lute authority of Scripture, may not exclude numbers not only from its offices, but even from open worship, is shewn in the repeated endeavours to revise particular portions of the ritual, and is acknowledged in the Royal Commission on the Articles of Subscription; and even the Archbishops of Canterbury and York may ultimately be brought to perceive that if the merely human parts of the ecclesiastical statute be revised, so as to remove needless obstacles and obsolete exclusions, the national Establishment may be rendered more completely and truthfully than it now is 'the Church of England.""-Daily Telegraph, Feb. 9.

"If there was one point on which orthodox feeling was unanimous, it was, that the essayists had expressed themselves of the Scriptures in terms entirely inconsistent with the teaching of the Church as to their authority and origin. This, in each case, was one of the two articles of charge which remained after the merciless pruning of the inferior court, and the Privy Council have decided that the expressions in question are not prohibited by the Articles or formularies of the Church. The whole charge, in short, has fallen to the ground in its most important issue. It is right to add, that this is the point upon which the two archbishops dissent from the rest of the Court. The Bishop of London, however, who was the only other ecclesiastical member of the Council, assents; and the general grounds which the Court gives for its decision are very similar to the opinions expressed by the Bishop of St David's in his recent charge. But, right or wrong, the question is definitively settled, and the members of the Church are released from all legal obligation to maintain a higher authority for the Scriptures than that claimed for them in 'Essays and Reviews.'

“It can hardly be anticipated that the amount of licence thus established for the whole body of the clergy will be satisfactory to the Church in general. There is, of course, a strong party by whom it will be enthusiastically welcomed, and there is another and a larger party, who, without having committed themselves in any way to the opinions of the Essayists, will be relieved to find the matter an open question; but the religious public is at present very uneasy on the subject. The recent publications of Dr Colenso have not contributed to reassure those who were disturbed by his forerunners, and they will hardly be disposed to find in the more unhesitating denunciations of Convocation a sufficient relief to their anxiety. Nor will this main issue be the only point in the decision regarded with anxiety. The second charge against Dr Williams was one of little practical importance in the present day; but the question raised in the second charge against Mr Wilson is one which a short time ago raised a storm against one of the most distinguished men in the Church, and involves a cardinal point of the popular creed. When the Privy Council decides that the sense given ordinarily to the words 'eternal punishment' is not necessarily that which was intended by the Church, and that the opinions attributed to Mr Maurice on this point may be held without a violation of the formularies, it pronounces a decision which will probably be regarded with considerable dissatisfaction by each of the two principal parties into which the Church is divided."-Times, Feb. 10.

"Grant that there is no element in Scripture which distinguishes it from the ordinary communications of God's Spirit, and the religious impressions of any good man of our acquaintance will have as much authority for us as the religious impressions of St Paul. Go a little farther, say that devout reason in all times and places is the highest inspiration possible, and you arrive at Goethe's compliment to the Gospel-to wit that it is a pleasant brook in which one may bathe and refresh himself as he walks on under the sky of nature, but that it is only one of many brooks which enliven the way. To this length the Lords of the Privy Council do not proceed, although we have no

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doubt that the "Essays and Reviews," if not in letter, then in spirit, respond to the idea of Goethe; but their Lordships unquestionably lay it down that the Church of England does not assert Scripture to be inspired in any sense which would not apply to Bishop Heber's melodious appeal to Christians to send the Gospel to the heathen or to Addison's hymn on the firmament. The clergy of the Church of England are required to believe that the Bible is, on the whole, a good book; but the Church of England does not affirm that it is, in any distinctive and authoritative sense, God's Book.

"After this, it is unnecessary to dwell upon the deliverance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council respecting particular theological tenetse Suffice it to say that their Lordships absolve ministers of the Church of England from obligation to believe in vicarious atonement and in the eternal punishment of the lost. The first of these has always been recognised as one of the fundamental doctrines of Catholic orthodoxy.

"How are we to sum up the result of all this, looked at from the national and historical standpoint? No feeling could be further from our minds than that of exultation over the Church of England in this the day of her humiliation and calamity. But the truth must be spoken, and the plain truth seems to us to be, that this judgment un-Churches the English establishment. It does so in two ways. In the first place, it deprives her members of all guarantee that her ministers will preach the gospel, and we hold that the preaching of the pure and full gospel of God is an indispensable mark of a true church. In the second place, it totally annihilates her discipline, or rather it proclaims to the world that her discipline is not even a name. The continuance in the ministry of men who have published the opinions of Dr Williams and Mr Wilson, might be safely pronounced an impossibility in any Christian Church possessed of a system of discipline. But the mere continuance of men in the church is not all we have in this instance. The Church has declared by every organ at her command that she regards those men as heretics. The bishops have denounced them; Convocation has denounced them; the whole body of the clergy has testified against them and yet they are unvisited by the slightest ecclesiastical censure! The Church of England, her ministers and her members, have less power to manage their own affairs than the smallest knot of sectaries in the kingdom. How any church can submit to a bondage like this, how Christian men can fail to see that so complete a surrender of that spiritual power, which is Christ's, into the hand of Cesar, is a heinous and terrible sin, we are unable to conceive. Evangelical Nonconformists in general, and the Presbyterian Church in particular, ought to address to evangelical ministers and members of the Church of England an earnest appeal and invitation to leave a church which surely, they themselves being witnesses, can no longer pretend to find her religion in the Bible or to call Christ her Kiug."-The Weekly Review, Feb. 13.

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The Central Committee of "The Inner Mission of the German Evangelical Church" has lately offered a prize of four hundred thalers for a work on "The Harmony of the Revelations of the Bible and of Nature." The object of the work is to be twofold :-"1. The rehabilitation of nature, so often abused to the concealment of God, and as a stumbling-block to the faith, in its rights as a revelation of the living God, which, though not perfect, is yet in deepest harmony and affinity with the Bible revelation. 2. To prove that the holy Scriptures vindicate their claim to be the documents of a divine. revelation, as well by the results of natural science as in spite of its results; and that Christian faith has no cause to be suspended

or shaken thereby. With the attainment of these two objects, the certainty of the faith, in its inherent power and security, would be assured; and, on the other hand, would be acknowledged, with equal earnestness, the right of free and conscientious investigation of nature from the stand point of positive evangelical faith and confession." Such a work is evidently a necessity of the times, and even more so in our own country, which takes so prominent a place in physical science, than in Germany itself; and it is much to be wished that the stimulus applied by the Inner Mission Committee may lead to the production of a treatise worthy of the theme.

Dr Tischendorf, in addition to former attacks upon the character and credit of his great Codex Sinaiticus, proceeding from the Archimandrite Porfiri Uspenski in Russia, and from Simonides in London, has recently had to repel another assault from one of his own countrymen, an anonymous writer in one of the church journals of Saxony. The tone of this attack appears to have been unduly personal and bitter against the meritorious editor, and to have roused him to an equally undue degree of excitement. The title of his pamphlet in reply is sufficiently significant on this point-"Weapons of Darkness against the Sinai-Bible." The brochure is censured for its extreme tone; but it is acknowledged that Tischendorf has again successfully vindicated both the originality of his discovery, and the high value of the manuscript. It were well if the indefatigable and justly celebrated critic would take a hint from these repeated attacks upon him to be a little less self-asserting than is his wont-a foible and fault of which an author is sure, sooner or later, to be disagreeably reminded by one or other of his fellows. Professors Kurtz and Keil have also been recently engaged in a painful controversy with each other, arising out of differences of opinion, and opposing literary criticisms on each other's lucubrations, on the subject of the Old Testament sacrifices; Kurtz maintains the substitutionary principle of sacrifice in opposition to Bähr's symbolical principle; and Keil favours a theory which endeavours to fuse these two principles together in a way which is not at all satisfactory to Kurtz. Keil wrote a bitter criticism on Kurtz, and Kurtz, unjustly refused a hearing in reply in the same journal, has published a pamphlet, entitled, "An Appeal against unfair Reviewing," which it is hoped will be the last incident in a contention between two authors who have both rendered eminent service to the cause of Bible truth.

Zeitschrift für die gesammte Lutherische Theologie und Kirche. 1864. Erster Quartalheft.

This Journal, now in the twenty-fifth year of its existence, was originally founded by Rudelbach and Guericke, and is still carried on with undiminished

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vigour by Guericke and Delitzsch. It is the organ of what may fairly claim to be called the genuine Lutheran party of the German Protestant Church, being neither inclined to a Romanising high-churchism on the one hand, with Hengstenberg, and other divines of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung party; nor, on the other, to what would be called in this country the Broad Churchism of the "Studien und Kritiken," and the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie." It has the honour of being now the chief representative of Lutheran Orthodoxy in the land of Luther, and it sustains the championship of that time-honoured cause with a high degree not only of zeal but also of ability and learning.

The present No. of the Journal contains a curious instance of its sympathy with the old party of the yoo, or genuine Lutherans. It prints for the first time a satire upon the Philippistic or Melancthonian party of the 16th century, found among the papers of Amsdorf in the Ducal Library of Weimar. It is entitled, "A Dialogue between a Raven and a Dove," and appears to have been drawn up in reply to a satirical piece published in 1557 by John Major, Professor of eloquence in Wittemberg, under the title of Synodus Avium Depingens Miseram faciem Ecclesiae." Major was a zealous Philippist, and had handled the strict Lutherans very roughly in the Synod of the Birds. Ansdorf takes his revenge in the "Dialogue," and, speaking through the harsh throat of the Raven, ridicules the Dove for being so simple as to mistake Philip of Wittemberg for another nightingale, such as Luther had been. "You foolish simpleton, you, do you not know the song of the nightingale from the song of the siren? There is a vast difference between them. Both, indeed, are sweet and pleasant, but they have very different effects. The song which you heard at Wittemberg is the song of the siren, which killeth, not the song of the nightingale, which giveth life. Don't you remember what St Paul says of the persuasibilia humanae sapientiae verba, which men listen to and love, instead of the truth which they forsake and forget? That is what the siren is singing, teaching, and writing at this day. It is what human reason understands and can accept, and so all the wise and prudent and learned ones of the world are delighted with the song. It agrees with their philosophy, and it serves to make peace with antichrist for a time. But the true nightingale sings what is higher and better than all human wisdom, and what is even contrary to it. What eye of man hath not seen, and ear of man hath not heard, and heart of man hath not conceived," &c., &c. The dialogue has little merit either as to substance or form, and the author himself seems to have been aware that it was no match against Major's Synodus Avium, as he never sent it to the press. But it has at least a historical interest in a document of the Philippistic and Crypto-Calvinistic Controversies; and we may add that the comparison of Luther to a nightingale is an unmistakable allusion to one of the earliest and most popular of the Reformation poems, of Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Nuremberg, entitled "Die Wittenbergische Nachtigall," in which he hails the teaching of Luther as the true old gospel music, long forgotten or corrupted, but now sounding forth again in all its primitive purity and heart-reviving power.

Among other valuable papers there is one by Professor Thomasius of Erlangen, on the "Position of the Christian Ministry in relation to the present Opposition to the Doctrine and Order of the Church," which gives a good deal of insight into the present religious, or rather unreligious, condition of German society, and contains many excellent thoughts and suggestions as to the specific desiderata of the ministry in such a state of things, which may be advantageously studied by ourselves in view of present and prospective dangers in the direction of rationalism and unbelief. There is also an article of much value on "The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," by Richter, a Lutheran pastor, in which the old doctrine of the Reformation on this subject is firmly maintained and ably defended. "It is far from being an adequate expression," says h, "of the specific greatness of the Scriptures, as compared

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with all other writings, to acknowledge that God's saving truth is contained therein without any mixture of error. More essential for the Scriptures is the wider assertion that the expression which they give to God's saving truth is an expression of it which comes from God himself, and which is addressed to the church by his own will, that God is the auctor primarius of the Scriptures, and that to him, as such, even their linguistic form was not a matter of indifference, and was not left to the invention and caprice of the human authors. This divine derivation of Scripture is what is taught in the old dogmatic systems under the title of the doctrine of inspiration, and no theory of inspiration gives a satisfactory solution of the question which does not contain a warrant for saying to every human being, of all races and times, This is God's own very word to thee." The author distinguishes, however, between the thesis of plenary inspiration, as held by the old divines, and the way in which they sought to carry it out, in a theory of verbal dictation or suggestion. He sets aside the latter as inconsistent with a due recognition of the human element, which appears so unmistakable in the written result of the inspirational process. The recognition of this human side of the Scriptures is, he thinks, the one permanent fruit of modern criticism which has accrued to the church, and will abide with it.

Zeitschrift für die Historische Theologie. 1864.

The first number of this Journal for the present year is chiefly taken up with an account of "the gradual transition of Bremen from the Lutheran to the Reformed Confession," by Prediger Walte of that city. The article goes into much local detail, and cannot, of course, have the same interest for English as for German readers. But to every exact student, whether English or German, of the history of the great religious revolution of the 16th century, such special monographs have a peculiar importance and value, and the more of the local and personal elements they contain so much the better. To such students also there is something specially interesting and instructive in instances like those of Bremen and the Palatinate, where a double reformation, so to speak, or a first and a second reformation, took place, first from Popery to Lutheranism, and next, by way of farther development, from the Lutheran to the Reformed Confession. In the Palatinate this second reformation was effected chiefly by the authority of the Elector Frederick III., with the theological assistance of Olevianus and Ursinus, while in Bremen all the power of the magistracy was at first employed to discountenance and suppress it, and the growth and ultimate triumph of the movement were entirely owing to what the author of the article calls "the freer Melancthonian spirit.' Dr Albert Hardenberg, a disciple of Melancthon, was the first Protestant preacher who introduced into Bremen the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, as distinguished from the "consubstantiation" of Luther; and though Hardenberg himself was driven from the city in 1561, never to return, his teaching and testimony continued to gain ground so rapidly upon Lutheranism, in the convictions of the citizens, that Bremen could never be induced to receive the Lutheran "Formula Concordiae," and was willing, at a later period, to take part in the deliberations and decisions of the Reformed Synod of Dort. The history of such a process of spontaneous and gradual religious and ecclesiastical transition may not be so striking and picturesque as that of a revolution effected by a coup d'état, but it is a great deal more significant and instructive.

The second No. for 1864 has two papers of antiquarian literary interest, one by Professor Preger of Munich, containing an unpublished tractate of Meister Eckhart, and an outline of the ground-principles