4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

Ps. civ.- Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

4 Who maketh his angels spirits;

his ministers a flaming fire.'

earth, and their words at the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which, as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoiceth, and as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the skirt of the heaven, and his circuit to the end of the same, nor is there anything hid from his great heat. O Lord, my God, thou art very great, who hast covered him with honour and with majesty: who clothest him with light, as with a gar ment: who stretchest him out the heavens, as it were a canopy: who layeth the beams of his chamber in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: he walketh on the wings of the wind: who maketh his angels, spirits; his ministers, a flaming fire. .-P. xi.

Here are the first six verses of the 19th Psalm, and the first four verses of the 104th, first dislocated' by being separated from the psalms to which they belong, and then violently placed together, simply on the ground, we presume, that they treat of the same subject, 'the glory of the heavenly system. Why, if this were true, it would not justify the unwarranted apposition, since it is clearly possible, and indeed probable, that the same subject might have been celebrated in different odes, by different writers, or even by the same. The allegation, however, is not true. Any one at a glance may see that the portion of the 104th Psalm does not in any way relate to the glory of the heavenly system,' and that it constitutes an utterly inharmonious and ill-judged appendage to the portion of the 19th. The other examples given of so-called 'recovered' odes are not a whit more satisfactory than this. And this is the manner in which the entire volume is composed! We may notice here, in passing, that, in the Book of the Prophets, p. 132, there is inserted a chapter out of the Revelation of St. John.' May we ask the author to explain in what part of the Old Testament he found this? or why, if he touched on the New Testament at all, he did not proceed further? We proceed to give our readers a sample or two of the new translations which our author has introduced. For clearness we shall resort to parallel columns.

'GENESIS X. 23, 24.

'And Lamech said unto his wives, Adali and Zillah, hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech; for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt: if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

'And Cain said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Cain, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my damage, and a young man to my hurt: if Cain be avenged sevenfold, truly Abel seventy and sevenfold.'

We have thus selected from the compass of a single page enough to show our readers how the matter stands. The author gives us new translations, not upon critical, but on purely conjectural grounds, and simply because he thinks they will make better sense. This principle is explicitly avowed in the following passage in the Introduction:

In illustration of this observation, I might refer to a passage in the first chapter of Isaiah; one which is probably as frequently quoted as any other in the whole Bible: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Nor does Lowth ever once appear to have been struck with this most patent incongruity, but very gravely proceeds to enlarge himself upon the properties of crimson and of Tyrian dye. In the agonies of remorse, a man might reproach himself, or another might reproach him, with the blackness, the filthiness of his depravity; but for either to talk of the gaudiness, of red sins or of white sins, were, to the last degree, absurd and preposterous. From the "letter" I appeal to the spirit; from the text to the context: for "sins," we should read hands!'-P. x.

Certainly, if an appeal from the letter to the spirit after this fashion is to be allowed, all necessity for critical investigation is at an end, and our Bibles will for ever be open to change and contradiction, according to the temper of the 'spirit' which may be brought to the interpretation of them.

Of the objection to which his repudiation of the Hebrew text exposes him the author is not wholly unmindful, and we will present to the reader the manner in which he both states and answers it:

To this it will be urged-But the Bible, in its present distribution and rendering (some few inconsiderable passages excepted), is in every way conformable to the earliest and existing manuscripts in the Greek, in the Hebrew, in the Syriac, in the Arabic, in the Coptic, in the Chaldee; and hence it cannot but be admitted that the Authorized Version is and must be, to all intents and purposes, a faithful transcript of the original Old Testament Scriptures.'-P. xxi.

To this, after an allegory which, to our minds, has no relevancy, he replies in substance :

'A work such as the Hebrew Bible must be examined by the light of internal, for it will admit of no other evidence, and by that evidence alone must its every pretension be weighed, established, or disallowed.'-P. xxi.

Here a principle is laid down, which, if it could be substantiated, would clearly throw the Old Testament Scriptures into the hands of speculators and dreamers of every school, not excepting even the wildest. There is a vast difference, however, between assertion and proof, and we can only suppose that the author is either unacquainted with, or has been unmindful of, the evidence by which the history of

the canon of the Old Testament is to be traced. The subject is too large and complex to be satisfactorily treated here, but a good compendium is readily accessible in Kitto's Biblical Cyclopædia, under the article Canon.

In the assumed absence of all external evidence, our author forms a theory of the Old Testament Scriptures not very closely in harmony, we think, with the internal evidence. The last sentence in the book thus presents it to us :

In one word, the Old Testament Scriptures (roundly speaking) would appear to me to be a literature, unique and irrecoverable in its character; to have been exclusively begotten of, and peculiar to, one transient phase of our humanity, and that phase to have passed in the "latter days" of Rome imperial. And in this regard, perhaps, no where to be paralleled save of the dramatic writings of the Elizabethan age. Let but the same vicissitudes and lapse of time sweep o'er that too, no less gorgeous and inspired age, and, think you, will not the day come also, when will be seen, side by side with our immortal Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, the apocryphal Rowes, Lees, Southerns; and Otway, as Malachi, accounted the last of the prophets?'-P. 466.

This compact expression of the author's biblical theory contains several particulars not unworthy of more distinct notice.

First, the Old Testament Scriptures are a literature; secondly, they are a dramatic' literature; thirdly, they have been exclusively begotten of, and peculiar to, one transient phase of our humanity; fourthly, they belong to the latter days of Rome imperial;' fifthly, they may be paralleled with the dramatic writings of the Elizabethan age; and sixthly, they are in no other sense inspired than are the writings of Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson.'

And does the author really believe all this? Yes, gentle reader, this is his creed, at least, the creed which he professes. The true inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures he, of course, utterly denies; he denies also their historical character. They are merely a literature, and a dramatic literature; they are also a comparatively modern dramatic literature. Thus, he says,

I think that it were very, very difficult to establish that any portions of the Old Testament Scriptures are older than, if so old as, the first or second century of the Christian era; or that the mass of these writings had, in their integrity, any relation whatsoever, direct or indirect, to the Hebrew polity or race. As a whole, they may safely be pronounced to be the least Eastern, and the most nervous and Saxon literature now extant. They would appear to me to be pre-eminently of Latin, or, rather, of Latin-Greek descent; and one moment's consideration will satisfy any impartial man that the burden of these writings is perpetually rolling upon those two terrible judgments, which were for ever dangling over the "latter days' of ancient Rome-democracy and the Northmen.'-P. 457.

And in order to set forth these two 'terrible judgments,' Adam and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon, cum multis aliis, are made the subjects of allegorical tales, as 'personifications of humanity.' We must give our readers a few specimens of these.

On the trial of our first parents in the garden of Eden he thus writes:

The allegory, or rather the allegorical fragment, which we are here considering (for some two or three would appear to have been confounded together) is figurative of the assumption of the use of Reason; of which the dawning evidence was an attempt to distinguish between "good" and "evil." From which epoch is dated what is commonly called, The Fall of Man that is to say, the time when Man became "Man" in the sublimest sense of the term, Humanity; ceasing to inherit the kingdom of eternal life, tenanted, to this hour, of the Bedouin and the brute: eternal life simply meaning the natural state of unreclaimed mortality, which alone is eternal, or invariable in its character and transmission,'-P. 450,

And thus on the history of Jacob :—

The history of Jacob would appear to embrace one whole cycle of humanity, or, the life of the “plain man." Civilization is traced from its first struggles in the womb, through the elder alarms, duplicities, and wanderings of the days of our pilgrimage, to our reconciliation and compromise with Esau in the "latter days," and our re-entry to the land in which our fathers were a stranger.'-P. 451.

On that passage in the sixth chapter of Genesis, where, announcing the deluge, the Lord says, 'I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth,' we have the following annotation :

In a sublimer sense, Man would here seem to be employed as the personification of all animated nature, and in the sense of "all flesh." This passage, with another which will presently be encountered, "all flesh, wherein is the breath of life," would tend somewhat to abate the more extravagant pretensions of our species, not only as regards particularity of origin, but exclusiveness of accountability. Man is far from being the only animal which has wandered, or apostatized from the original simplicity or savageness of his condition. And to the extent to which these animals, as the horse, the dog, the cow, may be said to have lent themselves to the pressure from without, so far may they safely be conceived alike to be answerable, for such, their apostasy.'—P. 451,

The author commences his notes on the book of the Prophets' in the following manner :

In the classification of Hebrew prophecy, I found two courses open to adoption. It was practicable either to have followed a geographic or a specific distribution. For instance, all those predictions which relate to Tyre could have been classed under the head of " Tyre;" similarly, those which relate to Egypt, Babylon, Zion, &c., could alike have been collected under their respective heads. Or, again, where the specific character of gratulation, or denunciation was, to all intents and purposes, the same, it were possible to collect all such predictions together; be the recipient Egypt, Babylon, Tyre, or any other state. This latter course has appeared to me to be the more judicious. In so doing, if these writings are to be literally and historically interpreted, I have erred: if, on the contrary, the names of these several states are but simply allegorical substitutions (as is the "Babylon" of the Revelations for the empire of Imperial Rome), and to which the key is now in a great measure lost, then have I well done.'-P. 455.

And, accordingly, he tells us, that the very elaborate "burdens" of Egypt, Babylon, and Tyre, severally represent the genii of refinement, feudalism, and commerce,' p. 455. Thus, the Bible is one gigantic romance, or rather a series of philosophical romances, more or less founded on fact.'

It would have been but reasonable, certainly, before such a sweeping and important conclusion was to be arrived at by the reader, to have

given him some view of the nature and force of the internal evidence by which it may be sustained. No such attempt, however, has the author made. He treats us with a portion merely, and seems to think what, we suspect, he will scarcely find true, that thinking men will take the ipse dixit of a writer who does not even avow his name, as a sufficient basis for one of the most baseless and improbable speculations ever broached to the world. Assuredly there is nothing on the face of the Old Testament Scriptures to warrant such a conception of them. They at least profess to be bond fide historical books; and it is infinitely more natural and easy to take them as what they seem, than wantonly to imagine so vast a system of artifice and fraud as must destroy even the moral character of the writers.

In one instance, indeed, the author stands evidently self-condemned. In speaking of the prophetic books, he says, 'If these writings are to be literally and historically interpreted, I have erred.' Why, what does he himself do but literally and historically interpret' them, when he says, the burden of these writings is perpetually rolling upon those two terrible judgments, which were for ever dangling over the 'latter days' of ancient Rome-democracy and the Northmen? We cannot see how this interpretation of Old Testament prophecy differs in principle from the application of it literally and historically' made to Egypt, Babylon, and Tyre. By his own showing, therefore, it is plain that the author has erred,' and we cannot doubt that those who think' (to use his own phrase) will make the proper use of his error.

In one point, indeed, his conjectural ingenuity has been sufficiently fortunate, namely, in assigning the two terrible judgments of democracy and the Northmen' (we say nothing of the good taste of representing them as 'for ever dangling over the latter times of the Roman empire') as objects of prophetical reference. It is the general belief that the irruptions of the northern nations on the Roman territory, and the French revolution of 1792, were contemplated by the Hebrew seers, although this is a very meagre and inadequate account of the scope of their visions. Sooth to say, however, our author scarcely seems to have made up his mind on this subject, for, in another passage, these two judgments are advanced to three :—

In the contemplation of the Hebrew Scriptures, three several epochs should ever be present to the philosophic eye-1793; the early settlement of the New England States; and the incursions of the Northmen upon ancient Rome. There is scarcely a catastrophe, or combination of catastrophes, predicted in the sacred volume, which is not reducible to one or more of these three heads.'-P. 452.

In this passage we have not only the author's 'scheme of prophecy' flagrantly violated by the addition of a third event to the two previously specified, but entirely broken up by the addition of an event entirely out of keeping with the others. Grave as we, in common with all other members of the critical profession, are, we can scarcely repress a smile at the mention of the early settlement of the New England States' in this connexion. Until now we did not know