a and arduous learning of commentaries and expositions, a clearheaded and high-souled piece like this at once renders valueless. The writer shows us how impossible it will henceforward be for an honest theologian, of any competent attainments, to drivel as does Mr. Bickersteth in his “ Rock of Ages.” His rock is a sand-hill, of the driest, most barren, and least cohesive materials. We have thus dealt, as our space and ability would allow, with a subject the proper presentment of which would require more than one volume; and we have recognized heartily the valuable contribution made to the fairest handling of parts of that subject in the book before us. Other books of like sort will follow, if not from the same sources, then from others. The religious world is ready for them, and must have them. In all Christian communities the proportion of sincere, and even of avowed or professed believers in the old theories and dogmas of a traditional faith, is steadily and rapidly falling away when compared with the increase of population; and those of our sects which appear to thrive do so by schemes, artifices, and measures which will not bear the search of inquisitive eyes. “Orthodoxy” is effete; it is dead. It will know no resurrection. The theme which we have been discussing covers the whole ground of the difference between what the Bible really professes to be and is, and the traditional superstitions and the untenable theories and notions which are associated with it; - the difference between a faith which wise and rightminded and free-souled men may hold in hearty confidence and reverence, and that which must constantly quake and grow pale in presence even of the monumental stones and the recording phenomena of the earth. Our faith to be secure . must rest upon the foundations, and be nourished by the verities, which God has furnished for it, not upon materials invented by ourselves. There will still be a difference between the Divine and the human, a difference between science and omni-science, enough to provide us with a religion. Our higher culture must stand clear of the rubbish of antiquated and discredited belief. It is no just ground of complaint against the destructive criticism of our day, that it does not at once furnish substitute materials and principles as positive and satisfactory as those which it takes away once were. Each age must accept its work and office in the authentication of the grounds and compass of faith, in the form in which the exacting task comes to it. We recall gratefully the toils of the Benedictines copying the letter of the Scripture on the diamond page of ivory, or on the spacious folios of parchment, and touching the ornamental characters with the exquisite tints of blue and gold. But now that that mechanical toil is spared us, and the dull lead, and the cheap ink, and the paper bleached from beggars' rags, have made the record to have no cost, the same skill must go to its interpretation, the same love must be lavished upon its spirit. There is one fact, at least, to reassure the weak or the fearful. There are men, not few nor singular, who have faced all this destructive work of criticism, have weighed all its blows, and have yielded everything that it has broken or rendered unserviceable; and who are all the stronger in their faith in things divine and holy, all the more stout in their loyalty to Christ and his truth, all the more hopeful of the cause and the kingdom which is committed to Him. Having centred all upon Christ, - his grace and fulness, – they have found peace and strength. They may seem to deal rashly or threateningly with the belief or the things believed, that are dear to others. But it may be well to heed in season their warnings and appeals as they try to dissever the substance of truth from traditions and superstitions, lest the cradle of faith should prove to be the grave of religion. NOTE. — In a note to Dr. Williams's Review of Bunsen's Biblical Researches (page 75 of the American edition of “ Essays and Reviews"), Dr. Palfrey is represented, by a reference to his work on the Jewish Scriptures, as “restricting the idea of revelation to Moses and the Gospels,” to the exclusion of “the Psalms and Prophets and Epistles.” This is an oversight or an error on the part of Dr. Williams. Dr. Palfrey recognizes no such difference between the Gospels and Epistles. . 1. Geistliche Gedichte. Von NICOLAUS Ludwig, GRAF VON ZINZEN DORF. (Spiritual Poems. By Count ZINZENDORF.) Stuttgart. 1845. 2. Geistliche Lieder. (Spiritual Songs.) Von FRIEDRICH GOTTLIEB KLOPSTOCK. Leipsic. 1839. 3. Geistliche Oden und Lieder. (Spiritual Odes and Songs.) Von CHRISTIAN FÜRCHTEGOTT GELLERT. Leipsic. 1757. 4. Worte des Herzens. (Words of the Heart.) Von Johann CASPAR LAVATER. Zurich. 1771. (Essay towards a universal Evangelic Hymn and Prayer-Book. In our last number we gave some specimens of old German hymns, with interspersed historical and biographical notices, from Luther down to Zinzendorf. In this paper we shall attempt a short survey of the history of German hymnology, showing the working out of the idea of the hymn in German hands, and remarking upon some of the chief characteristics of the German hymns, as tried by the standard of the ideal itself. The work of Bunsen, named in the above list, the fruit of a sixteen years' labor, reminds us of the singular combination of poetic enthusiasm and plodding patience which marks our German brethren. Their scientific and reflective thoroughness in whatever they undertake goes with them even into poetry and piety, and not least strikingly is it exemplified in that department which requires so fine a fusion of both those elements, the constructing of hymns and hymn-books. The name of Klopstock marks the era when the longing of the German national genius to understand and supply its wants in the hymnological direction began to express itself distinctly; but it had long been at work more or less obscurely, in the struggles of mystic, moralist, and dogmatist to mould into an effective shape the elements of sacred song. What is the true and great idea of the Hymn, - what is its purpose, as the German heart, and, we may say, the Christian heart, quickened by the Reformation, has so long been seeking, more or less consciously, to fulfil it ? The Hymn has been happily described as “the voice of the Christian heart in song." 66 The heart of the Christian congregation uttering itself in song,” may stand as a good synonyme for the hymns of the Church. The Church may be regarded as a household, a fold, or a camp. Hymns are the songs that cheer the family ; lull the flock to rest, or lead it on after the Shepherd through wild and rocky places; that sustain, stimulate; and steady the heart of the army of martyrs, with the consciousness of the great Providence overhead, the spiritual fountain within, and the triumph which awaits the faithful. The early Christians felt themselves to be a band of armed covenanters. In their militant pilgrimage they cheered the way, lightened the toil, enlivened the loneliness of many a pass, and nerved themselves for many a conflict, by songs of encouragement and admonition, hymns which recited stirring truth, or psalms which breathed the home-longing after God and holiness and heaven. There was one leader, one warfare, and one crown. Such has been the significance of the Hymn at every revival of the primitive religion. So it was in Saxony, - so it was in Bohemia, --so in Scotland, - so in England, --so have we seen , and felt it at intervals in our own land. Whenever the Church has come out from the wilderness of trouble and persecution into comfort and repute, music, sharing the common degeneracy of the rest of the service, has too generally tended to become more a remembrancer of the past than a quickener to the present and the future,- instead of waking the soul and calling it up to heaven, has come down to charm the carnal ear of dreaming indolence. Between ceremony and controversy, how hard it is to get back again that old feeling, at once of catholicity and of individual accountableness, which alone can make the Church hymn the song of the pilgrim army of the one God, under the one Captain, marching on to one victory, triumph, and salvation ! The influence of Protestantism upon hymnology is a curious and instructive subject, and one which connects itself throughout with the study of German hymn-writing and hymn-writers. Protestantism, as a contest for opinion or organization, can ambit touch Tersif Kla ing, I aspira and d and to produ and should hymn hardly produce a true hymn. It can do that only as it is an impulse of self-defence, a struggle for the very life and freedom of the soul. That, indeed, is what Protestantism was, with Luther, in the beginning, though he himself, as he grew strong in ecclesiastical influence, sadly degenerated from that old simplicity; and after his death Protestantism became to a very great extent an essentially unmusical thing When Luther appeared, the popular heart had been long yearning for the opportunity to utter itself in vernacular song. As early as Charlemagne, we find the beginning made of translating church hymns into the vernacular, under the Imperial auspices. In the thirteenth century, we find one Brother Berthold complaining that heresy was propagating itself by putting songs into the people's mouths, and calling on the orthodox to make safe and sound ones for their children in self-defence. The fifteenth century was greatly busied in translating Latin hymns. Thus, it has been said, was the Reformation already announcing itself from afar. But Luther found the people ready to take these hymns and use them. The time was come when, in this revival of the old simplicity of the faith, they too, like the first disciples, were to teach and admonish each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, - not merely to be sung to, but to sing to each other, and to sing all together, as a band of brethren and sisters in the Lord. This practical use of the Hymn, as the song of the Christian pilgrim and soldier, which was made so prominent in the hymns of the Reformation, though often sadly lost out of sight in the subsequent successes and struggles of Protestants, was never more signally illustrated than in the Moravian hymnology with a notice of which we closed our former paper, and which, through the Methodists and Montgomery, has infused a spirit into English hymnology that is destined never to die. With Klopstock, who was born in 1724, begins a new period of German hymnology. His name opens that era when the influences of the age of Frederick the Great, the age of freethinking, of rationalism, the age of Lavater and Rousseau, told upon the hymns as upon the faith of the Church. It was the period of what the Germans call the “watering [dilution] of the hymn-books.” The great revival of poetic aspiration and Bef piety |