along the road to rationalism, as Schleiermacher seemed to do, yet on the whole he appears to have received from this man more of philosophical edification than from any other. Yet, even as a student, he was independent of others; he enjoyed and profited by dialectic, but he did not need it, and he notes the sudden death of Schleiermacher with the regret of a friend, not with the despair of a disciple.

Martensen's gift as a theologian was manifest from the first. At the age of six and twenty he won the theological diploma of the university, and he set off at once to learn what Germany had to teach him. He was absent two years, always in Socratic dispute with some great man; at Berlin with Steffens, at Munich with the mystic Franz Baader, at Vienna with Lenau. The riddle which weighed upon him, and which he invited every thinker whom he met to assist him in solving, was the autonomy of consciousness. Those who are familiar with Martensen's writings will recognise the central position which this idea takes in all his religious philosophy. He holds it impossible that man can know God by his own consciousness, by the effort of his intellect. All knowledge of God must be based on faith, credo, ut intelligam, as Martensen never tires of repeating. When he returned to Denmark he took up these ideas, and formulated them in a Latin treatise, for which the University in 1837 gave him a degree. His views, which were in direct opposition to those familiar to Lutheran divinity at that time, and his determined attacks upon philosophical speculation, attracted great notice in Germany as well as in Scandinavia.

He was made Doctor of Divinity in 1840, and Professor in 1841. He long nourished a dream of writing a great work on the Mystics; at Paris and at Vienna he made vast preparations for this book, which never was written, and of which only a fragment remains in his treatise on Meister Eckhart, which deals with German mysticism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was published in 1840, and in

1841 appeared his Outline of a System of Moral Philosophy, a selection from his lectures since 1838. As a university lecturer Martensen exercised a very wide 'influence, and his popular manner attracted to his chair crowds of non-theological students. His popularity became greater still, when, in 1845, he became Court Preacher, and his Hegelianism began to give a colouring to the conscience of his generation. The public was thoroughly prepared to receive his doctrines gladly when, in 1849, he published the most successful and famous of his contributions to theological literature, his Christian Dogmatics, which has been translated into most European languages, even into Modern Greek, and has exercised as wide an influence on Protestant thought as any volume of our century. In Germany it has enjoyed a popularity even wider than in Scandinavia. In 1854, when Mynster died, Martensen, who had refused the bishopric of Slesvig, accepted the primacy of Denmark, and he began his administrative labours in the Church with acts of great vigour and determination. He became in consequence cordially detested and violently attacked by all those sections. of the Danish Lutheran body which wavered to this side or to that from a hierarchical orthodoxy.

Great part of Martensen's time and energy henceforth was taken up with polemic against Grundtvig, against Rasmus Nielsen (of whose death I hear as I write these lines), against the Catholics and against the Irvingites. Many of his later writings are of this purely controversial character, his "Exposure of the so-called Grundtvigianism," his "Catholicism and Protestantism," his "Socialism and Christendom." It must be difficult, I think, for any but Scandinavian readers to follow these discussions with interest. But in 1871 Martensen returned to the wider field of positive philosophy, and published the first volume of his Christian Ethics, which was concluded in 1878. This book attracted but little less attention than the

Dogmatics had done. He supported his mystical views of faith against modern logic and modern physic still more actively in his remarkable volume of studies on Jacob Böhme, which formed, as he confessed, his own favourite among his writings. Some passages of this book were severely criticized as being obscure and fantastic; but the theological world accepted it as putting forth the doctrines of orthodoxy more clearly and vigorously than even the Dogmatics. It is, I believe, the opinion of all competent students that, considered in conjunction, these three books form the most considerable contribution to Lutheran theology which Scandinavia has supplied. The extreme clearness and beauty of the style cannot but add to the charm of these works, which an outsider can study with no less pleasure than instruction. Martensen was by no means indifferent to the form of his writing; he says in one place that it was his ambition to raise Danish theology to a rank in literature level with that attained by Danish poetry. In February, 1884, Dr. Martensen died, and was buried with great solemnity in his own cathedral of Our Lady, The King and the conservative party knew what they owed to the rigid Tory prelate, whose face was set like a flint against the modern spirit in politics, in literature, in philosophy. Martensen in his later years had come to be a dam against the rising tides of democracy, and he was much more than a churchman, he was a great conservative statesman. All the party which calls itself the party of order rallied around him, and united to do honour to him alive and dead. Nor could those who smarted under his inflexible will, who lamented his determined opposition to new ideas, fail to be proud of him. He was a great man, a man who did honour to Denmark. It is not the critics of his own

country only, it is the more impartial Germans who have declared Hans Lassen Martensen to be the greatest Protestant theologian of the present century.

EDMUND GOSSE.

69

RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE ON THE OLD TESTAMENT.

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IN complying with the wish of the editor of the EXPOSITOR, that I should furnish a periodical review of the more recent foreign literature bearing on the Scriptures of the Old Testament, I must appeal, as regards this opening paper, to the indulgence of my readers in consideration of the very limited available for my purpose. Moreover, it is only in a second or third contribution that a review of this kind can hope to correspond, as far as possible, to the aims of the Magazine and the wishes of the readers. Lastly, there is not at my disposal, at the present moment, the amount of leisure I would fain have devoted to the accomplishment of this task.

The books and articles noticed in this review were published, almost without exception, during the year 1883; yet I have thought it well to refer to some few writings of greater importance which appeared in the year 1882. As regards the literature of 1884, I hope to furnish a review thereof in the course of a few months.

For the earlier period the following writings are to be recommended: (1) Joh. Geo. Walch, Bibliotheca Theologica selecta. Jenæ, 1757-65 (Four thick vols.). Idem, Bibliotheca Patristica. Jena, 1770 (New ed. improved and greatly enlarged. Ed. J. T. L. Danzius. Jenæ, 1834; pp. 804). (2) Geo. Bened. Winer, Handbuch der Theolog. Literatur, hauptsächlich der Protestantischen. 3rd ed.; 2 vols. Leipzig, 1838-40. (3) E. A. Zuchold, Bibliotheca Theologica. [List of writings in the domain of Protest. Theology, or of importance for the same, published in Germany during the years 1830-62. In alphabetical order.] Göttingen, 1864; pp. 1560. (4) Edward Baldamus u. Rich. Haupt, Die lit. Erscheinungen der letzten 5 Jahre, 1865–69, auf dem Gebiet der Prot. [und Kathol.] Theologie. Systematisch geordnet. Reudnitz [now, Leipzig], 1870; pp. 140 [Kathol., pp. 100]. E. Baldamus, Die Erscheinungen der deutschen Lit. auf dem Gebiet der Prot. [u. Kathol.] Theologie, 1870-1874. Leipz. 1875. Idem, Die Ersch. der deutsch. Lit. auf dem Geb. der Prot. [Kath.] Th., 1875–1879. Leipzig, 1880; pp.144 [Kath., 1881, pp. 92]. As regards the period from Oct. 1876 to the end of 1881, the report has been so ably prepared by Prof. Emil

Kautzsch, that even all the non-German literature, so far as known to him, has been included in his account. His notices, bearing the stamp as they do of diligence and scholarship, are worthy of careful attention; although, as regards the Pentateuchcriticism, the author unfortunately belongs to the school of Wellhausen. In like manner the historic surveys prepared by Prof. Carl Siegfried, though written from a pretty radical standpoint, in more than one respect merit our gratitude. Be it further observed that Kautzsch and Siegfried enter more fully into details than it is possible for us here to do. He, therefore, who wishes for more complete information, should consult the work of one or other of these scholars.

We begin with the AIDS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Among these, the 9th edition of Gesenius' Lexicon (Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Chaldäisches Handwörterbuch uber das Alte Testament. Neunte Aufl., neu bearbeitet von F. Mühlau u. W. Volck [Professors at Dorpat]. Leipzig; Vogel, 1883; pp. xlvi. and 978), has been unfavourably criticised by four scholars of very different theological leanings: E. Schürer, Theolog. Literaturzeitung 1883, No. 23; Friederich Delitzsch, The Heb. Language viewed in the Light of Assyrian Research, Lond., 1883, Preface; P. A. de Lagarde, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 1884, Pt. 7 [reprinted in Mittheilungen, Göttingen, 1884, pp. 208–239]; H. L. Strack, Theolog. Literaturblatt 1884, No. 22. The main fault found is that the editors have far too little turned to account the labours of such explorers as, de Lagarde, Dillmann, Hupfeld, Nöldeke, and have made too little use of the ascertained results of Assyriology; while in the etymological parts they have followed Fleischer in quite a one-sided way. H. Strack, in his exposition of the doctrine of the Hebrew forms (Hermann L. Strack, Hebräische Grammatik, mit Uebungsstücken, Litteratur, und Vokabular. Karlsruhe u. Leipzig; H. Reuther, 1883; London, Dulau & Co.; pp. xv., 163; 2 Mk. 70 [Part I. of the Porta linguarum orientalium]), has endeavoured to combine brevity and distinctness with a scientific

1 Comp. Wissenschaftlicher Jahresbericht über die Morgenländischen Studien von Oct. 1876 bis Dec. 1877 [u. im Jahre 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881]. Leipzig, 1879 sqq. (Zeitschr. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Supplement to vol. xxxiii. [xxxiv. sqq.]).

2 Comp. Theologischer Jahresbericht. Unter Mitwirkung von

herausgeg.

von B. Pünjer. Vol. i. [ii. iii.], containing the literature of the year 1881 [1882, 1883]. Leipzig, 1882 [1883, 1884].