voices, and whose trumpet gives out, on every subject, an uncertain sound. If there is any reason to think she does not do so, if her true meaning embodies a clear, distinct, and masterly method of doctrine, which has been more or less eclipsed for two centuries,-would it not be worth while at least to recover this meaning, and see if it will help us? Even if we reject it, let us reject it with our eyes open, but let us not seek refuge in a perpetual course of "evading rather than explaining the sense of the Articles." The hope seems almost a forlorn one, after so long an interval of misrepresentation. Yet one who has entered into the unity, the comprehensiveness, the courageousness of Luther's own teaching, cannot resist the conviction that in a resuscitation of his pregnant ideas would be found the means of reviving a tone of Christian thought worthy to command the assent of a reasonable, a manly, and an English people. HENRY WACE.

[We have much pleasure in inserting the above communication, with which we have been kindly favoured. We are, however, not prepared to accept it as a solution of the problem; still less are we satisfied as to the accuracy of the problem itself, even with the modification suggested by Mr. Wace. It would be idle to impugn the fact that the excitement caused by the Lutheran Reformation was felt throughout England, and that it affected the minds of our Reformers. There was, moreover, much in Lutheran Theology and Confessions which was the common property of all the Reformed. But it was to Switzerland rather than to Germany that we should look for direct influence on our Reformation. Calvin and Zwingle, widely as they differed from each other, yet had more to do with us than Luther. Mr. Wace admits that the doctrine of our Church on the Eucharist was not copied from the Wurtemberg Confession-a significant admission. The "judicious Hooker" is a great name amongst us; but was he Lutheran? or was he Zwinglian in his views of the Sacraments, and Calvinistic in his doctrines? It may be convenient to remind our readers that Archbishop Lawrence's Bampton Lectures, in common with the writings of Bishop Mant and of poor Bishop Bethell, were the arsenal from which those of the Tractarians who had not much learning in Reformation literature, but who affected it, drew their arguments. Archbishop Lawrence's Bampton Lectures were delivered in 1808, but did not at the time attract much attention. When, however, the Tractarian controversy broke out, they were republished, and those who had not read Luther or Melancthon quoted their sentiments freely from the Archbishop, not unfrequently to their own detriment; amongst others, notably Mr. Dodgson, then Chap

lain to Bishop Longley. Probably it will be found that the attempt to identify the doctrines of Luther with those of the Church of England is not a novelty. Bishop O'Brien, in his Lectures on Justification, made a most crushing reply to the statements of Archbishop Lawrence. The Archbishop's views on Calvinism and Baptismal Regeneration figured largely in the Gorham controversy. We recall these facts, for even within the compass of a few years it is curious how the wheel of controversial theology comes round, and what is old puts on afresh the semblance of novelty.-ED. C. O.]

THE SUPERHUMAN ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE.

The Superhuman Origin of the Bible inferred from Itself. The Congregational Lecture for 1873, by Henry Rogers. Hodder and Stoughton. 1874.

THE author's name is a sufficient guarantee for the value of the work before us. The series of lectures, of which the present forms one, is entitled "The Congregational Union Lectures," and they were established with a view to the promotion of Biblical science, and theological and ecclesiastical literature. These lectures, like the Boyle, Bampton, and Warburtonian Lectures in the Established Church, are for the most part delivered orally; but in the present instance a deviation from the prescribed course was deemed desirable by the lecturer, and acquiesced in by the Committee of the Union. One of the advantages resulting from this circumstance is that the length of each lecture has been determined rather by the nature of the subject than by the limits imposed upon the lecturer by the requirements of his audience.

The general object proposed in this work may be explained in few words. It has often been observed that the Bible is not such a book as man, without divine aid, was either capable of producing, or likely to attempt to produce. A careful examination of its contents has suggested to the mind of the writer many arguments in support of this position. He sees in the Bible a multitude of traits for which he is unable to account by a reference to any of the known properties and forces which exist in our human nature. There are many points in which it appears to him altogether out of analogy with that nature; whilst, at the same time, it is, in these very respects, in harmony with the works and ways of God, as disclosed in the constitution of nature.

These phenomena, whilst inexplicable on the supposition of the human origin of the Bible, are altogether in harmony with the supposition of its superhuman origín.

The numerous indications which it presents of unity of design and purpose, notwithstanding the fact that it proceeded from the pens of many writers, separated from one another by long intervals of time, is corroborative of the same conclusion, which is still further confirmed by the manifold peculiarities of structure, matter, and style, which palpably discriminate the Bible from all other books.

It is the object of the lecturer, in the volume before us, to endeavour so far to illustrate these several points as to produce upon the minds of his readers the same conviction which has taken strong hold upon his own, and which he has expressed in the following sententious words :-"That the Bible is not such a book as man would have made, if he could; or could have made, if he would."

It will be our endeavour to communicate to our readers such a general outline of our author's arguments as may stimulate them to the careful perusal of a work which is admirably calculated, in our judgment, to supply them with matter both of interest and of instruction.

The rigid monotheism of the Bible supplies Mr. Rogers with his first argument in support of its superhuman origin. The proneness of mankind in general to idolatry is confirmed by universal experience, as well as by the testimony of sacred and profane history. The ancestors of the Jewish race presented no exception to the prevailing practices of the nations around them; and the frequent and almost continuous relapse of that nation, throughout the early periods of its history, into the same sin, and, we may add, the history of the Christian Church from the fourth century downwards, bear witness to the strength of the temptation which idolatrous worship presents to some of the prevailing instincts of our common nature.

Now, in spite of the fact that a large proportion of those to whom the words of warning and reproof were addressed were deeply imbued with the love and with the practice of idolatry, it is a matter of fact which is incapable of dispute, that the Bible, from beginning to end, is one earnest and emphatic protest against that sin; in other words, that the exhortation persistently delivered throughout it, by the lips of writers separated from each other by many intervening centuries, and under the most widely diversified circumstances, may, in this respect, be summed up in the words of the latest of their number: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Now, on the supposition that the Bible is from God, this continuous and consistent protest against idolatry under its many-sided forms is intelligible; on

any other supposition, it presents great, if not insuperable, difficulties.

Another peculiarity of the Bible is the remarkable manner in which it inverts the relative importance of events, as commonly regarded in the eyes of men. It was well observed, as Mr. Rogers reminds his readers, by the earliest modern apologist for Christianity, Philip de Mornay, that the Bible is, in this respect, unique among books, in that "it aims at none other mark than the honour of God-contrary to man's nature." The events which fill the pages of ordinary historians are, for the most part, left untouched by the sacred writers, or they are noticed only as they bear upon the destinies of the people and the kingdom of God.

"Of the great political changes" (Mr. Rogers writes) "which passed over the ancient world, the Bible is almost as silent and unconcerned as sun and stars when they look down upon the tumult and noise of man's battle-fields. We hear as it were the sound, but it is as the ocean on a distant shore. The intrigues of courts, the career and achievements of great conquerors, the thrilling events which marked the extinction or transfer of political power and civilization, the great battles which shook the world; in a word, all those things over which the imagination of the ordinary historian. lingers with such intense emotion, are touched only as they happen. to traverse the religious history of the strange community whose destinies the Bible is tracing, or those ulterior designs of which this people were to be the unconscious instruments to the world." (pp. 14, 15.)

Mr. Rogers briefly alludes to two attempts which have been made to account for this strange phenomenon on the supposition of the human origin of the Bible.

Some have been pleased to represent the God of the Hebrews, as portrayed in the pages of Scripture, as One Who was wholly absorbed by the fortunes of the Jewish race, and Who was altogether indifferent to the destinies of the other nations of the world. It will suffice to observe, in answer to such a representation, that those who adopt it must either be altogether ignorant of the prevailing current of Scriptural allusions to the Divine government, as exercised not only over the Jewish race, but over the kingdoms of men generally; or they must regard as "myths," i.e., as the pure inventions of the writers, the allusions which are found both in the historical and the prophetical books of the Old Testament to the rulers of Pagan nations, as Pharaoh, Sennacherib, and Cyrus. Whichever alternative such objectors may adopt, the candid inquirer will not fail to be convinced that it was not "because they thought that Jehovah had abdicated the throne of universal dominion," that the writers of Holy Scripture observe so profound a silence on events which

generally stir the hearts of individuals and of nations to their lowest depths. The answer to those who ascribe this silence to Jewish vanity is equally conclusive with the foregoing. Whilst passing over the great achievements of the nations around them, as though unworthy of notice, the writers of the Bible have dwelt with special minuteness upon the infamies of their own; and moreover, when they do allude to the annals of the surrounding nations, it is chiefly to record their achievements when they became the appointed ministers of vengeance upon themselves.

Before dismissing this portion of his subject, Mr. Rogers does not omit to direct the attention of his readers to a fact of almost equal significance with that last noticed. It is not a little remarkable, that whilst, on the one hand, the writers of the Bible pass over the larger portion of those events on which the ordinary historian dilates, as unworthy of their notice, the records which they have preserved of some of the nations with which they were successively brought into contact comprise almost all that is known with absolute certainty respecting them. Not only are we indebted to the Bible for almost all that we know of the ancient history of nations such as the Moabites and the Amorites, but even as regards the great empires of Nineveh and of Babylon, almost all that was known for many ages was derived, as Mr. Rogers reminds his readers, from the same sources.

In dealing with the characteristics of the morality of the New Testament, Mr. Rogers points out that there are some of its features not only so original as to excite observation, but "so palpably in the face of human nature as to make it difficult to believe that they were the utterances of human nature at all."

Christianity, as it has been admirably pointed out by Soame Jenyns and by Paley, not only regards as virtues, but assigns the highest place amongst virtues, to those qualities which heathen moralists generally, and which, alas! too many amongst professed Christians, exclude, either formally or practically, from such a designation-such, for example, as humility, and the patient endurance and unrestricted forgiveness of injuries. Now it is upon these and kindred dispositions of heart and of life that the Gospel of Christ Jesus bestows its special benediction.

It may, indeed, be objected that the terms in which these passive virtues are commended in the New Testament are so strong-not to say excessive-that it is absolutely essential to interpret the language employed as rhetorical; and that even when so interpreted, the commendation appears extravagant. It will be seen that in exact proportion to the strength with which this objection is urged, the force of the argument employed by Mr. Rogers is increased. It is conceded-such is the drift of his