revelation from God, or from the Devil. If his father tells a child something which seems to him monstrous, faith requires him to submit his own judgment, because he knows his father's person, and is sure, therefore, that his father tells it him. But we cannot thus know God, and can only recognise His voice by the words spoken being in agreement with our idea of His moral nature."ii. 221.

All these free and natural movements of his mind on questions the most momentous, are concurrent with a manifest increase in the depth and loftiness of his religious character; a coincidence perfectly intelligible to those who appreciate, as he did,

".... the great philosophical and Christian truth, which seems to me the very truth of truths, that Christian unity, and the perfection of Christ's Church, are independent of theological articles of opinion; consisting in a certain moral state, and moral and religious affections, which have existed in good Christians of all ages and all communions, along with an infinitely varying proportion of truth and error."-i. 359.

The supremacy of the moral nature in Arnold was so absolute, as to determine all his tastes exclusively towards objects of real and of human interest. He could never construct a world for himself, of ideas, of images, of things; he must live among persons. Metaphysics, Art, Science, had no attractions for him. If he praises Plato, it is the Phædo that extorts his admiration, and that chiefly for the language. (i. 391.) He does not care for Florence, (i. 304.) and throughout his continental journeys never mentions even a picture or a statue. He could teach the first six books of Euclid! (ii. 206) and rather than have physical science the principal thing in his son's mind, he "would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament." (ii. 37.) And where human knowledge occupies the transition territory from things to persons, viz. in Natural History, or the study of living things, he was deterred from entering by the uprising of imperfect moral sympathies, which could neither be laid asleep nor satisfied: "the whole subject," he said, "of the brute creation is to me one of such painful mystery that I dare not approach it."-ii. 348.

We must tear ourselves away from this delightful companionship with one whose image will henceforth stand in one of the most sacred niches of our memory. His political opinions, amply discussed in Reviews of a different character, we cannot notice. They were in the spirit with all the expressions of his mind: the joint results of a clear-sighted, and unconquerable sense of justice, and a profound historical wisdom, that with that moral eye fully open, had read the lives of nations, and connected their punishments with their sins. His occasional faults, his vehement expression of opinion, his severe condemnation of individuals not fairly obnoxious to personal reproach, we feel no desire to draw forth for censure. These things may well pass, without a word, in such a man. It is hard enough to speak with just and wise appreciation of what is noble and great in one to whom we look up through so immeasurable a distance; and one ought in truth to be like him, to show him as he is. Statuere qui sit sapiens vel maxime videtur esse sapientis.

ART. VII.—NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

I. Notes and Comments on Passages of Scripture. By John Kentish. London: Chapman, Newgate Street; and Mardon, Farringdon Street. Birmingham: Belcher and Son. 1844. pp. 447.

In this volume an excellent and venerable Minister has gathered the fruits of a long and patient study of the Scriptures, and presented them in the closing years of his life to the public. They consist of detached comments on various passages of the Old and New Testaments, communicated at first without any plan or mutual connection to the pages of different periodicals, chiefly the Monthly Repository and the Christian Reformer, and now collected, revised, and arranged in the order of the several books of Scripture to which they refer.

Of his principles of interpretation, the author says in his Preface-" My aim has been, in the first instance, to ascertain what the original text is, and to alter nothing on conjecture; and then to explain passages by means of the subject and connection, and of parallel or kindred texts."

This statement will convey an idea of the design and character of the work. It is marked throughout by the cautious judgment, the accurate knowledge, the good taste and various literature, and the modest, candid, and liberal spirit, which have procured for its author, through a protracted course of eminent usefulness in the service of truth and virtue, the high esteem and confidence of his contemporaries, and the affectionate veneration of many younger men. His volume discovers a minute acquaintance with the criticism and interpretation of the Scriptures, a profound and discriminating admiration of their contents, and a firm belief in the "special divine origin" of Judaism and Christianity.

If in any thing respecting it we experience a deficiency, it relates rather to the conception of the work, than to the mode of its execution-thoughtful and religious minds at

the present time requiring less perhaps the elucidation of particular passages, than the exhibition of broad and general views, which bring out the great idea of Christianity, and assign it its true place and value in the plans of an universal Providence. In this respect the peculiar learning of the work carries us back to an earlier period, and reminds us of the studies and modes of thought, which distinguished the English divines of the old Presbyterian school.

The work must not, however, be tried by a standard which, from its very structure and design, it obviously disowns. For its accuracy, its solidity, its calm and wellweighed judgments, its total freedom from pretension and dogmatism, it deserves to be studied as a model by younger divines. The copious indexes with which it is furnished supply a ready means of reference. To the theological student it will often yield most valuable aid; and we heartily join in the pious wish of its author, that it may tend to promote among the ministers and laity of that denomination in which it will immediately circulate, a juster acquaintance with the Scriptures.

II. Anastasis, or the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, rationally and scripturally considered. By George Bush, Professor of Hebrew, New York, City University. London: Wiley and Putman. 1845.

This is an extraordinary book, not so much for the attention which it has excited, or for its deciding adversely to the common doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as for the principles of Biblical interpretation which it implies and espouses. The work, in some sort, makes an epoch in theology. A verbal and dogmatic orthodoxy is here found oldly, if not consciously, undermining its own ground. Guided by the lights of modern science, the author argues against and denies the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which is so old a tenet in the Christian Church, as to form an article in what is termed the Apostles' Creed.

"We have endeavoured to show that the physiological fact of the constant change which our bodies are undergoing is irreconcileably at war with the tenet of the resurrection of our bodies.

Now of this fact of physiology, we do not hesitate to declare ourselves absolutely certain [the italics are the author's]. Can we then be absolutely certain that we have attained the true mind of the Spirit, when we ascribe to it a sense which virtually nullifies the previous certainty ?"-P. 391.

Here then we have reason and science brought into collision with the most generally-received standard of the Christian faith, by one who has and wishes to retain the reputation of Orthodoxy. Not only "the Apostles' Creed," however, but Scripture, in what has been all but the universally received exposition of its meaning, is unwaveringly set aside, and a new interpretation substituted, which is held to be in accordance with modern knowledge. Nor does Dr. Bush do this covertly or stealthily. He is wise enough to see the nature of the theological position in which he thus places himself, and honest enough to own, as well as to defend it. An introductory essay maintains with more vigour than taste the general thesis that "the knowledge of revelation is progressive." Had we space, we should be inclined to transfer this piece entire to our pages; we must be content with one extract:

"The truth is, as the human mind is constituted, it is utterly impossible to refrain from asking the questions to which we have referred, and which bear upon the apparent conflict between the revelations of Scripture and the revelations of science. If, for instance, the obvious literal and grammatical sense of the sacred record leads me to believe that the material globe, with the various orders of its inhabitants, was first spoken into existence six thousand years ago, and Geology, at the same time, brings to my mind absolute demonstrations which I cannot possibly resist without doing violence to the fundamental laws of belief, that it has existed thousands and myriads of years before that time, what am I to think? I am brought to a stand at once. I must pause and ponder on this discrepancy. I must cast about for some adequate mode of harmonising these various views. What will it avail to tell me, when I am assured to the contrary, that as Geology is merely in its infancy, its asserted results are not to be depended upon, and that it is altogether too early to build such sweeping conclusions upon such a slender induction of facts? I know that this is what no one will affirm who is acquainted with the facts."P. 26.

This volume has occasioned great excitement in the