arbitrary plan of accepting certain portions of the narrative, while rejecting others, to which, under the name of criticism, M. Renan has recourse? No principle appears to guide him but his own autocratic will. It is simply by a macht-spruch, as the Germans say-by a mere subjective opinion which is allowed magisterial authority-that he pronounces the twelfth chapter to be trustworthy, and the fifth chapter to be an invention of the writer. Most of our readers, instead of listening to the utterances of such an oracle, and accepting them at their own valuation as infallible, will probably prefer resting in the conclusion of the Church from the beginning, that in the simple, natural, and most instructive record contained in the Acts, we have a true, unvarnished, and unbiassed account of the principal events which took place in the Church during the first thirty years which followed the ascension of her Divine Author to heaven.

We cannot dwell upon the many erroneous, or one-sided, statements which occur in the remainder of the work. There is not a chapter, hardly, even, a page, which does not furnish matter for criticism.* But we must be content with having noticed, as was proposed, what seem to us the leading fallacies of the book.

Without alluding to the many other minute points which call for criticism, we shall now conclude with a few remarks on the general character of the work, and on the position which its author claims while following out the undertaking in which he is embarked.

As to the work itself, we cannot suppose that any one will ascribe to it the least scientific value. It is throughout redolent of romance, and an effort is constantly required on the part of liberty of looking at this Epistle with our own eyes, and venture to say that nothing of the kind is to be seen. Any difference of view that may have existed between Peter and Paul speedily vanished; and to represent the church of the early part of the second century as divided into two sections holding the peculiar doctrines of these two apostles respectively, is a mere dream of certain German critics.

It is but fair to except from the above general condemnation the remarks which M. Renan makes on the character and influence of Barnabas. He has set in a very striking light the obligations under which the early church lay to that admirable man. While he somewhat exaggerates, we think, the power for good which Barnabas exercised over Paul, we cordially agree with him that Christianity has been guilty of some injustice towards this great man in not placing him in the front rank among its founders.' Barnabas was singularly distinguished by that charity which thinketh no evil.' His largeness of heart, as well as liberality of view, can scarcely be over-estimated; and we rejoice that M. Renan has brought him forth from the shade cast over him by his still greater contemporary and friend.

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the reader to keep in mind that its object is serious-its theme the most solemn and sacred which the history of the past can furnish. Not one of the problems with which it deals receives any approach to an adequate solution. We have seen how M. Renan accounts for a belief in the Resurrection having arisen in the Church; and if we have suppressed a smile in perusing the pages he has devoted to this subject, nothing but the intrinsic gravity of the question has enabled us to do so. Men are not in the habit of acting in real life as he has here represented them. To leap in an hour or two from the deepest despair to the most bewildering excitement-to convince themselves, with an assurance which henceforth smiled at suffering and death, that fancy was fact, and that, because a woman asserted it, an event had really taken place of which they had never till then imagined the possibility-to conjure up apparitions, and conceive of discourses, admonitions, instructions, and promises as being addressed to them by the creature of their imagination-to paint that fancied Being as eating in their society, as breathing upon them and blessing them, and as at last guiding them out to a well-known spot, and there, as they looked, ascending into heaven-to go forth in consequence of their belief in all this, to preach the Resurrection to the world, and, if need be, to seal their testimony to this delusion with their blood; this is a tissue of improbabilities so startling, that they would be denounced as incredible if they appeared in the chapters of a novel, and are utterly contemptible when gravely set forth in what professes to be a rigidly philosophical and historical work. The same fantastic character pervades the book throughout. We have considered at some length the manner in which Paul's conversion is accounted for, and have seen the romance which M. Renan weaves around the persecutor, while, in opposition to every known fact, he describes him as melting with pity for his victims, and secretly adoring the sweet name of Jesus. And so he goes on, the world being described as eager to welcome Christianity, while yet, by some unaccountable mistake, it bitterly hated and persecuted the Christians; and the colleges,' or 'burial-clubs,' of Rome furnishing the model, and, to some extent, the means, by which the Church gradually advanced in its career of conquest. This is what is now proposed in preference to a belief in the Gospel as divine, and to a conviction that it owed its astonishing triumphs to the promised presence and blessing of its heavenly Author! What would Gibbon have said had he seen his famous secondary causes' thus eclipsed and superseded? We shall not conjecture; but shall simply say for

ourselves, that we deem it infinitely more easy to accept those many miracles of divine grace and power which are recorded in Scripture, than to perform that one astounding miracle of credulity, by which alone it is possible to rest in M. Renan's explanation of the manner in which Christianity made its way in the world.

As to the author himself, we desire to speak of him with that respect due to his undoubted ability and acquirements, as well as to what is still more honourable to him, the candour of spirit by which he is in general distinguished. But we fear he must be regarded as destitute of that spiritual earnestness which is an essential requisite to success in such an enterprise as that in which he is now engaged. He seems to have no conception of the tremendous import of those problems which he has placed anew under discussion. Several paragraphs of his introduction force this thought very painfully upon the reader. He tells us (page liii.) that such works as his should be written with a supreme indifference, as if one wrote them for a deserted 'planet.' And this, while the question in dispute is, whether or not our heavenly Father has ever spoken to His children upon earth? whether or not we know anything certain of the past history of mankind, or anything satisfactory as to the future which lies before them? whether or not we have any Bible, any Church, any sanctuary, any Saviour? The man who can investigate such points as these without deep emotion, and who can demand that they should be treated with as cool a head and as insensible a heart as are brought to the comparatively trifling questions of science, is a man, we must take leave to say, destitute of proper feeling, and one who need not henceforth hesitate to botanise upon his mother's grave.' We cannot, therefore, yield to that demand which M. Renan makes when he exclaims, in his closing paragraph, 'Paix donc, au nom de 'Dieu!' and by which he would have the infidel and the Christian quietly to proceed in their respective paths, each practically regardless of the other. Not thus lightly do we hold our faith in the Gospel. It is to us all in all. And we cannot consent to be silent when it is assailed; we cannot grant M. Renan the license which he craves, of being permitted to publish theories which tend to destroy our dearest hopes, without addressing to him words of earnest reasoning and rebuke. The Gospel may, alas! be nothing to him, but it is everything to us. And even he, we think, should show greater respect to the feelings of those whose most precious treasure he seeks to take away, than to ask them to sit passively by while the process is being accomplished. May he yet come

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to bow with ourselves at the feet of the Divine Man, and to acknowledge Him as the living embodiment of both truth and love, as the Light of the world, as the Saviour of the lost, as the Author of peace and purity, and as the only Guide of blinded and perishing souls to a blessed and rejoicing immortality!

ART. VII.-(1). L'Armée Prussienne. Par MICHEL CHEVALIER. Paris Dentu. 1856.

(2.) War Map of the German States. London: Nelson & Sons.

THE present age has been singularly prolific in political revolutions. It has been the lot of no other to witness the accretion of two minor States into extensive kingdoms, upon the downfall of an empire which for centuries had treated them as rebellious vassals. One of these States, who now speaks to Europe in the name of Germany, and who certainly bids fair to unite the whole of Germany under her sceptre, was unknown at the Reformation. The other, who now directs the destinies of Italy, was unknown as an Italian power previous to the Treaty of Utrecht. It is remarkable that these, the last comers into the group of principalities, of which they formed the least promising units, should have finally absorbed the greater portion of their neighbours, within the limits of our generation, and finally laid prostrate their imperial enemy, who had so often cudgelled them into subjection. There is a connection between these two states, an identity of principle and a uniformity of action, independent of the similarity of their destinies and of their recent alliance, which may throw some light on their marvellous success. If they now find themselves at the head of their respective races, the causes which have led their steps from the cradle of barren provinces to the summits of flourishing empires have not been divergent.

The Counts of Savoy, like those of Hohenzollern, trace back their lineage to the tributaries of King Otho, and Charlemagne. For a long period they maintained a precarious existence; Prussia as a fief of Poland, and Savoy as a satrap of the German Emperor, only too happy, under the shelter of such powerful patronage, to escape the fangs of annihilation. Both States, from their beginning, appear to have acted upon the principle of clutching land wherever they could get it, seizing little parcels of territory here and there, and leaving it for time to consoli

date the fragments thus acquired into one compact dominion. If the intervening proprietors could not be ejected by conquest, they were cozened by barter. Those whom neither the sword nor money could subdue were caught in the meshes of Venus. The value of lives was calculated with the accuracy of a modern insurance office, and by the marriage of a young scion with the heir apparent of the property, the reversionary interest of the coveted prize was secured. By adroit tactics of this sort, as well as by military service, the Counts of Savoy extended their sway from Maurienne to Susa and Montserrat, and from Montserrat to Turin. An entrenched position on the northern slopes of the Alps, led almost by a natural consequence, to a position equally fortified with castles on the south; and the command of the mountain passes soon resulted in encroachment on the plain. By similar strategy the Counts of Hohenzollern, from the swamp of Brandenburg, hardly bigger than an English county, dotted the western and northern parts of Germany with demesnes, which served rather to map out the frontiers of their prospective kingdom than as vital members of the same corporate body.

The Jülich and Cleves Duchies were leagues away from Brandenburg, as Brandenburg was from Stettin, and neither of these had any topographical connection with East Prussia. Yet at each European treaty both Prussia and Sardinia came in for some make-weight, which served to round off their dominions, till both were allowed, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, Prussia, by direct stipulation with the Emperor of Austria, and Sardinia, by consent of the great powers, to assume the state and dignity of royal kingdoms. This was the great turning point in their respective destinies. The sword of Frederick, by adding Silesia to Brandenburg, and filling up the gap between East and Central Prussia with Posen, lifted Prussia from the humble condition of a feudatory into that of a rival of the House of Austria. The Congress of Vienna, by adding Genoa to the dominions of Piedmont, enabled her to pursue in Italy a line of her own, free from the tutelage of the same imperial house. In the rest of the rôle there is a perfect identity of means, as well as of ends. Austria, with all the obstinacy of the Hapsburgs, hugged to the last the old principles of an effete feudatory government. Her two young rivals adopted every principle which modern reason and experience prove to be essential to political progress. Prussia, by becoming the arbiter of the commercial, paved her way to become the arbiter of the political destinies of Germany. Sardinia, also by commercial reforms, taught Italy to inaugurate the reconstruction of her