"If I had read them before, my enemies might have said that Luther had borrowed every thing from Wessel." The thinking minds of Europe had reached such a stage in the advancing process of human progression, that the same ideas struck them much about the same period, as the same new star may be discovered about the same time by astronomers in France, Germany, and England. Viewed under this aspect, we grant the reformatory character of Wessel's theology. It was the symptom of a change which had been gradually progressing, but which it can hardly be said to have influenced. Various causes contributed to the result. But however we may trace its secondary causes, we cannot overlook the agency of divine truth, accompanied by divine influence, in the actual catastrophe; and whether we view the Reformation as contrasted with its antecedents, or as illustrated by its sequences, we are compelled to say, "This is the Lord's doing: it is marvellous in our eyes."

The Home School; or, Hints on Home Education. By the Rev. NORMAN MACLEOD, author of "The Earnest Student."

THE home school and home education which the author of this excellent little work recommends, is the instruction and training, direct or indirect, which parents cannot but give to their children in the family circle in the course of their every-day domestic life. It is quite impossible to overestimate the importance of this home education; but we fear it is comparatively rare that its importance is duly felt, and receives that degree of attention which it pre-eminently deserves. There can be no doubt that a bias is given to the young mind in its very earliest years which may give a special direction to its entire future life,-a stamp impressed on its susceptible character then which it may bear for ever. There can be as little doubt that this is often done by parents without the slightest consciousness on their part, and without the least intention of doing so. But all the more necessary is it that they should be made intelligently aware of the even tremendous importance to their children of their own character and conduct, which constitute the mould into which the infant mind is cast, and stamped for future good or evil, happiness or misery. To give them this intelligence, to make them fully aware of its importance, and to instruct them how to use it, is the design of Mr Macleod's little volume; and the design is admirably executed.

Mr Macleod apologises for the aspect of these "Hints," as having been contributed at different periods to the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, and delivered as addresses to meetings of parents, saying, "Had they been written continuously for publication, they would have had more unity of design, and been better proportioned in their several parts." We are not sure that we agree with him. They seem to us to have sufficient unity of design, and to be far more natural, fresh, and freely applicable to all the varieties of character and circumstance than they could have been had they been cast into a more elaborate and regularly proportioned form. Each chapter may be read by itself, in any order, and without the necessity of reading the preceding chapter to get introduced to the subject; and yet they may be read continuously with great advantage. This can be shown by giving a list of subjects

VOL. V.-NO. XVI

2 H

treated of in the chapters successively; by which means also our readers may form some conception of the general character of the treatise itself. These chapters are: 1. A few words to parents on the importance of their own children. 2. The earthly and heavenly parents. 3. Christian baptism and Christian education. 4. A few words on training. 5. Christian education in right feeling towards God. 6. Habits,-right feelings towards parents,-obedience,-self-sacrifice,-industry,-perseverance, truth, honesty,-Mrs Wesley's training of her family. 7. Training by example and precept. 8. Training with love,-firmness, perseverance, and watchfulness. 9. Prayer. 10. Results,encouragement to Christian parents,-difficulties and objections,— conclusion."

Our readers will, we are persuaded, readily admit that any thing like an adequate discussion of these topics cannot fail to produce a work of great value. And we venture unhesitatingly to add, that so far as the limits within which the rev. author has been pleased to confine himself would admit, they are adequately discussed. This is, as we intend it, high praise, for the topics are all of extreme importance. They very evidently have come fresh and warm from the sagacious mind and loving heart of an able, accomplished, and earnest Christian father and minister, who has known and felt in his own youth, and knows and feels in his own manhood, what he teaches, and who wishes to convey similar lessons to his own flock, to his native country, and to all mankind, so far as the publication of this little volume may enable him to do so. The style is easy, natural, vivid, graphic, impressive. The illustrations are apt and striking; and there are many passages of apparently undesigned, but real eloquence. Our limits in a mere notice would not admit extracts; nor could any extracts do justice to the varied character of the work. But we give it our most cordial approbation; and we should be delighted if a copy of it would be placed in each family throughout the kingdom, for the regulation of all home education.

The Inspiration of Holy Scripture. Five Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge. By the Rev. LORD ARTHUR HERVEY, M.A. Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.

IN the course of the searching discussion which the question of the Inspiration of Scripture is at present undergoing throughout the church, there are some symptoms which give token of the likelihood of a wiser and sounder judgment being come to in regard to it, than a short time ago might have been apprehended. Those mutilated theories of inspiration with which many, in times of less earnest religious feeling and inquiry than the present, were wont to rest contented, are very generally felt to be unsatisfactory and insufficient. The theory of divine inspiration which attributed to the Word of God different measures and varieties of supernatural influence, and distributed to each page its due per centage of divine superintendence or suggestion, is hardly now advocated with the same dogmatism and confidence as it was by such men as Pye Smith and Henderson formerly. The more modern theory of the German school, which partially or wholly ignores the objective element in inspired revelation, and

confines itself to the subjective elevation and enlightenment of the rational or religious consciousness in its apprehensions of truth, has, indeed, found more general favour in recent times, ushered in and advocated as it has been by Coleridge and his disciples among ourselves. But even this theory has manifested, to the conviction of not a few with whose habits of thought and speculation it harmonised, its own vanity and defectiveness, when in the pages of Morell and Maurice it was seen to be a theory which did away with all real distinction between the inspiration of apostles and prophets moved by the Holy Ghost, and that of men under the ordinary teaching of the Spirit, and when it left to us nothing which we could specifically and strictly call a supernatural communication from God, contradistinguished from a human discovery and exhibition of truth. The longer and more narrowly it is examined, it will appear the more clearly, that to deny the objective element in inspiration, and to substitute an exclusively subjective inspiration in its place, even although this latter is dependent on the Spirit for its development, is in reality to deny a supernatural revelation altogether.

Some recent publications that have appeared among us would seem to indicate a reaction as having begun against the felt and inherent defects of such a theory. Mr Westcott, in his "Elements of the Gospel Harmony," when treating of the subject of inspiration, has strongly and ably advocated the doctrine of the equal and co-ordinate presence of the objective and subjective elements in inspired Scripture as necessary to explain the facts of a supernatural revelation supernaturally inspired, and as demanded by the express statements of the sacred volume. The recent work of Mr Lee on the " Inspiration of Holy Scripture," is a learned and elaborate discussion of the question, occupying substantially the same ground of argument, and forming a very valuable contribution towards the right settlement of the controversy. Both these works, more especially the latter of them, are deserving of very high praise. They approximate more closely than many of the works of preceding writers on this subject to what we believe to be a sound and scriptural solution of the problem of inspiration, arguing as they do for the necessity of recognising in Scripture the presence both of an objective communication of truth from God, and a subjective reception and expression of that truth, on the part of the inspired man who records it. The question of how the objective and subjective elements in inspired Scripture are to be reconciled with each other, how the divine and the human are made to meet without limiting or neutralising one another in the sacred page,-is one of those which are placed beyond the reach of our understanding to answer, and baffle all attempts to explain. The Scriptures do not profess to explain to us the process through which they are inspired; they only assert the fact that they are inspired.

The work of Lord Arthur Hervey on inspiration is a seasonable and valuable contribution to the argument of those who plead for a Bible in the strict sense of the words infallible and divine in all its announcements. It is no unfavourable token of the progress of sound opinions on this vexed question, that these discourses were delivered before the University of Cambridge, and have been published at the request of many who heard them, and were interested in the views

propounded. They indicate, on the part of the author, an earnest and devout feeling of regard for the sacred volume; the argument for the inspiration of Scripture is for the most part conducted in a satisfactory manner; and the various objections that have been brought against this doctrine are sometimes ably as well as satisfactorily met. We are not at all sure that the author, in some cases, has risen to the level of his own argument, or seen the extent of the principles he advocates; and that he has not sometimes yielded up to the adversary points which had better have been defended against him, under the influence of that bugbear which has frightened so many-the dread of what has been called mechanical inspiration. But taking these discourses as a whole, they are to be regarded as a step in the right direction towards a sound view of the inspiration of the Word of God; and, viewed in connection with other works which have recently been devoted to the same question, seem to indicate that healthier and more scriptural opinions on the subject are beginning to prevail.

The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament Revised from Critical Sources ; being an attempt to present a purer and more correct Text than the received one of Van Der Hooght, by the aid of the best existing materials. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, Ď.D.

London: Bagster & Sons.

THE criticism of the Old Testament text has for a considerable period remained almost stationary; and while learning, ingenuity, and talent have been lavishly devoted to the elucidation of the Greek text of the New Testament, and we see the fruit in such editions as those of Lachmann and Tischendorf, little comparatively has been done for the Old Testament since Van Der Hooght published his edition in 1705. That edition has ever since been recognised as the textus receptus; and although defects more or less have been generally acknowledged in it, and various emendations proposed, although the labours of Kennicott and De Rossi have amassed a store of materials from which criticism might develop a purer text, yet nothing of moment has been done towards the production of a critical edition of the Old Testament suited to the demands of the age. Compared, indeed, with the criticism of the New Testament, and the rectification of the Greek text, the task to be performed in connection with the Hebrew text is far more difficult and delicate. In the first place, the MSS. of the Hebrew text are few and modern in comparison with those of the New Testament; and being, as it is generally believed, very much of the same family or recension, it is extremely difficult to classify them with a view to assign their comparative value as witnesses for the various readings, or to lay down any rule or principle beyond that of mere numbers by which their evidence may be calculated; and, in the second place, in the absence to a considerable extent of any guiding principle, derived from the external evidence of MSS., as to the readings, there is larger room left for the use of internal evidence in the determination of the text, and perhaps greater necessity for the application of critical conjecture with a view to its emendation. On both these accounts, more especially on the latter ground, it becomes a task of the utmost difficulty and

delicacy to do for the Old Testament what has been so fully done for the New, and to produce a good critical edition of the Hebrew text.

Dr Davidson is well known by his learned and successful labours in the department of Biblical literature; and the works which he has already published have procured for him no small regard as a diligent, devoted, and erudite student of the sacred volume. The present work cannot fail to be accepted as a valuable contribution towards the great desideratum of a new and critical edition of the original text of the Old Testament Scriptures. It is evidently the fruit of much labour, and time, and study, spent upon the task. It gives the results of much learned research and patient investigation into the critical materials gathered together by scholars for the elucidation and rectification of the Hebrew text. It presents in a compact and distinct form those readings deemed to be most authoritative and best, according to the estimate formed by the author of the evidence in their favour; and these readings are followed by a brief indication of the authorities which support them.

It did not, apparently, fall within Dr Davidson's aim to explain the principles of evidence by which he has been guided in his selection of the readings preferred by him, or to lay down any general canons of criticism by which the value of the proof in each case might be tested. He has no Prolegomena explaining the principles on which his selection proceeds; but in those cases where he differs from the received text, he confines himself to the statement of the reading he prefers, together with the briefest possible indication of the authorities that sanction it. We have no doubt that to many who study his volume this will be felt to be a defect. To a superficial glance it looks as if he had numbered his authorities rather than weighed them; and however unjust such a charge might be, it will be felt to a considerable extent that, notwithstanding the value of Dr Davidson's work, he has left unfinished, or rather unattempted, the still more arduous task of establishing those principles of critical evidence applicable to the Old Testament, by which the various readings might be estimated at their proper worth, and the text scientifically rectified. Of course this could be done only by an endeavour to ascertain those general principles by which the value of the different MSS. and other authorities might be determined, and by some attempt to define the extent and laws of the higher criticism in its application to the text in the absence of external evidence. In the case of the Old Testament, this is an attempt which it would require the highest gifts of critical learning and sanctified wisdom to undertake with the hope of success.

The Symmetrical Structure of Scripture; or, The Principles of Scripture Parallelism, exemplified in an Analysis of the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and other Passages of the Sacred Writings. By the Rev. JOHN FORBES, LL.D. Edinburgh: Clark.

BISHOP LOWTH has undoubtedly the credit of being the first to explain and illustrate the true character of Hebrew poetry, as constructed not on the principle of the regular recurrence of syllables, similar in number and quantity, but upon a certain parallelism or correspondence of ideas,