"the dam of traditionalism" regarding the Bible, in Great Britain and Amer ica, has been broken through," that "criticism is coming in like a flood," and that “traditions are flating away like straws on the stream." This is not true, and its only effect can be to throw the laity into such doubt in regard to everything in the whole field that the value of Holy Scripture to them will be largely destroyed. These vague and terrible general statements are unpardonable in a scholar dealing with interests so precious. This is rude and reckless shaking of the foundations; it cannot possibly be that process of careful removal by which the weak is withdrawn that the strong may be substituted.

Dr. Briggs informs his readers that "T. Hartwell Horne has had more to do with current views of the literature of the Old Testament among the ministry of the British and American churches than the Talmud or the Bible, the Fathers or the Reformers, or all of them combined." This is not true. It is a very gross misstatement. The truth is that Dr. Briggs has not clearly defined to himself what he means by tradition. Ile says: “The Protestant traditionalist has so identified the books of the Bible with the traditional theories respecting them that the authority of the sacred writings is undermined to him when they are detached from venerable names. The Pentateuch is weakened to him when it is separated from the name of Moses; the Psalms have lost their comfort to him if David is not their author; the book of Proverbs is no longer a text-book of morals to him if Solomon did not write it." These sentences show how completely confused the mind of the Professor is in regard to the whole question at issue. What has T. Hartwell Horne, or what has tradition, to do with these questions? The church receives the Pentateuch as from Moses, not on the authority of tra dition or of T. Hartwell Horne, but because the book itself repeatedly claims Mosaic origin and our Lord confirmed that claim. It is an inexcusable misstatement to speak of conservative men as holding to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch on the ground of tradition or the teaching of Horne. As to the Psalms, there never has been any tradition that David was the author of all the l'salms. As far back as we can go in Hebrew tradition, we find the Psalms assigned by titles to various authors. That some of the Psalms ascribed to David are from his hand we have the express testimony of the historical books, of our Lord himself, and of his apostles. Even if Dr. Briggs thinks that he can explain all this testimony away he has no right to call it "tradition." That Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs, just as we have it, has never been held either in the Jewish or Christian church; the very testimony of the book itself contradicts it. But the book claims to be Solomonic. It is inexcusable to speak of that claim as "traditional." The question about these books is not at all a question between tradition and the higher criticism. Tradition weighs no more with those who differ with Dr. Briggs than it does with him.

Dr. Briggs says: All the historical books, most of the Psalms and Proverbs, the poetical books of Lamentations, Song of Songs and Job, Esther, Ruth, Jonah, and considerable portions of Isaiah and Zechariah, have been shown

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to be anonymous writings. Ecclesiastes is pseudonymous; and it is disputed whether Daniel and Deuteronomy are not also pseudonymous. Few of the Old Testament writings give us the names of their authors. Those who think it necessary to prove the inspiration of a writing by attaching to it the name of an inspired man find their evidence of the inspiration of these books destroyed by the higher criticism." What good can come of such indiscriminate talk as this? How was the book of Job, for instance, "shown to be anonymous"? It says nothing of any author, and no criticism of any kind was required. And so we may say of a good many of the other books. It is not the common opinion of our laity that in order to prove the inspiration of a writing it is necessary to attach to it the name of an inspired man. Such questions, as whether Moses wrote the book of Job, or whether Mordecai wrote the book of Esther, are not a part of that higher criticism which is painful to most Americans. But when such books as Daniel and Deuteronomy distinctly claim certain authorship, and that claim is apparently sanctioned by our Lord, it is painful to see it set aside by a criticism whose working maxim is, "The miraculous is always mythical."

It is strange to see in the same writer mysticism and rationalism combined. But this combination is necessary if one is to accept what Dr. Briggs understands as the results of the higher criticism and hold on to Christian faith. Kuenen views Christianity simply as one of the great religions. One who accepts his style of criticism will lose all objective certainty in regard to the Scripture. He will have left as divine so much of the Bible as seems to him divine, or to put it more simply, so much as suits his notions of what is fit. Dr. Briggs thinks this is the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, when it says: The authority of Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed dependeth not on the testimony of any man or church; but wholly upon Cod (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore, it is to be received because it is the word of God." He interprets this to mean that those who adhere to this do not accept the Bible on the authority of Moses, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Peter, or John." What strange confusion! What the Westminster men meant was that we do not accept Paul's writings on the authority of the Roman Church, or of tradition, but on account of the witness of the divine Spirit to l'aul himself. Dr. Briggs understands them to mean that we are free to reject Paul along with the pope, retaining only those particular writings or parts of his writings to which we think the Spirit of God bears witness in our hearts. This is not the position of Protestantism.

ARTICLE XI.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

THE MORAL SYSTEM AND THE ATONEMENT.

ran, D.D. Oberlin, O: E. J. Goodrich.

By Rev. Samuel Davies Coch1889. (pp. xix. 546. 9x)

It is a long time since American theology has been enriched by a solid, thoroughly reasoned treatise on one of the great doctrines of Scripture. Sich a work used to be what the Germans call an “epɔch-making" book. A leading English Review expresses the judgment that what is the subject of Dr. Cochran's able and extended volume is now to take the place in Christian thought of the "historic," or biographical, Christ. That battle is ended. And now the central conception of Christianity as a religion of atonement is ascending to its primary and appointed place." If so-and various signs indicate that it is to be so-an elaborate treatise like Dr. Cochran's will be at once timely and influential.

It will be compared not so much with those of older authors as with that which it chiefly opposes, Dr. Bushnell's "Vicarious Sacrifice," or with Mr. Armour's "Atonement an 1 Law," the only recent American one (3d Ed. pp. 240), Dr. Lewis Edwards's" The Doctrine of the Atonement" (Welsh, London, pp. 526), and Dr. George Jamieson's "Discussions" (Scotch, Edinburgh, pp. 526); with the last-mach the fullest of the three-more especially. Dr. Edwards and Jamieson cast their books into the form of dialogue; the Illinois divine casts his into that of a logical and exegetical inquiry, without the lighter conversational air which seems to imply some doubt of the interest of the readers abroad in the subject. Twenty-four chapters more compact and weighty have seldo.n issued from the American press.

The teachings of Scripture here occupy the last 205 pages (Part IV). The other parts are: I. The Moral Law and System: II. The Godhead and its Purposes towards min; III. E spiation and Propitiation. No outline can give any but a meagre view of the multitude of individual topics herein discussed; and the ability and scope and exhaustive depth of thought with which it is done can be discovered only by patient an vigorous study. It is a book not for mere reading, but for study. The various schools of thought on its great topics are brought into clear and strong light; but the author well says that he has "taken nothing on trust, followed no leader, school, or symbo!, examined all points for (himself) and striven only to ascer tain the truth." Such a work, the growth really of twenty years of labori

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ous and intent thought, deserves the most candid and respectful examination. It abounds in fresh aspects of many doctrines. It is not a review of controversies, nor a history of doctrines, but a search for what God has revealed -careful, enterprising, and in dead earnest.

Dr. Cochran has done well to go to the bottom of our ideas of the moral system of God, before unfolding the atonement through Christ as a part of this system. For the atonement is wholly moral. tautological to say-is moral. Our salvation must therefore be moral. Our ruin by sin-it is The law involved is the moral law and the attributes of God concerned are moral attributes. The results of the divine intervention for lost sinners are moral. It is itself the grand moral transaction as to human destiny. All this established, the theologian moves forward on assured ground in moral government to meet all extremes of theoretic error on the subject-a merely commercial one upon the one side, a mere moral influence one upon the other. We have space for only this general account of so important a publication, abstaining from what will be said in a thorough review in these pages. There is no branch of theology," Dr. Jamieson well says, "of more vital moment to the church of Christ than his atonement.'

FUTURE PROBATION EXAMINED. By William De Loss Love, D. D. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1888. (pp. x. 323. 6x3.) $1.50.

Dr. Love has performed a most useful service in this volume upon the vexed question of future probation. Starting out with the obvious principle that "it is usage which decides the meaning of language," he gives a more complete survey than has ever before been given of the usage at the time of Christ, and in the centuries immediately preceding and following, of the words and phrases bearing upon the question of future punishment and future probation. The book is largely made up of quotations, from approved English translations, from the Apocrypha, the Targums, the Book of Enoch, Josephus, Philo, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Barnabas, Ignatius, Diognetus, the Pastor of Hermas, Papias, Justin Martyr, and other Fathers down to the beginning of the fourth century, showing the ideas current upon this and kindred subjects. From a perusal of these quotations the reader will get from original sources the views of these various writers of the times upon the eternity of God; eternal punishment; the resurrection; the day of judgment; the continuance of probation; the guilt of the heathen; how the heathen may be saved; the doctrine of free will; Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Paradise; and various other questions. Some of the later chapters consider a few of the incidental questions, in a more formal manner. cusses in these: The Nature of Punishment after Death; Canon Farrar's ErThe author disroneous Position and Citations; Objections and Concessions by Origen; Objections by the "New Departure;" Preaching to the Spirits in Prison and to the Dead. Among these instructive essays is the convincing one recently published in our own pages, proving that Clement of Alexandria was not an VOL. XLVI. NO. 182.

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After-death Probationist or Universalist. The volume is provided with an ample Table of Contents and a full Index of Subjects and Texts, and must prove invaluable to every pastor to whom libraries are inaccessible, and a great saving of time to all who are called upon to form an opinion upon the momentous themes treated.

BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. By Alvah Hovey, D.D., LL.D. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society. 1888. (pp. 192. 51x3.) 90 cents,

Dr. Hovey has produced one of the most valuable of the new discussions concerning eschatology stimulated by the New Departure movement. With great clearness and cogency he defends the ordinary views which have been held by the church with regard to the last things. The discussion is, throughout, judicious and convincing. No better book can be put into the hands of those who are wavering in the faith upon this subject, or whose faith is yet to be formed.

A COMMENTARY ON THE GREEK TEXT OF THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS. By the late John Eadie, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis to the United Presbyterian Church. Edited by the Rev. W. Young, M.A, Glasgow. Third Edition. New York: Scribner & Welford. (pp. lv. 493. 7x3.) A COMMENTARY ON THE GREEK TEXT OF THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE PHILIPPIANS. Second Edition. 1884. (pp. xliii. 292. 7x3.) A COMMENTARY ON THE GREEK TEXT OF THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE COLOSSIANS. Second Edition. 1884. (pp. xlvi. 302. 7x3}.)

A good service is done the religious public by the trustees of Dr. Eadie's estate in issuing a new edition of his valuable commentaries. Dr. Eadie, while very painstaking and careful to attend to all the minute points of biblical criticism, also excels in the depth of his evangelical sympathies and in the breadth of his appreciation of the whole system of divine revelation. The comprehensiveness of the author's treatment may be judged from the size of the volumes, as indicated above. Full indexes also accompany each volume, both of subjects and of the Greek terms particularly referred to. The commentaries throughout are based on grammatical and critical examination of the original text.

It may seem to some a drawback to the value of the commentaries, that they were written before the full results of investigations concerning the text of Scripture which are now before the public. were accessible. Some use, however, is made of the Codex Sinaiticus, and really this objection is not so great as it at first sight might seem. But, small as it is, it strikes us as unfortunate that the editor was not permitted to add brief annotations, such as now are made to accompany standard editions of Bengel, Clarke, and other of the great commentators. The passages, however, are few in which anything of importance depends upon facts in textual criticism brought to light since the learned author's last revision.