"My Chapter IV. occupies a ground by itself. How it came it will not be difficult to see, only it may be difficult to find why it did not come sooner, and to some, at least, of the great interpreters. It has to me the nature rather of an occurrence than a discovery; for how can that be called a discovery which the Master's words have been plainly teaching for eighteen hundred years, and which we, His disciples, have by some unaccountable dulness missed, even down to a particular day of accident within the last six months? an oversight all the more humiliating that the doctrine we have missed has been the doctrine of our Lord by Christ Himself; an operative doctrine indeed, and not a formulating, giving the outfit of the Spirit and the implemental forces by which He is to work. And, again, let it be the more valuable to us that it comes in after the formulating history is done, to be a Gospel by Christ's own authority, not inwoven with any of the old textures of the schools, but set in by an intercalation, to have its own footing, and its regulative sway in the respectful deference of the ages to come."-P. 12.

In showing how the Spirit was equipped with this threefold outfit of doctrine, our author elaborately examines the names given to the Spirit and His work, discovers that the one office of the Holy Ghost is to present Christ and His Gospel to the world as a testimony of sin and righteousness and judgment, examines and analyses these terms respectively, shows how they are to be interpreted so as "the first lessons of atonement from the lips of Christ Himself." Now there is some basis of truth in all this, and what truth there is is presented with some skill and force; but as an exhibition of the Gospel as finally given by Christ, as our Lord's "complete and explicit summation of the results He will have accomplished by His life and death," it is one-sided, mingled with much error, and therefore as a whole to be rejected.

First, both the name and the office of the Spirit are glaringly misconceived and misstated. According to our Lord's testimony, He is supremely "the Spirit of the truth;" the interpreter and administrator of "the truth as it is in Jesus," of the person and work of the Christ. As such He is the reprover of the world, the Paraclete within the Church to the world an unsought spontaneous pleader of the cause and claims of the Redeemer; to the Church an advocate called in, invoked and received by the prayer of penitent faith. To the disciples He was to reveal and apply the things of Christ, which to the world He was only

to proclaim and offer. Certainly, the whole mystery of the atoning work was to be set before the world in the threefold conviction; but only in a negative manner, as convincing sinners of their state and need. The full revelation of the mystery was to be given only to those who believe; to them alone should the Spirit show the things of Christ. Altogether forgetting this distinction, Dr. Bushnell gives the name Paraclete to the Spirit only in His relation to the world, and as a preacher of the Gospel to mankind. The passage in which he perpetrates this exegetical violence is one that we must not withhold; it is an instructive example of the bad effect of superficial exposition.

"There really appears to be no word of Scripture which has fared so badly at the hands of preachers and commentators as this word Comforter, of which I now speak. I say this considering the difficulty of finding any word in English that will fitly represent the Greek word, Paraclete. It is once translated, Advocate (1 John ii. 1). The commentators suggest other words, such as helper, counsel, teacher, intercessor. The very poorest representation ever proposed or adopted is our English name, Comforter. And it is all the worse that it is evidently intended to be taken as being naturally descriptive; for another word is even palpably mistranslated to conform to it: I will not leave you comfortless' (John xiv. 18), where the word 'comfortless' represents the word orphans in the original, the Saviour's design being in that word to say that He will not leave His disciples deserted, robbed of company and counsel; a very different matter from uncomforted. As if their being uncomfortable, or not sufficiently comforted, were a principal or prominent concern of the Master; a friend whose dignity it was to hold the rational and manly view of all experience, and have it as a matter conceded, that the best thing for them will sometimes be a fall out of condition, and be as grandly superior to all self-sympathy in the loss of earthly comforts as He has been Himself. No, there is no such feeble, over-soft sympathy in the Saviour's mind in His parting hour, that He should be contriving how especially to put His disciples in comfort and leave them so. Besides, His concern here is not for His disciples, but specially for such as He calls the world;' for it is the world that He is going to convince and bring to righteousness. And if the Spirit to be given is to be a gift having special reference to this, which appears in the manner of the language, the name Comforter is a name wholly inappropriate. To be comforted is just the thing the world as such does not want. And the Saviour has a much heavier and nobler

concern; viz. the organising of a grace for the world, such as He is just now bringing to completion. He is planning to unlocalise, universalise, and make victorious, the great salvation He has undertaken for mankind. And His idea stands on the face of the word He adopts for the designation of the promised ministry, whether we can find an English name for it or not. It is Paraclete-para, near; kletos, call. The near-caller, the bringer-in, for salvation; a word in no soft, soothing key, but a bugle-note of summons rather, such as the work of the Spirit, in the ingathering and organising of the everlasting Kingdom, fitly requires."-P. 221.

This paragraph is full of error. Without absolutely defending the translation Comforter, we may plead that as originally used by our translators the word had not the soft soothing sense above attributed to it; it meant, and still means, that invigoration and strengthening with might in the inner man which is the only comfort of the human soul. But we may confidently prefer the meaning derived from the passive participle; one called in as an advocate or helper, with a judicial application. St. John, who alone uses the word, never uses the common Greek verb from which the participle comes, a verb which the other writers often employ to signify encouragement and consolation. But by no artifice can the passive participle kletos be made to mean caller, call, bringer-in. The older Greek expositors, who sometimes gave it an active signification, only meant to imply that He who was called in was an active consoler and comforter. No one, until a new light dawned on Dr. Bushnell, ever dreamt of the interpretation he gives us. The Paraclete is an active advocate and helper of the Church, because as passively called in He actively discharges His function. So our Lord in the heavens is our advocate with the Father; not calling us, but called upon as such; and taking care of our interests in heaven, even as His representative takes care of our interests below. In the Church, and through the Church, and as the representative of Christ, He pleads as advocate the cause of the Redeemer and His redemption; but who Christ is, and what His redemption, He reveals more fully to believers as their Paraclete.

Before closing these miscellaneous remarks we must discharge our critical duty by protesting against the irreverence-or what we should call irreverence-which tinges the phraseology of this eloquent writer. This would not

be mentioned here, in the same pages which have treated so solemn a subject, were it not that flippancy of style is on the increase in England as in America, and we should be glad to contribute ever so little towards arresting it, at least within the circle of our own readers. It would be easy to collect a goodly list of offences against taste and theological decorum; but we forbear. Suffice that the reader of Dr. Bushnell, whom any remarks of ours might influence, is warned against the influence which his phraseological pleasantries might exert. For ourselves, we cannot understand how anyone who meditates upon the mystery of our Saviour's work-a mystery confessedly great, on any theory-can write about it in any other style than that of the utmost solemnity.

LITERARY NOTICES.

I. THEOLOGICAL.

CHRISTLIEB ON MODERN Doubt.

Modern Doubt and Christian Belief. A Series of Apologetic Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. By Theodore Christlieb, D.D., University Preacher and Professor of Theology at Bonn. Translated, with the Author's Sanction, chiefly by the Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, Ph.D., and Edited by the Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A., Vicar of Easton Royal, and Rural Dean. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1874.

No words that we might employ could adequately represent the magnitude of the crisis through which the cultivated European mind is passing in reference to the fundamental verities of the Christian faith. Unbelief, which, in the so-called Dark Ages, was not to be found upon this continent, and, when it threatened invasion from another, was repulsed by the united energies of new-born nations, then first made conscious of their strength, has now gained conquests in the very heart of Christendom, and is leading captive cultured men who, of all others, should be the most potent defenders of the faith. Very different indeed, in both principles and tactics, are the forces now arrayed against the truth, from those on which the olden chivalry employed their prowess, and very different are the methods by which they must be met. The Saracen could only in a very metaphorical sense be counted as one of our "ghostly enemies:" he was a creature of flesh and blood, wielded a weapon, and carried a standard of recognised shape and form, offered the intelligible alternative of submission or the sword, and, when once beaten, fell to rise no more. Where he conquered, he did not simply destroy the infidel himself proclaimed one primary truth, and by the very vociferousness of its utterance, seemed to drown every whisper of doubt. So successfully, indeed, did he impose his yoke, that the nations which accepted it are still the slowest to exchange it for a better. But the scepticism of the present day is a subtler thing; a universal solvent that corrodes the bonds which bind