From the Spectator, THE LIBRARY MAP OF AFRICA. seriously affect the geography of the centre; but we suppose that the publishers have weighed the pros and cons, and come to the conclusion that the amount of information that has been positively acquired since the publication of the last African maps deserved to be recorded, and that the additions and modifications that the future has supposing that there may be several lakes in this quarter, and Captain Speke had only native testimony to rely upon for by far Conducted by A. Keith Johnstone, F.R.S. the greater portion of his account. Again, E., &c. (Stanford.)— This grand map is the names of the explorers and dates are fairly entitled to be reckoned amongst the frequently placed by the side of the routes; golden joys that our old friend Pistol asso- but this is not always done, and we think ciated with Africa. We shall indulge a that it would be more satisfactory if we little in criticism presently, but for the mo- knew on what authority a good many of the ment we are inclined to give full vent to tracks across the desert are given. The our enthusiasm, and to express nothing but names of places, too, in remote regions are our admiring appreciation of the boldness given with a fulness that looks suspicious, of conception, the beauty of execution, and and perhaps more confidence would have the unsparingness of labour that mark this been felt if less pretension to knowledge great production. We are grateful for had been asserted. Of course, Dr. Livingthe enjoyment we have received from it; stone's present journey in search of the stretched at full length upon the goodly great watershed may have results that will canvas, we have had the double pleasure of recalling the interesting labours of the past, and anticipating, as we looked upon the vast extent of still unexplored country, the perhaps more interesting revelations of the future. The constructor has collected information from every quarter with indefatigable industry; he seems to have availed himself of all the reliable sources of informa- in store will present no difficulty in the way tion, and gives the full benefit of the discoveries to the Germans Barth and Rholf in the north, as well of those of our own countrymen in the centre and the south. And here we may as well come to the objections that we have to make; they are not very serious, and are certainly not intended to weigh against the merits of the work. We think that sufficient distinction has not been always drawn between facts and conjectures, and that boundaries are laid down sometimes that may have to be reconsidered. For instance, the shape of the Victoria N'yanza Lake is taken for granted on Speke's authority, whereas Captain Burton has given some excellent reasons for of incorporation. We might go on to say something about the colouring. Mr. Johnstone has acquiesced in certain ethnological theories that have not yet met with universal acceptance. But this is a small matter, and does not really affect the utility of the map. Students will trace the paths of modern exploration without troubling themselves with the thought whether they agree with the constructor on the distinction be tween the black and red races, and we have no doubt that the world at large will thoroughly appreciate the enterprise that has presented it with this magnificent result. PROFESSOR SEELEY, who is now said to be the author of "Ecce Homo," is a son of Mr. Seeley, the well-known Evangelical publisher, and was ecated at the City of London School, under Dr. Mortimer. Having proceeded to Cambridge, and entered at Christ's College, he took his degree in 1857, when he was Senior Classic, 30th Senior Optime, and first Chancellor's Medalist. He is Professor of Latin in University College, London. Reader. From the Quarterly Review. 1. Das Leben Jesu für das Deutsche Volk, 4. Das Bild Christi. By J. F. von Ooster- 5. Der Geschichtliche Christus. By Theodor Keim. Zurich, 1865. 6. Jesus Christ, son Temps, sa Vie, son Euvre. By E. de Pressensè. Paris, 1866. 7. Untersuchungen über die Evangelische Geschichte, u. s. w. By C. Weizsäcker. Gotha, 1864. 8. Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? By Constantin Tischendorf. Leipzig, 1865. 9. Der Ursprung unseren Evangelien, u. s. w. By Dr. Gustav Volkmar. Zurich, 1866. to one whose thoughts are hard, clear, chilling, and crushing as the iceberg) of the new school of Hegel, having demolished the grounds on which these facts used to rest, will show us in the name of science the new grounds on which they are henceforth to repose. What reasoning, what fierce denunciation, what wild wailing this book drew forth from astonished Christendom need not now be recalled. The man who, after playing bowls with spectres in the Catskill mountains, fell asleep, and awoke in the next generation, found, according to Irving's charming story, a state of matters in his native village not very flattering to his pride, or comforting to his affections. Dr. Strauss has just performed a similar feat, after thirty years of slumber; and in his case, too, the results are not adequate to his wishes. His scientific principles, whatever they are, ought by this time to have produced settled results. This is the property, and therefore the test, of all THIRTY years ago the Life of Jesus' of true science, that whatever difficulties it Strauss startled the world like a clap of may contend with at first, it conquers them thunder out of a calm sky. Theology has by its power of grouping facts already known, never since ceased to feel that shock. No of explaining new ones that occur, and of German writer, of whatever school, has been ordering and arranging ideas. Aristotle able to banish the recollection of it from his was right when he said that all science must pages. It was a book that marked an be capable of being taught. After thirty epoch; not, indeed, in the same sense as the years then, there should be, if the princiSumma' of Aquinas, or the Organon' of ples are true, something like a concord of Bacon, for these constructed, whilst that testimony from all the facts since examined, strove only to destroy. These were positive, something like an agreement among theoloand succeeding thinkers were obliged to gians upon some settled principles, if not take them up and carry on the thoughts those of Strauss, then those to which subsethey presented. The work of Strauss was quent verification has brought his principles negative: no wish to retain anything weak-down. This, however, is by no means what ened the arm that wielded the destroying the irrefragable Doctor finds; and the new hammer; no mistrust as to what the world Life of Jesus' surveys the state of things might be without Christianity, prevented with no great approbation. On this head him from doing his very utmost towards its we will allow the author to speak for himdestruction. In the name of criticism he self, compressing his critical survey a good declared that the Gospels were almost val- deal, and pharaphrasing it, but allowing him ueless as historical materials; in the name to distribute his praise and blame, of science he pronounced that miracles were impossible; in the name of the highest philosophy he professed to show the process by which the idea of such a character as that of Jesus Christ might be evolved out of the minds of a people, if but a few historical elements were given them. The Life of Jesus,' considered as a mine sprung under the ancient theology for the purpose of destroying it utterly, is a most remarkable production. But it claims a different rank from this. It is a work of science and philosophy. Christianity and the character of its author are facts; and this earnest disciple (ardent we must not apply The work we published thirty years ago, comparable in its way to "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason," was intended to demolish all old prejudices of theology, and to substitute pure science for the same. And now after thirty years, in a manner permitted to few, we revisit the field of discovery, to take account of the new scientific method in its results. Candour compels us to own that they are not entirely to our satisfaction. Our predecessors, Paulus, Hase, ing the Gospels as historical authorities; all of and Schleiermacher, had all persisted in treatwhich we, by good rights, made an end of. Every single narrative of the Evangelists we put into the crucible of our criticism; and how little of them we reported to be pure gold after our assay is known to mankind. Yet (will mankind believe it?) a Neander springs up after us, with his three mottoes from Athanasius, and Pascal, and Plato, with these invocations to all the good geniuses of philosophy and theology to help him in his strait, and with a certain tincture of philosophic education of a sort, with some training even in historical criticism, and concocts a quite "pitiable" book, in which he adheres to the miraculous in some degree, and considers all the Gospels inspired. Even Gfrörer, who ought to have known better, admits some of the miracles, in order, as we charitably suppose, to astonish the critics a little, and to create a sensation when he was " perorating after dinner As for Meyer, who believes in all throw himself into the position of the author he is expounding, at the expense of his own critical faculty. Of Ebrard, who wrote against us, we must say that his "restoration of orthodoxy really amounts to impudence;" the man actually treats the Evangelists as trustworthy historians. Weisse was a man of another sort, the first, indeed, who accorded to our book a sensible examination. Weisse went with our arguments against St. John; even mended them. But then he had a hankering after St. Mark, and neglected our great principle of explaining the miracles as reminiscences of the Old Testament; cannot wholly divest himself of miracles; in short, about, Weisse "there is nothing thoroughgoing; sound critical principles are crossed by the idiosyncrasies of a dilettante," and his work has now no more interest for us than that of curiosity. Of Ewald, we will say that there is a great deal of rhetoric and of unction, and that his mode of treatment shows the extremities to which theology is reduced, endeavouring by a cloud of words to disguise and conceal the inevitable. Lately two books of another stamp have appeared, the little tract of Keim, and the work of Renan. Keim lays down the principle that the life of Jesus should be interpreted by the laws of history and of psychology; but the sanguine man imagines that all theology will adopt his principle, which he does not thoroughly follow out even for himself; and we lose patience with him when he talks to us of the apostolic origin and the unity of the Gospel of St. Matthew; nor can he disentangle himself from miracles. Upon the whole, while he believes he has satisfied the demands of science, he is plunged in the illusions of theology. Renan, again, is misguided enough to retain the narrative portions of St. John, being, in fact, ignorant of the German works on this subject that have not been translated into French. Schenkel had well nigh escaped us, having published his "Charakterbild Jesu" after this survey of ours; but we descend upon him in a separate book, and we tell him, rather tartly perhaps, that in endeavouring to reconcile science and theology, he will please neither of them; that his science is an attempt to serve theology for which the. the miracles, it is laudable no doubt thus to ology will not thank him on account of the breadth of his admissions.'* Strauss thus cynically perorating' (we thank him for the word), after thirty years' use of his great scientific discovery, teaches us more things than he dreams of in his philosophy. In his anxiety to denounce trespassers, he forgets that he must produce disciples. Science, to be true, must be capable of being learned; where then are those that have learned it? Which of the great principles of the master have come to be admitted as theological axioms? It is a lame and impotent result to introduce us to Neander the pitiable' and to Gfrörer talking miracles for effect, and to Ebrard impudently orthodox, and to poor half-and-half Weisse, and to rhetorical Ewald, and to Keim with his adherence to St. Matthew, and to Renan with his scraps of St. John, and to Schenkel, who, thinking to reconcile orthodoxy and science, has been denounced by one hundred and seventeen orthodox teachers. Not one of all these adopts the author's three great principles, that the Gospels are not historical, that a miracle is impossible, and that the life of our Lord as recorded in the Gospels is an accretion of myths. The inference to our minds is that none of this boasted science is established, because there was none to establish. The world's astonishment, thirty years since, was not as that of men that wonder at the rosy dawn of a bright day, but as of men among whom some crashing bolt falls, and scathing the eyes with its blinding sheen, leaves them to recover their eyes as best they may. We are not concerned with the somewhat strange selection of names; but if the list had been extended, the argument would have been the same. Tholuck, Ullmann, Lange, Riggenbach, De Pressense, and a host of others who have treated the life of the Lord, might have been cited, but none of them as true di ciples. Among those who have discussed the Gospels, Olshausen, Bleek, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holtzmann, and a hundred beside, might have been cited, whose results, differing widely amongst themselves, differ widely each from those of Strauss. in any case to wake from a preternatural It could hardly we presume be agreeable sleep of thirty years, and to descend from the Catskill mountains, and to present our somewhat antiquated figure to a generation principal points on which he labours are the critical history of the Gospels and a certain theory of myths. that has gone far towards forgetting our ex- of life. We do not pretend in this place to do more than to give the reader, who may not have followed the argument, a general notion of the questions about the Gospels, which have been discussed with so much patience and labour for the last fifty years. First let us speak of the date when these four books were written. It must be borne in mind that to insist on a late origin for the Gospels is a necessity of Dr. Strauss's position, for his theory of myths depends upon it. That theory is that in the course of time certain fundamental ideas of Christianity received, by a spontaneous process of creation, a dress of legends and inventions which blended themselves inseparably with the true history. For the growth of such legends time would be indispensable. There must be an interval during which the Church unconsciously evolved the false, and allowed it to mingle with the true. If there were proof that one of the Gospels was written, just as we have it now, within a few months of the crucifixion, the mythical theory would be out of the question, and the only choice would lie between believing the history and attributing conscious falsification to the narrator. In contending that the Gospels were not in existence in their present form earlier than the middle of the second century, Strauss is contending for a century of silent mythformation, without which his theory must fall to the ground. We do not believe that but for this necessity such a theory could ever have been sustained. The external evidence for a late origin of the Gospels is only negative at best; and even this negative evidence is almost nothing, and when weighed against the opposite proofs in a fair balance will always kick the beam. The conclusion of Strauss admits with sufficient candour his object in contending for a late 'We do not find certain traces of the existence of our three first Gospels in their present form until towards the middle of the second century; consequently, not for a whole century after the time when the chief events of the history contained in them took place, and no one can reasonably maintain that this period is too short to make the intrusion of unhistorical elements into all parts of the evangelical history possible or conceivable.' The general views then of Strauss have been before the world for more than thirty years, and have caused the production of books and pamphlets to be told by hundreds; but they do not bear the test that all scientific systems bear with success they have not come to be adopted by friend and foe alike, on account of their intrinsic force and power of explaining We, however, who have no prejudice in facts. Let us see whether the details of favour of these unhistorical elements, must the system have fared any better. The be allowed to view the evidence for the date of the Gospels from a different side. We do not desire to find a late date, but to see whether there are any valid objections to the dates usually adopted. There is a large mass of evidence that points to the early origin; it is only modern criticism that insists upon a later. Constantine Tischendorf has summed up very clearly for us, in the little tract named at the head of this article, the evidence of the two first centuries on this subject. It is needless to observe that he has been attacked for this service; Zeller calls the pamphlet pretentious and superficial,' which it is not; and Volkmar tells us that it is possible to be a reader of manuscripts, like Tischendorf, and yet to be scarcely able to criticise even the text of the New Testament, still less to be a historical critic of the difficult problems of the second century. These amenities from learned persons, whose conclusions are greatly at variance among themselves, signify, that one may adopt any view about the origin of the Gospels except that for which alone there is any strong historical evidence. which one has for the events of childhood he could recall the very look, and gait, and manner of Polycarp, who gave accounts of his frequent intercourse with St. John and with others who had seen the Lord; and Irenæus says further that Polycarp's account of the doctrine and miracles of the Lord were all consonant with the Scriptures.' He also tells us elsewhere that the followers of Valentinus made a free use of St. John's Gospel. Now all this, written about the year 185, does much more than prove that Irenæus knew the four Gospels. When we are asked to believe, by one of the latest writers, Volkmar, that the Gospel of St. John was written about the year 155, we must assume that when Irenæus was now a man, and when the three other Gospels (even on Volkmar's estimate) bad been in use for full fifty years, a new Gospel, attributed to one of most eminent name, appeared and obtained its position suddenly and without challenge, with miracles recorded in no other Gospel, with new and momentous discourses of the Lord. Perhaps it is conceivable that this should There is not room here to offer even a have taken place; but even if we had no sketch of that evidence; but we can indi- testimony save that of Irenæus, it is in the cate the line it takes. The broad question highest degree unlikely. But Irenæus is is, whether the Gospels were in existence only one of many. Two attempts at Harand accepted as genuine at the end of the monies of the four Gospels had been made first century, or became part of it about the about the same time. Justin, who wrote middle of the second. Three great theo- at latest in A.D. 147, quotes three Gospels, logians, towards the close of the second and criticism is hard pressed to explain century, at Lyons, Carthage, and Alexan- away allusions to the fourth. Tischendorf dria, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement, makes good use of the argument from bear witness to the fact that at that time heretical writers; Hippolytus tells us that our Gospels were universally received as Valentinus relied on a passage in John (x. canonical. The well-known Muratorian 8); and the like is said of Basilides: if so, Fragment,' which belongs to the same time, this Gospel was well known in the first bears the same testimony. These would half of the second century. The Monnot do much towards determining a ques- tanists probably borrowed from John their tion which belongs to an earlier time, unlers view of the Paraclete. It is clear from two their evidence were in some measure re- passages of Tertullian that Marcion began trospective. But it is retrospective. For by believing the four Gospels, as known to example, Irenæus indulges in fanciful ana- us, and that afterwards, thinking them logies about the number four: there must tinctured with Judaism, he undertook to be four Gospels, neither more nor less, amend or alter the Gospel for himself: the because the Gospel is to go throughout the date of this amended Gospel, founded on world, and there are four quarters of the St. Luke, is about 138. Celsus knew the world; the Gospel is the breath of life, and four Gospels, writing about the year 160. there are four winds of heaven: the cheru- All this testimony, and much more that bim, on whom the creating Word is en- Tischendorf and others have adduced, tends throned, have four faces. All this is bad to carry us backward to the early part of reasoning to establish the number four; but the second century. Before a distinct and it affords a pretty good argument that the general recognition of the Gospels could Church had by this time become accus- take place before they could have been tomed to that number of Gospels. Irenæus winnowed out clear from all the apocryphal also reminds one Florinus that when he literature that at first hung about themwas yet a boy he sat at the feet of Poly-some time must have elapsed. It is scarcely carp, and that with the vivid memory conceivable, moreover, that a new Gospel |