the qualifications of its lamented author. Notwithstanding the traces of Rationalism and Mysticism already adverted to, and notwithstanding some other criticisms upon it which we think are just, and some of them we will presently name, it is a noble commentary, and we hope will have a wide circulation in this country.

Of its doctrinal character we wish to speak, though but briefly. Olshausen was so profoundly impressed with the pernicious errors of Dr Paulus and the whole school of Neological and Mystical interpreters, that the reaction of his mind drove him far toward the former doctrinal school of Luther. Too far, we think, notwithstanding that in occasional passages we find him interpreting neologically. It is certain that he has given great prominence throughout his work to the doctrines of the Christian system. They are set forth fearlessly, fully, and systematically, more so than in other German commentaries which have fallen under our notice. His doctrinal belief is in substance that of high Calvinism. He goes beyond Calvin, indeed, in some of his views, while in others we find him approaching more nearly the present type of New England theology. For the most part, however, he seems to have returned, perhaps too far, toward the Lutheran school of Biblical exegesis. We are tempted to quote a few of his doctrinal statements, that our readers may have an opportunity to judge for themselves to what class of Theologians he belonged. On John i. 14, he says, "the Logos did not become a man but the man, just as Adam was not one man amongst many other men, but the original man who included them all, who potentially carried in himself the whole To Adam, as well as to Christ, we may apply the expression of Augustine: in illo uno fuimus nos omnes.' Speaking of that righteousness which, he says, is the wedding-garment in the parable of the supper, he adds, "This inward righteousness is not represented as anything acquired or self-produced, but as something given, imparted, the non-appropriation of which (resulting from self-complacency and vanity, as if our own were sufficient) is the very ground of rebuke." Again, speaking of the love we ought to bear toward the evil man while abhorring the evil itself, he says, "such love man cannot obtain for himself by a determination of will, or, by any effort, for it is divine; he can receive it only by spiritual communication in faith.”

race.

Again, Vol. II. p. 499, "The impossibility of true believers being lost, even in the midst of all the temptations which they may encounter, is not founded upon their fidelity and decision, but upon the power of God. Here the doctrine of predestination is presented in its sublime and sacred aspect; there is a predestination of the holy, which is taught from one end of the Scriptures to the other; not, indeed, of such a nature that a

gratia irresistibilis compels the opposing will of man, but so that that will of man, which receives and loves the commands of God, is produced only by God's grace."

Upon the Divinity of Christ, the Atonement, the Depravity of man, and the Work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification, the author expresses clearly high Calvinistic views. His opinions on the subject of Baptism, however, are peculiar, combining those of our Baptist brethren with our own, differing, however, from both, in that he holds that the rite should be administered a second time to those who, as children of believing parents, have been already baptized in childhood. See his commentary on Matt. iii. 1. On the subject of faith, too, he holds a peculiar, mystical, and of course unsatisfactory opinion. With him faith is "susceptibility to the operations of divine grace, and their reception into the heart;" it is "the inwardly hungering desire of the spirit, which lays hold of not only the form, but also the essence of what is divine;" a "susceptibility for grace, on the condition of worthiness." "in "Faith," he says, all stages of its development, proceeds from the heart; its resting-place is in the immediate sphere of the inner life; it is receptive love, as grace is communicative love." He calls it again, Vol. I. p. 534, "the tenderest susceptibility for what is heavenly -the perfect womanhood of the soul. When yearning faith, by coming in contact with the objects it longs for, becomes seeing faith, out of such a mental state there certainly spring beliefs and doctrines of all kinds, which, as being the product of this inward and immediate, may themselves be termed faith."

In this last remark he exhibits his view of the relation of his idea of faith to the more common, and, as we think, the more correct one.

But we have no disposition to multiply our criticisms upon the work before us. What production of equal extent, on the Scriptures, is not open to manifold criticism? Taken as whole, however, Olshausen's Commentary is eminently spiritual and evangelical. It is learned and thorough; and, considering the associations of its author, is less marked by the peculiarities of German Lutherans than we might naturally have supposed. Its excellencies brighten every page, and challenge for the work a prominent place, if not the foremost, in that class of works to which it belongs.

ART. VIII.-Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology. Sermons, by THEODORE PARKER. London: Chapman.

THE rise of Socinianism in a country is never very difficult to account for. Let but its spiritual life decay, and its professed religion become a dead-letter, and you have at once provided the needful conditions of its existence. This was sufficiently illustrated in the history of Scotland itself. Under the baneful action of moderatism, the mass of the people became simply careless and indifferent. Christianity was not pressed on their attention as a thing with which they had personally to do, and being under no official obligation to make themselves intimately acquainted with its tenets, they allowed their hearts and minds to be diverted to other objects of interest altogether. With the clergy, however, especially with the more active minded among them, the case was somewhat different. They could hardly help giving some attention to the Bible. They, for one thing, required to study it, to find topics for such sermons as they preached; and their minds being thus brought constantly into immediate contact with religion, were in a manner forced to form distinct and definite opinions regarding it. The result was, that from a state of simple indifference, many were driven to take up a position of active antagonism. The process through which these parties went appears generally to have been this: First, their enmity to the truth exhibited itself in a vague dislike to the supernatural and the mysterious. That issued byand-bye, very naturally, in a definite opposition to some of the characteristic doctrines of the gospel; such, for example, as the New Birth, and the work of the Spirit in conversion; and when the system of Christian truth had been thus so far emasculated as to be reduced simply to a plain code of morals, the next step was not distant or difficult to take,-first to cast suspicion on the miracles of Christ, by laboriously explaining them away, and then boldly to question all that was supernatural in the origin and person of the Saviour himself.

That the people of Scotland did not in general fall away formally from the truth during the age to which we have re. ferred, was owing to a variety of providential circumstances; among others to the very violence with which that line of policy was pursued, which had led to the decadence at the first. But that things in this country would have borne a much closer resemblance to things in New England, had the matter been in the hands of some of the clergy alone, will be questioned by none who know anything of the opinions which were more

or less openly expressed by the Simpsons, the Wilsons, the Findlaters, the Nicolls, and the Scotts, of a not very distant past.*

The declension from the truth which occurred in America at the close of the last and beginning of the present century, had its origin, as in Scotland, in a decay of spiritual religion. The particular circumstances appear shortly to have been these.

With the best intentions, the first Puritan settlers attempted to establish a theocracy of the strictest kind. Church and State were to be identical. At least, no one was to be admitted to the full privileges of citizenship who was not a church-member in good standing; and as no man was suffered to partake of the communion until he had given satisfactory evidence of having undergone the radical change of regeneration, the civil power came, in course of time, to fall entirely into the hands of a comparatively small section of the community. As the young grew up to manhood, and immigrants from abroad swelled the population, the grievance thus caused came to be felt very severely. In theory, the system did look very fair and commendable; but when in practice it was found to work in such a way as to exclude from all management of State affairs an increasing number of men, who, though it could not be said that they were converted, had at least such serviceable political qualifications, as intelligence, character, wealth, and even orthodoxy,-the necessity for some change in the method of government could not well be questioned. It was, however, very unfortunate that the difficulty was met in the unsatisfactory way of simply "stretching the old formula to meet the new fact!" Adhering still to the original idea of the constitution, they extended the suffrage, by practically relaxing the terms of communion. First, all had secured to them the privileges of citizens who had been baptised in their infancy; and then, it being seen that this

There is hardly a district in the country which has not its traditional stories of ministers who lived and died in the Church of Scotland, yet who were (to say the least of it) as thorough Rationalists as ever were produced in Germany itself. The case of Mr Nicoll of Traquair was a peculiarly disgraceful one,his Sermons being actually published after his death for the express purpose of promoting Socinianism. A minister in the Presbytery of Biggar, still living, tells that at the first Presbytery dinner which he attended after his ordination,—having made a serious allusion to the miracles of Christ, he was interrupted by his neighbour, Mr Findlater of Newlands, who asked him, with a laugh, "if he really believed the miracles." And not to multiply cases: When the late Mr Walker of Carnwath was ordained at Carluke, he found that one very decided fruit of his predecessor Dr Scott's ministry, was a small Unitarian congregation, which may, for anything we know, exist to the present day. Such facts as these should be remembered, because there appears to be a disposition on the part of many to conclude that the rise of Socinianism in New England reflects suspiciously on the Puritanism in which the colony originated. Why should the truth be sought at the bottom of a well, if it lies plain and patent on the surface? A stream of living water will keep itself pure and clear. A pool left absolutely stagnant is sure to breed corruption.

arrangement would avail to tide over the discontent only to another generation, it was further ruled that every man who made a credible profession, whether he had himself been admitted to the Lord's table or no, should be entitled to receive baptism for his children. The constituency was in this way very considerably enlarged, of course; but other consequences followed from it, of a very much less satisfactory nature. One was that the minds of the people became thoroughly unsettled on the subject of the Christian ordinances. Baptism, so important in a civil point of view, sank as a religious institution into an empty form; and in regard to the other sacrament, the Venerable Stoddart" was the first to publish a heresy, which, we are persuaded, existed in a nascent state long before, that the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance, and is to be resorted to as such by men who, consciously and obviously, are themselves unregenerate. The tide of latitudinarianism was for a time arrested by the labours of Jonathan Edwards, and by the Revivals which were characteristic of his time; but the barriers thus presented were only partial and temporary. The wars of the Revolution, and the excitement attendant on the establishment of a new style of administration, counteracted, in great measure, all the good effects of these beneficial agencies; and at the close of the century, while there still remained many points of purest and brightest light, the decay of religion in New England was so decided as to make the appearance of Socinianism anything but strange and unaccountable.

The manner in which the evil originally manifested itself and spread, was not particularly creditable to its promoters. Socinian sentiments were in many instances held by ministers long before they were openly expressed. Quiet yet energetic efforts were made to diffuse these, by individuals who at the moment derived their entire support from funds contributed directly for the sustenance of orthodoxy. With a silence and secrecy which would have appeared more appropriate to the action of Jesuits than to that of men calling themselves by the name of Protestants, they worked their way as it were under ground. For a season each man looked with doubt and suspicion on his neighbour. No one knew very well who held by the truth and who did not. A dark conspiracy only was known to be on foot for overthrowing the established religion; and until the nature of the plot had been discovered, and its authors and provisions had been ascertained and made public, the friends of evangelical religion had no idea either of the extent of their danger, or of the quarters from which it might be expected to come.

In Scotland the heresies which were bred by moderation were left unmolested, owing to the prevailing indifferentism of the time, and the consequent suspension of the disciplinary