must be used, but with a Divine vindictiveness. And this seems to be the confession of the human heart in the most differing states of society. An Indian judge tells of the impression produced by a thief who cut off a child's wrists merely to get some tightly fastened bracelets. As the maimed stumps were held up in court a hundred voices cried, "Death is not enough." In the south of France a monster amused herself with her paramour at the theatre while her little boy was found slowly starved to death with his cheek laid against a little dog which nestled close to him. Many cried, "The priests are right; there must be a hell." These extreme cases make us perceive that there is an unexhausted necessity for punishment merely as penal, felt by the instinctive conscience of mankind to be due to certain conditions and degrees of sin, where restoration through it is evidently neither expected nor indeed hoped for' (p. 153).

One of the most convincing arguments in support of the doctrine of the Godhead of Christ is founded upon the nature of His claims and His place in the hearts of His followers. It is an argument which must always be associated with the genius of Lacordaire, and which was developed with remarkable power by Dr. Liddon in his Bampton Lectures. Familiar as it is, it is presented with great force and some originality by Bishop Alexander in a lengthy treatment, in the course of which it is said:

'He to whom we are consecrated in Baptism, whom we remember in Holy Communion, to whom each first day of our week is set apart, for whom we are to sanctify our hearts, to whom our lives are to be devoted, who brought us near to God by His sacrifice, who keeps us in temptation, whom we are to expect as we expect a returning friend when we look out for the sail or the streak of smoke of the vessel which brings him to us, who is to stand by us when flesh and heart fail, who must judge us, whom we shall worship for ever, and without whom heaven would be unheavened-who, and what, is He?

'He demands all we can give-memory, love, gratitude, reliance, constant thought, secret prayer, public worship, the belief of the intellect and heart, the bowed knee, the faithful working, the constant witness-if needs be, the confession even unto death.

'Who, and what, is He?

'If He were God, He could ask no more, and He could get no more, for we have no more to give. When we call upon people to give themselves to Christ we tell them implicitly that He is this. If not a single text plainly called Him Lord or God, if all creeds were expunged, and all dogmatic confessions cancelled in all our Churches, so long as our New Testament remains we shall have superabundant proof of the Divinity of Jesus in His own language and that of His Apostles (so far as their estimate is concerned), simply by comparing it with the principle of the Old Testament, "I am a jealous God," and with the utterance sanctioned by Christ Himself, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve (pp. 239, 240).

Not seldom a brilliant antithesis is epigrammatically made, as when we read

4 There are two contrasts between faith and science. In science the first proposition is true only so far as it agrees with the last; in faith the last is true only so far as it coheres with the first. Science commits suicide when she accepts a fixed creed, Faith when she rejects one' (p. 297).

Our quotations will show the character of Discussions which may well have made belief in Christianity more easy for many who heard them preached, and may well be valuable to many who read them. The Bishop of Derry's reputation as an orator is secure. He will pardon us if, with a criticism offered in all friendliness, we say that we think his arguments would be more weighty in a published work if greater attention were paid to the arrangement of the excellent materials, and if the distinguished author could find time for a more careful revision of them for the press.

We must not end our notice without calling attention to the admirable treatment of the Atonement on pp. 22-34, and a clever note on the use of the names Elohim and Jehovah in the Old Testament on pp. 59–63.

Principles of Biblical Criticism. By the Rev. J. T. LIAS, M.A., Rector of East Bergholt, formerly Hulsean Lecturer and Preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1893.)

In the preface to this book Mr. Lias expresses his 'opinion that in many departments of science, and especially in theological science, the great want of the day is manuals, addressed to intelligent and thoughtful men, and dealing with the first principles of the subjects on which they treat' (Preface, p. iv). We are not sure that our own opinion would be exactly the same as that of Mr. Lias on this subject. We often regret the extent to which strength seems to be frittered away in small books at the present time. Men who are capable of solid and enduring work often appear to us too ready to allow serious study to be interrupted by writing of a popular kind. Yet, though we doubt whether there are many who adequately measure the loss which thus results, it is true that there is need of popular manuals as well as of works for the learned. And the manual which Mr. Lias has published is one of great usefulness. It is on a subject of special interest and importance at the present time-Biblical criticism-and exhibits a very great deal of the care and caution which this subject demands.

The chapter on 'The Text of the Old Testament,' the part of that on 'The Inspiration of Scripture' which deals with the history of the doctrine of inspiration, the chapters on The History of Old Testament Criticism,' the 'Principles of Textual Criticism as applied to the New Testament,' and the Higher Criticism of the New Testament' contain well-arranged and clearly expressed information which will be useful to those who are beginning to study the subjects to which they refer. To many the more controversial chapters will be of chief interest.

There is a discussion on 'the genuineness of the Pentateuch which is of weight. Mr. Lias is no enemy of criticism. He fully recognizes the value of the scientific treatment of the language and history of the books of the Bible. But he emphasizes facts which the dominant school of critics of the Old Testament are too ready to overlook; and, while he does not dogmatize on the exact method

of composition and on the history of the Pentateuch, he has no doubt that it is a trustworthy work of ancient date.

'There is no reason whatever to suppose that down to the year 900 B.C. no record but a bare and uncertain tradition of Israelite history and institutions existed. Neither has sufficient evidence been produced to support the conclusion that the so-called Three Codes were separated from one another by any very wide tract of time. Still less are we entitled to conclude that Deuteronomy embodies a considerable amount of legislation unknown in the time of Hezekiah, and that many extremely important regulations in the Priestly Code had not been formulated even in the time of Ezekiel. These notions, we are persuaded, repose rather on the lively imaginations of German critics than on any more solid foundation, and they have been adopted by distinguished English Biblical teachers with more haste than discretion. The conclusion of sober reason on the question, it may be confidently affirmed, will eventually be this, that while we know not precisely who wrote the Pentateuch, nor when nor how it was written, it contains what must be regarded as in all essential respects an accurate historical record of the provisions of the Law given by Moses, and of the circumstances under which that Law was promulgated' (p. 133).

For most of the arguments upon which this position is based we must refer our readers to the book itself; but some of the author's points may be mentioned here. He cannot believe that 'the conception of exquisite unselfishness and self-control as displayed in the history of Moses;' the work of Joshua, 'pure from all taint of selfseeking;' the rule of Samuel, able 'at the close of a long and useful life' to challenge 'successfully' 'the closest inquiry into his career;' the life of David, which, if stained by one act of cowardice,' is marked also by noble repentance, and is utterly unlike what might be expected from an 'Oriental despot,' can have been created in an age like that of Josiah,' or, if they were so invented, would have attracted admiration.' 'A degraded age sets up for itself degraded types of character, or substitutes stage effects for lofty conceptions' (pp. 115, 116). He expresses in a striking way the powerful argument that the teaching of the Prophets implies the existence of the Law:

'The whole struggle between men like Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the party of irreligion hinges upon the presence of precepts admitted on both sides to be authoritative, which the one party desired to enforce and the other to ignore. The whole history of revealed religion is the history of such a struggle. God has revealed certain principles and duties from heaven; the corrupt heart of man endeavours to evade them. It is not the least among the shortcomings of the new criticism that it utterly fails to recognize the practical identity of the history of man's religious instincts under the two covenants-the continual struggle between nature and revelation, and, in the history of Israel at least, substitutes for it a struggle of quite a different kind-a struggle which rather resembles the resistance of an obstinate and sluggish conservatism against innovations which were the fruit of discovery and progress' (pp. 116, 117).

He points out the bearing on the subject of the 'universal tendency of the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures' to be opposed to

'the conception of matter as evil in its essential nature' (p. 129), and of the teaching 'of the writers of the New Testament and of our Blessed Lord' (p. 131). And he shows the moral and spiritual

loss which the 'destructive criticism' involves :

'What, under the view of Old Testament history we are asked to embrace, will become of the examples of manliness, fortitude, courage, faith, patience, integrity, to which we have been wont to point in the lives and characters of Old Testament heroes? The touch of criticism has resolved them into air. . . . Abraham . . . becomes a "free creation of unconscious art." Joseph is an incoherent concoction from various authorities. The venerable figure of Israel's leader and lawgiver . . . vanishes in the dim distance of antiquity. The captain who led Israel into the promised land . . . shrinks up into a fierce and daring guerilla chieftain. Samuel becomes the chief of a troop of dancing dervishes. David . . . subsides into a mere Oriental despot, . . . lustful, cowardly, subtle, cruel, malicious, who, while his soldiers fight for him, sits ingloriously at home corrupting their wives. . . . Solomon . . . is put aside as another figment of the Oriental imagination. The dark figure of "Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" vanishes into space at the touch of the critic's wand' (pp. 129, 130).

...

There is a short but important chapter which shows how the fulfilment of prophecy indicates the supernatural character of the Old Testament, and this is followed by a clear statement of part of the evidence which the Psalms afford to the facts of the Old Testament history. It is our opinion that the discussion of the dates of the Psalms has a very close connexion with other questions about the Old Testament. And if we are not disposed to follow Mr. Lias in ascribing Psalms xxii. and lxix. ' to Jeremiah rather than to David' (p. 149), we must express our gratitude for the defence of the Davidic authorship of Psalm li. :

'If Psalm li. were not written by David, but by some later writer in his name, that writer must have been, to use the expression of Bishop Westcott in relation to the Gospel of St. John, "an unknown Shakespeare,” though living in days when the dream was as yet undeveloped. And it also coincides precisely with the character of David as drawn in the Second Book of Samuel. Only such a man as is described in Psalm li. would have been capable of the flash of sudden conviction expressed in the remarkable words, "I have sinned against the Lord." Only such a man could have been the hero of the touching episode where the father fasts and weeps for his dying child, and then anoints his head and washes his face when he is told that the child is dead, and meets the remonstrances of his servants with the memorable reply, "Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." It is almost too absurd when we find people gravely arguing that the expression, "against Thee only have I sinned," is inadmissible in the mouth of David, inasmuch as he had also sinned deeply against Uriah. Such arguments may satisfy men who are utterly without experience in the deeper human emotions, but they will most certainly have no weight with any one who is conversant with the religious history of souls. Independently of the fact-sufficiently plain, one would have thoughtthat to the Hebrew sin against Jehovah and wrong done to an individual were not exactly on a level, there is a strong tendency in the repentant sinner to minimize the wrong done by him to man when placed in con

trast with the offence he has committed against the Majesty of God. We may dismiss almost without comment the discussion which has been raised on the words, "For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee, but thou delightest not in burnt offerings." There is nothing in these words inconsistent either with the authenticity of the Scripture account of the contents of the Mosaic Law or with the position and character of David. There is nothing more remarkable than the insight which was early displayed by men of deeply religious character into the true spiritual nature of obedience to the Mosaic precepts. Even before the days of David, Samuel had already discerned that "to obey was better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." And the strong antithetic way of putting things which we find here and in other passages is due to the genius of the Hebrew language, and not to any opposition to the doctrines set forth in the Pentateuch in its present form' (pp. 151, 152).

The book is not without blemishes. We doubt whether Mr. Lias has an adequate idea of the authority of the Church in her teaching office. His denial that the Church of any particular age is infallible' (p. 7) is expressed in such a way as to appear to imply the fallibility of the universal Church. When he says that 'the Scriptures are received as inspired, not on the authority of the Church, but on the authority of Christ' (p. 22), he makes a false antithesis. They are received, it is true, 'on the authority of Christ,' but they are received also on the authority of the Church' which Christ has appointed as His organ in the world, and to which He promised the guidance of the Holy Ghost.

Moreover, we question whether there is sufficient ground for the apparent acceptance of the opinion that the Book of Zechariah consists of two parts of different dates, and we are not sure that Mr. Lias has paid due attention to what is implied with regard to the Book of Jonah by the teaching of our Lord.

There are some marks of haste in the composition of the volume. It is said, for instance, that the Book of the Revelation is placed by Eusebius among the books which he calls avriλeyóμeva (pp. 18, 203), and Mr. Lias mentions that he cannot find the passage in which St. Jerome speaks of the use of the name Abiathar in St. Mark ii. 26 (p. 45, note ). Eusebius does not include the Revelation in his avrileyóμeva, but expresses doubt whether it should be placed among the oμodoyouμeva or the vóla, which is a different position. The passage referred to in St. Jerome is probably that in his Epistle lvii.2

The blemishes it is our duty to point out do not prevent the Principles of Biblical Criticism from being a valuable work. There is a danger lest books for young students on the criticism of the Old Testament should all be written on one side, and that the continual reassertion of particular views should lead such students to suppose that they rest upon a degree of proof which they do not possess. Mr. Lias is entitled to the gratitude of Churchmen because he has 1 Eus. H.E. III. xxv.

2 Ep. lvii. 9 (t. i. p. 314 A,B, Vallar.). St. Jerome does not appear to commit himself to any explanation of the difference between the First Book of Samuel and St. Mark's Gospel.