captivity date); that Ecclesiastes is a very late book, not the composition of Solomon; that the book of Job was written posterior to the age of Solomon, the speeches of Elihu belonging to a different poet. The book called after Jonah is said to have fallen into incompetent hands, it being wrongly dated and otherwise misapprehended; whilst the writer on Zechariah, though he gives the name of Stähelm as the ablest and most complete on the integrity side of the question, is equally unfortunate, because this German's views, it seems,

little."

are worth

Coming to the New Testament, the Reviewer says,-still without one word of proof,-that the four Gospels passed through " one or two forms of rédaction." "Since Strauss (it is added) published his Leben Jesu, and the Tübingen school examined the New Testament records, this is admitted by every true critic." "The authenticity of the fourth Gospel can scarcely be looked upon as established." "In like manner it is a settled principle, that the Gospel and the Apocalypse did not proceed from the same John; and that the 2nd of Peter was not written by the Apostle whose name it bears.

Briefly to gather together some of the results of this attack upon Christianity, we find here that the personal existence of an Evil Spirit is denied by implication; the operation of the Holy Spirit in the inspiration of the Scriptures is put aside as creating the confusion of making "two authors" to the same book; St. Paul and St. James are said to oppose one another; the credibility of miracles is scoffed at as "the common belief of the day;" the history of Noah and the antediluvians is "mythical-not historical;" and as to prophecy generally, "the main point (we are told) which English theologians have to learn is, that the prophets did not predict definite future events in the distance, and that their predictions failed sometimes of accomplishment." Undisguised contempt is expressed for all "double senses and spiritual significance," and "all type-making, as the bane of hermeneutics." With this, of course, goes the great Messianic question; and instead of hearing, in accordance with our Lord, that the Prophets spake and the Scriptures testified of Him, we learn that it is "incorrect to affirm that the Psalmists were types of Christ, and were charged by the Holy Spirit to set forth beforehand, in Christ's name and person, the sufferings that awaited Him," (because, forsooth, the idea of a suffering Messiah was repugnant to the Jewish mind; as if the prophets were never commissioned to utter disagreeable things to their people, who were noted for unbelief, and often "erred, not knowing the Scriptures"). In the same off-hand style we are informed that "it is incorrect to say that the atoning work of Christ is drawn out of the 52nd and 53rd chapters of Isaiah-such language (it is added,

deprecatingly) prepares us to find that Shiloh is attributed to Messiah," and "that the Holy Spirit intended something further than Hosea" (ch. xi. 1), viz., what He (the Holy Spirit) informs us by the "Evangelist Matthew." "But what," it is asked, "could be expected of theologians, supposed to have given their assent to the Athanasian and other Creeds ?"

The conclusion of this flippant writer is well worth our consideration. "The editor," he says, "might have done better, had he not accommodated himself to the level of English theology. A similar book of far higher pretensions-a Dictionary, not merely abreast, but in advance of, its day-will appear in a happier future, when sectarian bigotry will have ceased to bark; when increasing intelligence and liberality will make it safe to assert opinions over which the ban of heresy now hangs; when dignitaries of the Established Church will encourage the expression of honest thought respecting the Bible; when the conclusions of sound criticism will be acknowledged by all who claim credit for the smallest amount of learning; when superstition shall have been cleared away by the light of truth, and the consciousness of the divine in man is no longer overwhelmed with a useless load of external evidence."

Such are some of the latest developments of Neology. They seem fully to justify the following observations.

(1.) It is impossible not to be struck with the arrogance of these writers. One of them indeed affects to find fault with others as "bold, rash, and self-sufficient;" but where, we should like to know, was ever heaped together more of self-sufficiency and ad captandum argument than is to be found in his own pages? Taking into account that this new school represents by no means our most distinguished or devoted men, and that they rarely favour us with a particle of proof, but try to force the most astounding assumptions down our throats upon the bare authority of two or three German mystics, selected according to the taste of the writer, it seems to us to have reached the height of arrogance and conceit, and to remind us of those "great swelling words of vanity," spoken of somewhere. This at once throws a suspicion on the whole. Instead of the modesty of the true scholar, we have the short-sighted presumption of the sciolist, whose conclusions are all tinctured with false estimates of human power, and cannot therefore be relied upon in any pursuit of truth. Until such men become really men in understanding," and submit to recognise, as the first elements of knowledge, their own ignorance and liability to err, and their consequent dependence upon God for guidance and upon the whole Church for advice, they must excuse us for feeling an à priori difficulty in listening to a word they say.

(2.) Then we must observe how obviously it comes out that

the Word of God-the Bible-is now the great object of attack. It is not the Church, or her sacraments or ceremonials, or any of the interior doctrine in particular, but the whole of it, -the very foundations of all faith, our infallible Book itself. True, this is not the professed object in view. All is attempted under cover of a real devotion to God and His Word, in order to separate (as they say) the wheat from the tares. And so we have Dr. Williams and Bishop Colenso and M. Rénan taking the Bible under their special patronage, and proposing to act as a sort of "Liberation Society" in the matter, out of pity to us all. But this we believe to be only the cloak covering the cloven foot-Satan again saying, "Hath God said?" and actually quoting Scripture, as when tempting the Lord Jesus. It is only a new mode of attack, in hope of getting rid of Scripture altogether. For, we would ask, what would be left of God's Word after this sort of treatment? Let our adversaries tell us what is certainly God's Word, after questioning almost every book in the Bible, and endeavouring to show that it is full of mistakes, like any human production; that there is no such thing as prophecy or miracle; nothing supernatural, nothing doctrinal;- what would remain after an elimination of this kind; especially if these critics were followed-and why should they not be-by the Mormon and the atheist, with their peculiar verifying faculties?

In fact, be it ever remembered, these writers occupy the unenviable preeminence of being the first who have ever dreamed at least in the Christian Church-of criticising the Word of God as such. Thank God, some of our greatest minds have all along been throwing light on the language and structure, and in some cases the meaning, of Holy Scripture. This is fair criticism. But never before, we believe, has a party been bold enough to set themselves up within the Church as judges of that which is to judge them. This is not criticism, but unbelief and blasphemy. How reverently and modestly does St. Paul speak of divine things, when speaking for himself! "I have no commandment, he says, "yet give I my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful;" "and I think also I have the mind of the Spirit." If it be objected, that the apostle is not speaking of Bible-criticism here, we reply, certainly not; for it never entered into his mind, capable as he was by learning for most things, to sit in judgment upon God's Word. "Free handling" on this subject has been reserved as one of the boasts of these "last days," and is never to be met with in the schools of the prophets, or the colleges of apostles. Imagine the fearful discord that would be occasioned by introducing some of Professor Jowett's canons of interpretation, or some of the "conclusions" of the writers before us, amongst the

solemn and reverential precepts of St. Paul to Timothy or to Titus! It would be well for men who ape the learning and liberty of St. Paul, to regard his awe-struck spirit both at and after his conversion, and the limitations he always sets himself and us, as to the proper view and treatment of God's holy Word.

men !"

(3.) Once more; we may notice the real termination of this sort of error. Such an error is not anything from which a man may easily recover, but a most serious and entire defection from truth, and truth's only standard in this world. To doubt God's Word is to doubt everything, and to challenge the Almighty. The history of a soul engaged in this unequal contest has been told us by the apostle Jude long ago. It is to go wandering on like one of those comets which astronomers assure us can never return, into the blackness of darkness for ever. Observe the fearful uncertainty of the future as indicated by one of these writers," Whither inquiries will lead, no one can at present pretend to guess-highly improbable that it should coincide altogether with any form of religion at present known among Here is the heaven of Pyrrhonism-independence of God-self-deification. But this is more distinctly seen, and even anticipated with fondness, by his companion writer. He boldly speaks of "the divine in man;" not meaning thereby that blessed influence exerted over us by the Holy Spirit when He brings our depraved hearts back to God, called in Scripture, being "made partakers of the Divine nature;" but something altogether due to civilization, science, and human goodness. A correspondent, not long ago, told us of an Indian Fakeer who, when asked for his best idea of the Supreme God, at once inverted his finger to himself, saying, "I am he." Wherein is this very different from, or a whit worse than, the case of writers who, amidst the blaze of Gospel light, deliberately shut their eyes to it all, and congratulate themselves upon "a consciousness of the divine in man, no longer overwhelmed with a useless load of external revelation"? Let us not be deceived as to the only resting-place of this new phase of atheism. As we stand on the verge of such an abyss, struck with equal horror and pity at the sight of any of our fellow-sinners plunging blindly into it, may we say, "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, my honour, be thou not united." What relief is it for the humble Christian to be able to turn, from the contemplation of such dreary and hopeless scepticism, to that word of promise, our infallible Word,where we meet God eye to eye, find every healing of the soul, and recognising the fitness and loveliness of Jesus as in a glass, "are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." W. J. B.

FORSYTH'S LIFE OF CICERO.

Life of Marcus Tullius Circero. By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. In two Volumes. London: John Murray. 1864.

"What will history say of me six hundred years hence?" was the exclamation of the greatest orator, statesman, and philosopher whom ancient Rome can boast. History has had a good deal to say of him, who may not be inappropriately termed the last of the great Romans, before Rome fell under the power of the most infamous sovereigns that have ever disgraced a throne. Few men probably have been more praised, and, as is generally the case under such circumstances, few men have been more vilified than Cicero. In his lifetime, and after his death, he had enemies who delighted in spreading calumnious reports concerning him. Yet it may safely be asserted, that since the revival of letters, and especially since the invention of printing, his name has been worshipped, until a very recent period, by the literati with a species of veneration amounting almost to idolatry. Of late there has been a kind of reaction, and by some modern writers he has been as unduly depreciated as he was before unduly extolled. The two extremes of opinion may be represented by Middleton and Niebuhr on the one hand, and by Melmoth, Drumann, and Mommsen on the other. Middleton goes so far in his admiration, that De Quincy considers his chief object was, from sheer dislike to Christianity, to paint, in the person of Cicero, a perfect model of scrupulous morality; and to show that, in dangerous times and under most difficult circumstances, he acted with a self-restraint and integrity to which Christian ethics could have added no element of value. Niebuhr, whose intellect and Christianity were both of a far higher order than Middleton's, and whose opinion is therefore more to be depended on, observes,-"I love Cicero as if I had known him, and I judge of him as I would judge of a near relation who had committed a folly." Drumann's elaborate work is a sustained attack upon the character of Cicero from beginning to end; he scarcely gives him credit for a single pure or disinterested motive in the whole course of his life; and whenever there is a possibility of imputing something wrong, he imputes it to him in the most prejudiced and unjust manner possible. Mommsen treats the great Roman with the extreme of superciliousness. Fixing his eyes on the infirmity of his political conduct, in which there are occasions, sometimes to blame, sometimes to pity, but more to admire, this German historian thinks himself entitled to sneer at him for his failings, and, strange to say, is determinately blind to the splendour of