the matter, he might have found a general principle which would have cleared up, not the passage in Exodus vi. only, but also others that are still stumbling-blocks, The general principle is this, that "the negative particle is often used in the Scriptures in a comparative and not in an absolute sense. This same principle applies also to Josephus, as Whiston long ago observed in a note to his translation of his works.

To conclude: in regard to the minute verbal criticism of words and sentences, which is a distinguishing feature of this volume, and in which the Germans, from their excessive subjectivism are prone to revel, we are decidedly of opinion that, unless it be conducted under the guidance of common sense, it will not be beneficial but mischievous. Most men do without telescopes and microscopes; and in order to use them aright, the human eye, as God made it, is indispensable. The telescope brings to our view distant worlds; but, if we keep it constantly to our eye, we shall stumble over obstacles close at hand, which the use of the naked eye would have enabled us to avoid. The microscope reveals new beauties in the wing of a butterfly, or in the corolla of the flower by the wayside. But keep it at your eye as you walk along, and it will hide the frightful precipice before you and the ing chasm beyond.

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Theologische Studien und Kritiken. Jahrgang, 1865. Erstes Heft. THIS important journal enters upon its thirty-eighth year in the first number for 1865, just published, which opens with a short preface by Dr. Ullmann, announcing that Dr. Rothe, of Heidelberg, has retired from the joint-editorship, and that his place is to be supplied by Dr. Hundeshagen, of Heidelberg, and Professor Riehm. Dr. Hundeshagen has been long before the public, and occupies a place in the foremost rank of living divines of the middle or "mediative" school. Professor Riehm is still a young man, an admiring disciple of the late Professor Umbreit, and like him specially devoted to the study of the Old Testament. He commences in this number the first of a series of papers on Messianic Prophecy, which promise to be of much interest and value. His German style is pure, perspicuous, and flowing, and his views of the subject, so far as yet developed, seem to be conceived in a spirit equally removed from narrowness and laxity. The second article is an elaborate and able critique of the new edition of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," by Beck, of Reutlingen, of which the main drift is to show the differences between the earlier and the latest forms of that notorious work, and to point out the melancholy progress which its author has made in the direction of a total abnegation of all Christian thought and feeling. Beck maintains that Strauss has gone back to the position of the old Stoics-he is a modern Julian, who has apostatized from Christianity to the pagan philosophy of the Porch; and, like that Imperial dreamer, he imagines that his apostacy is to draw after it the ruin of Christianity and the Church. He is happily compared to the Stoics who encountered Paul in the Agora of Athens, and spoke contemptuously of him as a repoλóyos-a picker-up and retailer of worthless notions. And in the eye of Strauss, Paul is really nothing better. Strange to say, he regards the great Apostle of the Gentiles as the chief Judaizer of Christianity, who did more than any of Christ's first disciples did to pervert and corrupt the true mind and teaching of the Master, by overlaying his person and work with the Messianic ideas and superstitions of the Jewish mind. The antagonism which is here. laid bare between Strauss and Baur is very remarkable. To Baur, St. Paul is the least Jewish of all the apostles, and has most of the free and large spirit of the Gospel of Christ; to Strauss, St. Paul is the

greatest Judaizer of the whole apostolic college. With Baur, the difference between St. Paul and St. Peter in this respect is exaggerated into an antagonism which rent the primitive Church into two hostile parties; and, to explain the healing of this alleged but imaginary breach by mutual approximations and concessions, he assumes a postapostolic date for most of the New Testament books, which he prepos. terously maintains to have been written in the second century, for the purpose of helping and persuading this happy reconciliation. But .what is to be thought of the certainty attainable on such questions by the methods of recent criticism, when we find the two foremost professors of this criticism contradicting each other so flatly on a point of such fundamental importance as this? St. Paul, says Baur, was of all the apostles the freest from the spirit of Judaism. No, says Strauss, St. Paul was more than any of them infected with that spirit. In fact, Baur does not shrink from insinuating that St. Paul was broader and more catholic in his thoughts than the Master himself, so as sometimes to leave on his reader the impression that, in his opinion, the apostle was more truly the founder of Christianity in its universal form than Christ himself; whereas Strauss affirms the exact opposite of this-viz., that St. Paul did more to narrow the spirit of Christianity into a form of Judaism than all the other apostles put together -not having had the same direct acquaintance as they with the true facts of Christ's life and ministry. Can both these theories of primitive Christianity be true? Do they not cancel and destroy each other? But of the two, Strauss's theory is immensely the worse. Its audacity is astounding. It makes Paul the great perverter of true Christianity, instead of the greatest of all its expounders and promulgators. It represents his epistles as so far from being the most ancient written sources of pure Christian thought, that they are the most ancient and the most mischievous monuments of its corruption and degradation. In a word, the work of Dr. Strauss in the world is to undo the work of St. Paul, to restore what he destroyed, to recover what he lost. Was there ever so flagrant an instance of the reductio ad absurdum?

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The Early Scottish Church. The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. By the Rev. THOMAS MCLAUCHLAN, M.A., F.S.A.S. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1864. MR. MCLAUCHLAN's work has appeared too recently to admit of our reviewing it in this number with the deliberation and fulness which its importance demands. We reserve such a review for an early future number, but we cannot withhold the present brief notice, in token of the hearty welcome with which we receive the volume, and to express the warm thanks which we think due to its excellent author.

The work is an eminently seasonable one in several respects. Few of our readers, probably, are aware what a large number of able and learned works have appeared of late years, bearing, more or less directly, upon the early history of the Scottish Church-we mean its pre-medieval and early medieval periods. Not to mention the light thrown upon the subject, in scattered and casual rays, by numerous publications of our antiquarian clubs and societies, this portion of our ecclesiastical history, either in whole or in detached parts, has been formally treated and discussed by many recent authors of note, both in Scotland and Ireland, including Professor Cosmo Innes, Mr. W. F. Skene, Mr. E. W. Robertson, Mr. Grub, of Aberdeen, Dr. Cunningham, minister of Crieff, Dr. Todd, of Dublin, and Dr. Reeves, of Armagh; and Dr. Cunningham is the only author of the number who

has looked at the subject from a Presbyterian point of view, and allowed due weight to the evidence which Bede, Fordun, and other ancient authorities supply, in proof of some fundamental constitutional characteristics of the early Scottish Church as distinguished from the Church of Rome. But it is surely to be regretted, even in the interest of historical science and thorough discussion, that this important field of research should have been left almost exclusively of late in the hands of Episcopalian writers; to whose learning and ability, indeed, we are quite willing to accord all due appreciation, but whose ecclesiastical leanings have predisposed them to do less than justice to some highly important parts of the subject. Hence the special value of Mr. McLauchlan's work at the present time. The author is evidently thoroughly familiar with the whole literature of the field, from the very earliest to the very latest date. His perfect command of the Celtic languages and records gives him a conspicuous advantage, in the use of the most ancient Irish and Gaelic authorities; and combining with all this learning acute perception, sound judgment, a high degree of moderation and candour, and a profound love for his subject, he has been able to produce a work which will not only be highly acceptable to Presbyterian readers, but will command, we are confident, the respect and attention even of those who deem it a matter of importance to maintain that the primitive Church of Scotland was an Episcopal Church.

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The announcement of Mr. McLauchlan's volume induced to postpone our promised article on the Culdees, as we wished to compare the results of his studies on that subject with those obtained by Professor Ebrard, of Erlangen. In a future number we hope to be able to give our readers the benefit of this comparison, and, in the meanwhile, we have an important additional reason for not regretting the postponement which has taken place, in the recent publication by Dr. Reeves of an elaborate Dissertation on the same theme. It appears in the "Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,” and is marked by all the wonted accuracy and exhaustiveness of that eminent antiquary in the statement and accumulation of facts; however much we may be compelled to differ from him as to the ecclesiastical interpretation which the facts admit of and warrant.

The Tree of Promise; or, the Mosaic Economy a Dispensation of the Covenant of Grace. By the late Rev. ALEXANDER STEWART, of Cromarty; with a Biographical Notice. Edinburgh: Kennedy. 1864. THE name of this author is a sufficient certificate to the book. At the time of Dr. Candlish's appointment to the chair of theology, vacated by the death of Dr. Chalmers, Alexander Stewart, of Cromarty, was chosen to succeed him in the pulpit of Free St. George's-the highest practical testimony to his power and genius as a preacher. His lamented death, ere the translation could be accomplished, called forth from the pen of Hugh Miller a tribute which is perhaps one of the most eloquent passages that noble writer has left behind him. "Compared," he says, "with other theologians in this department "-the exposition of the Aaronic Priesthood and Sacrifices-"we have felt under his ministry as if-when admitted to the company of some party of modern savans employed in deciphering a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk of the desert, and here successful in discovering the meaning of an isolated sign, and there of a detached symbol-we had been suddenly joined by some sage of the olden time, to whom the mysterious inscription was but a piece of common language, written in a familiar alphabet, and who could read off fluently and as a whole what the

others could but darkly and painfully guess at in detached and broken parts." It is fortunate that this posthumous volume is on the very subject in the treatment of which he is thus said, by so competent a judge, to have so marvellously excelled. And the intrinsic excellence of the volume will constrain every one able to form an opinion to ratify Hugh Miller's judgment. It contains a most valuable contribution to theology, and as seasonable as it is valuable. It expounds the whole ritual, first the real and then the typical import of all the sacrifices and whole priestly action under the Mosaic economy. There is nothing of the vague spiritualizing, which is so haphazard and unsatisfactory, so arbitrary and endless. It is not the shallow rhetoric of mere simile that the author draws upon, but the profound principle of analogy, and he wields it with such ease and power that the two priesthoods of type and antitype are made to throw most abundant reciprocal illustration on each other. The light from Christ's priesthood is made to present the multitude and variety of sacrificial services under Aaron in the light of a grand unity, while the individual terms of the series which is thus seen to be one, are successively employed to reveal that variety and plenitude of truth in the one sacrifice of Christ, which, by reason of its simplicity and oneness, are apt to be overlooked. Archbishop Whately has tried to lay down the position that, while it is a fact that the death of Christ has brought salvation, we must be satisfied with the fact without inquiring into the how. And it is a favourite notion with not a few. Let any intelligent student of Scripture read this volume, and say whether it be not most manifest that it is the will of God that we should inquire into and understand the how, and give God a great revenue of glory in that he has enlightened us. The Aaronic priesthood lights up the fact-the historical fact with abundant and variegated illustration of the rationale. To suppress this light were irreverence and ingratitude. To deal in this way with astronomical science would leave the astronomy of observation and the telescope, but destroy the astronomy of Newton and Lagrange. Hugh Miller knew better. He has put Chalmers and Stewart, as theologians, in such rank as Newton and Lagrange hold in physical science; and the noble book which we have just read with equal instruction and delight will prove to multitudes that Hugh Miller's eloquent tribute to his minister was right. There is, indeed, a sense in which this work will be called fragmentary. It has the disadvantage of being a posthumous production. But the fragmentariness is more apparent than real. There is nothing fragmentary in the impression it will leave on the mind of the intelligent and unbiassed reader the impression of an illuminated majestic temple of truth, replenished with the peculiar sacerdotal glory of all manner of priestly and sacrificial transactions, pointing to the covenanted oblation and intercession of the Royal and Eternal High Priest of Zion. We commend the book very specially to students of theology. It would constitute an admirable gift for some of our wealthy and nobly beneficent laymen to disseminate among the future pastors of the Church.

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Christian Certainty. By SAMUEL WAINWRIGHT, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Micklegate, York; Author of "Voices from the Sanctuary." London: Hatchard and Co., Piccadilly. 1865.

THIS volume has reached us just as we were going to press; but even from the hasty glance we have been able to give it, we can perceive that it displays no small amount of learning, research, and reflection. Mr. Wainwright's plan is very comprehensive, including "the Difficulties felt by some, the Doubts which perplex many, the Sophisms

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which bewilder more, and lastly and chiefly, the immovable and infallible Certainty which is within the reach of all." Under these heads, the author treats of the "Objections raised by Rationalistic critics, the Doubts suggested by Science, Interpretation, Inspiration, the Antiquity of Man, Plurality of Races, the Deluge, Eternity of Punishment, Evidences of Christianity," &c. The work, therefore, may be viewed as a memorial in which those desirous of reaching "certainty" in the things wherein they have been instructed may find the arguments which are scattered through a variety of publications condensed within a readable compass, and presented in a style at once pleasing and persuasive.

Money: a Popular Exposition in Rough Notes, with Remarks on Stewardship and Systematic Beneficence. By T. BINNEY. Jackson, Walford, and Hodder. 1865.

THESE "Rough Notes," marked by all the shrewd common sense and terse thinking of Mr. Binney, will, doubtless, coming from such a "bank," get into general "circulation," and realize no small amount of "money" for the noble purposes which he contemplates. The principles of Christian giving are elucidated with singular clearness, vindicated from misapprehension with great success, and enforced with all the peculiar eloquence of the writer.

Sketches from the Life of the Rev. Charles Smith Bird, M.A., F.L.S., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Vicar of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral. By the Rev. CLAUDE SMITH BIRD, M.A., Curate of Clareborough, Retford, Notts. London: James Nisbet and Co. 1864. AN interesting memorial of a pious, devoted, and useful servant of Christ, whose gentle and amiable virtues shine in every page, endeared him to all with whom he came into contact during life, and now shed a sweet perfume over his memory. A warm-hearted but liberalminded Churchman, a staunch Protestant and vigorous anti-Tractarian divine, a keen and accomplished entomologist, a lover of quiet sports, of good men, and of little children, Mr. Bird was indeed one of "the saints in the earth, the excellent." His intercourse with Wilberforce furnishes us with two anecdotes which we may transcribe :—

WILBERFORCE AND SHERIDAN.

"The Rev. Sir Charles Anderson related to Mr. Bird an anecdote of Mr. Wilberforce, showing the reproach he had to bear for Christ. Sheridan was late in his revels one night, and going home intoxicated, lost his balance and fell into the gutter. There he lay till a policeman picked him up, and asked his name. He had just sense enough left to answer Wilberforce! Help arrived and he was taken home. Early next morning, the rumour spread like wild-fire, that Wilberforce had been picked up drunk in the streets. Sir Charles was in town at the time, and said it was quite shocking to see the exulting satisfaction displayed among the members of Parliament on the occasion. They rejoiced at the Christian leader's imaginary fall."

ROBERT WILBERFORCE.

"When Mr. Bird saw Mr. Wilberforce again, his son Robert was present, and argued a good deal with the old gentleman, describing to him the famous sermons of J. H. Newman in Oxford. Mr. Wilberforce could not comprehend them, and Mr. Bird was struck with his perplexity. He kept saying, 'What is that, Robert? Tell me that again.'