it not already changed the conditions of Labour, of Production, of Consumption, throughout the whole world? Why should there not be an earthly Atonement, though, of course, of an inferior character to the other; but still resulting from the death of our blessed Redeemer? The idea itself has been so beautifully developed by our highly-esteemed friend, that we will make free with this part of his speech by way of conclusion :

Jesus Christ has restored to man the strength of his reason by connecting it with God, and he has also restored the strength of God's love towards us, by obtaining forgiveness for man. Being stronger, man casts upon the infinite a bolder eye; having become more indulgent, God opens somewhat wider the outlet upon that infinite. Man not so helpless, God not so severe― such are the two great results of Christianity.

It is in this sense we must consider Christianity as being the father of all progress, of all discoveries,-not, indeed, because it reveals them to Christians alone, but because Christianity has made man, every man, more capable of realizing them. And after thus establishing this fundamental principle, I should wish you to observe how verily every discovery and every progress bears the imprint of the Redemption. Yea, we purchase all, we redeem all. Since Adam, man is condemned to redeem himself; but since Jesus Christ, he is helped in that work of redemption.

The earth hides and seems to refuse those blessings which she contains, however for us alone :-we are obliged to conquer them. God hands over to us all created objects, in a sort of chaotic confusion, just as a father gives his child a pell-mell alphabet, in order that the child may himself learn how to assemble the different letters. So, in all times, man was able to redeem himself from cold and heat, from rain, from hunger, from the enmity of nature, from the injustice of his fellow-man, from the evil propensities of his own person. Though supported throughout his hard labour by certain common blessings, such as the air, light, water; and by certain natural forces, such as gravitation, attraction, affinity--blessings and forces which are gratuitous gifts made by God to all ;-yet how arduous still is that work, how heavy that labour! But of a sudden, man appears to receive more help, even in a matter-of-fact sense of the word, from the day when light and forgiveness came down from heaven. His reason is more lucid, his will more straightforward, his labour more fruitful. Nay, at every instant, a free bounty falls out of the Divine treasury of goodness, ever delivering our souls and bodies from some obstacle or burthen. Compare the state of the world before Christ and after Christ, and then observe how Christian societies go on, gradually imparting their own blessings to every other community. There is exactly the same difference as if a captive laden with chains were to meet with a deliverer, who would help him to break, one after another, every link of the irons weighing heavily on his limbs.

Our Lord, whilst redeeming our souls, and giving to us habits and laws which have ransomed us from iniquity and vice, has bestowed on our mind a greater capacity for redeeming our body from the numberless shackles that

fetter it. As I am on the ground of matter, and of visible objects, I must confine myself to that lower region, and show you the progress of our deliverance in this direction.

The telescope and the microscope have redeemed the limits imposed upon the curiosity of our sight, by opening before our eyes the impalpable heavens, and the opacity of the earth;-the mariner's needle-that clock which points to places; and the watch-that other needle pointing to time-have opened ocean upon ocean.

The discovery of America and of printing, once granted to the bold researches of man, have, as it were, added a supplement to our globe, and a supplement to our mind.

Again, the steam-engine has redeemed man's limbs from a large part of their most painful labours. This powerful invention, which, under a thousand different forms, replaces the sweat of man by the sweat of water, has multiplied a hundredfold the mass of objects destined to satisfy our wants, by diminishing the sum of efforts required to produce them. Coalthat black stone, out of which the genius of man extracts heat, power, motion, and light-coal, combining with a metal, forms and animates numberless engines, those slaves of mankind in the nineteenth century that have superseded the slaves who were the machinery of the world nineteen centuries before Christ, to use the words of an American poet.

In a few hours, when night has spread her thick shades over us, an invisible and filmy gas, impelled into a tapering tube by some careless hand, will redeem us from darkness.

When being absent, we wish to meet our friends, a small iron wire, something like a hyphen, we might say, redeems our bodies from distance. To greet our own fatherland, to transmit our impressions and affection to a beloved and loving family, a spark running along this wire redeems our souls and feelings from the pangs of absence. And, if you please, at this very moment, a ray of the sun, under the guidance of an artist, may send your image home, and thus redeem us in another way from absence.

Indeed, you must believe me when I say that the Church, whose special mission is to suppress all distance between God and man, views with delight all improvements tending to suppress distance between man and man. It will doubtless be one day a source of honour to our age, that it shall be called, in a material, legal, political, and social view, a shortener of distances...

Now all these improvements in industry, arts, and sciences, do restore, by degrees, the alliance broken off between earthly and heavenly blessings ;— an alliance which, according to our traditions, was really the primeval plan of God upon His Creation. And this is what you call material progress ?—No, no; it is all moral improvement. We might as well call printing a material improvement whilst thinking of the printing-type, not of what is printed; whilst thinking of the ink-roller of the press, not of the thoughts brought suddenly into an immortal life. To redeem man from the crushing burden of that distance which swallows up so much of his fleeting time, cramps his studies, stifles his claims and remonstrances; to make easier our life as well as our relations, our researches, and our intercourse; to facilitate likewise missions, councils, meetings of every description; to strike out new roads for govern

means of that Hellenistic Greek which had been diffused through the East by the conquests of Alexander. If, therefore, the Jews could bar all appeals to the well-known Greek, and remove the controversy to the inner courts of their own temple, the decision, it might be expected, would not improbably turn out to be in their own favour. Just before Origen's own time more than one Jew or Judaizing heretic had attempted to produce Greek versions which should supersede the Septuagint. Some ninety years before the period of which we write, Aquila, a Jewish proselyte of Sinope, had issued what professed to be a literal translation from the Hebrew. It was so uncompromisingly literal that the reader sometimes found. the Hebrew word or phrase imported bodily into the Greek, with only the slight alteration of new characters and a fresh ending. Its purpose was not disavowed. It was to furnish the Greek-speaking Jews with a more exact translation from the Hebrew, in order to fortify them in their opposition to Christianity. Some five years later, Theodotion, an Ebionite of Ephesus, made another version of the Septuagint; he did not profess to re-translate it, but only to correct it where it differed from the Hebrew. A little later, and yet another Ebionite tried his hand on the Alexandrian version: this was Symmachus. His translation was more readable than that of Aquila, as not being so utterly barbarous in expression; but it was far from being elegant, or even correct, Greek.

Of course Origen could never dream of substituting any of these translations for the Septuagint, stamped as it was with the approbation of the whole Eastern Church. But still they might be made very useful; indeed, notwithstanding the original sin of motive to which they owed their existence, we have the authority of S. Jerome, and of Origen himself, for saying that even the barbarous Aquila had understood his work and executed it more fairly than might have been expected. What Origen wanted was to get a pure Greek version. To do this he must, of course, compare it with the Hebrew; but the Hebrew itself might be corrupt, so he must seek help also elsewhere. Now these Greek versions, made sixty, eighty, ninety years before, had undoubtedly, he could see, been written with the Septuagint open before their writers. Here, then, was a valuable means of testing how far the present manuscripts of the Septuagint had been corrupted during the last century at least. He himself had collected. some such manuscripts, and the duties of his office made hi acquainted with many more. From the commencement career he had been accustomed to compare and critici and he had grown skilful, as may be supposed, in dis

which regards the separate cells, and the wonderful agreement of the translations, is curtly set down by S. Jerome as a fiction. It seems probable, moreover, that the translator of the Pentateuch was not the same as the translator of the other parts of the Old Testament. In the midst of uncertainties and probabilities, however, four things seem to be tolerably clear; first, that the version called the LXX. was made at Alexandria; secondly, that it was the work of different authors; thirdly, that it was not inspired; fourthly, that it was a holy and correct version, quoted by the Apostles, always used in the Greek Church, and the basis of all the Latin editions before S. Jerome's Vulgate.

All the misfortunes that continual transcription, careless blundering, and wilful corruption could combine to inflict upon a manuscript had fallen to the lot of the Septuagint version at the time when it was handed to Origen to be used in the instruction of the faithful and the refutation of Jew and Greek. This was only what might have been fully expected from the fact that, since the Christian era, it had become the court of appeal of two rival sets of controversialists-the Christian and the Jew. Indeed, from the very beginning it had been defective, and, if we may trust S. Jerome, designedly defective; for the Septuagint translation of the Prophetical books had purposely omitted passages of the Hebrew which its authors considered not proper to be submitted to the sight of profane Greeks and Gentiles. Up to the Christian era, however, we may suppose great discrepancies of manuscript did not exist, and that those variations which did appear were not much heeded in the comparatively rare transcription of the text. The Hellenistic Jews and the Jews of Palestine used the LXX. in the synagogues instead of the Hebrew. A few libraries of great cities had copies, and a few learned Greeks had some idea of their existence. Beyond this there was nothing to make its correctness of more importance than that of a liturgy or psalm-book. But, soon after the Christian era, its character and importance were completely changed. The Eunuch was reading the Septuagint version when Philip, by divine inspiration, came up with him and showed him that the words he was reading were verified in Jesus. This was prophetic of what was to follow. The Christians used it to prove the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the Jews made the most of it to confute the same. Thereupon, somewhat suspiciously, there arose among the Jews a disposition to underrate the LXX., and make much of the Hebrew original. Hebrew was but little known, whereas all the intellectual commerce of the world was carried on by

means of that Hellenistic Greek which had been diffused through the East by the conquests of Alexander. If, therefore, the Jews could bar all appeals to the well-known Greek, and remove the controversy to the inner courts of their own temple, the decision, it might be expected, would not improbably turn out to be in their own favour. Just before Origen's own time more than one Jew or Judaizing heretic had attempted to produce Greek versions which should supersede the Septuagint. Some ninety years before the period of which we write, Aquila, a Jewish proselyte of Sinope, had issued what professed to be a literal translation from the Hebrew. It was so uncompromisingly literal that the reader sometimes found the Hebrew word or phrase imported bodily into the Greek, with only the slight alteration of new characters and a fresh ending. Its purpose was not disavowed. It was to furnish the Greek-speaking Jews with a more exact translation from the Hebrew, in order to fortify them in their opposition to Christianity. Some five years later, Theodotion, an Ebionite of Ephesus, made another version of the Septuagint; he did not profess to re-translate it, but only to correct it where it differed from the Hebrew. A little later, and yet another Ebionite tried his hand on the Alexandrian version: this was Symmachus. His translation was more readable than that of Aquila, as not being so utterly barbarous in expression; but it was far from being elegant, or even correct, Greek.

Of course Origen could never dream of substituting any of these translations for the Septuagint, stamped as it was with the approbation of the whole Eastern Church. But still they might be made very useful; indeed, notwithstanding the original sin of motive to which they owed their existence, we have the authority of S. Jerome, and of Origen himself, for saying that even the barbarous Aquila had understood his work and executed it more fairly than might have been expected. What Origen wanted was to get a pure Greek version. To do this he must, of course, compare it with the Hebrew; but the Hebrew itself might be corrupt, so he must seek help also elsewhere. Now these Greek versions, made sixty, eighty, ninety years before, had undoubtedly, he could see, been written with the Septuagint open before their writers. Here, then, was a valuable means of testing how far the present manuscripts of the Septuagint had been corrupted during the last century at least. He himself had collected some such manuscripts, and the duties of his office made him acquainted with many more. From the commencement of his career he had been accustomed to compare and criticise them, and he had grown skilful, as may be supposed, in distinguish