ment in its simple sense of adversary, became appropriated to the prince of the malignant spirits-the head and representative of the spiritual world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil."

It is here said, with as much plainness as Mr. Milman is accustomed to say any thing, that the doctrine of Satan as a personal being and prince of the demons, so abundantly sanctioned by Christ and his apostles, was derived from the Persian system of an original principle of evil, of which he had been speaking.

"Even the notion of the one Supreme Deity," says our author, "had undergone some modification consonant to certain prevailing opinions of the time. Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime truth of one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence or philosophical abstraction, had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in oriental language, of an Emanation, or in Platonic, of Wisdom, Reason or Intelligence, of the one Supreme. This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or more abstract notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism; it was pure Platonism; it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrean school. . . . . In conformity with this principle the Jews, in the interpretation of the older scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings as the channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition alluded to by St. Stephen, the law was delivered by 'the disposition of angels; according to another, this office was delegated to a single angel, sometimes called the angel of the law, at others the Metatron. But the more ordinary representative, as it were, of God to the sense and mind of man, was the Memra, or the Divine Word; and it is remarkable that the same appellation is found in the Indian, the Persian, the Platonic, and the Alexandrean systems. By the Targumits, the earliest Jewish commentators on the scriptures, this term had been already applied to the

Messiah; nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme."-p. 46.

All this is said in illustration of the influence of the religions of the East on Judaism. Every reader of the scriptures, however, knows, that in the earliest books of the Bible, we find constant mention made of the Angel of Jehovah, called also the Angel of the presence or face, Jehovah, Adonai, distinguished from Jehovah, yet called by his names, assuming his attributes, and claiming the same homage. This person we find called afterwards the Angel of the Covenant, the Mighty God, the Son, the Image of God, the Word. As the doctrine of redemption was first revealed in the obscure intimation given to our fallen parents, and was gradually unfolded by subsequent revelations into the full system of the gospel; so the doctrine of a divine Person, distinguished from Jehovah, and yet Jehovah; the image, the revealer, the word of God, was declared first obscurely in the books of Moses, and then with constantly increasing clearness, till God was manifested in the flesh. The Jews had this doctrine long before their intercourse with the East; and, in accordance with the whole system of revelation, it was gradually developed, not by the progress of the human mind, but by successive disclosures from the source of all divine truth.

"No question" continues Mr. Milman, "has been more strenuously debated than the knowledge of a future state entertained by the earlier Jews. At all events, it is quite clear that, before the time of Christ, not merely the inimortality of the soul, but, what is very different, a final resurrection, had become interwoven in the popular belief. Passages in the later prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, particularly the latter, may be adduced as the first distinct authorities on which this belief might be grounded. It appears, however, in its more perfect development, soon after the return from the captivity. As early as the revolt of the Maccabees, it was so deeply rooted in the public mind that we find a solemn ceremony performed for the dead. From henceforth it became the leading article of the great schism between the traditionists and the anti-traditionists, the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and in the gospels we cannot but discover at a glance, its almost universal prevalence. Even the Roman historian was struck by its influence on the indomitable character of the people. In the Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a place no less prominent than in the later Jewish belief."-p. 46.

In like manner, he represents the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah, the origin of which he does not distinctly mention, as owing much of its form at least, to the oriental religion and philosophy. It is certainly a very remarkable fact that there should be this striking coincidence, on all the points above specified, between the doctrines of the Jews, and the views prevalent from the remotest East to Greece and Egypt. There are three hypotheses on which this coincidence may be accounted for. First, the Jews may have derived their doctrines of angels, Satan, a divine mediator, of a future state, &c. from the East. If so they were not matters of divine revelation to the Jews. They are matters, according to Mr. Milman, of religious speculation, of more or less plausibility, which owe their origin to human ingenuity, or to the necessities of the human heart, and their propagation to their suitableness to the existing state of the human mind. This is the hypothesis which Mr. Milman's whole mode of representation favours, and which the German writers, Bertholdt more especially, to whom in his notes he constantly refers, openly avow.

A second hypothesis, which has many advocates and for which much may be said, is, that the East derived their doctrines, on these subjects from the Jews and not the Jews from the East. The doctrine of one supreme God, of a divine Revealer, of angels, of Satan, of a future state, are all taught more or less clearly in the earliest Jewish scriptures. It may be considered a moral impossibility that a nation so centrally situated as the Jews were, should possess these doctrines, so consonant with the nature and necessities of man, and yet no intimation of them be conveyed to the thoughtful and inquisitive minds around them. It is just what might have been anticipated that these doctrines would be gradually and widely disseminated; variously modified and combined by being wrought up with the religious philosophy of the nations to which they gained access. This is just what has happened to Christianity, whose distinguishguishing principles have been wrought into the various systems of eastern and western philosophy and religion with which it has come into contact.

The unreasonableness of supposing that the Jews borrowed their doctrines from the East is still more apparent, if we accede to the opinion that Zoroaster lived as late as the reign of Darius Hystaspes, a thousand years after the age of Moses. But even if with Niebuhr, Heeren,

and Rhode, a much higher antiquity be assigned to the magian religion, the case is but little altered. The truth is the age of Zoroaster is unknown, and it is uncertain whether he was the author of a new system, or the reformer of an old. The magian religion is the old nature worship combined with principles, either the result of speculation, or derived indirectly from revelation. This much is certain, that we have no authentic records of that system, which are not posterior by centuries to the writings of Moses. We might, therefore, almost as reasonably assert that Christianity has borrowed from Mohammedism the principles which are common to the two religions, as that Judaism derived its peculiar doctrines from the East. It is also to be remembered, that Christianity is as old as the creation, if we may borrow the language of infidelity to express an important truth; that is, that Christianity is but the full development of truths contained in the earliest records of revelation. Every thing in the gospels is potentially in the Pentateuch; what is fully disclosed and expanded in the writings of Paul, has its germ in the writings of Moses. The religion revealed in the scriptures, is a consistent, gradually unfolded system; its last and highest development may be traced back to its earliest and simplest declarations. It is therefore in this sense a self developed system. It is not composed of heterogeneous principles, or of principles derived from different sources. And so long as the latest enunciations of the prophets can thus be shown to be in harmony with the earlier teaching of Moses, it is certainly most unreasonable to assume that these later doctrines were borrowed from the heathen.

There is a third hypothesis, on which the coincidence between Judaism and the religions of the East may be accounted for. All mankind are the descendants of the same parents. The revelations made to Adam and Noah were the common property of the race. What amount of religious knowledge was possessed by Noah cannot be ascertained, but we know that it included all that was necessary to a life of true godliness. How was this knowledge, so congenial to human reason, to perish from among men? It has become obscured and corrupted partly by the speculations of philosophers, and partly by the superstition of the people; but it has probably never yet perished entirely even among the most degraded of the descendants of Adam. And the higher we ascend in the history of our race, the

purer do we find this traditionary knowledge. What therefore is more probable than that the portion of truth found in the early religions of the East, was derived partly from this original revelation common to all mankind, and partly from communications more or less direct with the chosen depositories of divine truth, subsequent to the time of Moses and the prophets?

At any rate, as we know, on the authority of Christ and. the Apostles, that the doctrines contained in the Jewish scriptures are true, the fact that other nations, to a certain extent, had the same doctrines more or less corrupted, must be accounted for, on a hypothesis consistent with the truth and divine origin of those doctrines. And we think that Mr. Milman in favouring a hypothesis which assigns a heathen origin to so many of these doctrines, does thus far throw his weight on the side of infidelity.

This disposition to account for every thing philosophically, or from natural causes, which is so strikingly exhibited in his account of Judaism, is manifested no less clearly in his history of Christianity. "Our history," he says, "will endeavour to trace all the modifications of Christianity by which it accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages; and this apparently almost skilful, but, in fact, necessary condescension to the predominant state of moral culture, of which itself formed a constituent element, maintained its uninterrupted dominion." Again, "Christianity may exist in a certain form in a nation of savages as well as in a nation of philosophers, yet its specific character will almost entirely depend upon the character of the people who are its votaries. It must be considered, therefore, in constant connexion with that character; it will darken with the darkness and brighten with the light of each succeeding century; in an ungenial time it will recede so far from its genuine and essential nature as scarcely to retain any sign of its divine original; it will advance with the advancement of human nature, and keep up the moral to the utmost height of the intellectual culture of man."-p. 37.

If this means that an ignorant and corrupt people will be apt to misconceive and pervert the doctrines of the gospel; and that philosophers will be disposed to explain them away, it is all true. But Mr. Milman means something very different from this. He loses sight of Christianity as a system of objective truths, recorded in the scriptures, and of divine authority. He contemplates it almost exclusively,