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its unequalled services to the Popes, by the monstrous maxims which Pascal exposed, and the practices which expressed them, so kindled against it the indignation of Christendom, that Clement XIV. was compelled to suppress it in all Christian States.

"The rage of this system against whatever would hinder its march against its own subjects when they have conscientiously paused in their submission-has had something transcendent in its pitiless malignity. The fierceness of its persecutions has been precisely proportioned to its power. The hand which looks so full of blessing has opened the deep of oubliettes, has added tortures to the rack, has framed the frightful Iron Maiden, has set the torch to martyr fires. The breath which should have filled the air with sweeter than Sabæan odours, has blighted the bloom of many lives, and floated curses over the nations so frequent and so awful, that life itself was withered before them, till their very extravagance made them harmless.

"Instead of true wisdom, where this system has prevailed with an unquestioned supremacy, it has fostered and maintained wide popular ignorance. Instead of true sanctity, its fruit has been. shown in peasantries debased, aristocracies corrupted, an arrogant and a profligate priesthood. It has honoured the vilest who would serve it, and crushed the purest who would not. It sent gifts and applause, and sang its most exulting Te Deum, for Philip the Second; while its poisoned bullet killed William of Orange. The medal which it struck in joyful commemoration of the bloody diabolism of St. Bartholomew's is one of its records. Its highest officials have sometimes lived lives which its own annalists have hated to touch. Alexander VI., cruel, crafty, avaricious, licentious, whom it were flattery to call a Tiberius in pontificals-who bribed his way to the highest dignity, who burned Savonarola, the traditional portrait of whose favourite mistress, profanely painted as the Mother of God, hangs yet in the Vatican, who probably died by the poisoned wine which he had prepared for his cardinals, and whose evil renown is scarcely matched by that of Cæsar Borgia his son-stands as one of its infallible Popes, holding the keys of heaven for men.

"If any system is doomed by its history, this is the one. Protestantism has now so checked it, the advancing moral development of mankind has set such limits to its power, that these are largely facts of the past. The Vatican Court is now free from scandal. The Church at present seeks strength through beneficence, not through control of the secular arm; by its helps to piety, not through appeals to physical fear. But its more spontaneous and self-revealing development has been in this more friendly Past. Therefore the nations whom once it has ruled, when they finally break from it, hate it with an intensity proportioned to the promises it has failed to fulfil, and the bitter

degradations it has made, them undergo. Atheism itself-that moral suicide-seems better to them than to be again subjected to Rome.

"This is the system as realised in history, and there forever adjudged and sentenced. Of course this gives immense advantage to those who now resist its progress. It cannot fascinate the nations again till the long experience is forgotten. But such is not at all its appearance as presented to those whom it wins to its fold. And we must look at it, in a measure at least, as those who honour and love it look, if we would understand its power, if we would know how it is that it hopes a second time to conquer the world."

Our space fails us, and we can now say but a few words more, whether about the New York meeting or the Alliance in general. Yet many matters would press for notice if we had time. We had intended, in particular, to make special reference to some of the papers read under the "Christian Life " division. But we cannot do more than name even the beautiful papers in the section on "Education and Literature," contributed respectively by Dr. Simpson, of Derby, England, on "Modern Literature and Christianity," and by Dr. Noah Porter, of Yale College, on "Modern Literature in its Relation to Christianity." Dr. Porter is not only an able and sagacious philosopher, but an elegant and acute critic. Dr. Simpson, also, is a man of great ability and accomplishment, of whom England should hear more than as yet it has done. In the same section we note, as of special interest to some of our readers, that Dr. Rigg read a paper on the "Relations of the Secular and Religious Elements in Popular Education in England;" a paper of information, not of controversy. We further note, as probably likely to interest many of our ministerial readers, that under the third section of this division-"The Pulpit and the Age "-Dr. Parker, of London, Dr. Kidder, Professor of Homiletics at Drew Seminary, and author of a volume on the subject of Homiletics," Mr. Ward Beecher, and Dr. John Hall, the eminent Baptist Minister of New York, contributed their ideas respectively, Dr. Hall dealing specifically with the proper matter in preaching-"What to Preach."

At Berlin, in 1857, the Rev. Henry Alford (afterwards Dean Alford) took part in a joint sacramental celebration, in the large hall of a noble hotel. For this Christian act he was proscribed at home by his fellow clergy generally,

Dean Payne Smith at New York.

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and it is not improbable that it lost him a bishopric. At New York Dean Payne Smith, worthy successor at Canterbury of Dean Alford, did the like at a Presbyterian Church, the Church of Dr. Adams, one of the most influential among the New York clergy. It may be that this act, like that of his predecessor, may interfere with his promotion. If it should, Dean Smith is every whit too manly a Christian and too Christian a man to regret that, in the frankness of his heart, he did a thing so right as to take part in that joint communion. In America what he had done gave vast umbrage to the small but most exclusive quasi Anglo-Catholic party; in England it was for weeks the subject of solemn correspondence in the Guardian. But in his diocesan, the Primate, Dean Payne Smith has a powerful friend and ally, who will not, so far as he is concerned, allow him to suffer for his catholicity of spirit. The Dean carried to New York a letter of greeting from the Primate, excellent in tone and substance, which is printed in the appendix to this volume. Dr. Smith was well supported during the Alliance by several brother clergymen of distinction; in particular by Mr. Dallas Marston, Professor Stanley Leathes, and Mr. Fremantle. Altogether, Christian breadth and liberality of feeling has made a decided advance within the Church of England since 1857.

So we bid farewell to the New York Conference of the Evangelical Alliance. Those who had the privilege to be present will never forget it. All New York rose en masse to bid them welcome. All public places were thrown open to the Alliance,and the City Corporation, under the guidance of honest Mayor Havemeyer, one of the leaders in the great movement against the infamous rings which had so long bound the city in disgraceful and demoralising thraldom, led the Alliance round by steamer to show them the magnificent municipal institutions and charities of the corporation. Philadelphia and Washington vied with New York. The President delayed a military appointment to meet the Alliance at the White House. Hospitality was, on all sides, equally generous and courteous. The States showed in all points at their best. May the Christianity of the two continents hold them one!

ART. II.-1. The Book of Daniel, with Notes and Introduction. By CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D., Bishop of Lincoln. Rivingtons. 1871.

2. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. The Book of the Prophet Daniel. By K. F. KEIL, D.D. Translated from the German by the Rev. M. G. EASTON, A.M. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1872.

3. Daniel the Prophet. Nine Lectures Delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Oxford. With Copious Notes. By the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. Oxford: Jas. Parker and Co. Third Edition. 1869. 4. Etudes Bibliques. Par F. GODET, Docteur et Professeur en Théologie. Première Série: Ancien Testament. Paris Sandoz et Fischbacher. Deuxième Edition.

1873.

5. Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. By KARL FRIEDRICH KEIL. Translated from the Second Edition, with Supplementary Notes from Bleek and others, by GEORGE C. M. DOUGLAS, B.A., D.D. Vol. II. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1870.

THE Book of Daniel has long been one of the high places of the field where the contest is waged for the faith once delivered unto the saints. With men to whom a miracle is a thing incredible, and prophecy an offence or an impossibility, it is not surprising to find the most inveterate opposition displayed towards a writing which contains a record of such miracles as those of the Babylonian exile, and a series of prophecies second to none in the Old Testament in the extent of their range and the minuteness of their details. If Daniel is numbered among the prophets, then the oracles of Tübingen are confounded like the magicians over whom he triumphed twenty-four centuries ago. It is a book, as Dr. Pusey says in his opening paragraph, which "admits of no half measures. It is either Divine or an imposture. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a most frightful scale, ascribing to God prophecies which were never uttered, and miracles which are assumed never to have been wrought."

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In the case of this book, we have now nothing of the patchwork system advocated like the piecemeal authorship of the Pentateuch, and the so-called first and second Isaiahs of Rationalistic criticism. The whole book is relegated by its impugners to the Maccabean era, and its prophecies distorted to give them no later application than to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and the war of independence, thus making them prophecies post eventum. Though the spuriousness of Daniel's book has come to be an axiom of the school which vaunts itself for its culture and its candour, theirs is not the joy of them that divide the spoil even after a century of attack. According to the highest authority in matters of Old Testament inspiration and canonicity, "Daniel the Prophet" spake of Him. All the theories which eliminate the Messianic and eschatological references from the book are beset with difficulties far exceeding that which recognises Daniel as a member of the "goodly fellowship of the prophets," and are based upon assumptions so cumbrous and arbitrary that they can be expected to find credence only where there was a foregone conclusion of disbelief.

Among the books called forth in answer to the Essays and Reviews, we question whether any is so likely to find a place among the standard works of English divinity a generation hence as the nine lectures of the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. Messrs. Clark have given us, as one of their recent and most valuable issues, the translation of Keil's Commentary on Daniel. Bishop Wordsworth reserved this book as the last published instalment of his Exposition, and prefixed to his Notes an unusually copious and interesting Introduction.

As to the person of the prophet, we learn that he was led captive into Babylon in the third year of King Jehoiakim (B.c. 606-5); hence his birth would seem almost to have coincided with the great reformation of religion in Judah under King Josiah. For one like Daniel, of noble, if not of royal birth, there was the promise of a prosperous career, until the nation was filled with mourning by the death of Josiah occasioned by the wound received at Megiddo. A younger son of Josiah (Shallum) was hastily proclaimed king in his father's stead under the name of Jehoahaz, but the Egyptian king Pharaoh Necho was the real master of the country. After a reign of only three months, the young monarch was carried off to the camp of