disgrace to criticism of any kind, to say nothing of its higher' departments. If Moses did not write the books of the Pentateuch to such an extent as to warrant his being described as their author; and if those books, together with the writings which follow in the received canon, do not constitute a Divine and Inspired authority, then, it is not merely Judaism, but Christianity that is gone. The New Testament is thus far committed to the Old, and they must stand or fall together. This external proof is sufficient to show, that all internal evidence that may seem to be at variance with it must be fallacious.

Dr. Donaldson's chapter on an Infallible Literature' is opposed, as will be anticipated, to the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. But his reasonings on this topic are all of the old complexion. Some of them we have examined recently, and we shall perhaps soon return to the subject. For the present we take leave of Dr. Donaldson, earnestly hoping that when we meet him again we shall find more to commend.*

Letters of John Calvin, compiled from the Original Manuscripts and Edited with Historical Notes. By Dr. JULES BONNET. Vol. II. 8vo. Constable.-We commended the first volume of these Letters to our readers on its appearance, and we are pleased that we can now call attention to the second. The letters in this second volume extend from 1545 to 1553 inclusive, and are nearly three hundred in number. The translator and editor has not burdened the text with notes, but he has supplied very useful information at many points of

Ten years since the editor of this journal felt some perplexity on the question of Inspiration, and endeavoured to make his way to settled views concerning it. The substance of the conclusions which then commended themselves to my judgment appeared some time afterwards in an article in this Review (No. XIV., 178 et seq.). From the shape which recent discussions on this subject have taken, it became expedient that I should do something towards protecting myself against certain representations of my opinions which have been anything but accurate, and by no means harmless in their tendency. The article on Inspiration in the number of the British Quarterly for January last was called forth by those circumstances. Much of the material of the former article was separated from a good deal of extraneous matter, and reproduced in the latter, in a form more regular and digested, and with considerable additions. In this second article not a passage, a clause, or a word was either inserted or omitted with the intention of saying anything, or of seeming to say anything, at all different in 1857, from what I had said in 1851, except on one point-the point of the imprecatory psalms. In 1851 I regarded those psalms as inspired, and the imprecations in them as being in great part judicial, and in part prophetic. I so regard them still. 'But further reflection has satisfied me that the moral feeling of the writers must have been sound that the men who so wrote must not be supposed to have erred morally in thus writing. I still feel, indeed, that such language can never be proper to us, inasmuch as the circumstances of those persons can never be really our circumstances. But in their circumstances there must have been fitness in it. This has been my opinion, and well known, for some years past. In so far therefore as the human feeling supposed to be expressed in those psalms is concerned, I should not have expressed myself at any time within the last three or four years in the terms which I employed in 1851. It is not needful I should say more just now. Religious men in this country are manifestly committed to a thorough investigation of all questions of this nature, and we mean to deal with such questions in this journal-we have no thought of evading any one of them.-EDITOR.

the correspondence. There is no picture of the Reformation times so fresh and living as that which comes forth from sources of this nature. The present volume furnishes large evidence as to the sincerity, piety, and spirit of self-sacrifice by which the Protestant Reformers were characterized, and it shows also that amidst all their excellencies they had very much to learn.

Christianity and our Era. By GEORGE GILFILLAN. 8vo. Hogg. -Mr. Gilfillan has here taken up a large theme. Those who know the character of his genius will probably expect that a work from his pen with such a title will be found to touch on almost everybody and everything. Mr. Gilfillan always writes with a moral aim, is intent on upholding principles, but he must always look at principles through persons. The world and the church are much out of joint; our zealous man of letters labours hard to bring them to their right position, and his manner leads him to stud his pages in a remarkable degree with the names of all the celebrities, whether for good or evil, which our era has produced. This ceaseless talk about people, where the object is, or should be, something much higher, is felt by many as an impertinence, and as not a little wearisome. But it is the manner of Mr. Gilfillan to write thus, and those who cannot accept him as acting under this tendency, have nothing left but to dispense with his companionship altogether. He is a laborious man, always collecting, but always disbursing, and the world, it would seem, moves on much too fast to allow of his doing much in the way of arranging, digesting, and pruning his material. In a word, the manner and style of Mr. Gilfillan furnish ample occasion for sharp criticism on the part of those who may be disposed to indulge in that vein. But it is not less true, that his writings teem with the fruits of his reading, that they contain much sound and useful thought, and that a large class of our young men are, on the whole, much the better for reading them. Our higher class of critics seem to look on the literature of Mr. Gilfillan as belonging to a sort of Red Indian school; and the millenarianism which makes its appearance in this volume will, we fear, lead them to think that their copper-coloured friend is going mad.

Expository Discourses on the Epistle to the Philippians. By THOMAS TOLLER. 8vo. Snow.-We scarcely know how it has happened that this book has not obtained an earlier notice from us. It is a volume very like a good deal of our best English authorshipmore substance than show, presenting the results of reading and learning more than the parade of such things. Mr. Toller's style is singularly devoid of the ornate, the imaginative, or the impassioned, but it is clear, exact, and everywhere the vehicle of definite and intelligent thought. We counsel the preacher who would expound the Epistle to the Philippians to read the book, and it can hardly be read without sensible advantage by any thoughtful Christian.

On Preaching and Preachers. By the Rev. JOHN LEIFCHILD, D.D. 12mo. Ward. This publication consists of an Inaugural Address delivered at the opening of the new Baptist College in Regent's Park, and of an Appendix on Preaching and Preachers. The Address' is

Gilfillan―Toller-Leifchild, &c.

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brief, touching in part on the message of the preacher, and in part on the end that should be kept in view in delivering it. But the value of the work lies mainly in the Appendix, which is fich in the counsels of experience concerning the work of the preacher. It is not always an easy thing to make young preachers sensible how much-how very much they need such counsels. The consequences are that many, neglecting these lessons early, never learn them at all, and many learn them slowly, and at best but imperfectly, in the bitter school of experience. Dr. Leifchild's volume is a fitting book to be put into the hands of students and young ministers by all who wish them well.

Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth: Illustrations from the Book of Proverbs. By the Rev. WILLIAM ARNOT. 8vo. Nelson.-This book, we are told, has reached the seventh edition. We are glad to learn that it is so. It shows that they are not light and frothy performances only which get this kind of recognition from the public. It is a work of real thought and wisdom, and written in a clear, condensed, and weighty style. We know nothing of Mr. Arnot; but it is manifest that he knows how to bring a disciplined intelligence, and a thorough literary culture, to the aid of evangelical truth. The book is emphatically a good book, and as its material is given in small sections, a portion of it might be read every day.

Inspiration, in Three Lectures. By the Rev. A. E. PEARCE. Judd. -Mr. Pearce has been at much pains to understand the subject to which this publication relates-and he does understand it, greatly better than many of much higher pretensions. The aim of the lecturer is to show what inspiration is, where it is, and how it is to be ascertained. To those who wish a manual on this important subject, we commend the work here provided for them. Substantially, it is a sound production, both in its facts and in its reasonings.

Scripture Characters. By ROBERT CANDLISH, D.D. 8vo. Nelson. -These Characters' were published with other papers by the author in 1850; they are here republished separately, having undergone 'careful revision and correction.' The characters described stand in somewhat of chronological order, and are from the Old Testament and the New. The name of the author is a guarantee that what is done has been done with discrimination and power.

The City; its Sins and Sorrows. By THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. Fcp. Black. This volume consists of four sermons, with an appendix, and is designed to lay bare the 'sins and sorrows' to be found in the recesses of all our great cities. Dr. Guthrie admits that our cities are the centres of all good, as well as of all evil; but towards the vices and miseries to be found there his benevolent heart turns with the most impassioned solicitude. In continental cities, and in the cities of nearly all past time, the disease has been left, for the most part, to fester in secret as it might. It is peculiar to our state of things that there should be men among us resolved to bring all this wretchedness, suffering, and filth to the light of day, and to ask the passers-by, can nothing be done to conquer this? God speed them in their work! Many may shake the head, and pronounce the conquest

of such evils as impossible. Be it so; but we suppose the possible in that direction is possible, and that is what the Master expects from us.

Luther's Evangelien-Auslegung aus seinen homiletischen and exegetischen Werken für Schriftforscher, Prediger und erbauungsuchende Leser zusammengestellt. Von CHR. G. EBERLE. Stuttgart: Liesching. Williams and Norgate. Erstes Heft. (Luther's Inter'pretation of the Gospels, Collected from his Homiletic and Exegetical 'Writings, for the use of Students of Scripture, Preachers, and for 'Devotional Reading.') By C. G. EBERLE. Part I.-The object and the utility of this compilation are sufficiently obvious. The writings from which these extracts are gathered and set in order cover a range of some four-and-twenty volumes. In the course of the work, all that Luther has anywhere said in the way of interpretation, or practical remark on the Gospels, will be brought together and arranged as a running commentary on the lessons of the day. This First Part contains-160 large-sized pages. It is proposed to complete the whole in ten parts, with the addition of a serviceable index. Luther's sermons and Luther's commentaries will be thus thrown together to illustrate each other and the sacred text. The very words of Luther are everywhere preserved, with the briefest possible connecting links, and no omissions of importance. The First Part brings the commentary as far as Quinquagesima Sunday.

Die Lehre von der heiligen Liebe, oder Grundzüge der Evangelischkirchlichen Moral Theologie. Von ERNST SARTORIUS. Dritte

Abtheilung. Zweite Hälfte. Williams and Norgate. pp. 280. (The Doctrine of Holy Love, or Principles of Christian Morals according to the Evangelical Church.') By ERNEST SARTORIUS. Concluding half of the Third Part.-This volume completes a work commenced in 1840, when the first part went through three editions. The second part, now in a second edition, was published in 1844, and the preceding half of the third in 1851. This treatise on Ethics has enjoyed a considerable reputation in Germany. Dr. Sartorius is a divine of the evangelical school, and warmly attached to the old confessions of faith. He has written Meditations on the Manifestation of the Divine Glory in the Church, and especially on the Presence of the Glorified Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Sacrament; also a pamphlet On the Necessity and Obligation of the Ecclesiastical Confessions of Faith. Most of our readers would follow him with more pleasure in his devout and thoughtful expositions of Christian duty, than in such expressions, eloquent and able as they often are, of his intense attachment to the peculiarities and the formulas of Lutheranism. The first part of the present work was devoted to The Primal Love and its Opposite' (Von der ursprünglichen Liebe und ihrem Gegensatz). The second treated of Atoning or Reconciling Love' (Von der versöhnenden Liebe), and the third, Of Uniting, Purifying, Active, and Obedient Love.' The concluding volume continues the discussion of the love of obedience, and treats of perfecting love. The first two hundred pages are occupied with disquisitions on the last five commandments of the Decalogue, inculcating love to our

neighbour. In the remainder, the author speaks of the patience and hope of love in affliction and the hour of death,' and lastly of 'eternal life, the last judgment, and the triumph of holy love.'

Die Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus übersetzt und erklärt. Von HEINRICH EWALD. Göttingen. Williams and Norgate. (The Epistles of the Apostle Paul.) Translated and Elucidated by H. EWALD. pp. 494. This translation, with its commentary, includes several of the Pauline Epistles arranged in three classes, as follows:-First, Epistles belonging to the period of the second great missionary journey-viz., the (so called) second and the first' to the Thessalonians. Secondly, Epistles belonging to the third journey-viz., those to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Thirdly, Epistles belonging to the period of captivity at Rome-viz., 'the fragment of one' to the Ephesians, that to the Philippians, the letter to Philemon, the Epistle to the Colossians. The other epistles usually attributed to Paul are omitted, because, in the opinion of the critic, they are not directly from his hand. They may, perhaps be noticed in a future work.

This commentary is terse and compressed to a degree unusual with German critics. It is unencumbered with speculative matter and discursive remarks on the criticisms of others. The author appears to have confined himself almost entirely to the province in which he can certainly render most service-the accurate exhibition of the grammatical meaning, the connexion of the clauses, the course of the argument, &c. We cannot here enter upon any of the numerous questions which criticism, from another point of view, would inevitably raise. Suffice it to say that Ewald, though a rationalist, is one of the better sort. His apprehension of Old Testament prophecy, on which he has expended so much pains and unquestionable learning, appears to us lamentably defective. But just because we differ so widely from him in accepting that supernatural element which he rejects, we are the more desirous to render due justice to the merits of such an antagonist. That his scholarship, and that of some others of his school, has been indirectly of service to Biblical literature no impartial observer will deny. Ewald is not an arrogant destructive. Very different is his spirit from that of the Strausses, Bruno-Bauers, and Lützelbergers. He is very far from desiring to depreciate the Hebrew religion and culture, that he may exalt the pagan. His modesty is conspicuous-so rare is that quality with his party. We can readily give him credit for all sincerity and rectitude of purpose, only regretting that, appreciating and exhibiting so fully as he does the morality of the New Testament, he has not yet discerned in its pages something beyond the most exalted ethics.

Die jüdische Apocalyptik in ihrer Geschichtlichen Entwickelung. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Christenthums nebst einem Anhange über das gnostische System des Basilides. Von Dr. A. HILGENFELD. Jena. (Williams and Norgate.)

The Apocalyptic Element in Judaism viewed in its Historic Development. A Contribution, to the History of the Antecedents of