proved that a usurping priesthood cannot in a free country long co-exist with a National Church; one must give way, or both must fall.

Again, in Scotland, there has been a secession; a large body of the presbytery claiming powers which a nation cannot be expected to grant, on account of their interfering with civil rights; and hence the claimants have dissolved their connexion with the Establishment. In like manner in the Episcopal Church in Scotland, some ill-judging churchmen are for carrying things with a high hand, as in the astounding excommunication of the Rev. Sir W. Dunbar; whereas were they connected with a tolerant National Church, they would be taught to feel that ecclesiastical authority ought to be exercised with wisdom and moderation. The Tractarians among ourselves avow their impatience of the salutary restraints of a National Church; and boldly express their admiration of such men as Hildebrand, Bonner, and Laud, who made Church censures to be felt as well as pronounced.

We ought then to bless God for the National Church of England, not only as an instrument in his hand of spiritual benefit, but as a protector of our civil and religious privileges. The State has no right to interfere with its spiritual prerogatives; but it has a good, a Scriptural right to take care that the nation shall not be reduced to such abject thraldom as that in which the priests of Ireland retain the mass of the people; and with which the Tractarians menace England.

H. A. L.

ON THE DESIGNATION 66 MALEFACTOR," LUKE XXIII. 32.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SOME of your correspondents have alluded to the effect of the admission or exclusion of a comma in the Catechism; permit me to point the introduction of a comma in our Bibles in Luke xxiii. 32, after the word "other" ("two other, malefactors"), and to inquire whether it is rightly placed. The comma is not in the edition of 1611, nor in several Bibles which I have referred to, printed in the last century and the beginning of the present; but I observe it in some modern copies. The object is to throw the word "malefactors" in apposition with "other;" making the pronoun "other" to be used substantively instead of adjectively; in order that an evil word may not seem to be applied to Him who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.

But the question arises, "Is this the correct translation of the original?" I presume not. I do not think the sacred writer meant in this passage to declare that the others were evil doers, and our Lord not. The etymological signification of the original word, and of the word used in our translation, is an evil-doer; but words come to have a secondary meaning by common use; and I can remember myself, when I was a child (and I believe the same is the case with the great mass of unlettered readers) that the word "malefactor" carried with it, in my apprehension, only the idea of a person condemned to legal punishment, without any reference to his guilt or innocence; just as by the word "martyr" most persons understand a sufferer (as when they say martyr to the gout") and not a witness. I doubt not the Greek designation in this place is used in the same general sense; and that it is a mis-translation-an interference with the simple style of the New Testament-to put the two words in apposition. If we cannot divest ourselves of the etymology of the word "malefactors" so as to take it

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only in its popular sense, it were well if we had found a neutral word; but I do not think any unlettered man ever mistook the meaning. Upon turning to Hammond, Whitby, Poole's Annotations, Scott, &c. I find no comma, nor do they intimate any difficulty. Wickliffe rendered the passage "other two wicked men ;" but Tyndale dropped the "other," and read "two evil doers," and Cranmer's translation adopted that rendering. This could not be right. The Geneva Version has it, "Two others which were evil doers;" but this is adding words to Holy Writ, unless the apposition be conceded.

F. G.

CANON SYDNEY SMITH AND THE "TIMES" NEWSPAPER.

For the Christian Observer.

THE conductors of the "Times" newspaper facetiously urge Canon Sydney Smith to perpetrate a volume of Sermons. That portent did occur in the year 1809; the Pauline "Peter Plymley" being then "Preacher at the Foundling, and Berkeley street and Fitzroy chapels;" and eke "Rector of Foston, Yorkshire;" where his Bishop had afterwards the ill-taste to command him to reside, thus darkening the mirth of the Metropolis. The review of those Sermons in the "Christian Observer," will furnish some anticipations of what the proposed Volume will

contain.

The reviewers confessed that Mr. Smith's habit of making everything comic, and the remembrance of the laughs with which he had enlivened the gravest truths, made them doubt whether his Edinburgh pen could adjust itself to sermon-writing; but they found they were wrong, for though they acquitted him of intentionally affecting their risible muscles in his sermons, yet he had succeeded without intention. They applaud his dread of being righteous over-much; and his excellent ne quid nimis advice, that "Those who have not strength of character to deviate materially from the customs of the world in the patronage of folly, and estimation of vice, need not go all lengths; some scanty limits, some feeble shame they may still preserve." They admire his grandeur of thought in small things, as where instead of urging the common-place virtue of saying a civil word to a poor man next door whom we have insulted, but who will be placated by a shake of the hand, or of adding five per cent. to the bill of a tradesman whom we have kept out of his money, he tells us to rush "over mountains and seas to find him, to beg his prayers to God, and to restore to him wine and oil, and vineyards and olive-yards, tenfold for all we have taken ;"—a splendid, but not very probable, pilgrimage.

The reviewers also admired his style, and said something about Momus and Barrow, Smith and Jeremy Taylor; touching the two last of whom we have the following rich morsel. Bishop Taylor is describing a hen-pecked husband; the Foundling Preacher is pleading for a Blind Asylum.

Taylor.

"And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours he remembers the objection that is in his bosom, and sighs deeply. The boys, and the pedlars, and

Smith.

"This is the reason why the blind are miserable and dejected; because their soul [query their body] is mutilated and they are a laughter and a ruin; and the dismembered of its best sense; because boys of the streets [and the pedlars and

the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave that he lived and died a poor wretched person."

the fruiterers] mock at their stumbling feet; and therefore, [that is, because of the boys and the pedlars,] I implore you by the Son of David, have mercy on the blind."

The reviewers show further that Mr. Smith could quote from a ballad as well as a Bishop: "Do not let these men perish; but, taught by the Power which has ever pity on you, learn ye to have pity on them." But he is not so happy, they say, in quoting Holy Writ as human authors. Thus (to speak seriously) he turns" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," in one place, to "God forgive them ;" and in another, to "Lord, forgive them." John the Baptist's words, "Repent, &c." are given to " an Apostle;" and the text about being "righteous over-much," which Cruden relegates to the Book of Ecclesiastes, Mr. Smith assigns to "St. Paul." There is a panegyric upon "Judas," whom the reviewers were much puzzled about, till glancing back to the preacher's text, they found that it was taken from the Apocrypha, and referred to Maccabeus; that glorious example to the London and Bloomsbury loyal volunteers, who, Mr. Smith affirms, "prayed first for victory; and if that cannot be, we implore for death."

Thus the reviewers proceed with their Reverend author through more than forty columns; but alas! bringing far heavier charges, involving unsound doctrine, than can be gone into in a hasty paragraph. Take only one example: speaking of "the fruits of THE SPIRIT," Mr. Smith writes, "We say, in our language, to seize on the spirit of a thing; we talk of the spirit of our political institutions; of the spirit of our civil and criminal law; and we seem to mean by the expression," and so forth. After this, and much more of the same aspect, it is to be hoped that Mr. Smith will not take the Times Editors at their word.

MEMINI.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PUBLICATIONS ON THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF
PROPHECY.

1. An Illustration of Ezekiel's Vision of "The Chariot:" its literal Meaning, Utility, and Fulfilment in the Nineteenth Century, respectively dedicated to all the Tribes of Israel, wherever dispersed, and to the public in general. 1843.

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2. Israel's Ordinances; a few Thoughts on their Perpetuity, respectfully suggested in a Letter to the Right Rev. the Bishop of Jerusalem. By CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH. 1843. THERE are so many unhappy controversies in the Church of Christ in these our restless days, that we have been unwilling to add our contingent to the strife, by touching upon one which of late has been warmly agitated in some circles; namely, that relative to the altogether literal application of the prophecies; more especially those which refer to the Jews. Thus the "Jewish CHRIST. OBSERV. APP.

Intelligence" lately remarked, "The return of the Jews to the land of their fathers is now generally acknowledged that last and most subtle cloud of Roman error, spiritual interpretation, has almost passed away." Now we are not about to write a controversial article; we are only going to state the facts of the case, that we may know what the controversy is about. In re

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gard, for instance, to the statement just quoted, our Reverend friends of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews may mean only that "the return of the Jews to the land of their fathers" is literal, and not "spiritual;" or they may intend further to designate as "Roman error" every kind of "spiritual interpretation." In either case, spiritual interpretation was not invented by the Romanists; and perhaps our friends only added the epithet "Roman" to make the sentence more pungent; for the ancient Fathers spiritualised to absurdity; and there is "spiritual interpretation" in our own creed when we say, in answer to the Romanist, that our Lord's calling his body and blood "bread" and wine," does not imply transubstantiation; any more than "I am the door," "I am the good shepherd," "I am the vine, are to be literalised; and what is meant by "That rock was Christ," and numerous such explications in the New Testament, especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, if all "spiritual interpretation" is "Roman error?" It is clear, then, that the above statement is more broad than true; even if everything relative to the future condition of the Jews were to be construed as literally as Charlotte Elizabeth herself, in her Letter to Bishop Alexander, asserts it ought to be: for even then we should have gone but a little way in establishing literalism; for much remains in type, metaphor, and allusion, which does not relate to the Jews; and will it be said that all this is literal, and nothing figurative? The writers of the above passage must have forgotten Dr. Wiseman on the Lord's Supper, or they would have recollected that his interpretation is grossly literal, and that he repudiates spiritual explication, as do the Tractarians, as Protestant error, not "Roman."

We have not argued; we are only inquiring where we stand; for to

ascertain this, is convenient to all parties.

With regard to the future pros pects of the people of Israel, the question of their literal restoration to Palestine is not properly included in what Charlotte Elizabeth describes as "those momentous points on which many minds are exercised," for all who advocate the doctrine of exclusively literal interpretation take the restoration to Palestine for granted as common ground, and not as a stage in advance; and many who do not go farther have no difficulty as to this particular. That zealous friend of Israel, the late Reverend Mr. Simeon, in No. 324 of his "Appendix to the Hora Homileticæ," published in 1828, remarks: "That the Jews shall be restored to their own land is, I think, as plainly declared in Scripture as any truth in the Bible;" but he adds, "though if any be disposed to doubt it, I am not anxious to maintain a controversy respecting it, because, however important it may be to the Jews, it is to us a matter of small moment." Thus thought this venerable man. Though he believed that the Jews would be restored to Palestine, he did not consider it a point worth raising a controversy about; it was at all events, to us Christians, he thought, "a matter of small moment;" and least of all had it any bearing upon the great duty for which the members of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews entered into holy compact; for "The future conversion of the Jews," said he, "is absolutely certain, and indeed is universally admitted." Here he took his stand; their conversion was certain, and all who would aid him in endeavouring to promote it, by making known to them the true Messiah who was to be "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel," he hailed as true soundhearted brethren in this glorious cause. If a Jew was taught of God, led by the Holy Spirit to Christ,