human agency and divine efficiency. They give a well defined, objective Christian doctrine, and a subjective Christian life, a free spirit of scriptural and historical research, and in matters of fundamental doctrine, a profound regard for the authority of the inspired Word.

This glimpse of a field, which it would require volumes to explore, brings to view a few principles of some practical value.

1. The tendency of the Germans to metaphysical speculations, arises in part from national proclivity; and in part from their exclusion from the province of political economy and the science of Government, or what amounts to an exclusion. They cannot have free and full range through these, in our country, open fields of thought. Within certain limits marked by the throne, the prince is a terror to free-thinkers in Berlin, as really as the pontiff is at Rome.

2. There is seen to be an expulsive power in systems of error, to displace one another, often employed by Divine Providence as the means of a more full and abiding settlement of the truth. Rationalism came into the German church through the door of a lifeless Lutheran formula. Kant and Fichte discredited its inflated, empty dogmatism, by their imperative conscience and ideal pantheism, according to which, the thinking subject posits, or works out of itself, all it knows and believes-all that is not itself. From this spider-weaving process, came that epigrammatic definition of Christianity, borrowed of the Germans by Theodore Parker, which we place on the tombstone of this interred nihilism. "That is Christianity which a man believes to be Christianity."

Schelling and Hegel damaged the acute subjectivism of their predecessors by a more subtle, material Pantheism, in which nature, by a blindly-working life, advances in an eternal progression from the lower to the higher pótences, up to the terminal point in self-consciousness and deification. Hence Strauss's doctrine concerning revelation. Now the evangelical party comes in, and applies the Gospel as a moral magnet, to draw from the ruins of these masterly elaborations, what of force they possessed, to widen its own field of occupancy, and to fortify it against all future assailants.

3. A dead orthodoxy is as certain a source of evil to the Church as a living heresy. When there remained but little to the Germans, except the form of godliness, an unregenerate church as naturally sought the quietus of false doctrine, as the false doctrine afterwards brought in a shallow, scornful, destructive criticism.

4. The present state of the German Church is not what we desire and may hope for it. There are many evils in a union

so comprehensive as that by which it is held together. There are evils in any such organic connection of the Church with the state, as makes the latter the controlling power. Nevertheless

the general movement is in the right direction-from midnight to dawn, from the dawn to noonday. She is comprehending error, not to embrace, but to weaken and annihilate it. She is more and more building her hopes of triumph, where all must build them, not on the truth of doctrine alone, not on the life of faith alone, but on both these combined.

ART. VII.-Biblical Commentary on the New Testament. By Dr HERMANN OLSHAUSEN, Professor of Theology in the University of Erlangen. Translated from the German for Clarke's Foreign and Theological Library. First American Edition, revised after the fourth German Edition. By A. C. KENDRICK, D.D., Professor of Greek in the University of Rochester. To which is Prefixed, Olshausen's Proof of the Genuineness of the Writings of the New Testament. Translated by DAVID FOSDICK, Jr. Volumes I and II. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman, & Co., 115 Nassau Street. 1857.

In our last Number, we gave a brief notice of Olshausen's Commentary on the New Testament. At the same time we intimated a purpose to bestow upon it a more extended notice in a future number. That purpose we propose now to execute. Further study of the work has not changed or essentially modified the favourable opinion of it which we have already expressed. The first two volumes of the original German edition, containing the Gospels and the Acts, were published in 1832. The author was then Professor of Theology in the University at Königsberg, in Prussia, from whence he was removed in 1835, to the same chair at Erlangen, in Bavaria, which he filled at the time of his death. There he completed his work in six volumes. Not long afterwards it appeared in an English dress, in Clarke's Foreign and Theological Library, receiving, from English scholars no less favour than from the evangelical minds of Germany. While, therefore, our readers are not wholly unacquainted with its merits, we believe its circulation in the English edition has been mostly among biblical scholars, and very limited among unprofessional readers, who are yet by no means uninterested in sacred learning.

Since the death of Olshausan, the third German edition has been carefully revised and essentially improved by Dr Ebrard,

his pupil and successor in the University. The fourth German edition, comprising the results of this revision, is made the basis of this first American issue, the translation passing under the careful review," sentence by sentence," of Professor A. C. Kendrick, of the University of Rochester. As it comes now, for the first time, directly to the American public, and as it is a work of much value, both for the sacred learning which it embodies and for its truly Christian spirit, we have thought fit to set forth at some length the high estimate of it, which, after a somewhat careful examination, we have been led to form.

The questions which naturally present themselves, concerning this work in its present form, are two: what merit has it as a translation, and what, as an exposition of the New Testament Scriptures? Regarding the first, we are content to quote the remarks of Prof. Kendrick, in his Preface to the edition before us: "It evinces fidelity and industry, and is, in parts, nearly unexceptionable. As a whole, however, it is marred by serious defects, sometimes mistaking, sometimes obscuring, and sometimes directly reversing the sense of the original, and elsewhere injured by an awkward and unidiomatic style." The American editor has accordingly gone "through the work, sentence by sentence, correcting errors, clearing up obscurities, pruning redundancies, and, so far as might be, rendering the style more neat and idiomatic." The difficulty of accomplishing this last object, no one, at all acquainted wilh the German language, will hesitate to acknowledge. To translate from it into English is at once a difficult and peculiar process. A literal rendering, or anything like it, is impossible. The German composition must in a manner be taken to pieces, the very thought, as it were, decomposed, and a new work constructed from the debris of the old. Under such circumstances, careful revision, and by another scholar, is almost a necessity. Committed to competent hands, and especially in a work like this of Olshausen, revision must add greatly to the reliableness, and so to the value of the translation. On this account, we cordially welcome the edition before us as revised by Prof. Kendrick. We thank him for the notes he has, too sparingly, interspersed, through the two volumes already published. Taking these as a specimen, we hope he will append his reflections more frequently in those which are yet to

come.

It is in reference to the second of the above questions, viz. : what are the characteristics and merits of this work as an exposition of the New Testament Scriptures, that we propose to offer a few remarks. But why, it will be asked, translate our commentaries? Why go to Germany for them, that land of transcendentalism, infidelity, rationalism, mysticism, and myths? We reply, because with much that is perilous and evil in the

atmosphere and works of German biblical scholars, there is very much that is too precious to be unknown. Besides, we are compelled to borrow from the Germans in the department of sacred learning, because we have so little of our own. They have far outstripped us in sacred philology and historical criticism. They have long had, and still have, many diligent, patient, enthusiastic toilers in this field; we comparatively few. Hence, while the Germans abound in thorough critical expositions of the Bible, we are without a single good specimen. We have, indeed, some admirable original works on the exegesis of portions of the Bible. Stuart, Barnes, Alexander, Hodge, Hackett, Alford, and Davidson have done excellent service in exposition, and in textual and historical criticism. Henry, Doddridge, Owen, Leighton, Scott, and Clarke, have done equal service in commentaries which are, for the most part, of a more popular character. But what single commentary have we on the Old or New Testament, original in English, which is thoroughly critical? What educated pastor has not often sighed for precisely such a work as this of Olshausen, which blends the rich, spiritual character of the English commentaries we have named, with the rigidly critical; a commentary in his own tongue wherein he was born, which, so far from ignoring or dexterously evading the difficulties of Scripture, grapples with them boldly like Calvin, and contributes its measure toward their solution. There is no such lack of critical commentaries in Germany. German scholars have taken the lead, and far excel us in the department of Sacred Philology. They have written in better circumstances for the formation and free expression of an independent judgment. The mad dog cry of heresy, if not less frequently raised, has had fewer terrors with them, and has less often resulted in hunting down its hapless object. Indeed, it cannot be denied that liberty and independence among the Germans in the department of Biblical criticism, have degenerated into latitudinarianism. With too many of them the sacred classics have been like the profane. Isaiah and Paul have fared in their hands like Homer and Horace. Indeed, worse, since the natural bias of an unbelieving heart is far from being friendly to the honest interpretation of Scripture; while in Germany it is notorious that many who have devoted their lives to this department of study, make no pretensions to piety, nor even to orthodoxy. No wonder, then, that Germany has produced such interpreters of Scripture as Paulus, Baur, De Wette, in his earlier days, and Strauss. No wonder that the Lutheran school, characterised by rigid adherence to the analogy of the faith, gave way, at length, to one of an opposite character, too little regardful of this analogy, unscrupulously tearing itself along the path of Scriptural interpretation, with no respect whatever for established systems of belief or practice. This was

deplorable. It was, however, owing in great measure to the narrowness and servility of the Lutheran interpreters. But, on the other hand, the excesses and faults of this Rationalist school have in turn called forth many noble champions into the field of biblical learning, men like Neander, Tholuck, and Hengstenberg, not only eminent for their learning, but also for their piety, their reverence of the Scriptures, and their general orthodoxy. They are not, however, without their faults. They sometimes fall, as we apprehend, into obvious and dangerous error. But they are learned, thorough, critical. They have also brought large resources of sacred learning, and patient study to the elucidation of Scripture; they have opened new and rich fields of religious thought; they have written freshly, suggestively, and so profitably, not only for their own countrymen, but also for American and English scholars, who, for the reason already named, have necessarily resorted to them on grave biblical questions.

Olshausen belongs to this last, best school of German commentators. Free from the shackles of established systems of doctrine and polity, free also from an undue bias of traditionary opinions and usages, he yet exhibits none of that contempt for these systems and usages which betrays itself so frequently in writings of the Rationalistic school. Possessed of the rich results of philological investigation, which have been accumulating through the labours of his predecessors of the Lutheran and Neological schools, he came to his work of exegesis with a love and reverence for the word of God which we in vain look for in their productions. Happily, too, for the results of his long labour upon the New Testament, he set out with what we take to be the true idea for a commentator, viz., that the Bible, though written by different men, of different intellectual and moral characteristics, living in different countries and ages of the world, is yet one, one progressive revelation, containing a harmonious system of doctrines, all its diversities of style, form, purpose, subject-matter, finding their union and accordance in the one Spirit which guided infallibly the respective writers. Of course he connects the Old and New Testaments, as we think God connected them, shewing their intimate mutual relations, and illustrating and elucidating the one by the other. His opinion on this point may be learned from a brief extract taken from his remarks on Matt. v. 17. "The Old Testament is the foundation on which the structure of the New Testament is to be placed, in order to complete it. In this comparison (viz., of the relation of his work to the Law and the Prophets), the Old Testament contains the outline (mogpwars, Rom. ii. 20), and the New its filling up; the two are in organic connection, like bud and blossom. The fulfilment is, therefore, to be regarded as a