deed, laid aside by the naturalistic school, as involving greater miracles than are contained in any theory of inspiration; but no more philosophical mode of accounting for the genesis of those records had been offered in its stead. It was only in 1835 that Strauss published his "Life of Jesus," which, though it has already become, in great measure, obsolete, has had a stronger influence for evil and for good than any work of the present century. It has led the way in the application of the canons of historical criticism to the New Testament, a criticism of which Neander and Baur may be taken as representing the two opposite types, the former admitting the miraculous element, and yet claiming to find in the Gospels only the imprint which a being endowed as was Christ must needs have made in history and literature, while the latter proposed to himself the far more difficult problem of accounting for the origin of the Gospels on the hypothesis of their presenting only magnified and distorted images of an extraordinary man. In his last direction, theorists have taken divergent routes, demanding close watchfulness and keen discrimination in the scholar who would give account of their movements. At the same time, the traditional beliefs as to the authorship of the Pen'tateuch, the integrity of various books of the Hebrew canon, the inspiration of the prophets, and the Divine element in Judaism, have been shaken at every point, and have given birth to a very wide range of critical and controversial litera ture. Within this same period, also, natural science (or rather natural history, for it has not yet outgrown this name) has claimed the right of eminent domain over the entire realm of religious thought. Previously, geology had suggested grave questions as to the Scriptural account of the Creation and the Deluge, while physiologists had demanded either the repudiation or the broad interpretation of portions of the Pentateuch that seem to imply the common parentage of the human race; but no comprehensive theory of nature had assumed to embrace the entire cosmos, its human denizens, and its Creator. Of late there has been a strong and growing tendency to employ the phenomena of matter in determining the laws of - mind, of the spiritual universe, of the Infinite Being, a sort of differential calculus by which propositions demonstrated as to infinitesimal atoms and germs are affirmed of the immeasurable soul of man and its Author and Father. The Comtian philosophy is, in fact, a view of nature and being through the reversed telescope, an application of the laws and limitations of the tadpole to the Creator, a materialism as crass and grovelling as that of the most degraded fetich-worshipper. With this influence Christianity is now brought into close conflict, and that not by professed infidels alone, but even by office-bearers in the Christian Church, who, like Baden Powell, elude the charge of Atheism only by Pantheistic word. jugglery. When we say that the Bibliotheca has never slumbered on its watch-tower during the pendency of any important discussion, but has been loyal equally to freedom and to truth at epochs when to betray either the one or the other seemed almost inevitable, we certainly have given it, not only high praise, but a title to more than transient interest and favor. There are few periodicals whose volumes we should wish to keep for future reference; while this is a work for the library, containing the authentic record of phases of opinion, which indeed are essentially short-lived, yet will possess a permanent historical interest and importance.* Apart from controversy, there has been, since this work commenced, a vast increase of positive knowledge. The recension of the sacred text has been pursued with a thoroughness of method, and a certainty as to results, distancing Griesbach as far as he distanced his predecessors on the same career. There have been, also, steps taken in the science of interpretation, which cannot be retraced; and commentators have arisen who have given a new essor to an exegesis both rational and reverent, and who are making the Bible seem more than ever the living word of God, and not the record of things past It may be well here to advert to the fact, that there was issued, in 1857, an Index to the first thirteen volumes, or we should rather term it four Indexes, namely, an analytic table exhibiting the contents of each number in its order, a list of Scriptural texts illustrated, an alphabetical index of subjects, and another of writers. Undoubtedly this labor will soon be renewed. and buried. As to the external history of the sacred canon, aside from the fundamental points at issue between the opposite schools, yet in great part because of the joining of these issues, there has been accumulated, collated, and co-ordinated a mass of materials, pre-existent indeed, yet many of them before unused or unwisely used. As to collateral sources of illustration for the Biblical interpreter, even were we to pass in silence all that has been derived from excavations, monuments, inscriptions, and hieroglyphics, the mere results of travel and intelligent observation have become surprisingly rich and significant, especially when the travellers have been, like Professor Hackett and Rev. W. M. Thomson the missionary, men who know so thoroughly what to ask and seek; for the inquirer's revenue is determined more by his skill in asking questions, than by his opportunities for answering them. Now in all these departments the Bibliotheca has contained, not only the résumé of what has been accomplished elsewhere, but a large proportion of first-hand contributions. Especially in the extensive range of research open to the missionary and to the tourist who loves the Holy Land, have the original papers been frequent, copious, comprehensive in their scope, and full of illumining suggestions for the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The contributions from different missionaries, covering the ground of their own personal knowledge and experience, would alone suffice to give to this department of the work the prestige of undoubted authenticity, and a high and rare measure of interest. We are inclined to believe that the interests of theological science and Biblical learning can in our day be served in few ways more effectually, than by publications of the class to which the Bibliotheca Sacra belongs. We must, indeed, always welcome the advent into any department of sacred knowledge of one who can devote himself wholly to its labors; and from men of this class we have a right to expect revised texts, continuous commentaries, or systematic treatises. Yet it must have occurred to every person familiar with the theological literature of Germany, that the most eminent German divines and critics have in numerous instances distinguished themselves at least as much by their contributions to periodicals such as they have often edited, or by brief monographs printed independently, as by more weighty or voluminous productions; and that, on the other hand, these writers in their more elaborate works are constantly referring with honor to, and quoting from, precisely such articles. This method is adapted both to the writers and to the subjects. In our country, at least, with hardly an exception, the most learned theologians and Biblical scholars are busy men, often hard-working parish ministers or painstaking teachers, not infrequently remote from large libraries, and dependent mainly on their own books. A man thus situated cannot hope to prepare an edition of the New Testament, a critical commentary on the four Gospels, or a body of divinity, which shall contain so much of the products of his own peculiar genius, special study, or independent research, as to place it far in advance of the similar works already in existence. But he may, if first thoroughly grounded in theology and hermeneutics, so concentrate his powers, inquiries, and labors upon some one among the countless subjects open before him, as to present it in new aspects, to enrich it with a wealth of erudition never expended upon it before, and especially to illustrate it by those somewhat remote, yet none the less instructive relations and analogies, which do not suggest themselves to the more systematic writer, however profound. Indeed, it may often be the case that a man's habits of mind, mode of life, or line of study may make him the most suitable of all men to cast light on some one limited subject, while he could only "darken counsel" on other subjects even in the very same department. A case in point is afforded by Smith's treatise on the Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. This, if we leave out of our account that portion of the introductory and supplementary matter which has no especial relevancy to the subject in hand, is about long enough for a double article in the Bibliotheca Sacra. The author evinces no adaptation for critical studies in general, and his essay on the Sources of St. Luke's Writings is but a feeble reproduction of what had been often written. before. But on St. Paul's Voyage and Shipwreck he has expended a vast amount of study, classical, philological, mechanical, geographical; he has made surveys and explorations in person, has interrogated navigators in the Mediterranean, has heaped together illustrative and confirmatory facts and quotations from an immense range of reading, all with this end in view, and has, as it seems to us, left nothing more to be inquired on the subject. Now a commentator on the New Testament, or on the Acts of the Apostles alone, could not afford the time, and probably would be destitute of other requisite fitnesses and means, for such works as this. But its results have been freely used by Conybeare and Howson, by Hackett, and by others who have written since the book appeared, so as to attach to the narrative a reality and vividness such as it has not had till now. One chief use we would say with emphasis of a work like that under review, is to afford a medium of publication for these products of concentrated study on a single passage of Scripture, or point of controversy, or topic of critical or historical interest. A large part of the best talent and ripest learning of Christendom is every year condensed in such writings. A press ready to welcome them will often be a condition precedent to their preparation; and in the absence of such a press, and with the difficulty which besets independent publication in the mind of one of slender experience in type, many valuable papers of this sort would remain in manuscript to feed the paper-mills of the next generation. It must be borne in mind, too, that several of the departments that come within the scope of the theologian demand treatment in detail, rather than in systematic order. Theology itself is too vast to be circumscribed by any man-made syllabus or nomenclature. Its system lies unfolded in the Infinite Mind alone; its order is the order of the universe. But there are numberless individual topics connected with the nature of God and of man and their mutual relations in the past and future, many of which can be more fairly treated when discussed by themselves than when considered merely in their relation to some general "scheme." The Scriptures also, and those of either Testament, present too much ground to be covered (except very superficially), by any one historiographer or commentator, unless his professed aim be to make a thorough and careful compilation of pre-existing materials. This last is what our best general commentators have done to a greater |
