shocks the moral sense of men to say that a pirate, with all his darkness of mind as to God and divine things, with all his callousness, with all the moral habits of a life of crime, becomes perfectly holy by a change of will, by forming a new intention, by mere honesty of purpose. If the demands of God thus rapidly sink with the increasing depravity of men, as has often been remarked, the shortest road to perfection is the most debasing course of crime. 2. Need any reader of the Bible be reminded that the consciousness of sin, of present corruption and unworthiness, is one of the most uniform features of the experience of God's people as there recorded? 3. Or is there any one point in which Christian experience in all ages of the church is more strongly pronounced than in this sense of sin, and consequently humiliation under it? In opposition to the common consciousness of men, to the plainest teachings of the Scriptures, and to the experience of the people of God, we are called upon to believe that "honest intention" is the whole of duty and religion; if we have that, we are perfect. If this is a false doctrine, no one can fail to see what its effects must be. If a man thinks himself perfect, if he says, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knows not that he is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked," his situation is most deplorable. Mr Finney is well aware that his doctrine changes the whole nature of religion, and hence his frequent denunciations of the false philosophy and pretended orthodoxy by which religion has been perverted and the church corrupted. And certain it is that religion, as represented by him, is something exceedingly different from what good people in all ages have commonly regarded it. We should have to provide a new language, new hymns, new prayers, and especially a new Bible. It is useless, however, to continue these remarks. If a man can believe that every human being is either perfectly sinful or perfectly holy, he can believe any thing; and a theory that leads to this conclusion is thereby exploded, and its fragments need hardly be looked after.

Of course, Mr Finney teaches that full or perfect obedience to the moral law is the condition of salvation, now and ever. There is not a passage in the Bible, he says, which intimates that men are saved or justified "upon conditions short of personal holiness, or a return to full obedience to the moral law." (P. 366.) Any man, therefore, conscious of coming short of perfection has sure evidence that he is not justified. "As the moral law is the law of nature, it is absurd to suppose that entire obedience to it should not be the unalterable condition of salvation."-(P. 364.) Regeneration, therefore, is declared to be "AN INSTANTANEOUS CHANGE FROM ENTIRE SINFULNESS TO ENTIRE HOLINESS.”—(P. 500.)

This work has interested us principally on two accounts:First, as an illustration of the abject slavery to which the understanding, when divorced from the Bible, and from the other constituents of our nature, reduces those who submit themselves to its authority. One would think that history furnished examples enough of the consequences of following such a guide, to deter others from repeating the experiment. Secondly, Mr Finney's book is the best refutation that can well be given of the popular theology current in many parts of our country. How long have we been accustomed to hear that inability is incompatible with obligation, and that happiness is the highest good! Grant Mr Finney these principles, and he need ask you no further favours. You must follow him to all his conclusions. He has had the strength and the boldness to carry them out to their legitimate consequences; and here they are. You must either take them, or give up the principles whence they flow. We heartily thank our author for having brought matters to this alternative.

ART. II.-The Prophet Habakkuk expounded by Francis Delitzsch. Leipzig, pp. xxx. & 208.*

IF we estimate the value of a commentary by the size of the volume, or the extent of Scriptural surface over which it travels, the merit of this exposition of Habakkuk by Dr Francis Delitzsch will undoubtedly not be very great; but if we allow the ability, the learning, the evangelical views, and the deep-toned piety, which it displays, to enter into the computation, we must assign to the work before us a distinguished place. Its author belongs to that school of German theologians, so happily on the increase, who with profound scholarship unite staunch orthodoxy, and who are turning the tide of popular unbelief by their unanswerable demonstrations that learning and faith in Scripture go hand in hand. In the matters of inspiration and of the supernatural facts of the Bible, Dr Delitzsch admits of no compromise; and he plainly evinces in abundant instances throughout the book, the truth of what he thus states in his introduction, that there must be-for we have in Habakkuk an instance of it-" a prophecy, which, as it cannot be explained from human foresight, must have a supernatural divine illumination for its cause.' This deserves to be rated pre-eminently among the qualifications of an expositor. How essential it is for a Biblical interpreter to have

* Der Prophet Habakkuk ausgelegt von Franz Delitzsch.

this conviction well grounded in his mind at the outset can be best appreciated by those who have seen something of the monstrosities of exegesis and of criticism to which an error here has given rise. If some one were to attempt to expound the "Paradise Lost" on the presumption that it was an infantile production, and should go determinedly to work to reduce every thing to the level of what might be expected from a child's capacities, lopping off and paring down without scruple wherever this was necessary to his end, such a procedure with Milton may very well be put on a parallel with that treatment of the books of Scripture which sets out with the principle that nothing supernatural can be admitted. Lexicography, grammar, history, have all been, as occasion required, broken on the wheel. Many German works, which pass under the name of commentaries or introductions, are by this unsound principle at the bottom rendered perfectly worthless, except as museums of exegetical curiosities; while others, that are really valuable, are in many points sadly disfigured. In the hands of unbelieving interpreters, the method and result of their exegesis have grown up into a system, which spreads its influence over the whole field of sacred literature, even to points where we would least suspect its existence. It constantly reappears in places the most remote from those obnoxious passages for the sake of which it was invented. With an appear

ance of candour and laborious induction well calculated to deceive the unwary, it deduces significations, assigns etymologies, lays down grammatical rules, which nevertheless have no other reason but that they may be applied in some particular case where the maxims of neology find them necessary. So that even an interpreter of sound views, if he suffers himself to depend upon writers of this school for materials, without subjecting them to an independent and thorough investigation for himself, will be constantly liable (as has often actually happened) to adopt, without designing or observing it, what has sprung from no better origin than principles which he repudiates. On the other hand, if he rejects indiscriminately all that such works contain, he deprives himself of the benefit of whatever is valuable in the patient and laborious researches of many able scholars.

Without undertaking to pronounce accurately upon the comparative merits or demerits of the work before us, we wish to note a few things, in addition to the soundness of its author's theological sentiments, which contribute much to its value as a critical commentary. In Hebrew philology Dr Delitzsch is evidently at home. His previous labours in this field, particularly his Jesurun, published in 1838 under the double title of "Prolegomena to Fürst's Hebrew Concordance, and Introduction

to the Grammar and Lexicography of the Hebrew language, in opposition to Gesenius and Ewald," are spoken of by Dr Fürst, in the preface to his great work, in the most exalted terms, saving only the author's "piam nervosamque orthodoxiam," to which of course he was no friend. The regard shown for the genuine Hebrew construction and the strict Hebrew sense as determined by usage, and his preference for a Hebrew etymology wherever one is possible, not refusing, however, on proper occasions, the aid of the cognate tongues, are undoubtedly just principles of interpretation. With much that is original and striking, there is little strained or extravagant; he never seems to be seeking for the novel, but only for the true. And whether he has in all cases found it or not, his views certainly commend themselves often by their acuteness and plausibility, and the remarks upon points of grammar and lexicography, with which the book before us is interspersed, betray the hand of a master, and are valuable, to say the least, as suggesting to the scholar topics for examination.

We would next refer to the extensive use made of parallel passages, or in the German phrase Grundstellen. This reaches further than the discovery of casual, perhaps superficial, similarity in expression, to the assumption of a dependence of one writer upon another whether in thought or language. The inspired books, forming at once the literature of his nation and the symbols of his faith, rooted themselves deeply in the memory and the heart of the religiously instructed Hebrew, and were most intimately associated with his whole inward life. He derived from them to a large extent his thoughts and modes of conception, and their familiar language naturally and often involuntarily presented itself to him as the aptest vehicle of his ideas. Add to this, that the prophetic writings must be expected in a very particular manner to betray this influence of a preceding revelation, since the organ and bearer of divine communications must surrender himself entirely to the agency of God upon his mind, partly mediate through the Scriptures already existing, partly immediate, but still connecting itself with the existing word. Each new revelation adopted within itself the old or attached itself upon it, in conformity with the process of gradual development which God was conducting. This unison seals that revelation, which has come through the medium of many different individuals, as nevertheless the work of one and the same divine Spirit. It is not strange then if we find that later writers borrow expressions from those that preceded them, take up their thoughts and enlarge upon or vary them according to their immediate purpose, and often where they make no express citation, yet allude to particular passages in such a man

ner as to show that they had them in their thoughts. Hengstenberg has done an eminent service in showing from the example of the Pentateuch how this dependence on former books of Scripture pervades all that succeed them, and what extensive and valuable use may be made of the fact for purposes of exposition. Delitzsch has laboured very ardently and successfully in this line. He perhaps presses a resemblance sometimes which is not very obvious, or assumes a dependence where none existed; but we would rather have the results of an exploration which discovered too much than of one which discovered too little. We cannot but express our conviction, that this is an important and comparatively untrodden field for Biblical investigation, and one which promises rich results. There has indeed been no lack of so-called collations of parallel passages, and the margins of some of our Bibles have been literally crammed with them; and yet all is to very small purpose, for it has been done with little judgment and with no fixed principles. There is a great work here, which remains to be done, both in the Old Testament and in the New, not only for the elucidation of particular passages, but by a slow and laborious induction to trace the organic connection of Scripture and the relation which each of the inspired writers sustains to every other and to the grand scheme of revelation, and indirectly to shed light upon the nature of inspiration itself.

In his exposition Delitzsch pursues the system of rigid translation, which, since the publication of Winer's Grammar of the New Testament, has been constantly winning favour with the learned. The true plan of eliciting an author's meaning is to render word for word with the utmost possible exactness. We must assume that when he uses the future he intends that, and not the past; when he uses the definite article he does not intend the indefinite; when he says "for," he does not mean "but," when he says "or," he does not mean and." We must interpret what he says, not what we think he ought to have said. Unless this strict system be adopted, an opening is left to foist in or explain away any thing whatever, and no limit can be set to the abuses which will ensue. As Trench, the recent commentator upon the parables, has somewhere said in sentiment, if not in words, "Give the language of the inspired writers with all strictness, and their theology will take care of itself." In his exposition, too, our author adheres strictly throughout to the text in its present form, and steadfastly opposes all those arbitrary tinkerings and alterations which are so ready a resort to some commentators in every difficulty. What a confidence he reposes even in the points may be seen from the following passage:-"How is the enigma to be