of Trent, from the French of Rosscenw St Hilaire; 2. The Rational Psychology and its Vindications, by Dr Hall; 3. The Religion of the Indians; 4. The Heretical Gnosis, from the German of Baxmann; 5. Man's Place in a Natural System of Zoology; & The National Crisis.

III. The Presbyterian Quarterly Review for October.

We have extracted from this periodical the long article with which our present number opens. The October Number contains the following articles-1. Memorabilia of John Owen, a good appreciation of Owen's place in theology; 2. The Pulpit a Civiliser; 3. Alexis de Tocqueville; 4. Alcuin the Teacher of Charlemagne, a good monography; 5. The Two Rebellions, an analogy of faith, comparing that of the Ten Tribes and that of America.

XII-CRITICAL NOTICES.

THE EXEGETICAL.

The Revised Translation of the New Testament, with a Notice of the Principal Various Readings. By the Rev. H. HIGHTON, M.A., late Principal of Cheltenham College, and Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. London Bagster. 1862.

This revised translation, the work of an accomplished scholar, alters as little as possible, and aims to shew that a revision of the New Testament by public authority is both feasible and may be made with advantage. The position he occupies will be understood when he says, "The execution of this work has convinced me that not only is our authorised translation the best ever made, either in our own country or in America, up to the present time (with the exception of the later published of the revised translations of particular books by Dean Alford and his four colleagues), but also that our received text is, on the whole, the best Greek text for popular use. The operation of the rules according to which the revision of the Greek text has been usually made is somewhat unfortunate in its results." We quite agree with him.

One important feature of this translation is, that translations of the principal various readings are placed in the margin. This will do a great service, as they shew to the English reader that all the alterations from MSS. are of no great importance, so far as the sense is concerned.

The translator has, on the whole, been successful in dealing with the three or four chief difficulties which any proposed revision has to encounter, viz., the particles, the prepositions, the tenses, and the use of the article. The reserve which he has exercised, and his reluctance to alter, have, in certain passages, been carried further than is desirable. Thus he still retains a number of words and forms of expression which might with advantage be exchanged for others which would more exactly bring out the sense. But his principle was to make only such alterations as appeared to him to attain to a certain degree of importance and of probability. The archaic garb and the idiomatic English are preserved. We regard this revised version as a decided success, and creditable in the hghest degree to the Christian scholar who executed it. We hope to return to it more fully. S.

02

Notes on the Gospels, Critical and Explanatory. By M. C. JACOBUS, Professor of Biblical Literature. Edinburgh: W. Oliphant & Co. 1862. Professor Jacobus's Notes on Matthew have been so highly appreciated in America, that they have run through thirty-three editions. While they are unmistakeably Calvinistic, and also the fruit of learned investigation, they are happily free from technical language, plain, perspicuous, and withal elegantly expressed. We regard them as the best style of commentary for Sabbathschool teachers and heads of families, and there is little doubt that they will find at once a full recognition among us, as they deserve.

A Paraphrase of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. By J. C. WHISH, M.A., with Notes from various sources. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday. 1862.

This is a kind of book which we would gladly see greatly multiplied. It is what it professes to be, a laborious and painstaking study of Isaiah's prophecy. The paraphrase is good, and is deserving of commendation. The authorised version is retained in all cases where the sense of the original is clearly expressed by it, and the paraphrase is added only when the meaning is not very obvious. The notes display a praiseworthy amount of reading; and the whole production is scholarly and highly creditable to the author. While we say all this, however, we are not to be held as committed to the interpretation here given; all we wish to convey is simply our approbation of a good effort, and in the right direction. The result would be only good if all our ministers were to take up a book of either the Old Testament or New, and make such a study of it as Mr Whish has done. There is nothing so profitable as the study of a book of the Bible as a whole.

DOGMATIC THEOLOGY.

Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin. A New Translation. By HENRY BEVERIDGE, Esq. Edinburgh: Clark. 1863.

This translation of Calvin's invaluable "Institutes" deserves to be well known, and it will be valued wherever it is known. While it is faithful as a version of that great system which embodies the thinking of Calvin's life, it is also a very readable English book. The translator has collated the Latin and French editions carefully; he has given the division and arrangement of the chapters of the Institutes; and given also the purport of the sections at the commencement of each chapter. Though no one will depreciate the elegant and happy translation by Mr Allen, of which a third edition appeared in 1844, the present version may be put upon an equality with it for precision and accuracy, while this one has the other advantages above mentioned. No one can estimate how important it would be if the religious readers who peruse only such works as partake of what may be called the tract style and character would acquaint themselves with such a system as is presented to them in this translation-a system so fitted to satisfy thought and to enlarge the mind, and withal, so scriptural that it may be called a biblical theology, giving the result of the most perfect exegesis.

The Christian Verity Stated, a_Summary of Trinitarian Doctrine. By WALTER CHAMBERLAIN, M.A., Incumbent of St John's, Bolton-le-Moors. London: Wertheim. 1862.

We have been greatly pleased with this work, written in reply to Dr Beard's "Reasons for being a Unitarian." The way in which he speaks of the Trinity and the Eternal Sonship is replete with the true spirit of patristic theology, which he has not imbibed merely from the great writers of his

church, but from the sources. We are glad to see a work replete with so much patristic learning, which is becoming more and more rare in the Church of England, once so much distinguished for this sort of learning. He says, "May the time never come when the people of England shall be ignorant of, or indifferent to, those creeds," viz., the apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian. We might take exception to a few theological phrases in the volume not commonly used by the best writers, and not improvements. But as a whole it is the production of an accomplished Trinitarian, who defers to the Scripture alone, which he expounds with exactness, but who, at the same time, finds the truth, which is dear to him, freshly and clearly brought out in the writings of the Fathers. We warmly commend it to those who can appreciate the theology of such authors as Pearson on the Creed. The style is not equal to the thinking.

A Review of the Baptismal Controversy. By J. B. MOZLEY, B.D., Vicar of Old Shoreham, late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. London: Rivington. 1862.

All his readers will acknowledge the honour that is due to this author for his logical ability and great theological learning. He reviews the baptismal views of Augustinianism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. But his discussion does not touch the main difficulty of the subject as a practical question. Such as will allow no changes to be made upon the church offices, so as to adapt them to modern ideas of the necessary harmony between language and conviction, will, in all likelihood, hail the book as an impreg nable defence of the formularies, at once temperate and skilful. And, indeed, if they are to be defended at all, it must be on Mr Mozley's ground. They, however, who wish the language of honest truthfulness in the words of worship, will not be satisfied by all the able and ingenious pleading of the author. The main difficulty is one which neither the authority of antiquity nor the non-natural acceptation of words, can silence or solve. It will rise up again for a solution of another sort, till the phraseology of worship and of inner conviction truly coincide.

re

In explaining how the Anglican Church came to apply the term generate" to all baptized infants, Mr Mozley says (p. 157), "The Anglican divines surmounted the difficulty by constructing a new and special sense of the term 'regenerate' as used in connection with baptism, employing the term in this connection to denote only an implanted faculty for the attainment of goodness and holiness-a capacity to be improved, a power to bo cultivated, an assisting grace to be used." He acknowledges that the Anglican double sense was an innovation in theology, the term never having been used in two different senses before (p. 158), and that the Anglican divines use it with considerable scruple and hesitation as to its being a true sense (p. 159). He adds, that there is no reason against such a use of the term, provided the sense is understood. But as the sense of the term "regenerate," as applicable to individuals, is different from that secondary sense in which it is applicable to the whole Christian body, the result, as he acknowledges, has been to confound and identify them (p. 161), and persons may argue for a long time on this question, if they do not com pare at the outset their respective meanings of the term (p. 162).

The author has done much to prove that the language used in the Anglican formularies is an advance upon Scripture, that it cannot be proved by Scripture, and that it cannot be imposed as a doctrine. But he must take a step further. Although we sympathise with men who are held in tho fetters of old ecclesiastical formulas, Patristic and Anglican, the true curo is not to set up a non-natural sense of words, but to change what is inadequate, for what, in Christian truth and simplicity, is an adequate expres. sion of the Biblical doctrine on the subject.

Christian Faith its Nature, Object, Causes, and Effects. By JHN H. GODWIN. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodden. 1862.

Mr Godwin is one of the professors of the New College, London; and this volume is the congregational lecture for 1860. It was published after its successor. Since its publication it has called forth a considerable amount of discussion. It has been reviewed unfavourably in most, if not all, of the organs of the congregational body. A series of articles, condemning it utterly, appeared in the British Standard newspaper; they have since been reprinted as a pamphlet, and are now acknowledged as the work of the Rev. Brewin Grant of Sheffield. We can hardly point to a book which, in a life so short, has made for itself so many enemies, and which has found so few friends. We are of the number of those which condemn it utterly. Beyond any reasonable doubt, the author, as far as he exhibits his thoughts in this volume, has departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. On all the important articles of that faith his trumpet, at the very best, gives forth but an uncertain sound; and on that article of a standing or falling church, justification through the imputed righteousness of another, the book is altogether gone out of the way. Mr Godwin recognises no righteousness but the personal righteousness, the moral integrity and rectitude of God or of man. A.

History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ. By Dr DORNER. Edinburgh: Clark. 1862.

Another volume will complete the translation of this important contribution to theology, when we shall take occasion to notice the work more fully.

MISSIONS.

Great Missionaries. By Rev. Dr A. THOMSON. T. Nelson & Sons. 1862. What Hinders? A Sermon preached in Surrey Chapel before the Directors and Friends of the London Missionary Society, May 14. 1862. By Rev. Dr ANDREW THOMSON, Edinburgh. 1862.

Missions are now a power in the world. Against a thousand antagonisms, they have won their way to that position, and it would scarcely be too much to say that they are slowly becoming the most potent moral influence that operates in our day. Not even the pursuit of gold, the universal passion, calls forth such exertions, or such calm, deliberate sacrifices as the cause of missions; and the church, the flock, the pastor, or the worshipper that has not felt its influence has yet to experience the force of one of the mightiest motives which can propel the mind of man. It was missions that sent men to die for Christ in Greenland, to pine in the jungles of India, and to perish amid the snows of Patagonia. It was the same great cause that prompted many to face the cannibals of Erromanga and other islands in the South Seas, and brave all that is deadly in the climate of Sierra Leone. It was missions that led to those wonderful discoveries which have recently lifted the veil which long concealed the regions of Central Africa. From a little band of missionaries at Loodiana, far inland in India, there lately went forth a call to prayer, and millions after millions all round the globe fell on their knees at the call. Men who in youth sneered at 66 consecrated cobblers," and " apostates from the anvil and the loom," were compelled, before they died, to blush for very shame over the ribaldry which their ignorance or their hatred of truth had prompted. Those whom they contumeliously despised had subdued viceroys by the truth told in love; had first incensed, and then vanquished the British Parliament; had opened India to the gospel, and established or consolidated a system whose influence was to vibrate round the globe, and guide the churches till the last of the redeemed be gathered in.

Ignorance was abashed before such results, and the missionary is welcomed at last, even by mere politicians, as the great civiliser-witness the recent case of the Sonthals. We are thus emboldened to repeat that missions are now a power in the world. A missionary zealous, fearless, loving, Spirittaught, is a king of men; and when the ephemeral notorieties who are deemed famous go out in darkness to be forgotten for ever, he takes his place among the true immortals, the real benefactors of the world, the "fellow-workers with God."

In the volume and the sermon now before us, Dr Thomson, their author, has done what may help to give missions more and more their true place in the minds of men. The title of the sermon indicates the occasion which called it forth. It was addressed to the grand annual gathering of the Nonconformists-a kind of oecumenical congregation composed very largely, we might say mainly, of ministers; and the assemblages at these sermons are among the most solemn and important that any minister can address. We have heard some leading minds preach to these assembled brethren; and if others felt as we did when receiving impressions which will go with us to the grave, the value of such meetings can scarcely be overrated. Dr Thomson's sermon worthily sustains the credit of such assemblages, and ably supports the objects they have in view. He successfully and conclusively disposes of some difficulties still retarding the greatest of all enterprises, but to none of his sentiments do we more cordially respond than the statement that much of our missionary strength has hitherto been expended on what was necessarily mere pioneering. By the ever-needed blessing, an accelerated rate of progress, and an increased momentum, may now be expected. They would come were the "What Hinders?" which Dr Thomson exposes, taken out of the way; and that time will arrive, because God is working.

But it is of Dr Thomson's volume that we would chiefly speak, in order to commend both it and its great subject to all our readers, and far beyond that range, if we could reach it. We have here twelve sketches of as many great missionaries, vigorously and graphically written, with the strong points of their characters admirably brought out, and lucidly set before us. The volume obviously contains the pith, or the spirit of many more, read and mastered to furnish materials for commending these twelve heroes to the churches, where their memories may well be fragrant; and while the work is thus well adapted to our rapid and impatient age, it will, we hope, convey important truth into many minds which, but for it, might never have entered upon such studies, or never have searched for information far and near, as Dr Thomson has done with such obvious care.

We need not very minutely analyse the contents of the volume. Thousands, we trust, will do that for themselves. But we have here depicted John Eliot and his achievements among the red men of the west-the missionary whose "pains and prayers" made the desert blossom as the rose and Brainerd the blessed-sometimes morbid and self-consuming-but withal, one of the most honoured of men since apostolic times: and Christian David of Herrenhut, with his intrepid bands, who made Greenland vocal with the good tidings all unknown before-a man whose history we think is here presented to us in a separate or continuous form for the first time: and John Williams, the man whose heroism in the cause of truth was blessed to carry the knowledge of it to about 300,000 savages; and who, with his own hands, built churches, houses, and even ships, to spread the gospel, dying a martyr at last in the cause: and John Theodore Vanderkemp, the once-noted infidel, but, by the grace of God, the still more noted messenger of mercy to thousands: and our own John Campbell, the meek, timid hero, the indefatigable worker for Christ in many lands: and Dr Grant, the apostle, may we call him of the Nestorians; and Ziegenbalg, and Swartz, and Carey, and Martyn, for India; with Dr Judson for Burmah,all of them honoured far above princes, and prepared for their place among