of firmness, not more hope or ecstacy, it has much more of that which will abide forever-charity. The truth which, stamped on the very front of civilization, every true heart may read with gratitude and courage, and which neither literature nor statesmanship can afford to ignore, is that the gospel, bearing the protestant nations onward in freedom, knowledge and virtue, and acquiring influence over other peoples, by all events whether of peace or war, and through all the channels of human enterprise, by science and commerce as well as by philanthropy, is steadily unfolding according to the plan announced by its Author-" first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."

There were four thousand years of preparation before the seed-corn was cast into the earth. It has been germinating scarcely two thousand. Yet now we seem to discern signs of the bursting forth of the ear. We see them in the marvelous increase of knowledge and of the means of communication among men, in the unprecedented and general agitation about education and equal rights, in the multiplicity of philanthropic enterprises and the promotion of reforms, in the actual or prospective overthrow of slavery among all Christian nations, in the going forth of missionaries to renew the battles against idolatry and carry the gospel to every creature, in the decay and threatened dissolution of those apostate powers-Popery and Mohammedanism, and in the increase of Christian unity and co-operation among protestants, as though the ranks were forming for an onward movement along the whole line of conflict between the powers of sin and Anti-Christ and those of Christian love.

8

steadily multiplying and gaining in power. Never be s there so much of eminent scholarship devoted to ect of making the Bible appear a plain teacher, an auth ve exponent of the law of human life, and a pledge of G esence and inspiration in the submissive and believing s d the intense effort made by those who would, if possible, mine human confidence in the sacred volume, now in m and now in another, indicates the importance wh eptics are attaching to the question whether the Bible is accepted for what it purports to be, or stripped of its san and reduced to the level of mere human composition. perior value of modern Commentaries over the earlier exp ns, appears largely in two features. They are based upon ler understanding of the text; and they often yield us it of much patient study over some specific and limited p n of the Divine Word, to which the author has devot ecial attention, and to the interpretation of which he brings ecial adaptation of powers.

Dr. Murphy has not mistaken his sphere in giving hims the study and exposition of the Pentateuch. He comes with a true critic's analysis, with a ripe scholar's learnin

A CRITICAL AND EXIGETICAL COMMENTARY ON THE BOOKS NESIS AND EXODUS. With a new translation. By J. G. Murph D., T. C. D. Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. With a Preface by Thompson, D. D., New York. Boston: Draper & Halliday. 1861 vo vols. Octavo. pp. 535, 385.

without authority and self-consistency. He sees in M distinct person, and not a mere myth or name; and he nizes him as an inspired historian rather than an unskil inartistic compiler. He admits gratefully the noble a ments of science; but he does not believe that all the was born or is likely to die with the geologists. He has ly read what the students in the department of Ant have to say, and the deductions of the physiologists hav been dismissed with a sneer; but he argues strongly generally received chronology, which makes the creation am date back only about four thousand years. He sees joices in a general and comprehensive order, along who the great work of Providence proceeds, making the hig succeed the lower, and interpreting the idea of progress march of events; but he is no believer in the theory of opment as it has been lately brought forward, and he hol tenaciously to the doctrine of special interpositions, and reality and the need of miracles. Few men discern m quently than he a deep spiritual meaning in the external ry of the chosen people, or in the exceptional work of power among men ; but he finds something more than a in the reported talks of God with men, and he will not his faith in the doctrine of a personal God, who is real among the nations, for any poetic parody upon the ancie however beautiful or ingenious, which makes the laws of stand in the place of the Hebrew Jehovah, or puts pa instead of Evangelical Christianity.

The theological views to which the commentary of D. phy lends its support can be readily inferred from what h

mmatical difficulties, and they denote a critical acquaint th the latest results of philological and hermeneutical st deals with the geological difficulties which are alleged in sition to the Mosaic account of the creation and the del d adopts, in the main, the theory so ably argued by Dr. e Smith,-which regards the language of Scripture the age of the people of common life and of appearance, ich supposes that the creation, described in the first ch of Genesis, and the deluge of Noah, are local in their ar d are only parts of the great work of upheaval and rene ich has been carried forward through all the geological ag e supposes that the writer, here as elsewhere, "presents ea ange as it would appear to an ordinary spectator standing e earth," and suggests that "it was not the object or the et of divine revelation to anticipate science" on the points ov nich geologists have sought to make up an issue with the re

of Moses. And he has laid down a very important prin e, deserving of regard and calculated to suggest caution to n few audacious critics, when he says: "We cannot found th ghtest inference upon a passage which we do not understan r affirm a single discrepancy until we have made all reasona e inquiry whether it really exists, and what is its precise na re and amount.' The new translation, while sometimes in nsely literal that the reader may see just precisely the philo gical grounds upon which a given interpretation rests, is gen ally made to approach as nearly as "practicable to the com on version and suggests a revision of that version quite as

much as anything else. The author translates and expounds as a scholar, though he makes no secret of the fact that he is a Christian believer, and avows the fact that his critical study has both vindicated and fortified his faith. He does not belong at all to the rationalistic school of criticism, and he is manifestly disinclined to join any Broad Church into which he cannot carry his thoroughly evangelical convictions and have them respected.

On the whole, we have seen no commentary on the first two books in the Pentateuch which may be more strongly commended than this for its ability, its fairness, and careful analysis, its eminently reasonable and common sense expositions, its rigid confinement of itself to its own legitimate work, its suggestive hints, its manly tone, its mingling of reverence with fearlessness, and especially for its vigorous and attractive style. It appears at an opportune period. It will fittingly rebuke the flippant tone which superficial minds are inclined to employ when speaking of the Old Testament Scriptures, by unfolding the meaning of that special providential training to which God subjected the Jewish people, and by its repeated exposure of the blunders into which an untaught but egotistic criticism has been led. One feels braced up in mind and heart by an hour's study of these volumes as the use of a wholesome tonic or the breathing of mountain air in August braces the nerves. Light will be found falling upon many an obscure passage, and the difficulties which have hung around an incident or a statement will lessen or disappear, as the author's explanations are studied; but especially will the mind itself be put into a more vital sympathy with the writer and with the narrative as the work is appropriated by the reader, and so the soul itself will become in part the interpreter of the record made for the purpose of perfecting its life.

The method of exposition adopted will at once commend itself as being philosophical, natural and effective. The general arrangement and division of topics in the book are first brought forward; then, at the head of each section a few prominent words are quoted and briefly expounded for the benefit especially of persons who may have some knowledge of the Hebrew ;