rial found in the Gospels. Without directly controverting- rather, perhaps, assuming-the usual dogmatic interpretation of the life there recorded, it yet attempts to deal with it in a way of purely legal exposition, so to speak, - something in the spirit, for example, of Maine's "Ancient Law," of which it has occasionally reminded us. It is an attempt to find in the person and character of Jesus the key to the vast movement, both historic and spiritual, known as Christianity. So far, it suggests most readily for comparison Mr. Furness's "Jesus and his Biographers;" but, while inferior in tenderness and spiritual insight to that most original of American studies of the Bible, it is greatly its superior in masculine force and breadth, and philosophical discrimination. Its discernment of the work of Jesus is official rather than spiritual, "the rise of a monarchy," not the simple manifestation of a life; as its style, too, is clear, hard, secular, rather than devout and tender. Its merit lies not in accuracy of critical scholarship; indeed, it is so little precise in this respect, that the name "Christ," which in the gospel is always used as the type of "a politico-theological idea" (as a German might say), is here employed continually as a purely personal name, to the complete exclusion of the "Jesus" of the evangelists. Nor is it marked by special boldness of scientific criticism; since it is content to assume roughly the credibility of miraculous narrative on sufficient evidence, and so to deal with the account as it lies on the surface, like facts given in evidence before a court. Nor has it much of what we should have particularly expected and wished in such a study, that is, a clear and profound appreciation of the actual circumstances of the gospel period, and the historical antecedents among the Jews which made possible at once the mission, the doom, and the glorious work of Jesus indeed, we know not where, except in Gfrörer, to find even an attempt to master the historical problem from this vantage-ground; and with him it is only an attempt, foiled by his wilful and untrustworthy mode of treatment. So that this fresh and vigorous sketch finds its great value as a layman's study in a field bounded by no professional prerogative; in the nobility of its protest in behalf of the higher ethics of Christianity; and in the fruitful suggestion of many a point of interest, undetected or feebly discerned by a vision professionally narrowed. In its clear, vigorous, unprejudiced style * For example (p. 8): “No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic, and such an enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce." of dealing with its topic and its proofs, it offers a most interesting comparison with the avowed polemic aim of Strauss's recent popularized edition of his "Leben Jesu," -a comparison which we commend to the attention of scholars and critics. ANOTHER example in the same line, the study of Christianity as pure history, though here in the way of critical, painstaking erudition, we find in the three volumes of Mr. Donaldson already published.* In the language of the writer, "Every period of history contains a message of God to man ;" and, preliminary to the practical understanding and applying of that message, there is a task of purely literary criticism to ascertain precisely what it is. We do not observe that this task of criticism is discharged with any peculiar vigor or insight it is rather spent in laying the materials of judgment before the reader's mind in as clear, full, and dispassionate a manner as possible. Compared with such a book as that we have just described, this is dull and slow: to read it is mere task-work; it is to be studied up patiently, if one cares enough about the matter it contains, which is, the germs of doctrine and opinion found in the earliest post-apostolic writings. Two points stand out above the general level of this useful but protracted dissertation,-one, the great disrespect towards the "Tübingen School" which is evinced and vindicated in the preliminary essay; and the other, the fine discerning and exhibiting of the "moral heat" of the Christian writings (vol. i. p. 50), and of the noble contrast they offer to the spirit and the literature of heathendom. Occasionally, a fact or a criticism bears a special value: as when it is shown that the Christian promise of salvation was no promise of selfish or personal delight, but that the phrase itself, "going to heaven," is of Stoic origin (p. 85); when the heretics, and not the Church, are shown to be the intolerant party (p. 53); and when the early Christian ethics are contrasted with pagan immorality on one side, and with modern verbal morality on the other (p. 84). The careful reader will find two distinct sources of interest in these scholarly and handsome volumes, study of doctrine in the period of its early growth, and as an exhibition of the body of thought and imagery familiar to the religious as a * A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. By JAMES DONALDSON. Vol. I. The Apostolic Fathers. Vols. II., III. The Apologists. London: Macmillan & Co. fancy of that age. And their thorough conscientious workmanship promises to make them of classical and standard value. * Ir is greatly to be regretted by those who seek results of permanent value in Mr. Stanley's bulky and showy volumes, that he should have cast them in the form of lectures to an uncritical audience, and should have thought it necessary to disguise the simplicity of the historical lesson in a frequently theatrical jargon, and a prodigiously inflated rhetoric. We should complain of this the less, if it did not cover the lack of sincerity and fulness in dealing with the actual material of history. Mr. Stanley has no belief or comprehension, that the true lessons of history are to be found in the completest and fairest presenting of its actual results; and so he adjusts it to the popular mind in the shape of narrative composed "for purposes of edification." The very title of his book is curiously conventional and misleading. Why should the ideas we associate with the spiritual mission and the Church of Christ be obtruded on the petty factions and the tragical fortunes of the state of Israel? We enter in advance this plea of dissatisfaction with the general scope and method of this extremely pretentious book. But it is undeniable that it was written by a man of great wealth of scholarship, and of considerable fertility as well as liberality of mind. And, with much impatience and frequent protest, the reader finds often a genuine charm in the free flow of narrative, or his judgment is instructed by a piece of careful and original study. For examples of this latter, we mention the intellectual estimate of Solomon, considerably higher than that we have been accustomed to entertain; and the view which is presented, partly new to us, of the religious relations of Israel and Judah in the first years after the division of the kingdom. The general conception of the history, meanwhile, appears to us in the highest degree conventional, not to say untrue; while it is matter of serious blame, that Mr. Stanley has failed to make his work of value to scholars, by the thorough study which he was so well qualified to present of the real relations between the religion of Israel and the superstitions native to the soil, or the customs of outlying populations. That whole great field of research he does not so much disclaim as silently ignore. * Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Part II. From Samuel to the Captivity. By ARTHUR PENRHyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster. London: John Murray. 8vo. pp. 596. VOL. LXXX. -NEW SERIES, VOL. I. NO. III. 34 "*supplemented as THE American reprint of Mr. Orme's "Memoir, it is by the valuable notes and Appendix of the American editor, will, if it meets with the circulation which its merits deserve, do much towards enlightening the laity, as well as the less scholarly members of the clerical profession, upon a matter with regard to which they have hitherto been kept in ignorance. We say kept in ignorance, because most Trinitarian scholars, in this country at least, have apparently considered, and some of them frankly confessed, that it was for the interest of their theology to allow the genuineness of no part of the sacred record to be called in question, lest thereby the reverence of the people for the whole should be diminished! To those unacquainted with the work, which now for the first time appears in an American dress, we would say, that it is not written in the interest of any sect or body of Christians, but originated solely in a desire to purify the Sacred Writings from the corruptions to which they, in common with all ancient literature, have been exposed. The writer was a firm believer in the doctrine of the Trinity, of which the passage under discussion, if genuine, would be one of the strongest supports, a circumstance which of itself sufficiently vouches for his impartiality, when we consider the conclusion at which he arrives; namely, that the passage is certainly spurious. And by far the greater number of those engaged in the controversy of which he is the historian were Trinitarians also; so that the book is really a collection of Trinitarian testimonies upon both sides of the question. Mr. Abbot's Appendix of twenty-five pages brings down the historical outline to the present time. No one who is acquainted with the previous labors of the editor in the various departments of Biblical criticism will need any other indorsement than his name as a voucher for the accuracy of the work in its present form. He has corrected a very large number of errors found in the English edition, and translated the extracts from foreign languages; thus making the book more intelligible to the unlearned reader. WE have next, in the new version of Epictetus,† the work of a Roman slave who belonged to Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero. It may *Memoir of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly Witnesses (1 John v. 7); including Critical Notices of the Principal Writers on both Sides of the Discussion. By "Criticus" [Rev. WILLIAM ORME]. A new edition. With Notes and an Appendix by EZRA ABBOT. New York: James Miller. 12mo. pp. 213. The Works of Epictetus, consisting of his Discourses, in four books: The Enchiridion and Fragments, a translation from the Greek, based on that of Elizabeth Carter. By THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1865. assist memory of dates to say, that this Epaphroditus may have received letters sometimes intended for Paul's friend of the same name, and wondered what people meant who said, "all the saints salute you." Here is the work of a slave of a freedman; and, like the work of a good many other slaves, it steadily crops out, again and again, as the centuries go on; and each generation of people, a little more wide awake than the fallen generations between, takes comfort in Epictetus. Whenever men have occasion to set their teeth, and "grin and bear it," they are glad to come back to the clear, clean, shrewd, firm utterances of this lame slave. In such times it is worth the while to talk to the man who said, when his leg was in the rack, "You will break my leg;" and, when the leg was broken, said, “I told you so." So we find Col. Higginson making notes in his Elizabeth Carter's "Epictetus,” as he " camps out" in Florida, - and he tells us with satisfaction that Toussaint made the book his favorite manual. It is good, sharp, ostrichmeat, very profitable for world or for man who have need to eat something besides puffs and jellies. - According to the accustomed canons of modern criticism, we have no right to speak of the book but as a new edition of a translation, which we are to suppose our readers well versed in, of a series of Philosophical Discourses which they have known for seventeen hundred and sixty-six years, or thereabouts. We should be limited by such canons as severely as a legislator is, sometimes, by the rigid application of the rules of the House. But it is so far possible that the cares of modern civilization, the pressure of the war, and the difficulty, indeed, of getting hold of a copy of "Epictetus" in the original or of Mrs. Carter's version in either edition, may have hindered this part of the education of some of our readers, that we shall disown the canons, so far as to make the most modest allusion to the philosophy so calmly stated here, as if we were addressing those who have not yet studied it. Here, then, are four books of Discourses, grouped under nearly one hundred different subjects, which profess to be, and probably are, near transcripts of what Epictetus said, on as many different occasions, to those who received his instructions. Arrian, a senator and consul of Rome, an able military officer, is the expert Xenophon, or, shall we say, Plato, who writes them down. If we choose to be scholastic and to classify things, we say that they are the choicest fragments we have left of the Stoic school, as it existed in the first century. But, if we choose to give human individuality a little more play, we say that they are the work of a brave, cheerful, faithful man, who believed in God and in the Divine nature of man; and who, with infinite wit and |