adopt no new models, till it should be finally settled whether the screw or the paddle be the best mode of propelling a ship? We admit this illustration to be a lame one, but the sagacity of the mandarin who would act on the motto, "Let us hold fast what we have," * appears in his admitting the superiority of western naval architecture, but effectually staves off the adoption of it. And just so the state of the original text may be made use of by opponents of revision to get rid of the question altogether. But the best answer to all such reasons for delay is the fact, that men of the highest respectability have actually made a beginning of the work; not pretending that they act by "authority," but simply to show that the thing may be done, and done in a style which need not alarm the most timid. We refer to the work, the title of which stands at the head of this article, The Gospel according to St John, after the Authorised Version, newly compared with the original Greek and revised by five clergymen. The "five clergymen are John Barrow, D.D.; George Moberley, D.C.L.; Henry Alford, B.D.; William C. Humphry, B.D.; and Charles J. Ellicot, M.A.;" for they append their names to a full and candid preface, honourable alike to their catholicity and good taste, as the whole production reflects high credit upon them, as critics and as lovers of the Bible. The authorised version is printed in parallel columns with their revision; and so slight is the alteration that many consecutive verses may be found verbatim et literatim the same. When there are alterations, they are, so far as we can judge, decided improvements; and especially in the connecting particles and other minute parts, the tenses of verbs, and the omission of supplements, we see much to approve. It is needless to add that the rhythm, the dignity, the gravity, the simplicity of the revision of these five clergymen, is not a whit behind their prototype. Let what has been done for this gospel be done for other portions of the Word of God, by men equally qualified, and the work is done. It strikes us, however, that these clergymen, seeking as much as possible to avoid censure for attempting too much, have actually done less than they might warrantably have undertaken. We refer to their not thinking it their duty to attempt any critical revision of the Greek text of St John. For this they assign their reasons, which are modest and sensible; but, of course, a final revision of the Scriptures must cope with the difficulty of various readings, &c., to which we have already referred. We strongly recommend our readers to procure this respectable specimen of a revised Gospel, and * Title of a pamphlet by Dr Cumming against the revision of the Scriptures. to study it carefully, not forgetting to begin with the preface. We are tempted to enrich our pages with some extracts very pertinent to the subjects we have been discussing; but instead of doing so, we leave those who can to regale themselves with, the whole of that document. It is refreshing to listen to the sentiments of real scholars, after being bored with the twaddle of men who are no scholars, and who, judging of others by themselves perhaps, pronounce that the scholarship of the nineteenth century is not equal to the task of revising the English Bible ! The prophecies of Scripture are all true, and their fulfilment certain; but there have been many prophecies about the Scriptures wholly false-not fulfilled, and never to be fulfilled. Among these were the dark vaticinations of good men of past days, when the revival of sacred learning began to bear on the fact that the Hebrew and Greek originals-at least as we have them are not immaculate. The very idea of " different readings," of discrepant manuscripts, of interpolations and omissions, made those men tremble for the ark of divine revelation! Some were for concealing these unwelcome discoveries, and some stood aghast at the proposal of a critical edition of the Scriptures, which was to exhibit in frightful array the thousands of variations from the received text. Good men prophesied that all manner of evil would arise from such unhallowed exposures! But they were mistaken. No evil came, but much good has accrued from the prosecution of these biblical labours.* Again, when the light of science began to fall on the sacred page, and men reached conclusions in chronology, geology, history, supposed to be adverse to the teachings of the Bible, there were prognostics uttered very confidently-but very ignorantly-as to the danger to the faith from these whisperings of science. The fear was groundless: the prophecy was, false. When science had spoken, and the voice of revelation had been compared with it, it was found that revelation beheld in science a handmaid and a witness, not an enemy. * Those who are versed in the kind of literature to which reference is here made, will recal to mind many illustrations of these remarks. We shall cite only one. When Bentley issued proposals for a corrected text of the New Testament, derived from ancient manuscripts, then recently discovered, he was attacked in no measured terms of abuse for his temerity. Here is a specimen : "It [Bentley's proposed edition] destroys at once the authority of all our published scriptures; cries down, by a sort of Papal edict, all our current editions, as corrupt and adulterate. Such injustice and barbarity, insult upon the sense and judgment of the learned world, raises a universal resentment and indignation." Bentley replied to these charges not in the meekest manner possible. He knew his anonymous antagonist, and refers to him in this style: "We know the animal here thoroughly well, and when he has outroared all the lions of Libya, he kindly shews us by his long ears, that we are in no danger."Bentley's Works, vol. iii., p. 500. VOL. VII-NO. XXIII. E Once more, in days of old, when the Bible was translated into the vulgar tongues, many were the doleful predictions of the disastrous results that were sure to follow. All manner of heresies, divisions, and mischiefs, must of necessity spring from allowing the common people to read the Word of God in a language they could understand! From the time of Jerome, to the days of Wycliffe, and Tyndal, and Luther, the cry has been raised; but none had cause to lament the spread of divine truth among the people, but the corrupt clergy, and their unscriptural institutions. Thus speaks one of those foes of the light of revelation- "The devil himself may be well versed in Scripture, and even adhere to its very letter, as he is now doing in the case of so many sects, which have nothing in their favour but mere Scripture." (Sebastian Frank, quoted in Hagenbach, vol. ii., p. 232.) Here we must close our remarks. We have not thought it necessary to examine in detail all the objections that an ingenious pleader might raise against the revision of our authorised version of the Scriptures; but in the course of this article we have touched on the main elements of the question. We are not blind to the inconveniences, and even possible dangers, that may arise from the enterprise in question, but we are clearly of opinion that the great and permanent advantages of a wise and able revision of our English Bible, immensely preponderate over the disadvantages, and we conclude with a quotation from Archbishop Whately, which might have served as a motto to this paper, -" A choice of difficulties seems a necessary condition of human affairs. For it perpetually happens, in every department of life, that there will be objections, greater or less, to each of any possible courses before us. And yet, many intelligent persons sit down quite satisfied that they have proved their point, when they have shewn the grave objections to one course, without at all noticing those that lie against all the others, and without perceiving they are in the condition alluded to in the Roman proverb-"Lupum auribus teneo" - when it is difficult and hazardous to keep one's hold, and eminently hazardous to let it go."* * Detached Thoughts and Apophthegms, p. 24. ART. III.-Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord. By RICHARD On Miracles. By RALPH WARDLAW, D. D. "What sign showest ter & Brothers, No. 285 Broadway. 1853. Pp. 295. An Inquiry into the Proofs, Nature, and Extent of Inspiration, Printed by w. Baxter, for B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, uts London; and J. Parker, Oxford. 1831. ALL the departures from the ancient faith concerning the authority of the Scriptures, which have distinguished modern speculation, may be traced directly, whatever may be said of the perverseness of the heart as the ultimate cause, to an in-Ou superable repugnance to the admission of miracles. The supernatural has been the stone of stumbling and the rock of ofe fence. The antipathy to it has given rise to open infidelity on Sulir. C. the one hand, and to the various types of criticism on other, which, in consequence of their agreement in rejecting terle everything that transcends the ordinary agencies of nature, forud f have been classed under the common name of Rationalism. If the immediate intervention of God, either in the world of matter or of mind, is assumed to be intrinsically incredible, nothing is left but to discard the records which assert and pretend to give of as impudent impostures, or to seek, by tortuous interpretation, to reconcile accounts confessedly it ! false with the honesty of the historian, and, what would seem to be still more difficult, with the essential divinity of the religion. The English Deists, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took the former course, and denounced the Bible in unmeasured terms of vituperation and abuse. They saw notevonus middle ground between the rejection of the supernatural and the rejection of Christianity. They could not comprehend howto. that could, in any sense, be treated as divine which was made up of a tissue of fables, or how they could be regarded as honest men, who had palmed the crossest extravagances upon the world, as sober, historical realities. Woolston may, perhaps, be deemed an exception. His letters upon the miracles of our Saviour are remarkable for having anticipated the method, in A wisted some degree at least, which has been carried out with such perverseness of learning and ingenuity by Strauss and Bauer. "His whole reasoning," we use the words of Strauss himself, "turns upon the alternative, either to retain the historical reality of the miracles narrated in the Bible, and thus to sacrifice the divine character of the narratives, and reduce the miracles to mere artifices, miserable juggleries, or commonplace deceptions; or, in order to hold fast the divine character of these narratives, to reject them entirely as details of actual occurrences, and regard them as historical representations of certain spiritual truths." His own opinion is nowhere articulately expressed, but the presumption is, from the general (tenour and spirit of his book, that he was really a Deist, who resorted to allegory as a convenient cover for his malignity; and to the spiritual sense, as a protection from the unspiritual weapons with which he was likely to be assailed. He was well aware, if his dilemma could be fairly and conclusively made out, which horn of it the sturdy common sense of Englishmen would adopt. A religion shrouded in figures could be no religion for them. But, with this exception, if exception it can be called, the issue in England was, No miracles, no Christianity; the Bible must be accepted as it is, as out and out divine, or wholly and absolutely rejected; it was, the ancient faith or open and avowed infidelity. たかいな。 tuan The case was different in Germany. The publication of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments-an anonymous production of Reimar, which pursued precisely the same line of argument with the English Deists-gave rise to a class of theologians, who have undertaken to retain Christianity at the expense of the Relacus historical accuracy of its records. They agree with the Deists while in repudiating all that is supernatural, but they cannot agree il with them in denouncing prophets and apostles as impostors; or in divesting the biblical narratives of all moral and spiritual significance. The modes in which they save the credit of the as sacred writers, and the divine import of the sacred history, we acurato vary with the reigning philosophy, and constitute the different schools into which the class of theologians, commonly known as Rationalists, may be divided. The first of these schools, that founded by Eichborn, and perfected by Paulus, accepted the authenticity of the Scriptures, as a narrative of facts, by reducing the miraculous to the dimensions of the natural. They were only ordinary events, produced by ordinary agency, which had assumed an extraordinary character in the narrative, either from the omission of circumstances necessary to explain them, or from the style in which the opinions and prejudices of the age led the spectators to describe them. Our Saviour neither wrought nor pretended to miracles; and the |