to a stringent system. It is not uncommon for a practice to be pursued with an extreme fervour at the moment when it is about to pass away, as was the case with the Roman temple-architecture under Antoninus Pius just before its complete debasement under Caracalla, or of the building of vast towers to churches and monasteries just before the Reformation. But the men of the age from Ezra to Malachi, during which, according to the Jewish tradition, the whole of the older documents were revised and re-edited, must have set about their task with minds deeply imbued with the importance of the sacrificial system and the priestly office. This appears distinctly in the books of Chronicles, which were unquestionably written at this time. It is most natural to believe that the book of Leviticus also was compiled or reduced to its present state at the same time. The same tendency, it is believed, is to be traced in the rehandling of the other books of the Pentateuch, especially the later part of Exodus and the book of Numbers. The book of Deuteronomy, being a connected whole, is not susceptible of such treatment; but the book of Joshua is coloured by it.

We have, then, three periods of Jewish literature and legislation. First, the simpler period, to which belongs the underlying substance of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua, and the whole of the earlier histories; secondly, the Deuteronomic period, to which belong the book of Deuteronomy, the prophets except the prophets of the exile and return, and the later part of the history; and thirdly, the Levitical period, to which belong the prophets of the exile and return, the books of Leviticus and the Chronicles, and the general rehandling of the Pentateuch except Deuteronomy and the book of Joshua. The Psalms belong to all the periods: and the Hagiographa bear only incidentally upon the history.

In the views now expressed Kuenen, Colenso, and Robertson Smith substantially agree, and, though with some differences, Wellhausen. It is obvious that they are of great importance for a correct estimate of the Hebrew history, and make it more harmonious with what we know of history generally, though in the case of Israel the seminal point is different from that to be found

in other nations, being nothing else than a conscious relation to the Supreme Unity and Holiness.

NOTE XVII.

ON CUSTOMARY LAW AS DESCRIBED BY SIR H. MAYNE.

Sir H. Mayne, in his Ancient Law,' pp. 11-13, distinguishes two epochs antecedent to the reduction of Laws to Codes; the first that of almost arbitrary commands, or 'Themistes,' the second that of Customary Law. Of the first he says:

'It is certain that, in the infancy of mankind, no sort of legislature, not even a distinct author of law, is contemplated or conceived of. Law has scarcely reached the footing of a custom, it is rather a habit. It is, to use a French phrase, “in the air." The only authoritative statement of right and wrong is a judicial sentence after the facts, not one presupposing a law which has been violated, but one which has been breathed for the first time by a higher power into the judge's mind at the moment of adjudication. . . . An Englishman should be better able than a foreigner to appreciate the historical fact that the Themistes preceded any conception of law, because, amid the many inconsistent theories which prevail concerning the character of English jurisprudence, the most popular, or at all events the one which most affects practice, is certainly a theory which assumes that adjudged cases and precedents exist antecedently to rules, principles and distinctions.'

Of the second, the customary period, he says that it coincides with a period in which aristocracies were formed and became the depositaries of the law :

'Customs or Observances now exist as a substantive aggregate, and are assumed to be precisely known to the aristocratic order or caste.... Before the invention of writing, and during the infancy of the art, an aristocracy invested with judicial privileges formed the only expedient by which accurate preservation of the customs of the race or tribe could be at all approximated to.

Their genuineness was, so far as possible, ensured by confiding them to the recollection of a limited portion of the community. The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one. The condition of jurisprudence which it implies has left traces which may still be detected in legal and popular phraseology. The law thus known exclusively to a privileged minority, whether a caste, an aristocracy, a priestly tribe or a sacerdotal college, is true unwritten law. Except this, there is no such thing as unwritten law in the world.'

He adds: 'There was once a period at which English common law might reasonably have been termed unwritten. The elder English judges did really pretend to knowledge of rules, principles and distinctions which were not entirely revealed to the bar and to the lay-public.'

It is evident that we have traces of both these periods, as well as of the stage of codified law, in the history of Israel, though these periods are not quite mutually exclusive. It is generally believed that the Book of the Covenant' (Exod. xx-xxiii) dates from the earliest times. But such judgments as that of David on the supposititious case brought before him by Nathan (2 Sam. xii. 5, 6) or the famous judgment of Solomon are instances of Themistes, immediate judgments upon the facts held to proceed from divine inspiration. On the other hand, the position ascribed to the tribe of Levi (Deut. xxxiii. 9, 10, xxi. 5) and the connexion of judgment with the sanctuary, as seen in the use of the word Elohim for judges in Exod. xxi. 6, xxii. 8, 9, indicates the second stage when the knowledge of law belonged to the priestly tribe. Deuteronomy and Leviticus show the process of codification in two different stages and forms.

NOTE XVIII.

1. EXTRACTS FROM THE LIFE OF BARON BUNSEN, SHOWING THE WORKING OF ABSOLUTISM IN THE CHURCH IN GERMANY.

Vol. i. p. 198. He [the King of Prussia, Frederick William III] was intensely anxious to heal the wounds of his own ravaged and dissevered dominions, by effectually securing the advancement of Christianity, as the best means of renewing well-being in every direction; and he had a strong impression of the peculiar duty inherited by the House of Brandenburgh, to create peace and unity between the observances of the Reformed (or Calvinistic) Churches and those of the Lutheran Confession. Could the King have had his wish, it would probably have taken the form of an absolute merging of variations into a solid and uniform establishment like that of the Church of England, which he knew to have originated in a compound of the maxims of the two Reformers, to be modified according to German peculiarities. This is not the place to note in detail the course of serious study and the manifold difficulties undertaken and worked through by the conscientious King and his favourite aide-de-camp, Witzleben, during many years. The King's researches after modes of conciliation had encountered much opposition, and only in the military deference of this much-respected officer, and his honest appreciation of the object in view, did he find assistance in the construction of a form of prayer for his own private chapel, put together from various liturgical fragments, which he proceeded, after the mode of the long established paternal (i. e. absolute) government, by degrees to introduce throughout the kingdom. The King's 'Agenda' became the authorised form of public worship in the United Evangelic Church of Prussia,' in the years following the tercentenary festival of the Reformation in 1817, when the King, although a Calvinist, had for the first time partaken of the Lord's Supper in a Lutheran Church.

P. 259. The Government of the Prussian dominions had

always been a system of royal orders and decrees, constituted with exemplary regard to positive and actual law, and obeyed with military precision. When the King's will was once known, there was no question of remonstrance or of opposition:-for instance, when King Frederick William (father of Frederick the Great) resolved to maintain the cause of his Protestant brethren in Heidelberg (persecuted and driven out of their own Church by the Roman Catholic Elector), and therefore declared that, as long as they were not restored to their hereditary possessions, he would retaliate on the Church of Rome, by withholding from his Catholic subjects in Magdeburgh their immunities and the use of their church, he was only considered as doing what he would with his own,' and never accused of a breach of vested rights. When therefore the Prussian dominions received the large accession of territory consisting of the ancient dioceses of Cologne, Trêves, and Paderborn, the Prussian ordinances were alone reckoned upon for the regulation of the new countries as well as of the old. The Prussian troops were, as such, to march into the Protestant church after parade, whether recruited among the Catholic or the Protestant population; and if a marriage was to take place between persons of different persuasions (a so-called 'mixed marriage'), the law of Prussia vested in the father the sole right over the religious education of his children, and forbade his entering into stipulations on the subject before marriage. This was law, and the monarch's will-and how should it be interfered with?

P. 309. The King of Bavaria has commanded the Protestant soldiers to fall down before the Host. Those at Regensburg have refused; and the King allows the alternative of quitting the service or complying. A letter has been published (to Count Senfft, the Austrian Ambassador Extraordinary in London for the Belgian question) signifying that the Pope will never allow Roman Catholics (those of Limburg and Luxemburg) to be transferred to Protestant Sovereigns. Of both these things due use will be made here.