year and day, every station of life; and a little volume might be filled with dying hymns. The following titles, in Knapp's Treasury, include no less than seven hundred and forty-two articles: Hymns for New Year-the Four Seasons-Morning -Trades-Table-Evening-Birth-day-Week-days-Children-Youth-School-Charity-houses-Marriage-House

hold-Cradle-Juvenile Education-Government-Servants -Widows-Orphans-Old Age-the Sick-the Travellerthe Seaman-the Soldier-Times of Famine-Tempest-Pestilence-Conflagration-Harvest. Of these, the morning and evening hymns alone amount to more than three hundred.

In order to account for this extraordinary number of hymns, we must adduce a fact which, so far as our observation extends, has never been placed in the strong light which it deserves. Hymnology is almost two centuries older in Germany than in Great Britain. In the English language, original hymns are of comparatively recent date. Recurrence to our books will show how few we employ further back than Dryden and Merrick. Both in England and Scotland the Psalms of David were sung almost exclusively for a large part of two centuries; and this is true of most churches in Scotland at the present day. There were unquestionably many sacred lyrical effusions, from private Christians, in both countries; such as some of Blackmore's, the celebrated hymns of Bishop Ken, and in Scotland "Jerusalem, my mother dear," and Erskine's Gospel Sonnets; but these were not heard in publie worship, and so never became the common property of the people. The general and popular use of lively gospel hymns in England does not date much further back than the labours of Watts and Doddridge, and the great revival of religious feeling under Hervey, Whitefield, and the Wesleys; and it is remarkable how large a portion of the hymns now current among ourselves is derived from these very collections. In the Anglican Church, which best represented the English mind, the prevalent psalmody was first that of Sternhold and Hopkins, and then that of Tate and Brady. There are thousands of Presbyterian worshippers who to this very day content themselves with the rough, bald, and scarcely metrical prose of Rous; and some, though their number is happily decreasing, who think it a sin against God to use any praises in his worship which contain the name of Jesus.*

*[Issuing as our Review does from Scotland, we can scarcely allow this sentence to pass without a caveat. The following notes, from a few of the many writers who have adverted to the subject, will serve our purpose.-ED. B. and F. Ev. REVIEW.]

1. Rous's Version of the Psalms." It has been the fashion with our Southern neighbours," says one who (by common consent) stands in the front rank of modern Exegetes, "to sneer at that version, on account of its occasional baldness and harshness; but it will stand a comparison with any literal metrical version in any

How greatly in contrast with this has been the state of things in Germany, we have sufficiently shown. Long before the Reformation, German Christians possessed a store of spiri tual songs, partly from the Latin hymns of the Breviary, and partly the product of original pious feeling; since that time, we have attempted to trace the progress. We have seen in Luther himself a prince among Christian poets; and none can tell how much the great religious movement of the sixteenth century owed to those strains of his, of which one might say, as did Sir Philip Sydney, concerning Chevy Chase, that they "stir up the soul like the sound of a trumpet." There has been no time for three hundred years, in which German Christians have not been praising God in the words of original hymns. These have passed from mouth to mouth, and from language. It is commonly considered as little better than a reprint of Rous's version; but this is a mistake. It was the result of the careful labours of a Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland."-(Sufferings and Glories of the Messiah, by J. Brown, D.D., Edinburgh, note p. 74.) "Sternhold and Hopkins," observes the devout Romaine in his "Essay on Psalmody," "had a scrupulous regard for the very words of Scripture; the versification is not always smooth-but what is a thousand times more valuable, it is generally the sentiment of the Holy Spirit. This should silence every objection-it is the Word of God This version comes nearer the original than any I have seen, except the Scotch, which I have made use of when it appeared to me better expressed than the English. Here is every thing great, and noble, and divine, although not in Dr Watts' way or style. It is not, as good old Mr Hall used to call it, Watts' jingle." (Romaine's Works, vol. viii. p. 339.)

2. "The name of Christ, it is alleged, is not found in the book of Psalms. The name of the blessed Jesus ought to be in our psalm book." That the blessed Redeemer should have in our Psalmody a prominent place, is admitted by all. And has he not a commanding place in the book of Psalms? Is it true that the NAME of Christ, literally, is not there? Is not Messiah found in the original, and in our version, The Anointed? Do we not find in various forms of expression, "The Saviour God?" "God of Salvation?"&c. Turn them into Greek, and we shall then literally have Christ, and Jesus God. We bow at the NAME of Jesus, but we know no evangelical charm in mere Greek sounds, whatever they may have of literary fascination to the educated ear. We are unwilling to identify the spirit of the objector and of his objection, with that of the superstition which always bows at the name of Jesus, while knowing little of, and caring as little for, the glorious person and character of the Anointed Saviour. But to meet the objection: It is not true that these names of the divine Redeemer are not in the book of Psalms. Will the objector venture to say, that Christ is not in the Psalms of inspiration? that they are Christless Psalms? If not, then is not the objection a trifling play on words, not becoming the good man, when treating a serious subject? Or is it so that the church-at least the whole Presbyterian church-till a very late day had nothing but a Christless Psalmody? That those hundreds or thousands of churches in Europe and America, who use the scripture songs, have nothing but a Christless Psalmody? This will not in so many words be said; and yet, if the objection has any meaning, such is its import. But Christ Jesus is in those sacred compositions, his NAME, his character, is there delineated."(An Apology for the Book of Psalms, by the Rev. G. M'Master, D.D., Philadelphia, p. 197.) In the language of this divine book, the prayers and praises of the church have been offered up to the throne of grace from age to age. And it appears to have been the manual of the Son of God in the days of his flesh; who, at the conclusion of his last supper, is generally supposed, and that upon good grounds, to have sung a hymn taken from it; who pronounced on the cross the words of the 22d Psalm, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' and expired with a part of the 31st Psalm in his mouth, Into thy hands I commend my spirit.' Thus He, who had not the spirit by measure, in whom were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and who spake as never man spake, yet chose to conclude his life, to solace himself in his greatest agony, and at last to breathe out his soul in the Psalmist's form of words rather than his own. No tongue of man or angel, as Dr Hammond justly observes, can convey a higher idea of any book, and of their felicity who use it aright."-(Bishop Horne on the Psalms, pp. v. vi.)

father to son, and being connected with the freshness and dearest experiences of a most vital Christianity, as yet untainted by rationalism, have become part and parcel of the national inheritance. In this respect they possess all the traits and influence of the English or the Spanish ballad. Indeed they bear a close resemblance to those popular and soul-stirring compositions, in vigour of thought, simplicity of structure, and homely raciness of diction.*

ART. VII.—The Reformed Faith in Italy.

In the history of nations, that wondrous encyclopædia which has now become so voluminous and so complex, and in which our attention is daily becoming more bewildered, there are two countries that hitherto have constituted, and still will continue to constitute, the great centre of human interest. In them alone is to be found the key by which the gates of mystery are unlocked, and the destiny of nations understood. After this assertion, need we repeat the names of PALESTINE and ITALY? In the one country, we recognise the home of religion; and in the other, that of civilization: † the former was the temple, and the latter the academy of the world. But as the intellectual in man is so closely connected with the spiritual, that civilization cannot well be disunited from religion, therefore much of the religious history of the world is to be found in Rome, the mistress of nations, as well as in Jerusalem, the home of prophets and apostles,-so that the high and holy mission of the one was materially affected by the influ ence of the other. In this important point of view, the history of Rome, even from its earliest era, is essentially a religious history. Its wars with the Etrurians, Latins, and Carthaginians; its triumph over every antagonist, and ascent to universal supremacy-what was the worth of these, except by how much they bore upon "a religious movement" that occurred many centuries afterwards, and of which the end is not yet, though many centuries more have elapsed?

A conclusion so un-heroic, un-classical, un-Roman, in the estimation of many of our modern historians, was utterly unknown to Livy and Tacitus; and we can scarcely imagine with what superb astonishment they would have heard it announced. While they wrote the annals of their glorious country, they

In addition to the works named at the head of the article, and others noted in the margin, there are two to which our debt is so great that we cannot omit their titles-viz. Hagenbach's Kirchengeschichte des 18 u. 19, Jahrh, and Alt's "Christlicher Cultus."

+ Civilization, i.e., in its practical character and most effective ancient form.

only thought of its heroic deeds as the sources of its grandeur and political power. But little did they conjecture, that a record of which they were justly so proud, was but a sequel to the history of Judea, and that its close as well as its origin would be found in obscure and despised Palestine. Rome had fought and conquered, and afterwards coerced and civilised, wherever a nation could be reached, until even Britain, that poor fragment of the world that loomed through mist and twilight upon the outskirts of human existence, had been won from absorption into the void, and comprised within her allpervading empire. And here only the legions had halted because there was nothing more to subdue. But that last conquest being effected, the political mission of Rome was ended, and another influence was to enter and reap the fruits. And what and whence that new influence of which she had been the unconscious servant and harbinger? It was impersonated in Him who was peace, and gentleness, and self-abasement, while its teachers were twelve poor fishermen from a province so remote and contemptible as to be scarcely worth naming in the list of Roman tributaries. And yet, it was for the coming of these men that she had endured so many centuries of warfare, achieved so many unparalleled victories, and united so many nations into one compact well-legislated empire. Changes and improvements immeasurably more important still were to be introduced, of which these were but the preparatives; and all that had as yet been done, was nothing more than the construction of viaducts and highways for the progress of the fishermen of Galilee.

Such is the true spirit and philosophy of Roman history from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus; and without this reference, it has no real greatness nor even tangible meaning. Those achievements which in youth we were taught so indiscriminately to admire, are thus elevated into their true importance by being linked to the spiritual and supernatural. They form a sequel to that stupendous narrative, which, commencing in Eden, goes onward in a series of divine manifestation and miracle through the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Prophetic ages, until the whole is closed upon the mountain of Calvary. It is there that the history of the results of Roman action rightly commences. The real greatness of Rome consisted in her being adopted at this important point to carry on, with her own natural and acquired resources, the work which had been so begun and continued. It was a vocation which no other country was deemed fitted to receive, while in point of importance it was only secondary to that which had been originally bestowed upon the chosen people of God. It is gratifying to pause for a moment at this, the most im

portant epoch of Roman history, and contemplate the commencement of her new vocation. In such a case, we make little account of emperors and their slavish senates, the fierce wars which the empire continued to wage with the Parthian and the German, or the long-continued struggle that went onward at first for ambitious aggrandisement, and afterwards for mere national existence. We rather refer to the real life and inner spirit of Rome, and the deeds by which that vitality was manifested. And that life was Christianity. It was St Paul at the Three Taverns and Appii Forum, not the emperor in the capitol; it was among a handful of menials in Nero's household, and not in the commanders of Nero's legions, that the history of Rome was thenceforth to be found, and its full importance estimated. Roman patriotism was now to learn that there are still more important interests to die for than those of our country, and a higher approbation to reward the sacrifice than the applause of the wise and the good. And we know how the lesson was learned, and amidst what trial it was illustrated. Never was Roman energy so fully developed as in the missionary spirit with which it now went forth conquering and to conquer, or its devotedness so manifested as in the legions of her martyrs, who cheerfully gave themselves to the death that Christianity might live and triumph. And be it noted, that it was for this, too, that such a national character had been formed through whole centuries of high achievement. The result was, the acquirement of a new supremacy more complete than the old, under that regeneration by which Rome was born again; and it was now only that she seemed to have realised her proud title of the "Eternal City." Three centuries of Christian enterprise and suffering gave her the same importance over the whole Christian world, and the same ascendency in its councils, which she had formerly possessed as the arbitress of nations; she was now more than ever the great metropolis of the earth, upon which every eye was fixed, and to whose signal every movement was conformed. Matters being thus circumstanced, it might well have been thought that the predicted Millennium was at hand. Three centuries more-only three centuries more-and what at their close could remain unfinished! But from this very point a fearful reverse was to commence. The world, unfitted in its present state for further progress, was to be thrown back once more to its primitive childhood, and to undergo the struggles of a new existence, before it could enter that predicted life of happiness which was still in reserve for it. True, it had escaped from its Egypt of idolatrous bondage; it had even passed through the Red Sea in safety, crossed the dreary desert, and reached at length the confines of the promised