nation's Divine charter? This thought seems to lie in the background of Stephen's address. "Within the Acts, it is Stephen's discourse in which the Pauline 'All Israel shall be saved' (Rom. xi. 26) finds most definite expression." The discourse is an excellent illustration of Matt. x. 19, "It shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." J. S. BANKS.

CURRENT FRENCH THOUGHT. THE NEED OF CONFESSION. By G. WAGNER (Revue Chrétienne).—When old remedies have gone out of fashion or have fallen into discredit, they may be revived if they are issued under a new name and in a different kind of wrapper. The purchasers who judge by the label, and they are the majority, think they have found something new, and eagerly take possession of it. One is at times tempted to have recourse to a similar device in the interest of certain old practices, that are good in themselves, but have fallen into disrepute because they have been abused. Which of us, e.g., would recommend fasting under that name? To recommend it, not on the ground of health, but on that of morality or religion, would be to run the risk of being ridiculed or suspected of superstition. And so those who are afraid of the risks sometimes imitate the conduct above described, they change the label, and in this way hope to secure a better chance of being heard. I am not doing anything of the kind in speaking of confession.

There is no need to recount the history of the practice. Confession has been judged, condemned, rejected by the Protestant Church. Attempts to restore it have led to unwholesome practices which have soon merited and obtained the same condemnation as has come down on the old mechanical custom. All that is true: but the need of making confession still remains. No good thing is safe from abuse. Thieves and robbers may climb into the fold: the temple itself may be turned into a den of thieves. We are not to give in to abuses, or blindly abolish that which they may assail, and therefore I have no hesitation in saying that self-revelation, confession of the state of the inner being, is natural to man. We see this coming out in children. They tell everything. Punishments and ridicule gradually teach them to control and conceal their thoughts. But this reticence is an artificial state, and is never permanent. The childlike need still is within us, and is often clamant, however advanced in years and accustomed to self-concealment we may become. The most taciturn of us at times longs to taste the happiness of the child on its mother's knee, who sobs out the whole story of its distress. The most hardened criminals whose conscience seems dead experience the necessity of confession. They rarely keep the secret of their guilt. They write it on the walls of their prison, or reveal it in their sleep. Their safety depends on their silence, and yet they cannot be silent.

The need of confession is felt by all of us: the question is, To whom should we make confession? We may in our minds conjure up the ideal of a confessor-one who has lived long and suffered deeply, who has full sympathy with all that moves us, who is indifferent to nothing that concerns us, who is holy and severe but compassionate, who has no interests or designs of his own, and who will make no use of what we confide to him. But where shall such a one be found? The answer may be given, surely it is not to man we should confess, but to God. My reply, strange as it may seem to Protestant ears, is that that is not sufficient. Doubtless, full confession to God in the true sense of the term, with all that it implies, is sufficient. But confession to man may be necessarily consequent upon genuine penitence before God. If our fault

has been against a fellow-man, is not confession to man necessary? Can one be sincere towards God and hypocritical towards man? Can confession be valid if the fault continues? Surely not. Confession to God alone is especially an illusion when prayer is non-existent and true faith has passed away, when the God to whom confession is made is not a living person, but a faint shadow. A God who has eyes but cannot see, and ears that do not hear, whose presence does not restrain from sin as the presence of a man would do, is less than a man, and confession to such a being is not sufficient. Before there can be a true vision of God, the heart and conscience need to be cleansed and filled with humility. Crutches are what you need, and you speak of mounting with the wings of an eagle. To confess our faults to our fellows is the best preparation for genuine confession to God Himself. Let us then endeavour to render to each other this mutual office of mercy which consists in taking upon ourselves the faults of others and in binding up the wounds of their souls.

The first duty of all of us is to avow our faults and show ourselves just as we are. To whom should we make confession? To those whom we love. Our hidden evils sap our strength and fill us with discouragement and doubt. Outwardly, we may seem strong and valiant; inwardly our vigour is oozing away through a fatal wound. But we are afraid of losing our friends by letting them see us such as we are. This fear is one of the chastisements of our hypocrisy. To be afraid of losing an affection which is not addressed to us, but to a character we pretend to be, and in that fear to let the living heart die in order to preserve the dead mask!—what more cruel pain could be conceived? No: truth does not slay friendship, it rather gives it life. It is from this true relation of souls that religion springs-the relation between the Saviour, full of love and compassion, and the poor sinner that hides nothing from Him, but cries with gratitude, "Thou hast searched me and known me, and Thou lovest me: I render to Thee my life, since Thou hast saved it."

At the same time I would regard confession that is confined altogether to our moral faults and distresses as insufficient. The mistake of men does not consist simply in hiding evil, they sometimes hide good still more carefully, and this is one of the greatest hindrances to the advance of the kingdom of God. Each of us has his own mission, his own message to give. We have need of confessing it-of speaking out regardless of the fear of man, and of doing our utmost to scatter the darkness of falsehood and error. A great reward awaits those who have the courage to declare what they think and feel. They discover friends where they were afraid they would rouse up enemies. When truths are in the air and on the lips of men, there needs but the courageous heart to summon them forth; they only wait for that voice to rise into the light.

THE JEWISH LAW CONCERNING THE SANCTUARY. M. DE BROGLIE (Revue des Religions). The question before us is if the history of the people of Israel presupposes the laws concerning the sanctuary which are contained in the Pentateuch, or if, as many hold, those laws belong to a comparatively late period in the national life-in other words, if the Biblical history is consistent with itself. We shall endeavour to show that, in spite of diversity of practice, the laws in the Pentateuch concerning the sanctuary were known to the nation from the first.

1. The Period of the Conquest. In the Book of Joshua we have two references, one to the prescriptions in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the other to those in Leviticus. The first is the fulfilment of the commandment given by Moses to erect an altar on Mount Ebal, to offer sacrifices, and to pronounce blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience to the law. The altar is built of unhewn stones, and sacrifices are

offered in presence of the ark (Josh. viii. 30-35). The second is the erection of an altar by the Reubenites and Gadites on the right bank of the Jordan. This act would have led to civil war but for the explanation that the altar was simply an historical monument, and was not meant for sacrifice, and that it was fully understood that the one lawful place for sacrifice was the altar before the tabernacle (Josh. xxii.). The danger of national disruption and of religious schism to which the setting up of altar against altar would have exposed the Jewish people was felt by all, and led to an insistence upon the necessity of having one sanctuary, though the fact that God had not yet indicated where that was to be definitely fixed necessarily prevented a rigid obedience to the Levitical law upon the subject.

2. The Period of the Judges. This was a time of semi-barbarism. The nation was split up into various tribes and families, occupying different regions of Palestine, defending themselves separately against their enemies, and carrying on intermittent local wars. The state of matters was something like that in the West after the death of Charlemagne, when civilization was thrown back by a wave of barbarism. According to the author of the first part of the Book of Judges, this period was one of religious corruption-of rebellion against Jehovah. The people became addicted to the idolatry of their Canaanitish neighbours, were punished by enslavement, repented, were delivered by judges, and in time of peace fell away again. The same history often repeated itself. It is not surprising that when the Mosaic law was so ill observed there should be no reference to that part of it which related to the one central sanctuary. Worship at Shiloh, where the ark was, was still maintained, but it is not said that the whole nation took part in it, as in their then divided state it may have been almost impossible for them to do. The principal argument against the existence of the law in question is drawn from the conduct of judges and other pious personages, who offered sacrifices elsewhere than at Shiloh. But their conduct is easily to be explained. The procedure of Gideon, who offered a sacrifice to Jehovah at the place where there had been an altar to Baal, is a typical case. In times of reformation it must have often been thought advisable to re-establish the worship of the true God on the very sites that had been polluted by idolatry. The prescriptions concerning ritual were not regarded as being clothed with the same sacred authority as the Decalogue and the Covenant between God and Israel, and deviation from Levitical rules was sanctioned by the conduct of divinely inspired persons. In the Book of Judges we find many allusions to the earlier history of the nation-to the deliverance from Egypt, the Theophany at Sinai, the sacred tabernacle and ark, the Levitical priesthood, and the journey through the wilderness to Canaan.

3. The Reformation under Samuel. The period which begins with Samuel is one of organization and progress. Under Samuel the national unity was reconstituted. At the beginning of the period we see the house of God at Shiloh frequented by the Israelites: the ark, the priesthood, the tithes, and offerings referred to indicate an elaborate system which could not have originated in the dark ages of the Judges, but must date from the time of Moses. With the capture of the ark the national worship was interrupted and lost its raison d'être: the sanctuary was destroyed, the priests emigrated and carried away with them the sacred vessels of the tabernacle. We find them later on in the priestly city of Nob. The ark miraculously restored was not brought back to the altar and tabernacle, but remained at Kiriathjearim. During the twenty years that follow, Samuel is judge and prophet. He reproves idolatry, but does not restore the sanctuary. He offers sacrifices in various places, and seems to have authorized by his example the worship at high places, or

at least at more altars than one. Later history confirms this impression. The author of the Book of Kings, who believes in the existence of the law prescribing one central sanctuary, affirms repeatedly that until the erection of the temple people sacrificed at high places, and that David and Solomon followed this custom. As he teaches that David strictly obeyed the law of Moses, he must have considered the worship at high places lawful in his time, and must have interpreted the law of Deuteronomy in the most liberal sense, as tolerating various centres of worship until the time when Jehovah would choose the one place where He desired worship to be offered to Him. The conduct of Samuel in not reinstituting the sanctuary and its ritual is to be explained by the circumstances of the time and the nature of his mission. He had to combat the licentiousness and superstition of his age, and, as in the case of Israel in the wilderness, the giving of the moral law took precedence of legislation concerning ritual.

4. The Erection. of the Temple. When David had conquered his enemies he turned his attention to the reorganization of religion. He brought the ark to Jerusalem and proposed to build a temple for it. The design was accepted by God, and the execution of it deferred to the reign of Solomon, and it was now that the law promulgated in Deuteronomy as to one central sanctuary was put in force. Jerusalem was now understood to be the place chosen by Jehovah; once the temple was erected, it would become the centre of the national worship, and henceforth worship at other altars would be unlawful.

CURRENT SWISS THOUGHT.

A NEW LIFE OF JESUS. By J. J. PARANDER (Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie).— Under the title of Jesus of Nazareth from an Historical, Scientific, and Social Point of View, a new work has been published in Paris; and although it is in many parts fantastic and objectionable, it contains a good deal of attractive matter, and deserves some notice in our pages. The author, who uses the nom de plume of Paul de Regla, is a medical man, who has paid great attention to electro-magnetism, both as a theory and as applied to the healing art. He has travelled extensively in the East, and is versed in the occult lore which to us Westerns appears so strange and mysterious, and even offensive. Unlike many modern men of science, his tendency is rather to spiritualism than to materialism. Like a good Frenchman, he wishes to show that the watchword of the Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," is applicable to the movement inaugurated by Jesus. It is difficult to make out whether he is by birth a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. He claims to write in entire independence of spirit, and to be subject to no scholastic or ecclesiastical yoke. But one would be inclined to believe that, having begun as a Roman Catholic, he has been disgusted by the moral errors and pagan character of the Roman Church, and, like Lamennais and Quinet, and many others, has chosen to separate himself from it and go his own way in the search for spiritual light and consolation.

In his preface he asserts that his standpoint is not that of negative criticism or of rigid orthodoxy, that he "accepts the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, of that Jesus whom His disciples called Christ, but that he sees in Him simply a Reformer, and the Founder of an essentially human religion, a religion associated with progress of every kind, and dominated by the thought of God as the Father of all, and that he desires to study with impartiality the commanding and attractive figure of Jesus, such as history and science and research enable one to apprehend it." A sincere

love, an ardent thirst for truth, united to the greatest possible independence of mind, to a keen sympathy for the unfortunate, and a desire to remedy the ills by which humanity is afflicted, are evident in our author, and modify the indignation which some of his utterances are calculated to excite. His purpose is rather to set forth the religio Christi than the religio de Christo-to use Lessing's famous distinction-to see Jesus as He was, rather than as apostles and evangelists of the new faith conceived Him to be.

The author, penetrated with deep and sincere reverence for the person of Jesus, shows that reverence in the manner in which he reproduces such characteristic passages as the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the conversation with the woman of Samaria, in which is found the statement of the nature of the worship which is acceptable to God. But the words which he is fondest of quoting are those in which Jesus confutes His adversaries, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Scribes, the champions of the law and of the established order of things, which He as a revoluntary wished to abolish or, at least, to reform. Under the influence of this opinion our author goes astray by ignoring the principle of the kingdom of God, and the Messianic work-in other words, he is unable to ascertain what is the religio Christi without taking into account the conception Jesus formed of the kingdom of God, and the way in which He laboured to establish that kingdom on earth. We regret that his persistent antipathy towards the Jews and the Old Testament has prevented his indicating the unquestionable place which the teaching of the synagogue and the writings of the prophets had in the formation of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. To attribute to Him complete originality, entire independence of thought, is to break the chain of revelation and of historical continuity, and to misunderstand in great measure the teaching of Him who " came to fulfil the law and the prophets."

In a fresh and eloquent manner M. de Regla describes the political and religious condition of the Jewish people and of the Roman Empire at the time of the birth of Jesus. In the account he gives of the Jewish religious sects he lays special stress on that of the Essenes, and his narrative of their beliefs and practices is based both upon the testimony of ancient authors and upon the information of an Essene whose acquaintance he made in the East. "The Essenes," he says, 66 were more numerous than the Sadducees, but inferior to the Pharisees both in numbers and influence. They were true philosophers of the Pythagorean stamp. Their roots struck deep down into the nation, and they enjoyed a high reputation for sanctity, knowledge, and even prophetic gifts." The great part which M. de Regla believes the Essenes to have played in the Gospel history is one of the most characteristic features of his book. The idea which he holds, that Jesus belonged to this sect, is not a new one. In 1849 a couple of pamphlets, published at Leipsic, and professing to be translated from an ancient MS. found in a library at Alexandria, represent Jesus in this character. There can be no doubt that M. de Regla maintains his position valiantly, and that he furnishes a very vivid and picturesque narrative of what he thinks Jesus was, and did, and purposed to do. We leave to more accomplished critics than we can pretend to be the task of refuting the error, if error it be, of the Essene theory.

The scientific point of view of our author is indicated by the position he takes up towards the miraculous, and by the explanation he gives of the miracles which abound in the Gospels. He has no sympathy either with the Sadducean scepticism which rejects what it cannot understand, or with the blind credulity that accepts marvels indiscriminately. Strengthened by the knowledge which he believes he has gained of occult subjects, magnetism, hypnotism, &c., he accepts in good faith, we believe, and