various combinations of motives. The lawyer does not discover new principles of law. These remain the same whenever he rises to address court or jury. Still, ample room is left him for the exercise of his invention, in combining these principles into new trains of argument, and adapting them to the facts of the case. It is this effort that rouses his mind, and excites its original powers to exertion. In like manner, while the doctrines of Scripture remain unalterable, invention may be exercised, in ranging over every field of thought, and gathering from thence proofs, illustrations and persuasives, for the purpose of illuminating and convincing the understanding, kindling the imagination, and quickening the conscience. Under the influence of such new conceptions, the pulse of an audience cannot beat languidly. Their minds will be roused, their interest secured, their attention arrested, and the probability greatly increased, of their being brought to believe, and feel, and act. The same truths, being presented in aspects constantly diversified, will be seen by the hearers in new lights, and lead them with eagerness to press forward in knowledge.”—pp. 16, 17.

7. The Books of the Old and New Testaments, Canonical and Inspired; with remarks on the Apocrypha. By ROBERT HALDANE, Esq., of Scotland. First American Edition. With an Appendix. 18mo. pp. 191. Boston. Published by the American Doctrinal Tract Society, Perkins & Marvin, Agents. 1840.

Having long felt the need of a satisfactory work on the subjects here treated of, we took up this book with some degree of interest, though not with high expectation. The examination has convinced us that it is far from meeting the wants of the times. In the first place, the author is too warm a controversialist, and too intolerant a theologian. In the second place, he is master neither of his subject nor of its literature.

Part first, on the genuineness of the Holy Scriptures, is divided into three chapters, 1. the Old Testament, a mere popular outline, of seventeen pages; 2. the Apocrypha, treated in a similar way, in twenty-two pages; 3. the New Testament, to which the author properly devotes more space. A part of this chapter is very good, and the subject well treated. In the latter part of it, where he maintains that the question of the canon is one of revelation, not of erudition, he slides over the main point, as in too many other cases, with a mere assertion, and then discusses with some ability minor questions on which there is little difference of opinion among orthodox theologians. It is, indeed, very obvious, that we are not to prove the inspiration of the Scriptures, sentence by sentence; but the question must turn, as the author maintains, on the book as a whole; or we would rather say, on the inspiration of the author, and then the genuineness and integrity of his writings. Mr. Haldane says; "The first churches received the New Testament Scriptures from the witnesses of the Lord, and thus had inspired authority for those books." Very well; but this is precisely the point to be proved, and not dismissed, as it is here, with an assertion. If we understand him,-for his statements are so general that we are left in doubt as to his precise meaning,-his theory is, that each writer informed those for whose immediate benefit his book was prepared, that it was inspired, and was designed for all Christians alike. Thus the

individual Christians and churches, who received such communications, were virtually commanded to circulate them. Whether this account be true or not, certainly it is destitute of historical proof. It must either rest upon a priori reasoning, or it must be inferred from the fact, that these writings were received and regarded as inspired by the first Christians. As to the former, we may as well dismiss it at once; a priori reasoning will not establish a fact. In regard to the second, all the testimony of antiquity goes to show that those early Christians, whose writings have reached us, received the writings of the New Testament as inspired, not for the reasons assigned by Mr. Haldane, but on the ground of their apostolical origin. Again, he says; "Every thing that goes to unsettle the canons, goes to unsettle every doctrine contained in the canon." We are far from wishing to see the canon unsettled ; but we are as far from taking for granted so fundamental a point as that the canon of the New Testament was settled by revelation. If this is not what the author means, he argues to no purpose; if he does mean this, we repeat, his assertion is incapable of proof.

A Catholic may receive the voice of his church as authority without inquiry for reasons; but we do not see how a Protestant can be denied the right of inquiring historically, what is Scripture. The only way of satisfying the mind of any critic on this subject, is to show that a book of the New Testament is directly or indirectly of apostolic origin. We can prove that the apostles were inspired, and therefore their sanction is all we need. Others of that age, as Mark and Luke, may have been equally inspired; their writings may be just as valuable as those of the apostles themselves; but we have not the same proof of it in any given case, and therefore need apostolic sanction. What the author affirms of the New Testament would, indeed, be true if affirmed of the Old. We have the testimony of Christ and the apostles to the inspiration of that collection as a whole; and here, and here only, can it be said that the removal of one book, which was really in that collection, would unsettle the whole canon. Not that the Old Testament has a better authority than the New, but that the course of proof, which is synthetic in the one case, is analytic in the other.

Part second, on the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, is divided into four chapters, which with the appendix constitute about the half of the volume. We have much fault to find with his treatment of this subject, but cannot descend to notice all the particulars. In attempting to prove the inspiration of the New Testament, he does not begin at the right end. Instead of laying a strong historical basis, and arranging subsidiary and collateral proof in their proper place, he plunges at random into the subject, and gathers around him a complete chaos of evidence. On the subject of verbal inspiration, the chief difficulty his mind seems to labor under, arises from supposing that necessarily, in inspiration, the thoughts and words are formally dictated as if they came into the mind from without, instead of their springing up in a divinely illuminated and inspired soul. If the mind itself was inspired with the knowledge of any truth, all its intellectual acts, with reference to that truth, would naturally be under the influence of the same inspiration; it would, in that state, conceive of divine things (in just such a manner as God should lead it), arrange its thoughts, and also select its language. Is there any evidence that the written instruction of the apostles, was in general

inspired in a manner different from their oral instruction? Certainly the same promise was given in regard to both; and the apostle Paul always referred to his preaching as equally authoritative with his epistles. Nor have we the least intimation that his mind was in a different state when he was writing from what it was when preaching. Now, in his general course of inspired instruction (leaving out of view the case of visions and remarkable revelations), his thoughts and words do not seem to have had an external origin, but his inmost soul seems to have been made an inspired fountain from which the streams of thought and language issued. It is not our wish to insist on this view, nor do we suppose that the matter of inspiration is particularly affected by such nice questions in respect to the mode. What we would wish to represent is the dogmatic spirit with which our author maintains a mere hypothesis.

Many of the passages quoted in proof of verbal inspiration,-in which we ourselves are believers, in the sense above described,-have indeed some connection with the subject; but quite as many of them have no more to do with it than they have with the spots in the sun.

It is with true pleasure that we pass from the hazy atmosphere of the book to the pure and fresh air of the appendix by Dr. Woods. The latter is cool and collected, nice in his discriminations, and exact in his language. With a few exceptions, where we think either his analogy or his interpretation fails him, we could transfer his paragraphs to our creed. No language can better express our views than the following: "The sacred writers were so guided by the divine Spirit, that in every part of their work, they were rendered infallible, and wrote just what God willed they should write; so that the sacred volume entirely answers to the mind of God, and has nothing, either as to matter or form, which he did not see to be suited to the great object of a divine revelation." We go farther, and fully agree with Dr. Woods in the statement that, "The general doctrine of inspiration, understood in any proper sense, seems clearly to imply, that the divine influence which the prophets and apostles enjoyed, must have pertained, in some way, to the manner in which they communicated divine truth. For can we suppose that God moved his servants to write a particular doctrine or fact, and yet did not influence them to write it in a suitable manner?— that, after prompting them to communicate something of consequence, he so abandoned them, that they were liable, as every man without divine assistance is, to fall into mistakes, or to make the communication in a manner less proper in itself, and less agreeable to the mind of God, than some other."

8. Christology of the Old Testament, and a Commentary on the Predictions of the Messiah by the Prophets. By E. W. HENGSTENBERG. Translated from the German, by REUEL KEITH, D. D., Professor in the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary of Virginia. 3 vols., 8vo. pp. 560, 423, 499. Washington, D. C. W. M. Morrison. 1836, 1839.

Nothing is more difficult for journalists than to secure timely reviews of the most elaborate and valuable new works. If an editor would do any kind of justice to such books, he must limit his own labors to a few, and depend on his learned correspondents for the rest. But in so doing,

he becomes liable to various chances of disappointment or delay. Few competent men are willing to undertake the review of a great work; and when they have undertaken it, difficulty in the execution, other engagements, or feelings of modesty, make them slow in the performance. Such is our apology to the translator for neglecting till this late period to notice the Christology of Hengstenberg; and the same is due to some others for a similar neglect. In the mean time, until we can do better, we recommend this standard work to the biblical student We do not indeed agree with the author in all he says; nor are we blind to the defects that attach to the character of his mind. But it is the chief production of a learned and able critic, to the preparation of which he devoted many of the best years of his life. In the later volumes, particularly, we discover proofs of a mature mind and mature scholarship. In fact, they constitute the best commentary we have on the minor prophets. The translator, too, so far as we have examined, has performed his part with accuracy and skill. The mistakes which we have discovered are too unimportant to be mentioned.

ARTICLE VIII.

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

Miscellany from the German Papers.-Tholuck, in his Literary Index, the first number of the present year, which is the tenth since the commencement of his journal, takes a retrospect of the last ten years, and compares the state of theology in 1830 with that of 1840. Then there were three schools, that of the ordinary Rationalists, that of the historical supernaturalists, and that of Schleiermacher. Then Schleiermacher stood on the "summit of the age " (auf der Höhe der Zeit), as it is called. He justified, in part, the attack of the Rationalists upon the old orthodoxy, but on the other hand, he condemned the spiritual barrenness of Rationalism. But his disciples could not remain on his middle ground; most of them left it and passed over to the evangelical party. Hegelianism then scarcely had an existence in theology. Now every thing is changed; the peculiar system of Schleiermacher has passed away, and Hegelianism stands on the "summit of the age." Eight years ago a friend of mine wrote to me expressing his surprise that the Literary Index should pay so much regard to the Rationalism of Röhr, and adding, "in ten years Rationalism will be a dead dog, and Hegelianism will be going about like a roaring lion.””

as

Even the political journals have called upon Tholuck to come out openly and declare whether he swears allegiance to the new philosophy or not. He refers them to his new work on "Christian Devotion,' the best illustration of his position in theology, and says that he finds his honor, his strength and his consolation in the faith in which Luther, Calvin and Spener lived and died; a faith that is now branded by both the circumcised and the uncircumcised as pietism. While he abjures the

"extreme left" of Hegelianism, represented by Strauss and others who separate, in Christianity, doctrines from history, adopting the one and rejecting the other, and declines the honor of discipleship altogether, he believes that there are "depths in Hegelianism in which Christian truth can find a place," as is shown in Göschel's work, "the God-man," and still more in Dorner's "Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ " (1839). Tholuck avows his belief that theology and speculative philosophy cannot be separated; that theology is capable of justifying itself before reason, or rather showing itself as reason. Consequently theology must, in this world, always be, to some extent, fluctuating. Not that absolute truth is in itself variable, but that we never have any thing but an approximation to absolute truth, that we always see as through a glass darkly, and that these approximations must vary withthe positions from which we take our view. The mind is always struggling to approach nearer to truth, to obtain better views. "This inward necessity, as my Berlin friends know, first drove me to Jacobi; afterwards the study of many of the scholastics, such as Thomas Aquinas, and Anselm, and especially some of the mystics, had an influence upon me, and later still, Schelling and Schleiermacher. Now I am brought to the study of Hegel; and I should feel that I was not discharging my duty as an academical teacher, were I not to struggle to become master of a system which is striking its roots so deep into the whole spirit of the age."

The gross pantheism of the more frivolous class of Hegelians, of which the writings of Heyne, and the most popular journals of elegant literature (such as the Freihafen, the Jahreszeiten, the Hamburg Jahrbücher der Literatur) are the representatives, is not so much a result of philosophy as a fruit of the impiety of the age. According to them, the only choice now left us is "between a headless faith and a faithless head." A short time since, it was a disgrace to speak in such a frivolous tone; now, it is the mode with those who boast of standing on "the summit of the age."

Thus the triumph which Christianity was gaining is deferred. The old Rationalism, which was going out of date, is uniting with the new philosophical party under the banner of Strauss, and recovering strength. The only difficulty with them lies in the undeniable fact, that the old Rationalists gave up the doctrines of the Bible and retained the historical facts, while Strauss and his party give up the facts and

retain the doctrine-a rare union!

Still the religious energy of the Germans is much greater than it was ten years ago, although the friends of religion are divided into more parties than they were then. A new zeal is awakened in favor of the creeds, and a spirit of martyrdom is shown in favor of the old Lutheranism. It is to be regretted that the different parties of Christians pay so little regard to what they hold in common, and devote so much attention to points of difference.

Religion is sending forth a more commanding influence than formerly upon all the elements of society, and is affecting the most important events of the age. It has allied itself with politics as well as with the arts. In a part of Germany the government is maintaining Lutheranism; in other parts and in France the papal power is recovering strength; in England the Episcopal system is rigidly maintained; and in Russia a new zeal is awakened for the Greek church and a spirit of proselytism is revived.