In the form of guarded concessions subordinated to positive assertions of what is yet left for faith, the Professor yields the essential abatements which the impugners of the popular belief about inspiration insist upon first, without emphasizing, as he does, the Divine credentials which criticism cannot invalidate. He admits indefinitely the human element in the record, and avows as his judgment, that the main difficulties of the subject arise from attempts to construct a theory of inspiration, which attempts he regards as unwise and unsuccessful. Here again we have illustrated the different effect of different ways of saying the same things.

The volumes, whose contents our limited space compels us to pass over without further detail, will help far more than they will hinder everything commendable in the designs of