excepting the last, they do not tell much at the present day. But there were two more portents, one of which we cannot think of without awe, and it seems too appropriate and too sublime for human invention; and the other does appear entitled to credit as a matter of history. At the feast of Pentecost, the priests performing the offices felt a quaking, and heard a great noise as of a mighty movement, and the solemn words "Let us go up." Josephus considers it yet more dreadful that there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and when the city was in peace and prosperity, came up to the feast of Tabernacles, and began to cry," Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!" This he uttered, day and night, up and down the city and streets, and stripes from the Jews and the Romans were alike unavailing to stop him: to every stroke he replied, "Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!" As long as he lived during the siege he continued his cry, till at length he was killed by a stone, having just changed his words to "Woe to myself also."

Milton's lines on the desolation of Paradise at the flood rush into our mind. And if we take as figurative what the great poet wrote as descriptive in his ideal, and consider the course of subsequent history, they will well pourtray the desolation of Jerusalem ::

"Then shall this mount

Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood
With all his verdure spoiled and trees adrift,
Down the great river to the opening gulf,
And there take root an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals and ores, and seamew's clang;
To teach thee that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell."

HISTORICUS.

REV. D. MOORE'S HULSEAN LECTURE FOR 1864.

The Age and the Gospel. Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, at the Hulsean Lecture, 1864; to which is added, a Discourse on Final Retribution. By Daniel Moore, M.A. Rivingtons.

We are not among the number of those who consider controversy, and above all theological controversy, as an unmixed evil. It seems to be the unavoidable concomitant of the present condition of the race, while truth and error are in

constant antagonism, while mind differs from mind in so many respects, and while each earnest inquirer deems the views of religion he entertains to be of unspeakable importance. In spite of all that the most plausible advocate of peace principles allege for their inviting theory, sinful man is evidently a being of belligerent tendencies; and in a world like this, occasions are seldom wanting to call forth this perverse element of his degenerate nature. We agree with Mr. Moore, that "the Church of Christ is a militant Church to the end of time." Of necessity it is so, whether viewed in its individual aspect, or in its collective capacity; because it is impossible to advocate one set of truths without confronting those of an opposite character. The moment that the life of faith begins, the fight of faith begins; and every religious man, like Jeremiah, is "born a man of strife." We cannot put off our armour till we put on our shroud; nor can the seed of the woman relax in their efforts, till the seed of the serpent forego their assaults. By how much, in these days, infidel and irreligious men are contending against the truth, with a zeal and pertinacity worthy of a better cause, by so much it becomes the most docile follower of the Prince of Peace to contend, and "contend earnestly, for the faith once delivered to the saints." Christianity only demands that her interests should be supported in a spirit harmonious with her own. Her most strenuous advocate should seek to emulate the poet's fine conception of the fabled goddess of classical antiquity, who was said to have wielded her armour of celestial proof, without ever unclasping her garment of peace.

Many excellent men appear to dread any close examination into the grounds of their faith, lest the whole building should be shaken from the pinnacle to the base. They pray daily and nightly for perpetual calm. For them the sun must always stand still, and Jordan only flow backwards. They would ask for a total stagnation of the elements of thought; and the best millennium for them would be a resuscitation of the dark ages. These men forget that all great truths in science, in art, in political economy, and in the creeds they hold sacred, have had to stand the test of searching enquiry, and to make good their claims to human acceptance under the fire of sharp contention. The Protestant Reformation was a successful revolt against the usurped authority of the priesthood to place an arrest upon the progress of opinion; it was a successful plea for the unlimited freedom of the human mind in the faithful study of God's holy Word. The insulted majesty of truth slumbered, or appeared to slumber, like the Champion of Gaza, while "the green withs and cords" were binding on, only to rend them into shreds in her waking fury. We hold that the doctrines of the Reformation can only be maintained in the earnest

and intelligent spirit in which the first conquests were so nobly won. The truest friends of religion are not those who proscribe all investigation; but those who promote it in a true Christian temper, in faith, humility, and prayer. We should not be like the bat in the Jewish fable, who contended that all the light was hers, and was satisfied to remain in her pristine obscuration; but rather like the unchained eagle, rising above the early mists of morning into a purer atmosphere, and returning with the light of heaven upon her radiant wing before the sluggish world was well awake. We are bound, by the same laws which lead us to do homage to the truth ourselves, to resist to the utmost those pestilent and popular errors which, under the shallow pretext of a higher criticism, would tarnish her robe, break her sceptre, destroy her influence, and leave her, like the dove in the deluge, without a resting place in a world which she comes to enlighten and to save.

Such remarks as these naturally connect themselves with the volume before us, and with M. Rénan's strange French romance of the life of Christ, of which we propose to give some brief account. The Bampton Lecture at Oxford, and the Hulsean Lecture at Cambridge, have served successive generations well in years gone by. Formerly, the Hulsean Lectures were expected to be eight in number, and were always to be printed; but by a recent statute they have been reduced to four, the obligation to print not being paramount. Though still designed, according to the will of the founder, Mr. Hulse, "to show the evidence of revealed religion," they are not supposed to be so rigidly polemical as to repel youthful minds, which in former years they were in danger of becoming; but the preacher is wisely left at liberty to consult the religious interests of a mixed congregation of townsmen, no less than the argumentative predilections of the academic body. Few men could have been selected better able to combine both these objects than the present writer. And the discourses are presented to the public now, it is intimated, not only in acknowledgment of the interest they appeared to excite at the time, and in consequence of the understood wish of many, to whose judgment the author felt bound to defer, but especially with a view to more permanent usefulness among the younger class of undergraduates, some of whom it was feared might have been endangered by the insidiousness and sophistry of the new French school, headed by Rénan, and followed by Michelet.

The Lectures are four in number, under the general title, The Age and the Gospel; in the first of which the lecturer furnishes a very striking sketch of the leading characteristics of the day, literary, social, sceptical, and religious. In the second we are called to contemplate the Age, and the written word, which comprises the hostility of mankind to revealed

religion, and specifies some of the chief points of hostile attack; concluding with a powerful exhibition of the claims of Scripture to our devout and reverential regard. In the third, the preacher sets before us the unsatisfactory views of the claims of Christ as perplexed and distorted by modern criticism, in which it is successfully argued that, apart from the supernatural, the uncreated, and the Divine, the whole history of Christ is an enigma, and a mystery which never has been, nor can be, accounted for upon any humanitarian theory whatever. The last lecture is entitled "The Christ of God"-in which, admitting the whole Scripture Testimony respecting the Divine Personality of Jesus, it is shown that we have an adequate solution of the entire problem of Christianity, and an harmonious view of the whole method of redemption, centering in Him, considered at once as a scheme of moral government, and as a medium of efficacious grace.

The volume contains a discourse on Final Retribution, of which a critic in one of the Cambridge papers observes that, for its clear and persistent logic, it would do no dishonour to the ratiocinative powers of Bishop Butler himself. We have compared it with Dr. Pusey's able and learned sermon on the same topic, and recommend that both the discourses should be read together.

In addition to the Lectures, and the Sermon on Retribution, Mr. Moore has furnished an appendix of selections from the best authorities upon the controverted points of which he treats. We confess to have demurred to this at first sight, as we have a strong dislike to a succession of notes, as in Bishop Magee, or Hare on "The Mission of the Comforter," in which the addenda far exceed the size of all the rest of the volume. We have known instances in which there is scarcely a good thought in the book but you find a bristling note, and perhaps an unfaithful one, designed to free the luckless writer from being pilloried on the charge of picking and stealing, or downright plagiarism. It is due to Mr. Moore to say, that these remarks in no sense apply to him. Upon close inspection, we find that every point seems fairly worked out in his own telling language, wholly irrespective of the after-piece; but the notes are necessary in order that he may give the objections in the language of the objectors, and that he may furnish these corroborations of his own powerful arguments from acknowledged sources, which may make his work of lasting value to students and scholars who cannot have these productions at hand. This, therefore, which at first seemed a blemish to our fastidious apprehension, really adds to the usefulness of the volume in the case of all thoughtful readers.

The contents of the volume being so multifarious, it seems impossible to us to make selections which could give the reader

any fitting impression of the whole. But as we have verified his references for our own benefit, we are in a position to give, in our own vernacular, a general sketch of some of the points of the controversy, with here and there a fact or reference which may serve as a buttress and support to Mr. Moore's conclusions. And that our remarks may be as little technical as possible, we shall comprise them under such general observations as appear to rise out of our subject, which is, the antagonism of mankind to the faith of the Gospel.

That such hostility should exist, ought to surprise no thinking man, because it is distinctly anticipated as the prevailing sin of each succeeding age; for though the form varies, the principle is one and the same. To use a fine image of Mr. Burke, in another case, "the spirit transmigrates whilst we are gibbeting the carcase and demolishing the tomb." The foundation of this animosity is deeply laid in the nature and condition of man, who is much more disposed to recoil from the severity of God's law against sin than he is to acknowledge the aggravation of his sin against God's law. Here is a religion. that comes to proclaim a warfare against all in man that wars against the government and grace of God-a religion, indeed, which reveals a system of pardon and amnesty through a Redeemer, but demands at the same time the renewal of the heart, the allegiance of the life, and the consecration of all our powers to Him whom we have offended. Is it so wonderful that many object to the book on this very account-namely, that it gives a view of the state and condition of the race which is anything but flattering to the inherent and hereditary pride of human nature; and, if the truth were spoken, that it proposes, in the last resort, to have men be and do anything but what men desire to do and be? Their first impression is, "Certainly this is not the religion I should have invented for myself. I see not the necessity of such a scheme of redemption, and renovation, and inward change as Christianity demands." They dislike the sanctions and penalties of the Gospel even more than its peculiar doctrines; and with the hope of escaping from both, are prepared to reject the system altogether. They are just as ready to crucify the truth of Christ, as the Jews were to crucify the person of Christ; and instead of welcoming that tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of diseased nations, their language in effect is like one in the book of Daniel, who cried aloud and said thus:-"Hew the tree down and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit; let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches; nevertheless leave the stump of his roots in the earth." (Dan. iv. 23.) Here, therefore, is a deep-laid basis for the infidelity of the heart in the outset, and for that form of "contempt" which, as Paley says, "comes before examination." Take a religion