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might be used for. scenic effect, or perverted to the ends of superstition, is utterly and forever obliterated.

But the merits of Dr. Barclay's book are too great to suffer us to criticize severely its defects. It gives a valuable compendium of ancient and modern authorities concerning Jerusalem; a minute array of the points of its topography drawn from the Scriptures and Josephus; careful observations upon its climate and its vital and economical statistics; valuable measurements of ancient remains; the most elaborate and reliable account of modern Jerusalem yet given in the English language; while in its minute descriptions of the water-resources of the city, of the discovery of the great quarry, of the interior of the mosque of Omar and the substructions of el-Aksa, and also of the arch of the Tyropoon bridge, first identified by Robinson,' it adds not a little of substantial value to our knowledge. It is understood that the author will soon return to Jerusalem to prosecute his labors and researches under the most favorable circumstances. It is important to the interests of archæology to have such an acute and indefatigable observer continually upon the ground.

The concluding chapter of Dr. Barclay's book treats of "Jerusalem as it is to be." Dr. B. is a literalist of the extremest school. Accordingly he maps out upon the present territory of Palestine the features of Ezekiel's vision-the "Prince's possession" of fifty-one and a quarter miles square, including the city "Yehovah-shammah," nine miles square. This looks like running prophecy into the ground. Still, at this very hour, the Christian nations of Europe are girdling the land of Palestine with great commercial lines, uniting the East and the West; and nothing is wanting but a wise and efficient government, giving protection to capital and encouragement to industry, to render Palestine the very cen tre of commercial intercourse for both hemispheres. The memoir of the American Geographical Society on "Syrian

1 Dr. Barclay discovered an arch with a key-stone under Solomon's Pool at el-Burak.

Exploration," develops many interesting facts upon this subject. In the cycle of ages, the law may once more "go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."

"Palestine is so remarkably situated, that it forms the bridge between two continents, and a gateway to a third, Were the population and wealth of Europe, Asia, and Africa condensed into single points, Palestine would be the centre of their common gravity. And with the amazing facilities of modern intercourse and the prodigious extent of modern traffic, it is not easy to estimate the commercial grandeur to which a kingdom may attain, planted as it were on the very apex of the old world, with its three continents. spreading out beneath its feet, and with the Red sea on one side to bring it all the golden treasures and spicy harvests of the East; and the Mediterranean floating in, on the other side, all the skill, and enterprise, and knowledge of the West. For the sake of higher ends, it seems the purpose of God to make the Holy Land a mart of nations." But whether that land shall be occupied by Israel recalled and regenerated, and Jerusalem shall once more become a joy in the earth, are questions we would reverently and patiently leave to the unfolding of that prophecy which, "sounding through the long galleries of centuries," proclaims that all nations shall be blessed in Abraham and his seed.

NOTE. Since the foregoing Article was in type, Dr. Horatius Bonar's "Land of Promise" has come to hand. It gives a clear statement of the theory which enlarges Mount Zion upon the North, and transfers Akra to the eastern side of the valley from the Damascus gate, which Dr. B. regards as the Tyropoon. (pp. 496-501.) His view of Gihon, however, is untenable and self-contradictory.

1 Cited in "The Last Times," a volume of discourses by Rev. J. A. Seiss, Lutheran Pastor in Baltimore; an eloquent advocate of the pre-millenial advent.

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IN the Prefatory Note to the fourth volume of this work, it is announced that "the numerous references to Winer's New Testament Grammar (made, in the original, to the third edition) have [in the present volume] been conformed to the sixth enlarged and greatly improved edition. They have also been adjusted to the section and paragraph (instead of the page), in order that they may be equally available in a translation as in the original. Such a translation will probably be soon issued by the American publishers of Olshausen. The references in the previous volumes will be changed in the next issue." This fact gives an additional value to the present republication, of Olshausen's Commentaries. The enterprising House of Sheldon, Blakeman and Co. will receive the hearty thanks of theological students, whether in the active ministry or in a course of preparation to enter it, for making the excellent Grammar of Winer readily accessible to them.

The volumes now before us contain a continuation of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans; and the Commentaries on the Epistles to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians, the Philippians, and the Epistle to Titus. It is well known to our readers, that the lamented death of Olshausen occurred soon after he had written his Exposition of the Epistles to the Thessalonians. His pupil Wiesinger continues, in Olshausen's spirit, the Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians, to Titus, and Timothy, the Epistles of James, Peter, Jude, and John ; and Ebrard, another distinguished pupil of Olshausen, continues the Commentaries on the Epistles to the Hebrews and on the Apocalypse.

The entire Exposition contained in these volumes is eminently quickening and suggestive. It often points the student, where it fails to lead him, into the right course. It is the favorite exegetical work of a large class of devout students.

1 Biblical Commentary on the New Testament, by Dr. Herman Olshausen, Professor of Theology in the University of Erlangen. Translated from the German for Clark's Foreign and Theological Library. First American Edition. Revised after the latest 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. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman and Co., 115 Nassau Street. 1857. Vol. IV. pp. 586. Vol. V. pp. 624.

2. CARDINAL MAI'S GREEK BIBLE ACCORDING TO THE VATICAN MS.1

TISCHENDORF, nine years ago, informed the public, that when he was at Rome in 1843, Cardinal Mai showed to him five printed volumes, 4to size, of the whole Greek Bible, with the apocryphal books, which he had carefully edited from the celebrated Vatican MS., and should publish as soon as he had finished writing the Prolegomena, on which he was then at work with great diligence. The first four volumes contained the Sept. version of the O. T. and the Apocrypha; and the fifth, the entire original New Test. Tischendorf then thought that the entire work would be soon given to the public; but there was no news of it till five years after, when, the pope being banished from Rome by the revolution of 1848, cardinal Mai ventured to write to Asher, the Berlin bookseller, offering to him the work for publication. Asher was unwilling to pay the price demanded, and the project failed. Soon after, the pope was restored, and the work still lay in sheets unpublished. Cardinal Mai became very shy of showing it; few, if any, scholars got a sight of it, and the stories which the cardinal told to those who inquired of him respecting it, were not always very definite or entirely consistent with each other; and, as he at length died (in 1854) without publishing, doubts began to be expressed whether Tischendorf had ever seen the work, or whether any such work had ever been in existence. But now, after fifteen years of suppression, the authorities at Rome have actually allowed the five volumes to be published in that city; and the Messrs. Westermann and Co. of N. York are permitted to offer it for sale to the American public, at about fifty-three dollars the set, on common paper, or about sixty-six, on large paper. Whether the fifth volume, containing the N. T., will be offered separately from the other four, is still doubtful, though very much to be desired. Nothing, however, can hinder the reprint of the N. T. by any enterprising Protestant bookseller; and if the original work is accurately and faithfully done (and cardinal Mai was thirty years in doing it), such a republication would be invaluable. The Vatican MS. is now generally regarded as the oldest and most reliable MS. of the entire N. T. in existence; and it is quite complete, except the loss of some few leaves at the end. It has never been thoroughly and completely collated; and for the last hundred years, the Roman authorities have allowed Protestant scholars nothing more than a hasty perusal of it, for a very little while at a time, in certain parts, but no thorough examination of the whole. It belongs to the early part of the fourth century; it is within two hundred and fifty years of the original writers of the N. T., and may have been copied in part, possibly, from the very autographs. These circumstances give to this MS. a peculiar

Just published by Joseph Spithoever at Rome: Vet. et Nov. Testamentum ex antiquissimo Codice Vaticano edidit Angelus Maius, S. R. E. Card. 5 vols. 4to.

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interest and value; and there is no other one that can compare with it, unless it be the Alexandrian, in the British Museum in London. The Alexandrian, being in Protestant hands, has of course been many times freely used in the preparation of printed editions of the Greek text; but very different, as we have already seen, has been the case with the Vatican MS. An accurate printed edition, therefore, from the Vatican, such as this of cardinal Mai's professes to be, is of inestimable value to the theological and religious public. It would be of invaluable service to have a reprint of the N. T. text, exactly on the plan which Tischendorf has adopted in his reprint of the Apocalypse from the Codex Basilianus; that is, not a fac-simile in form, but an exact imitation, in effect, of the oldest MSS., by printing simply in square capitals, without accent or punctuation, without division of paragraphs, chapters, verses, or even words, but the letters only, in continua serie, just as all the original copies of the N. T. were written, and as they continued to be written for the most part, for four or five centuries afterwards. This would enable the scholar fairly to pick out the text for himself, without being subject to the dictation of uninspired editors and publishers.

The text of the classic Greek authors is made out almost entirely from MSS. ranging from the tenth to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The classic Greek MSS. preceding the tenth century, are generally the merest fragments and patches of books, helping only here and there in particular passages; whereas we have the entire N. Testament in MS. as early, at least, as the first years of the fourth century. Thus has God taken care of his Word.

3. PEIRCE'S SYSTEM OF ANALYTIC MECHANICS.1

THE present volume is to be followed, we percieve, by Treatises, from the same author, on Celestial Mechanics, Potential Physics, and Analytic Methodology. It was "originally prepared as part of a course of lectures for the students of mathematics in Harvard college." Although the volume is abstrusely mathematical, yet the splendid imagination of its author cannot be entirely banished from its pages. "I have re-examined," he says, "the memoirs of the great geometers, and have striven to consolidate their latest researches and their most exalted forms of thought into a consistent and uniform treatise. If I have, hereby, succeeded in opening to the students of my country a readier access to these choice jewels of intellect; if their brilliancy is not impaired in this attempt to reset them; if, in their new constellation, they illustrate each other, and concentrate a stronger light upon the names of their discoverers; and, still more, if any gem which I may have presumed to add is not wholly lustreless in the collection, I shall feel that my work has not been in vain.”— pp. vii, viii.

A System of Analytic Mechanics. By Benjamin Peirce, Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics in Harvard University, and Consulting Astronomer of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1855. pp. 495. 4to.

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