of the late papal aggression were demonstrably untrue. The idea is evidently suggested by Archbishop Whately's 'Historie Doubts touching the Existence of Napoleon Bonaparte,' and most happily exposes the presumptuous shallowness with which modern infidelity dogmatizes over the books of the New Testament. This entertaining chapter grows out of one that immediately precedes it, entitled Historic Criticism,' the object of which is to show the high probability that the art of printing itself may be the means of burying from the eyes of future generations the men and things of the present, not, indeed, in the vacuum of oblivion, but beneath the impenetrable piles of accumulating literature.

'You talk,' says Harrington, of the ease of consulting original documents, but when they lie buried in the depths of national museums, amidst mountain loads of forgotten and decaying literature, it will not be so easy, even supposing the present activity of the press only maintained for eighteen hundred and fifty years (although in all probability it will proceed at a rapidly increased ratio), I say it will not be so easy to lay your hands on what you want. The materials, again, will often exist by that time in dead, or half obsolete languages, or, at least, in languages full of archaic forms. It will be almost as difficult to unearth and collate the documents which bear upon any events less than the most momentous as to recover the memorials of Egypt from the pyramids, or of ancient Assyria from the mounds of Nineveh. The historian of a remote period must be a sort of Belzoni or Layard.'-p. 337.

From these views, expanded with singular ingenuity, the writer proceeds to illustrate the liabilities to error which exist in the interpretation of historical documents from their mere antiquity. It is difficult to place one's hand upon any passage in our literature in which an important argument is managed with more amusing dexterity. Indeed, the only danger is lest its application to the deistical controversy should be overlooked by the superficial reader in his admiration of the author's adroitness. He takes, as we have said, for his illustration, the record which he concisely gives of the recent attempt of the Pope to re-establish a Roman-catholic hierarchy in England, and developes a series of arguments by which that record may be demonstrated in future times to be fabulous, and the events altogether incredible. He commences with the names of those individuals who have been particularly prominent in the late agitation, and concludes from them that the pretended history was in fact a mere allegory. Thus he represents the future commentator Dr. Dickkopf, of New Zealand, or Kamschatka, or Caffre Land-who writes at an epoch when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins

6

of St. Paul's-as comparing the name of Cardinal Wiseman with that of the Worldly Wiseman of the Pilgrim's Progress,' and contending that the writer adopted that fictitious designation with the same view with which Bunyan sketched to all posterity his Pliable, Great Heart, Hopeful, and Byends. The word Newman again (and observe the significant fact that there were two of them) was, in all probability, I may say certainly, designed to embody two opposite tendencies, both of which, perhaps, claimed, in impatience of the effete humanity of that age (a dead and stereotyped protestantism), to introduce a new order of things.' The name Masterman affords him a similar opportunity as the Wisemen, and Newmen of that long-past era. This,' he says, in ancient English, was applied to him who was not a "servant," or "journeyman," and is not unfitly used to designate collectively the assemblage of wealthy merchants who, like those of Tyre were "princes:" and,' he slyly adds, what further confirms our view is, that it is impossible to point out any Englishman of any distinction who ever had any of these names! A similar argument is drawn from the infelicitous names of Bishop Philpott's and Lord Chancellor Wilde.

From this external evidence the learned commentator is supposed to address himself to the internal. Here he derives his argument from the known existing political relations of the European states, archly alluding to the pretended neglect of the conferring of the Pallium at the cardinal's inauguration, and of the alleged omission from the oath taken on that occasion of the clause which a facetious Englishman said ought to be translated, I will persecute and pitch into all heretics to the utmost of my power.' The argument for the improbability of the whole story concludes with the statement that, at the time in question, England, in a state of profound domestic and international peace, cordially received foreigners from all parts of the earth within her coasts, and celebrated a sort of jubilee of the nations in a vast building of glass (wonderful for those times), called The Great Exhibition, to which every country had contributed specimens of the comparatively rude manufactures of that rude age.'

The other chapter we have in view is entitled The Blank Bible.' The idea of this paper may be supposed to have been suggested by a characteristic passage in Foster's Introductory Essay to Doddridge's Rise and Progress.' The author is musing amidst a large collection of books containing a huge babel of all imaginable opinions and vagaries,' and while faneying the existence of a malignant agency which had conjured up this chaos of error and confusion, he exclaims:-' If

such a thing might be as the intervention of the agency of a better and more potent intelligence, to cause, by one instantaneous action on all those books, the obliteration of all that is fallacious, pernicious, or useless in them, what millions of pages would be blanched in our crowded libraries!' This paper is the narration of a dream that every trace on the pages of every Bible in existence was miraculously and simultaneously obliterated; and represents the effects which such an event would be likely to produce upon the religious world as at present constituted. All parties are represented, in consequence of this calamity, as clubbing the contributions of their memory to replace the vanished document, and the way in which their recollections are influenced by their doctrinal theories is represented with admirable tact.

'I was particularly struck, he says, with the varieties of reading which mere prejudices in favour of certain systems of theology occasioned in the several partisans of each. No doubt the worthy men were generally unconscious of the influence of these prejudices; yet, somehow, the memory was seldom so clear in relation to those texts which told against them as in relation to those which told for them. A certain Quaker had an impression that the words instituting the Eucharist were preceded by a qualifying expression, "and Jesus said to the twelve, Do this in remembrance of me;" while he could not exactly recollect whether or not the formula of" baptism" was expressed in the general terms some maintained it was. Several Unitarians had a clear recollection that in several places the authority of manuscripts, as estimated in Griesbach's recension, was decidedly against the common reading; while the Trinitarians maintained that Griesbach's recension in those instances had left that reading undisturbed. An Episcopalian began to have his doubts whether the usage in favour of the interchange of the words "bishop" and "presbyter" was so uniform as the Presbyterian and Independent maintained, and whether there was not a passage in which Timothy and Titus were expressly called "bishops." The Presbyterian and Independent had similar biases; and one gentleman, who was a strenuous advocate of the system of the latter, enforced one equivocal remembrance by saying, he could, as it were, distinctly see the very spot on the page before his mind's eye. Such tricks will imagination play with the memory, when preconception plays tricks with the imagination! In like manner, it was seen that, while the Calvinist was very distinct in his recollection of the ninth chapter of Romans, his memory was very faint as respects the exact wording of some of the verses in the Epistle of James; and though the Arminian had a most vivacious impression of all those passages which spoke of the claims of the law, he was in some doubt whether the Apostle Paul's sentiments respecting human depravity, and justification by faith alone, had not been a little exaggerated. In short, it very clearly appeared that tradition was no safe guide; that if, even when she was hardly a month old, she could play such freaks with the memories of honest people, there was but a sorry prospect of the secure transinission of truth for eighteen hundred years.

From each man's memory seemed to glide something or other which he was not inclined to retain there, and each seemed to substitute in its stead something that he liked better.'-pp. 240, 241.

The general character, however, of the volume before us would be much misunderstood if the above passage should be taken as an average specimen of its style and tone. Some of the profoundest subjects of theological disputation-such as miracles, the doctrine of a future state, &c.-are absolutely exhausted in these pages. Indeed, the closeness of the author's logic, and the infinite variety given to his reasoning by the adoption of the conversational form, render it impossible to present anything like a reflection of the book within the limits to which we are necessarily confined. We warmly commend it to universal perusal, as, perhaps, the most valuable, and certainly the most brilliant, contribution to the treasury of the Evidences' which has been made during the present century, and we especially invite to it the attention of any whose minds may have been perplexed by those sophisms of modern infidelity which obtain an unchallenged admission through the treacherous garb of an evangelical phraseology.

The author of The Eclipse of Faith' has not thought proper to favour the public with his name; but his speech betrayeth him, and if he had wished to preserve his incognito, he should have adopted any other than the conversational style, in the management of which he unavoidably exhibits that almost distinctive copiousness, vivacity, and grace, by which those who have the pleasure of his acquaintance have been so often charmed, and which, we imagine, very few of them will fail to identify.

Religious Progress; and Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. By William R. Williams, D.D. Glasgow: William Collins.

THIS is one of Mr. Collins's cheap series, and yields to none of its predecessors in sterling worth. Dr. Williams is yet only slightly known in this country, but his characteristics ensure him a wide and permanent reputation. He is the pastor of a Baptist church in New York, whose mental superiority commands universal respect, and is happily allied to devout habits and an evangelical faith. A striking testimony to his pre-eminence. is furnished by the Westminster Review' of January last (p. 295), where, referring to the episcopal clergy of the States, the writer says We do not find among them all any one to be compared with a dozen in the Presbyterian church, to Dr. Williams in the Baptist, or Andreas Norton in the Unitarian denomination.'

The present reprint contains two treatises, each consisting of nine lectures-the one on Religious Progress, and the other on The Lord's Prayer. Both are distinguished by qualities of a very high order, and prove the title of their author, so far as mental endowments are concerned, to take rank in the first class of preachers. What his secondary qualifications may be we know not; but if on a par with those of his intellect he cannot fail to be a most attractive, as well as most instructive preacher. His lectures are full of materials for thought. There is no mere wordiness in them. Dr. Williams clearly apprehends his own meaning; he sees distinctly the thoughts he designs to express, and feels the emotions he wishes to convey; his intellect is keen, searching, and powerful. It is so far metaphysical as to penetrate far below the surface. He feels the difficulties of his subject, and can afford to admit them; at the same time that the ardor of his spirit throws a glow and animation over the most recondite discussions. Ilis intellect and his emotions are in happy keeping, so that while the one illumines, the other warms; he addresses himself to the whole nature of his hearers a thing not common with his brethren-and thus awakens affec