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little heed to the nearly related phenomenon of the secret longing, or need, or charm, which draws certain characters towards that embodiment of the central life of Christendom, "the Church."

For example, it will often be the case, not only with the speculative man, but also with the intelligent man of affairs who keeps pace with the general movements of human thought, that he looks back with a certain longing and half regret to the composed and quiet faith which he may have shared in his earlier days, and which is the portion now of multitudes happy in a belief which is no belief with him. What is said of the late Mr. Choate that there were points of his early creed which he chose never to examine, because he shrunk from the pain of probing and dissecting, and perhaps changing them-speaks to the mood of many who have tried that process and found only weariness for the result. It is not without pain, too, that one sees the current of the world's life sweep by,—that life in which his own portion as a thinking and acting man is cast,—and feels it to be in some sense alien from the life of God, as shared by so many pious souls. In his lonely and still hours, he thinks with a sort of envy of those who have lived loyally and died peacefully in obedience to a creed which his intellect persists in regarding as outgrown, or swayed by motives which his common sense feels to be unsubstantial. The warm glow of pious emotion, like that of the mellowing year, clings to and makes beautiful the scenes where the heart lingers. The tendrils of the living vine are not detached without harsh compulsion, though it were from the rotting trunk and the ruined wall that would drag it on the ground in their own decay. And there are times when the man of critical and adventurous intellect would gladly surrender the joy of elevated thought, or the practical man the dazzling success of life, for an hour of the quiet and sure faith he associates with his memories of the Church, or his ideal of what the divine life of it might be.

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Now, if we attempt to analyze the method and tone with which such a mood of mind as we have described is appealed to by the Church of Rome, which in power, prestige, and executive skill so immeasurably distances every rival, we shall find it to be something like the following. Without appealing directly to the reason, it suggests subtile trains of thought, whose clew leads to its seat of power. Without much enlightening or instructing the conscience, it takes advantage of the tremendous energy of the hurt moral sensibility. Without regulating or constraining much the tides of passion in the ordinary course of life, it meets them in the confessional with marvellous skill, in all their tortuous detail, by its external tasks of penance and its soulsubduing hints of absolution. It does not much to develop the energy, to heal the misery, or prevent the vice of a people, or to abate any social wrong of which the world is weary, at least, infinitely little compared with the enormous resources of power at its command; but it offers the refuge of the convent and the imposing service of the cathedral, and teaches men to merge their sense of sin and sorrow in the impassioned exercise of faith. It opens no new avenue of earthly hope to the humble, the suffering, and the poor; but it drowns the sense

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of all calamity in a hope that belongs to another world. To the remonstrance of reason or the protest of an enlightened conscience it hardly deigns an answer; but it substitutes a new order of thought, a different array of hopes and motives, and rests its claim and its power on a foundation that escapes the analysis of the thinker or the sturdier sense of the man of the world; and when they least expect it, they may find themselves helplessly surrendered to the all-powerful magnetism of its charm.

The state of mind so skilfully met by the Church of Rome exists very widely at the present day. In all Protestant lands the want is felt of some form or other of ecclesiasticism, and a current is setting in that direction. The discourse of Dr. Bellows already referred to has its value as one of the most striking and vigorous expressions, among the liberal party in theology, of that tendency. Naturally, its drift and tone were misapprehended by some who did not readily adjust themselves to the speaker's point of view, or did not enough appreciate his position, as addressing a congregation of thinkers and scholars, from the high vantage-ground of independent and philosophic criticism. And we think, too, that the very earnestness and directness of purpose in his essay betrayed him into some partial judgments of men and things, foreign from his own nature, and lending too ready a handle to those who opposed the main current of the address. We are glad, therefore, that he has followed it by another, in which, in timely, plain, and eloquent words, he reaffirms his faith as a liberal Christian thinker, disclaims any thought or wish to reimpose the yoke of church authority never so lightly, and avows himself most broadly and positively as sharing the life of the present and the future, rather than the past. Of great value and beauty, in our apprehension, are his criticisms of some points of American life, and his statement of the spiritual good to flow from the uniting of the continents, the mingling life of Europe and America, and the influences of past ages of culture and faith. This is clad sometimes in images and illustrations which may be deemed over-fanciful, and which only the general dignity and force of rhetoric in the discourse rescues from the charge of extravagance even to grotesqueness in one or two instances. But as the clear, bold vindication of a personal conviction and position,—as a weighty, earnest, and powerful address to an audience" representing, 1. The Independent Congregation and Church over which I am set as minister; 2. The Unitarian Denomination; 3. The Protestant World; 4. The Nineteenth Century and this New Country," - it is a discourse of rare and peculiar value. We are sincerely glad of the discussion its author has provoked, into which it now enters as a fresh and vigorous element. And we anticipate, from this moving of the waters, a deepening, enriching, and purifying influence on the current of our popular religious life. Even the phrase "Broad Church" — which we do not remember Dr. Bellows using once, though it is the legend his work is cur

*A Sequel to "The Suspense of Faith." By HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

rently known by - we could be almost contented to accept, if it should signify the sweeping away of those hundred barriers of sect and creed and form, by the rising of the great tide-wave, obedient to the movement of the celestial spheres.

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THE Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in this city, making provision for Sunday morning services during the absence of their minister, certainly indulge in the spice of preaching, if variety is that ingredient. The acceptance of their multifarious invitations has already brought before them several representative men, and, we believe, representative women also. Popular lecturers have read. The left and right wings of several sects, and all the modifications of belief between, have furnished sermonizers; and the intimation is that the "liberty of prophesying" in Music Hall is to be still further enlarged. This is proving all things;" but whether to the finding of any other "good" than that now cherished to "hold fast," doth not yet appear. One consequence of this diffusion of tongues brought the right man into the right place, to do the right deed, in a manly and Christian fashion. Highly esteeming and sympathizing in many respects with the Rev. Theodore Parker, Mr. Clarke wrote and then preached "in his individual capacity" a Discourse, dissecting the theology of his friend, in that friend's 66 own pulpit, to his own people, and with their full consent." The occasion and the speaker raised the expectation of a marked performance, which was not disappointed. The production has a rich flavor of idiosyncrasy; and, for that reason, will interest everybody, and be wholly acceptable to nobody. The tone is frank and goodtempered; the style lucid, vigorous, and condensed. But for the serious doubt whether the apotheosizing of mere intellectual greatness is not morally perilous, the preacher's iconoclastic zeal in regard to the eminent statesman and lawyer who have recently been eulogized and denounced above and below the truth might be deemed irrelevant. However this may be, when Mr. Clarke passes from the "man to the theologian," from the region of hatred and love into that of pure, cold thought, he knows neither friend nor enemy. Thoroughly acquainted with the theology he examines, and holding his own theology as one who has carefully thought it out, he is pointed and decided in his agree ments and disagreements with Mr. Parker, outlining his criticism with clean and bold strokes. His sentences are warm with the sincerity of conviction, and his arguments are evidently the honest arguments that give cherished satisfaction to his own soul. Loyalty to what he holds to be the truth keeps him from all compromises. Sixteen open pages of small pica do not afford room, as an hour's speech did not afford time, for an extended and complete discussion. Therefore the discourse is but a sketch, a forcible and suggestive sketch. Salient points are stated which might be amplified to advantage; and in the maintenance of Christianity as a finality in religion, and a revelation

*Theodore Parker and his Theology: a Discourse delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, Sunday, September 25, 1859. By JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. Second Edition. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. 1859.

with supporting and illustrative miracles, and in the enunciation of a philosophy more comprehensive and truer to human experience than that which belongs to the theology under review, much more might have been written and said, without exhausting the subject. But the sermon is a contribution of thought which breeds thought; and the integrity of the criticism will command respect.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

THE first edition of Winer's Grammar of the New Testament Diction was published nearly forty years ago. The learned author has been continually laboring for its improvement up to the year 1855, when the sixth and last edition appeared. While engaged in the preparation of this edition an affection of the eyes brought the author to the verge of blindness; and as his decease has since occurred, no further improvements can be expected from his hand.

We do but echo the voice of the whole theological world when we give our testimony in favor of the unrivalled excellence of this Grammar, and its vast practical usefulness in the critical study of the meaning of the New Testament. Since the appearance of the first comparatively small work, up to that of the sixth enlarged and improved edition, it has been deservedly regarded by the learned of every name as without an equal or a rival. A former edition of the work was translated in this country in a very imperfect manner, and contained numerous important mistakes in regard to the meaning of the original. This sixth edition appears to us to have fallen into the hands of a competent translator, so far as knowledge of the German is concerned. Many portions of it which we have examined are so well translated, that there would seem to be no want of ability to make the English a correct representation of the German. But there does appear in some passages a want of accuracy, and evident marks of haste and carelessness occur not infrequently. We trust that a future revision of so important a work will cause these blemishes to disappear. A grammatical manual surely ought to be wholly free from inaccuracies of every kind.

But in regard to two portions of the work we have a more serious charge to prefer,-a charge implying qualities in the translator which we do not like to name. The charge is, that in one page—namely, p. 118, § 19 of the Translation - Mr. Masson has omitted two brief, but important statements, and one important note, containing nineteen lines, without giving any notice in his Preface or notes of any such expurgation. In another page—namely, p. 170 of the Translation an important paragraph relating to the same general subject is quietly expelled by Mr. Masson, and evidently for the same reason.

The

* A Grammar of the New Testament Diction, intended as an Introduction to the Critical Study of the Greek New Testament. By DR. GEORGE B. WINER. Translated from the Sixth enlarged and improved Edition of the original. By EDWARD MASSON, M. A. In two vols. Vol. I. Philadelphia: Smith, English, & Co. 1859.

reason is, that in the omitted passages the distinguished German grammarian has laid down principles, or expressed opinions, favorable to the doctrine of Unitarians, and adverse to that of Trinitarians, in relation to the Deity of Jesus Christ.

The passages under consideration in one of the above-mentioned pages relate to the usage of the Greek article in certain passages of the New Testament relating to the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ. It is well known that Granville Sharpe, Esq., Bishop Middleton, and some others, supposed that they had found a new argument for the Trinity in the omission of the Greek article in certain passages of the New Testament in which Christ is mentioned, and to which they give a different translation from that of the Common Version. Thus in Titus ii. 13, which in the Common Version reads "of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ," Middleton maintains that, in consequence of the omission of the article Toù before σwrpos, the rendering should be "of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ." The same doctrine he applies to some other passages, as Eph. v. 5; 2 Pet. i. 1; Jude 4. The doctrine of Middleton was, that "when two or more attributives, joined by a copulative, are assumed of the same person or thing, before the first attributive the article is inserted, before the remaining ones it is omitted."

Now Dr. Winer has abundantly proved, that, both in classical and New Testament Greek, the article is omitted before such attributives when they relate to a different person or thing from that which has the article, as well as when they relate to the same person or thing; that the omission of the article in such cases is perfectly accounted for, according to the well-known usage of the Greek language, when the latter appellative is made definite in some other way, as by a pronoun connected with it, or by its being so commonly applied to a person as to partake of the nature of a proper name, or by its being followed by a proper name, &c. The same thing has been demonstrated by the late Professor Stuart in a learned essay on the Greek article, and more recently by Alford in his note on Titus ii. 13.

Now, though Mr. Masson has not wholly concealed the opinion of Winer on this subject from a careful reader, yet it so happens that on one page in which it is discussed three important passages are expunged, and in another page Winer's explanation of a very important verse of Scripture has met with the same fate. Such treatment of an author by his translator, and that, too, without any notice given, seems to us to deserve the severest reprobation, even if no offence were committed against the cause of truth and good learning. One of the most distinguished scholars of Germany, who has bestowed the labor of nearly forty years upon the Grammar of the New Testament, and produced a work which theologians of all denominations have pronounced to be of first-rate excellence and of vast importance, suffers the hard lot of having his work expurgated by a translator, who has given so little attention and study to one of the pages which he has thus mangled,

* See the Biblical Repository for April, 1834.

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