by which they had been saved? In many cases it was nothing more than this-for this was all that the preacher had taught them, and all they knew,-that Christ was a Saviour, both able and willing to save to the uttermost. But this, as many excellent men contended at the time-as our own pages likewise bore witness-this was an historical, not a saving, faith. A man may know the right way, and yet not walk in it; he may know the cure, and, from perversity or pride, refuse the medicine. To know that Christ is the Saviour, is one thing; to "receive Christ Jesus the Lord" is another. The former, man may teach his fellow man; the latter, God alone can teach. So St. John has told us; no man can say that Jesus is the Christ, but by the Holy Ghost. This teaching the supposed converts never had. They had been terribly alarmed, not because they had seen the evil of sin, but because frightful descriptions of its consequences had been rung in their ears. They had not been convinced of sin; and neither before their conversions, nor afterwards, had they sorrowed after a godly sort. It was not to be expected that conversions such as these should last.

Here

Where the doctrinal teaching had been more scriptural, the effects, less boisterous at the time, have proved, we believe, on the whole more permanent. We refrain, of course, from mentioning particular instances, or contrasting one parish or district with another. But this is our impression after what information we can collect. the Holy Spirit was most honoured. The work was not that of passion and excitement; it was in general much more quiet; and the conversions had not the same startling appearance of a change almost miraculous. There was deep sorrow for sin, much self loathing on account of sin; and yet, in company with this, and not unfrequently prior to this, there was joy and peace in believing. And the fruit remains unto this day. On the whole, we are not discouraged by anything we have heard or seen. But without attempting to deny that, by the power of the Spirit, the greatest sinner, who has been a total stranger, hitherto, to all the influences of religion, may be made the subject of a sudden conversion, we are still of opinion that such cases are extremely rare, and that Mr. Bolton's record of his own spiritual experience affords no encouragement to expect them. As the path of the just, so is the work of conversion. It shineth more and more unto the perfect day; and what are termed sudden conversions will be found to be more properly revivals, deepenings of the work of the Spirit, where the seed had been already sown. We are far from giving way to despondency; we look forward to many seasons of refreshment from the presence of the Lord. We shall again pray, if spared so long, when our holy season of Advent returns, that the Lord will "raise up His power, and come

amongst us, and with great might succour us;" and that He will do it now, (( now in the time of this mortal life in which His Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility."

Suddenly return, and never,

Never more thy temples leave!"

ERNEST RENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS.

Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus. Fifteenth Edition. Levy, Brothers. Paris. 1863.

Ir is not without hesitation that we have determined to give even a brief notice of this book. Writings which proceed on the hypothesis that the Scriptures are only the works of men, and that it is idolatry to ascribe Divine honours to the Lord Jesus, can hardly be said to lie within the field of the Christian Observer. There are some circumstances, however, connected with this publication which seem to command our attention; and when we have indicated them, our readers will, we doubt not, be of the same opinion.

The first is, that however strange and incredible it may appear, the purpose of M. Renan is not intentionally unfriendly to the interests of Christianity! Fearful indeed must be the state of religious belief in France and Germany, when a Life of Jesus, thoroughly sceptical in all its parts, is considered to be a turning towards the truth! Yet such appears to be the fact. France, like England, is about a quarter of a century behind Germany in passing through the different phases of religious opinion. And as, since the time of David Strauss and Christian Bauer, in 1835, Germany has been gradually struggling into life and hope, and writings which we should call infidel are, in fact, a return from lower depths; so is this Life of Jesus, by M. Renan, wholly infidel, as it will appear to nearly every English reader, in reality a faint and feeble promise of better things. It does not deny, as some have done, that Christianity has no historical foundation whatever. It does not assert that the existence of a personal God, of theology, of religion, and of morality of all kinds, is purely ideal-a purely subjective conception of the mind of man. M. Renan does not say this, but he says what has made his book a thoroughly infidel publication. As Pascal suggests, it is our duty not to put a fair name upon it, and call it a reaction or variation from the posi

"If I were in a city where there were twelve fountains, and knew for certain that one of them was poisoned, I should feel obliged to warn every one I met with not to draw water from it; it

would be also my duty to point out the poisoned fountain rather than expose the whole city to the chance of being poi soned."-Thoughts on Miracles, 78.

tive school of philosophy; but boldly to write "POISON upon it, and to call it what it is, "An Antichristian Life of Christ." It is greatly to be feared that, giving all credit to M. Renan for some improvement of position as a Christian philosopher, he still has advanced no further than to believe, that all the philosophy there is in the world consists in the history of men's opinions about philosophy,-that there is no such thing as truth in morals or metaphysics independent of the conception of the human mind,-we are sorry to add (but it is from firm conviction that such is also his deliberate judgment), that all the religion there is in the world consists in the history of it; that is, of men's opinions, and their actions upon their opinions, in the matter of religion. For, after all the very pleasant expressions which we find in M. Renan's writings, he assumes as a data to start from, as an axiom almost which he hardly stays to demonstrate, that there is nothing whatever supernatural in the Bible, or in the religion of either the Jews or the Christians. Now, the reader will be able to see at a glance what is the true character of his book. Given the hypothesis, that there is nothing supernatural in the composition or contents of the Bible, the problem is, "How to explain the composition of the New Testament, the character of Jesus, and the success of Christianity?" This is the epitome of the whole volume, and our readers will not misunderstand us now, if we say, that, considering the difficulty (we believe the sheer impossibility, the almost absurdity) of the task, the writer has accomplished it with as little offence, with as much learning and scholarship, as was ever exhibited in any work of the kind. The difficulties lying in his path are like those in the old straits between Scylla and Charybdis, and they lie along the whole way, whether he is pursuing his course through Scripture criticism, or the Life of Christ. In the Gospels, he must balance between the clear evidence, external and internal, of their authenticity, the transparent honesty and truthfulness of the narrative, and their testimony to the supernatural, which must be false! Again, in the person of Jesus, he must balance between His purity and honesty and unworldliness, which are wholly inconsistent with His being an imposter, and His intelligence, His accuracy of judgment, and above all, His success, which forbid us to regard Him simply as an enthusiast! No critic such as De Witte, no philosopher sceptic like Theodore Parker, or Christian Bauer, or M. Renan, have ever accomplished this task, or ever will. We have read every word of M. Renan's book; we have weighed it as impartially as, we should think, any thorough believer weigh it; and our deliberate judgment is, that as a defence of scepticism, in spite of its freshness and cleverness, it is an utter failure. He cannot show how it is that the

can

Gospels can be worthy of implicit credit in all parts where they do not testify to the supernatural, but that where they do, they are puerile and wholly false. He cannot show how Jesus could be a wise and kind man, worthy of the honour of all mankind, if he were not the Christ of God.

Perhaps it will be expected that we should give a brief sketch of M. Renan's plan of solving these difficulties. If we do, it must be a mere sketch; and in doing it, we shall not seek for offensive expressions. In many instances, we are persuaded they were not intended to be so by the author; and moreover we hold that blasphemy, like immodesty, cannot be reported without making the reporter himself, in some degree, immoral and obscene.*

M. Renan, with great honesty and candour, ascribes all the four Gospels to the first century. The discourses of Jesus were reported by Matthew; his trade as a tax-gatherer making him familiar with the pen. The actions of Jesus were recorded by Mark, under the direction of Peter. The two Gospels we now have were formed out of these two originals, the legendary history being introduced by the separate compilers. The Gospel of St. John is perhaps all of it genuine, but written from memory, in extreme old age, with a reflection not only of the apostle's then present sentiments and feelings, but even of the theological disputes of his age, and of the legendary forms which all the narratives of the life of Jesus had then assumed. The facts are all clearly the descriptions of an eye-witness; but the portrait of Jesus has been coloured by the apostle's own strong character; so that it is John who speaks, even when he reports the words of Jesus. The Gospel of St. Luke, as it professes to be, is a collection of traditions of the apostolic age, when the legends, as well as the history, had gathered consistency and shape. There are marks of polish in the style which make the discourses reported by St. Luke less trustworthy than those of St. Matthew; but of many that he alone reports, there can be no doubt as to their genuineness and authenticity. Of course, on the principles of M. Renan, none of the Gospels in their present form could have been written till after the destruction of Jerusalem, of which, in the form of a prophecy, they all of them contain a history. The sum of all M. Renan's critiques on the Gospels is clearly this that they are in every way worthy of credit in all cases in which IT IS POSSIBLE THEY SHOULD BE BELieved. The character of the Lord Jesus presents a far greater difficulty.

*We wish to be understood, in this assertion, as speaking of the general tone of the book. There are exceptions to it. One passage, at page 334, where the Divinity of Jesus is argued from the pun

gency of his satire (!), is, to speak of it as it deserves, simply blasphemous. We would not, on any consideration, be instrumental in conveying such horrible thoughts to another person's mind

First, the author has to consider his historical surroundings. The disappointment of Jewish hopes, excited by their prophets, of a restoration to temporal greatness and power, led them to look for an ideal kingdom, in which these promises should be fulfilled, called the Reign of God in which some Jew should be the king. In a series of apocalyptic visions, of which the prophet Daniel was the originator and type, this kingdom was represented as beginning at the end of the present world, and with the establishment of a new one. Jesus was born and nurtured, not in Judæa, but in Galilee, a humble, thoughtful peasant; and his mind being possessed by these prophetic and apocalyptic ideas, he conceived the great truth, that the foundation of this heavenly kingdom would be laid in the paternity of God. He expressly declared himself to be the Son of God; and that all men might, like him, be so, and all brethren in this kingdom. That in this new world there was to be no outward religion whatever, no ceremonies, and no priesthood; it was to be a perfectly pure and spiritual brotherhood of the whole human race. This was the first idea of Jesus, the germ of real Christianity; this was the secret of its ultimate triumph over mankind. Jesus borrowed the form of his teaching, and much of its expression, from the Rabbis. Its pure and simple freshness had its type in the scenes of beauty which lay around him; in the lovely plains and glorious landscapes of Upper and Lower Galilee. His first preaching was a perfect idyl of spiritualized Judaism and uncorrupted Christianity. All his onward career may be said to have been an obscuring of this pure and bright beginning. He adopted from St. John a ceremony corrupting, so far, his own original idea. Even some of John's austerity, in spite of his protest against it, appears in his preaching; so that his religion, if acted out in conformity to his own principles, would have led to vows of perpetual poverty and celibacy, and entire renunciation of the world. Every time he walked beyond the narrow limits of Galilee, according to M. Renan, Jesus sustained damage in his spirit and teaching, and in his general views of himself and others. The idea grew stronger upon him that he was the Messiah, and in some wonderful sense the Son of God. He allowed the character of a worker of miracles to be ascribed to him; and sometimes affected supernatural knowledge to be used for his own purposes. At last he felt that his teaching and position involved so much contradiction, that a very short time would endanger all the good he had been able to effect; he desired, therefore, most earnestly to die, in the firm belief that what was true and good in his teaching would be really established by his death. The dreams about an earthly kingdom, or of a state of socialism, or of monastic poverty, all of them thoroughly Utopian, both