modern discovery was to be found in cypher, somewhere or other, in its pages. This egregious nonsense was sure by and bye to provoke reaction by the common rationalistic denial of all superior worth and divinity in the Scriptures. This position we deem hopeless and absurd. But it is equally impossible, in an age like ours, to maintain the other. The Bible, like nature, has its inequalities-its valleys and thickets, as well as its clear eminences. You can open it without finding anything expressly suited to your emergency. Mysterics have often been imagined in its words where they did not exist. It teaches no systems of science or philosophy whatever, and does not even predict the particulars of our present advancement in either. It was undoubtedly an error and a crime in those who felt this to leap to the other extreme, and ignore the numberless marks of a divine origin, which the Bible nevertheless possessed; but it were also an error and a wrong in us not to record this as one of the causes which have contributed to so sad a result.

Seventhly. The attacks which have of late thickened around the authenticity of the letter of inspiration have had their own share in lowering its credit with many. Not that we think these attacks successful. They have not added materially to the objections and difficulties, propounded by that respectable person Tom Paine in the last century. They have told onlywhen they have told at all-against Bibliolatry, which is not to be identified with the Bible itself. Still the frequency of such assaults, the pertinacity of the assailants, the comparative decency of their language, and the rapidity with which their writings now-a-days circulate, have served to nourish a belief among great classes of the community, that the Bible has suffered some new and deadly damage, if it has not been entirely defeated. The smoke is not fairly off the field of battle; and till it has risen, the true position of our army cannot be seen. Not till then, will it be found that not one of our battalions is dispersed, and not one of our standards has been taken.

Eighthly. This impression of partial defeat has principally spread among a class who were most susceptible of being injured by it-we mean the lower ranks. They have not been taught the habit of weighing moral evidence. They do not understand the principle of probabilities. Everything with them must be dogmatically certain, or demonstrably false. Scripture difficulties go, therefore, much farther with them than with the cultivated. They have got, in our age, precisely that degree of the little learning, which, on religious matters, is such a dangerous thing. Like the vulgar in Christ's day, they still

seek for a sign—and would wish to see the truth of Christianity whispered in the wind, or trumpeted in the thunder, or written around the sun. Their imperfect culture has taught them to reject ghosts; and they would wish to reject God and Christ too. Add to this their frequently immoral habits, their political resentments, their suspicion of clergymen, and the little time they have for thinking or reading on religious topics at all. Hence, alas! the big ha' Bible,' once their father's pride, is no longer a source of solace or pride to millions of our working men, who have become hard-eyed infidels, or bitter scoffers, or utterly careless and indifferent on the subject.

Ninthly. We must trace much of the evil we are deploring to the church, the pulpit, and the religious press. They have not commended the Bible as they should have done to the minds of men. Too often they have taught the false notions of a bygone age in reference to it. Sometimes, instead of fairly meeting, ministers have roared and dogmatized down the doubts which were given them to solve. Many of our American brethren seem anxious to preserve the Bible, principally as a padlock on the chains of the slave; or else, because, in their judgment, it contradicts the plainest deductions of modern science. And time would fail us to speak of the twaddle, the cant, the affected piety, the commonplace, the envy, the bigotry, the ignorance, and the party-spirit to which the divine Book is used as a stalking-horse in the present day. Coleridge wished for a book entitled 'Christianity Defended against its Defenders.' The second volume might be entitled the Cause of the Bible pleaded against Bibliolatry, Bigotry, Cant, and Spiritual Conceit —as well as against Rationalism, Infidelity, Vice, and Popular Ignorance.'

Finally, we think we discern in the depreciation of the Bible one part of a great and awful process through which God is conducting Christianity in our time. It is one of severe sifting, but, one out of which good must spring. Let us ever distinguish between things, and mere circumstances and words. Christianity is one thing, and churches are another; Christianity is one thing, and creeds are another; Christianity is one thing, and even the best of our present schemes for its promotion, and the strongest of its external evidences, are another, and the time seems come when God is, in his providence, to strike these one after another away-to stamp age and decrepitude upon them all to strip, as it were, our religion into its primitive power and simplicity, and not till it be thus stripped will it able, like a naked Athlete, to gain the race. Let the sifting, we say fearlessly, go on. Things must be worse ere

be

they are better. Let intellectual men continue to flock away, as, alas! they are flocking from our churches-let philosophers and physicists take the untruth of Christianity for granted, and laugh at you if you deny their statement,-let politicians treat it simply as an earthly fact, and a matter of mere polity,-let misled and unhappy men of genius rave at it as having gone out,'-let even some friendly critics of the evidences find them. but problematical :-all this might have been expected-all this had been foretold-all this is rather to be in the mean time desired-all this never touches the real merits of the Christian case, or affects the verdict which man's conscience and his heart have long ago returned in favour of real Christianity. All this, while thinning our professed ranks, ought to intensify the zeal, hope, and activity of those who remain, and all this will serve to precipitate the crisis we see before us, when men in their misery and darkness, sick of mere science, mere literature, mere philosophy, mere political advancement, mere religious naturalism, shall return to the Bible, and shall ask, crave, and obtain a sublimer form of Christianity than the world, since the first century, has ever seen.

We must not, we repeat, confound the battlements of Christianity with Christianity itself. These are often in reality the objects of assault, and while we are trembling for the foundations, the adversary may be only seeking to pull down the external buttresses. Church establishments, for instance, are but battlements - crazy and condemned battlements - and not Christianity. Let them fall, as soon as God pleases! Popery is another battlement, still more rotten, and reeling to its fall, its very splendour the ghastly lustre of leprosy like that which shone in ancient infected dwellings, and not Christianity. Let it fall suddenly and soon! Even creeds, excellent, and in the main true, as many of them are-even our ecclesiastical organizations, powerful as they seem, even our pulpits, great as the good they still do, even the office of the ministry, honoured, and deservedly honoured as it still is, even our external evidences and popular views of inspiration, are but battlements, and not Christianity. Christianity is independent of them, and though they were all ignored to-morrow, she would remain intact; her doctrines, her facts, her spirit, her blessed hopes, and her text-book would still survive, for they belong to the imperishable, the infinite, and the divine.

We have not space to enter on the subject of the cure for the disease, the causes of which we have thus partially indicated. This to be complete would include, besides defences and panegyrics on the Bible, a satisfactory settlement of the

question of inspiration, a more profound and thorough discussion of the relations which the Bible sustains to modern progress, culture, and society, and the infusion of a more humane and liberal spirit into the morality and the theology of the churches. These might not altogether stop the infidel torrent which has set in, and which must run its course, but they would tend to recommend the Bible to many who are at present sceptical of its supreme authority, and would cheer and comfort others whose hearts are trembling for the ark of God.

Whatever dangers are rising, or may yet arise, around the Scriptures, we need scarcely remind Christians of the duty which these very perils enforce, of clinging with renewed zeal and determination to The Book. There is none like it. Were it surrendered, the broadest calamities would rush upon the world. The moral sun of the earth were extinguished. The analogy is perfect. There may be larger and brighter luminaries in the universe than the sun; but he is our sun; and the man were a blasphemer or a lunatic, who should refuse to acknowledge his sovereignty, or to walk in his beams. So it were possible to conceive a clearer revelation of God's will than in the Bible; but it is our Bible, the unparalleled, unapproached luminary of the soul and conscience of man; and till a new and more glorious Day-star appear, woe to those who venture to deny or to depreciate its just claims!

Mr. Leask's volume is entitled, An Argument for Inspiration.' This, however, describes rather its aim than its result. It is not a connected or linked chain of argument at all. It is a series of interesting and eloquent papers on some of the more prominent characteristics of the sacred volume. The first lecture is on the Structure of the Bible; the second, on the Poetry of the Bible; the third, on the Dreams of the Bible; the fourth, on the Biography of the Bible; the fifth, on the Morality of the Bible; the sixth, on the Parables of the Bible; the seventh, on the Predictions of the Bible; the eighth, on the Miracles of the Bible; the ninth, on the Design of the Bible; and the tenth, on the Destiny of the Bible. It is perhaps a little hypercritical, but we should be glad if Mr. Leask had chosen another title than 'The Beauties of the Bible.' The alliteration is all very well, but the title leads the reader to expect a dissertation on the literary merits of the Scriptures, and he is rather surprised to find chapters on the Miracles, the Predictions, and above all on the Destiny of the Bible. This, however, is an objection which leaves the substance of the book untouched. That certainly possesses much merit, and is calculated to be of extensive usefulness. Admirably, in general,

with great clearness, acuteness, liveliness, and unction, does Mr. Leask dilate upon the literary, moral, and spiritual glories of the book of God. He writes con amore; he throws his whole soul into the subject. This holy enthusiasm is, indeed, one of the principal charms of the work, and redeems its fault of occasional commonplace in thought, and occasional rhetorical diffuseness and declamation in language. It is a book not to be judged from what may be called its fine passages, which sometimes rather mar the effect, but from the mass of vigorous, wholesome, and well-expressed thought which it contains. It is, perhaps, not quite so well written as his 'Footsteps of the Messiah,' and not nearly so elaborate and systematic as his "Great Redemption;' still it probably will be more popular

than either.

We have left ourselves no room for quotations. We refer our readers to the book itself, and especially to the opening passage on the Morality of the Bible, to the ingenious explanation of our Lord's parables, to the entire chapter on the Biography of the Bible, and to many passages of much energy and interest in the Predictions and the Design of the Bible. We pray heartily that the book may be blessed in the proportion of its own merits and its author's pious and ardent intentions. Mr. Wallace's volume consists of a series of lectures delivered in Bradford on the Sabbath afternoons to the working classes. We have reason to believe that he has done great good to the persons whom he more especially addressed. His lectures, if not so elaborate as Mr. Leask's, are equally sound, solid, and energetic. They have done much good to those for whom they were at first designed, and we cordially wish that the benefit may be extended to thousands more.

ART. V. Histoire de la Restauration. Par Alphonse de Lamartine. Tomes III. et IV. Paris Furne et Cie. 1852.

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In these two volumes Lamartine continues with great dramatic power the story of the Restoration. His style rises to the sublime, in some places; his descriptions are vivid in the extreme; his narrative is terse, vigorous, and clear; his appreciation of character powerful, though tainted on one side by