tive ignorance of the questions of modern | are less remarkable in themselves than in criticism, and even with a fear lest "his own their union, and throughout the whole work inquiries should degenerate into a merely there breathes an admirable humility. There critical or scholastic dissertation;" but in is no parade of learning, no distracting footwhich the devout author ranges over the notes, no allusions for the erudite alone. It periods of our Lord's life with the view of is an unencumbered, unartificial work. We introducing into his work "something of the are presented with the products and not depth and devotional thought of ancient in- with the processes of reasoning; with the terpretation." It is a work based largely results of scholarship without the display of on the ancient catenas, especially on the the critical knowledge on which they are aurea catena of Aquinas. But it is curious based. Dr. Hanna takes, as we have said, to note that the author began with the last all the facts supplied by the four evangelists, day of the passion (issuing a tentative vol- and believing that each has its own signifiume), and proceeded. thence to the rest of cance, weaves the whole into a connected the life, as Dr. Hanna has done. The titles thread of narrative. Many surface disof his volumes are, The Nativity, The Minis- crepancies are thus harmonized, and the contry, (2 vols.), The Holy Week, The Passion, secutiveness of the life, with its silently inThe Resurrection. creasing purpose, is disclosed with a singular freshness. In addition, unsuspected harmonies reveal themselves, and evidence to which the harmonist who starts with the idea that the record is full of flaws which require the correction of modern criticism is blind, becomes apparent. It is true that Dr. Hanna relies less on critical analysis in his expositions than on that loving insight which sees into the heart of questions when verbal exegesis stands still at the door. He deals much more fully with the events themselves than with the records or channel by which they come down to us. His pre-eminent aim is to ascertain the inner character of the agents in the scenes, and especially of the central Character in the narrative.

In the remarkable anonymous work titled Ecce Homo we have one of the ablest and most reverent attempts to estimate the meaning of our Lord's life, and his influence in the world. But as it is rather a treatise on Christian Ethics than a biographic study of the sacred character, we abstain from further reference to it.

Adequately to write the Life of our Lord, so as to bring out the wealth which lies half concealed and half revealed in the record of the evangelists, the biographer would require to possess such a combination of separate excellences that we can never expect to find the task executed to perfection. If it be true, as some one has said, that "it would require a second Christ to comprehend the first," it would no less require a divine biographer adequately to record a divine life. Knowledge of the philosophy of human nature, poetic insight into the physical universe and into human life, a wide know ledge of men, of the course of history, aud of the forces that swayed the world prior to the Christian era, familiarity with antiquarian lore, a topographical knowledge of Palestine, the power of keen analysis and of large constructiveness, with personal reverence and devoutness of heart, are all prerequisites to the task. These are not combined in any single individual. It is therefore vain to look for a realized ideal of biography that shall surpass the story of the four evangelists.

The latest complete effort to reproduce the scenes of that distant age, and to reset them in the framework of the nineteenth century, now lies before us. And while most of the "Lives" written recently excel this of Dr. Hanna in some one respect, it may be doubted if any of them presents such a combination of excellences. The historical, analytical, literary, topographical, and devotional features of these six volumes

Varied psychological insight reveals itself in all his analyses of character, especially in the account given of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Thomas. From incidental phases of thought and feeling a large significance is developed. The character of the betrayer, and the motives which led Judas to the commission of the crime with which his name is associated; the "inner workings of conscience and of humanity" in Pilate; the differences between St. Peter and St. John; the explanation of the denial by the former, and of the meaning of the look which led to his repentance; the conflicting elements in the soul of St. Thomas, are all admirably rendered. The dramatic portraiture is vivid, yet most delicate: photographic, as we have said, in the sharpness of the outlines, yet with coloured light and shade preserved, and with many of the phases of individuality suggested rather than portrayed; while the recital of the events of our Lord's life, so uncontroversial and undogmatic, so reverent and careful, leads at every stage to the adoration of faith. The classic grace with which the style of these volumes flows on may prevent many from perceiving the real depth of the stream, how clear the waters

are, and how the heavens are reflected in them. The pervading tone is that of reverential thoughtfulness and repose. We think that Dr. Hanna's descriptions of place excel those of any other writer, with the exception of Dean Stanley, in a quiet picturesque ness, in the subdued light of local colouring with which he has invested the localities he describes. By a few vivid touches he carries us into the very heart of the scene. We have the advantage of the writer's personal visit to the localities,- -a fact never obtruded, but which gives a steady background of reality and of vividness to all his descriptions. We have no highly-coloured figure-painting, but an exquisite felicity, a directness and pictorial precision which leave little to be desired.

The difference between their interpretations
is wide enough, but are we wrong in ascri-
bing the failure of the latter to his preposses-
sion against the supernatural, so that "his
eye saw only what it brought with it the
power of seeing"?

As a specimen of picturesque beauty in
Dr. Hanna's narrative, we may select the
description of the source of the Jordan at
Cæsarea-Philippi (Galilean Ministry, p.
317); and for instances in which the visit
of the author to the places he has described
has enabled him almost to photograph the
scene, we may refer to his account of Jacob's
Well, of the road from Bethany to Jeru-
salem past the hamlet of Bethphage, of the
shores of the Lake of Tiberias, and his
identification of Wady Fik as the ancient
Gadara.

But the description of Nature is subordi

Life, and these incidents are again subservi-
ent to the development of character. The
outward invariably yields to the in-
ward, the physical to the moral and spiri-
tual. Every other interest revolves around
the Sacred Biography itself. The figures of
the disciples move around their Master, and
serve as a background of contrast to him;
while all the minor characters, Jewish,
Greek, Roman, Syro phoenician, are sketched
by a delicate pencil and with singular tact.
So that from a perusal of these volumes we
believe that the sympathetic reader will
carry away a more distinct image of the
character and life of Christ, and his relation
to his contemporaries, than he can gain from.
the more brilliant page of Pressensé, or the
more elaborate discussions of Neander.

In their descriptions of Nature, and its possible influence on our Lord, the difference between Renan and Dr. Hanna is note-nated to a recital of the main incidents of the worthy. According to the former, "the aspect of Nature was "the whole education of Jesus." The soft beauty of Galilean lakes and meads, woods and hills, created a correspondingly soft beauty in the soul of the tender prophet of Nazareth; and thus the whole history of his earlier years is "one delightful pastoral." To the deeper insight of our author, Nature's influence over Christ was only inspiring and suggestive. It supplied illustrations of the laws of his kingdom for the disciples, and the framework of parables for the people. Dr. Hanna does not presume to indicate the thoughts which the thirty years' residence in Nazareth may have quickened, but the place, "so retired, so rich in natural beauty, with glimpses of the wide world around for the morning or evening hours," where he had "watched how the lilies grew, and saw how their Creator clothed them, had noticed how the smallest of seeds grew into the tallest of herbs; where outside the house he had seen two women grinding at one mill, inside, a woman hiding the leaven in the dough; where in the marketplace he had seen the five sparrows sold for two farthings; where the sleepwalks of the hills and the vineyards of the valleys had taught him what were the offices of the good shepherd and of the careful vinedresser-all those observations of thirty years were treasured up, to be drawn upon in due time, and turned into the lessons by which the world was to be taught wisdom."

It is instructive to note the difference between these two travellers, who have both gone over the same ground, and traced the footsteps of Jesus so far as they can be now identified, the one with a faith in the supernatural, and the other without it,--both accurate observers and exquisite narrators.

In the evangelical narratives there are frequent breaks in the continuity of the story, to fill up which by wise inference and not by rash conjecture is one end of historical study. These gaps are due not merely to the silence of the narrators, and the consequent want of connecting links, but to our ignorance of the motives which led to this or that course of action, and of the feelings with which our Lord's acts were accompanied. Much of what we may call the outward drapery of the scenes of the ministry is altogether omitted by the evangelists; and this, when supplied by a discreet interpreter, sheds peculiar light upon the incidents themselves. Or again, when several possible explanations of an event may be given, it is the part of the interpreter to choose the most likely, and, by a wise selection, it is singular how much light may be cast upon the narrative, while all trace of a hiatus between the events disappears. By thus clothing a scene with its unrecorded

even see that to change its order would be to mutilate its parts, to reverse its sequences would be to mar its perfection.

moral drapery, much apparent harshness and receive his teaching. Enigmatic gleams of arbitrariness vanish. For example, in the truth are dropped, which become intelligible case of our Lord's cursing the barren fig-tree, only in the light of the sequel. This charwhen we see that he was "enacting a par- acteristic is one in which the life of Jesus able," selecting a type of moral barrenness, differs from all other lives. There was and shadowing forth its doom, the very act of no immaturity of plan or act, and no tardy destruction becomes morally beautiful. We development: nothing came too soon, nothmay instance a few of these suggestions ing too late. The life advanced "without which occur in Dr. Hanna's volumes. The haste, yet without rest." Thus forming explanation of the sigh which escaped from a grand and growing unity, it suggests, in our Lord's lips before he cured the deaf and its very uniqueness, that its subject himself dumb man at Bethsaida (Galilean Ministry," saw the end from the beginning." We can pp. 307-8); the explanation of the vernacular Aramaic word "Ephphatha" then used in the district of Decapolis, or the use of the Hebrew phrase "Talitha-cumi" to the dead maiden in Jairus's Hebrew-speaking household; the reasons suggested for our Lord's visiting at a particular time the northern district of Cæsarea-Philippi, where he was "surrounded by the emblems of various faiths and worships;" or the analysis of the motives which led the Greeks in Jerusalem to wish to see Jesus, the act of cleansing the Temple having impressed them (Passion Week, p. 144); or the reasons why Galilee was selected as "the chosen trysting-place" for the appearances of the risen Lord with his disciples (Forty Days, pp. 109 11). In reference to all the manifold breaks in the narrative we may say what Dr. Hanna says of one set of them,

"We cannot doubt that if all the minor and connecting links were in our hands, we should be able to explain what now seems to be obscure, to harmonize what now seems to be conflicting. But in the absence of such knowledge we must be content to take what each writer tells us, and regard it as the broken fragment of a whole, all the parts of which are not in our hands, so that we can put them

connectedly together."-(Forty Days, PP

25-6.)

In connexion with that inexhaustible fulness which Dr. Hanna most happily and sometimes unconsciously signalizes in our Lord, his lectures are eminently suggestive of new phases and unexhausted processes of thought. They raise a multitude of open questions at which they merely hint, and the curtain falls upon them, leaving them unsolved. Ilence their catholicity. They proclaim one great Faith throughout, but they refuse to dogmatize upon details. It is difficult for a man with strong convictions which he holds firmly to be catholic towards those who differ from him; while it is easy for one who sits apart holding no form of creed to be blandly tolerant of all. But when we find catholicity in alliance with a strong faith, the union is as admirable as it

is rare.

The most distinctive feature of these volumes remains to be noticed. It is the frequency with which the soundings of moral evidence are taken in the simplest manner. The author is not writing a formal apologia, but he has indirectly written one.

Thus in one of the earliest chapters, on the Nativity, our attention is turned to that strange timing of events that then took Another advantage of such a study of the place." Dr. Hanna shrinks from the atLife of Jesus as this, is its unfolding of the tempt to penetrate within the veil which exquisite sequences both in the acts and teach hides from us the secret things of God; but ing of our Lord, and in the progressive he finds it possible to detect some natural testimony of others to his claim, those and obvious benefits which have attended singular "ties of thought" and of incident, the coming of the Saviour at the particular to which Dr. Hanna so often refers, the period when it happened." It has enhanced orderliness of the development of his plan, the number and force of the evidences for and the harmonious evolution of his whole his mission. For had Christ appeared at an work towards the world. The very key to earlier age, there would have been no room the interpretation of one scene is often to or scope for prophecy; and the record of be found in its sequence or connexion with his miracles coming down to us from a time another. The continuity of the story is when contemporary history was in the main marvellous, and when a blank occurs which legendary, would have been more open to cannot be filled up, a reason for the hiatus question than it can possibly be when it can usually be found. Incident leads on to proceeds from a literary age, and reaches us incident, disclosure to disclosure. Testimony" through the same channel, and with the is added to testimony. Christ himself same vouchers for its authenticity, as a teaches only as the disciples are able to large portion of ancient history." Further,

M. Renan with a direct and peremptory | the unique sense in which Jesus claimed it, negative. Neander had already admirably and in which his accusers knew that he replied to the attempt of De Wette and claimed it, it must have been the very Paulus, to prove a change of purpose in our height of blasphemy in him. No passing Lord's life; and the remarks of Dr. Hanna, delusion could lessen the sin of such a with the criticism of Pressensé, are a suffi- reiterated assertion by one of sane mind, cient reply to Renan. were it false.