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which is merely human. She is perfectly reckless of consequences in that respect. There is the unchanging Word, committed to her to guard and preach. She dare not tamper with it. It is the awful Wisdom of the Great God! She can only read it, only incorporate it into every Service and Worship, let it clash with human " Schemes" as it may !

Her unbending and unflinching faithfulness in that awful Trust, is really the cause of the cries from so many quarters, within her and without her, against her Service-Book. The very words which men, led by a "Plan," in England and America, would wish erased, are Bible words, in Bible connections! And yet, deluded by their "Plan," they talk of doing that, to make her teach "the essential Gospel!" One wants her not to say, "This is my Body, This is my Blood," the words of her Lord. Another wants her to leave out the words, "these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine," after priestly hands are imposed, where the Master says, in the same place," this fruit of the vine." Another wants her to omit her Absolution, and change her Ordinal, though the Lord said, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." And so, take what you will, it is the same. The improvement, whether towards Ultra-Protestantism, or towards Popery, will consist in some Inspired statement erased or evaded.

Faithful to her trust, reading her Lord's own Words, as her warrant, and His Apostles' quoting those words of the Eternal Wisdom and Truth in her Baptismal Formulas, the Church teaches Regeneration,-the Gospel Doctrine of the New Birth. Erase it from her Services, and you are wiping out, not her words, but God's. Take it away, you are taking from the Book of Life. Those words must stand. Let what Scheme will demand their omission, they must stand. If a Regeneration is preached, which will not square with those words, which is forced to change or omit those words, about which, clearly, those words know nothing,-if such a Regeneration is preached, that is for its preachers to look to. The Church knows nothing of their dialect. She talks only the Inspired Tongue. It is altogether too much to ask of her to accommodate herself to their pet vocabulary. Why, to-morrow, they may have another. Who can tell? They always have been changing

their Creeds and Confessions; why shall they not keep on doing so?

Of course, whether in the hurch or out, a man who has this "Scheme," of which we have been speaking, as the concentrated Bible, the essential Truth, must be utterly shocked at the idea of Regeneration in Baptism. He must get rid of it, out of Prayer Book, out of Bible, at any cost. But the only honest way possible is, for him to forget his little "Scheme." The Word of God is altogether too vast to be measured by his fragmentary "Plan;" the Gospel, into whose mysteries “Angels desire to look," is too great to be concentrated into his half-dozen very illogical "essentials of Christianity." It will be better for him to take the Word of God, at any hazard to his System, than to try to make it speak only as that System lets it. He may be assured, for his consolation, however, that whatever the Church means by Regeneration in Baptism, she does not mean, that "Effectual Calling" takes place in Baptism, as he seems to think; or that, like the Campbellite, she is unmindful of conditions and duties. She knows nothing of any such idea. If he will, therefore, first forget, for a moment, his traditional interpretation of Regeneration, and remember, that though she, in the words of Her Lord, teaches the New Birth of "Water and of the Spirit," yet she is teaching New Testament Regeneration, and talking about that, and not the Regeneration of any "Scheme," new or old,-certainly not his, -if he will remember that, he may be greatly relieved.

And now, in conclusion, one word to the preacher in the Church. As we have attempted to show, in this matter of the Two Regenerations, there is a received religious language about us, a dialect of technical words, conveying technical ideas. The Services you are using contain another language, the language of the New Testament. But the so called "Systems" have fifty voices, where this last has one. Therefore, those people in the pews before you are interpreting, many of them, all you read, and all you say, according to the popular religious dialect of the hour, and the place. What you read, and what you say, will be understood, with a running commentary of dialectic meaning. You are liable to be misunderstood. What is worse, the Church is liable to be misunderstood; and what

is immeasurably worse, the Word of God, plain as you may read it, is liable to be misunderstood too. Remember this. The Boston Free-thinkers, through their mouth-piece in the Monthly Magazine, want the Bible "depolarized” into common speech. You must "depolarize,” not the Bible, but the popular religious dialect. You must teach the truths it does contain in the husk of those technical phrases, in plain, good, homely Saxon. You must take them out of their dead shells, and enforce them as living. Do not fear to do it. It is just what thousands of the best hearts are waiting for, under every pulpit cushion in the land. Many of these words had a strong meaning once. They are now only the dead bones from which the life fled first, then, even the muscles and the flesh. They have since been adopted into another "System," and galvanized into some life. Many of them contain truths torn from their connections,-truths, great truths, sadly distorted. Do not forget the peculiarities of your place and time. Do not let, for instance, as in this case, a purely technical meaning of the word "Regeneration," blind your people, and especially the children of your charge, the lambs of the Flock, to the true sense of the Baptismal Service, and compel them to refuse assent to the Lord's plain words. See that you rid them of that commentary of "a Religious Dialect." Do not let them fancy, when you preach "Baptismal Regeneration," little as you like to do it, from a sense of duty sometimes, that you are preaching an "Effectual Call," or, a "Change of Heart" in Baptism. Give them good English, and tell them "what these things mean." Hearts that wait on your preaching, and children who grow up under your care, will find, and feel, at last, new joys, new hopes; they will find, that deeper, richer experience of the Christian life, which the Church teaches and nurtures; even though it be affirmed that she is a stranger to its power. There is such a thing as Evangelical experience and piety. CHRIST is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life. The strange developments of such works as we have placed at the head of our Article, are showing where that Evangelical experience and piety are yet to be sought, and where that Truth and Life are to find munitions and guardians.

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NOTICES OF BOOKS.

A TRANSLATION OF THE SYRIAC PESHITO VERSION of the Psalms of David, with Notes, Critical and Explanatory: by the Rev. ANDREW OLIVER, M. A. bip

.Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co אין אפד ואין דברים בלי נשפע

Trübner & Co. 1861.

London:

The abundant facilities for the study of the Scriptures in their originals might. at least in our day, seem to render it superfluous to devote time and labor to the production of a work like this. It seems, at first, a circuitous mode of doing what is already done, actum agere, to translate a book already translated, not from the original, but at second hand, from another language, as ancient and difficult as the original itself. Such labor might seem proper or requisite only when the original is lost, as we must always expect a translation either to fall short or to exceed its original somewhere. But the aim of the translator in the present instance, if we apprehend aright, has been to translate from another Version in order to let it reflect its light upon the obscurities of the original and thereby aid in rendering it more intelligible or perspicuous. The aim has been to give the Syriac, with all fidelity, clad in the modern costume of our Anglo-Saxon tongue; and here the original itself would seem rather to take the place of an auxiliary, in order to determine words or phrases in cases of doubt. Much, therefore, as the translation here made is meant to bear ultimately on the right understanding of the Hebrew text, yet in another view, it may seem to ignore all reference to its Hebrew relation, for this very purpose.

In the Syriac we have the oldest Version of the New Testament and one of the oldest of the Old Testament. Since the days of the late lamented Dr. Murdock, whose last literary labors, at a highly advanced stage of human life, were devoted chiefly to Oriental studies, no work has appeared in the English language as a translation of any part of the Syriac Peshito, down to the present year, and the work before us. A decade of years has thus passed away between the translation of the Syriac Testament by Dr. Murdock, and the Psalms now published by our brother in the Ministry, the Rev. Andrew Oliver, A. M.

As we are not prepared to speak definitively on the merits of the work itself, having not yet compared it sufficiently, we do not of course enter into a review of its execution now, but purpose doing so at the earliest opportunity. In the meanwhile, we can only express our favorable impressions from a cursory and incidental reading, with some expectation however that we may occasionally differ on less important points, whilst we have got the impression also that we shall find our Rev. Brother generally on the safe side. His preface, without any pretentions to elaborate prolegomena, is an unpretending multum in parvo, given in a few pages, explanatory, linguistic and apologetic, with a statement of interesting facts connected with the subject.

To the present writer the chief value of the Syriac for the Theological scholar is to be found in its bearing upon the exegesis of the New Testament. This part of our sacred Books is every where materially affected by the Aramaic elements. The phrases as well as the terms, concrete and abstract, give it peculiarities that clearly indicate its Oriental affinities; without some knowledge of which many things must remain obscure. A faithful translation, therefore, may be justly haied as an auxiliary in this department. Although the Peshito of the New Testament, translated by Dr. Murdock, is not the original, yet as the earliest of the New Testament Versions it has the advantage of antiquity, and must be regarded as the nearest approximation to the language spoken by our Lord. But of this Version itself we must say what the old poet said of his dithyrambics, épuŋi ewe yoril A wide survey of style, diction and literature is often necessary to determine the sense, and in this view a successful version of a version, whether of parts of the Old or the New Testament Peshito may serve to strengthen if not elucidate the

ground of the interpreter, and relieve him from the necessity of a loose and perhaps erroneous conjecture. In this view we greet every contribution to the light of truth and religion.

INSPIRATION AND INTERPRETATION.

Seven Sermons preached before the University of Oxford. Preliminary Remarks: being an Answer to a Volume entitled "Essays and Reviews." By the Rev. JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, M. A., Fellow of Oriel College, and Select Preacher. Oxford and London: Parkers. 8vo. pp. 508. A volume with such a title from the Author of the "Plain Commentary," promises a rich treat, and the reader will not be disappointed. It was while the Sermons were in course of delivery, that the "Essays and Reviews" came under his notice; and he says; "Astonished at the apathy which seemed to prevail on questions of such vital moment, I determined at all events not to be a party to a craven silence; and denounced, from the University pulpit, with hearty indignation, the whole system of unbelief (if system it can be called) which has been growing up for years among us, and which I was and am convinced must be openly met, not silently ignored until the mischief becomes unmanageable." We confess we like the honest and hearty condemnation with which Mr. Burgon treats these traitors of the Church, who yet live on her money. There are very good and well-meaning people now-a-days who would not speak plainly and truthfully, even of Beelzebub himself, without taking off their hats and making an apology, and virtually retracting their censure; and if he were to advertise a "Lecture," they would be sure to be on the platform, just to show that they are not "bigoted." Mr. Burgon says; "Some respectable persons, I doubt not, will think my treatment of them harsh and uncharitable. I invite them to consider that we do not expect blasphemy from ministers of the Gospel, irreligion from the teachers of youth, infidelity from the professor's chair; nor are we called upon to tolerate it either. Let those, who

feel little jealousy for God's honour, measure out in grains their censure of a volume, the confessed tendency of which is to sap the foundations of faith, and to introduce irreligion with a flood tide. Such shall not, at all events, be my method. Private regard, if it is to weigh largely with him who stands up for God's truth, should first have weighed a little with those by whom it has been most grievously outraged."

In the course of his "Preliminary Remarks," which cover two hundred and thirty pages, he reviews rigidly each one of these Essays, and he does not daub with untempered mortar. The following statement of the true place which the New Testament fills, contains volumes of meaning and cannot be too carefully remembered. The popular impression in our country is as wide apart from this, as it can be, and the popular theology and the popular religion of our times are all based on a different theory. Men make a religion according to their own notions, and then try to square the Bible accordingly, instead of interpreting the Bible according to the understanding and practice of the men who wrote it. That is just the difference between the Church theory, and the Sectarian theory. statement:

Here is the

"How did Christianity originate? How did it first establish a footing in the world? The answer is (in the words of the Rev. J. Woodward,) by the preaching of living men, who said they were commissioned of God to proclaim it. That was the origin and first establishment of Christianity. There is, indeed, a vague and increasing notion prevalent that Christianity was taken from the New Testament. The notion is historically untrue. Christianity was widely extended through the civilized world before the New Testament was written, and its several books were successively addressed to various bodies of Christian believers; to bodies, that is, which already professed the faith of Christ in its integrity. When, indeed, God ceased to inspire persons to write those books, and when they were all collected together into what we call the New Testament, the existing faith of the Church, derived from oral teaching, was tested by comparison with the Inspired Record. And it henceforth became the standing law of the Church, that nothing should be received as necessary to salvation which could not stand that test. But still, though thus tested, and every article being proved by the New Testament, Christianity is not taken from it. For it existed before it. What then was the Christianity which

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