brew, Jehovah ; the Persian, Ormuzd and Ahriman; the Greek and Roman, their Olympus, with its full complement of gods; the Christian, his Christ, eighteen times glorified; the Northern barbarian, his gods shivering beneath Polar snow; the Mohammedan, who hates images, his Prophet, with his face veiled by a flame; the Druse, his calf Hakem, with his azure eyes and his lion mask. Every one will be able to say his prayers in that universal Church, the true metropolis of the human race." The chief idol of this pantheistic temple is thus described :-" In the center the Brahmin Cow is resting with her full face turned upon you, her knees drawn in under her dewlap, ruminating upon some thought of cosmogony. On the right, the Persian Griffin, with lengthy claws and shaking wing, seems to guard a treasure; while on the left, the Chaldean Sphinx makes a mock of eternity by her granite dreams. On the back of these three beasts soldered together, rests the Egyptian ship, the mystical Bari, which ferries the souls across; the ship carries the ark of the covenant, which is itself surmounted by a ciborium, containing the host amid glittering rays. This symbol, executed in red granite, is to be repeated at the farther end of the temple, and to stand in the place of the altar, under a dome of twelve columns supporting a freize with twelve compartments, where the Olympian gods will be sculptured in bas-relief. By this monument, compounded of the symbols of all the modes of worship fused together, Chevenard wished to denote that all religions are but different forms of one and the same idea, and that, seen from a certain elevation, their forms must be indifferent. It is the Word, the great Pan, that humanity adores, under a multitude of pseudonymous characters; all the names of the deities are but epithets of the litany of that one, universal, and eternal God; the Word floating in light, that is, the supreme and ruling intelligence of which every animate creature contains a portion, and which man alone bears consciously within his heart and mind. Thus he was made an idol, that is, a plastic image, which every body may worship, for it contains the worship of each with its genealogy. Such it behooved the high altar of a pantheistic temple to be; for the mission of pantheism is to absorb in its vast bosom all ideas and forms; it excludes no religion, but assimilates them all."

And now, if in conclusion, we may venture on a few brief and humble suggestions, we would say, that one step toward counteracting all this spreading evil, is to be found in a correction of the two main errors of the popular historical school of the day. Let the two foundation principles of history, the

two true principles, be earnestly insisted on, and sedulously inculcated, and they will, they must, in time displace the counterfeits. Let, moreover, that true spiritualism which the Church system inspires, be carefully exhibited and expounded, alike from the pulpit and by the press; and let that disposition. to confound form and formalism, which so prepares the mind to receive Pantheistic views, be carefully corrected. Let those meager and jejune views of life, and especially of the life of Christ, be avoided, which sink its glorious ideal into an abstract statement of a doctrine, and because of the Sacrifice forget the Prophetship and the Royalty. Above all things, let there be a plain, distinct, and dogmatic teaching of the INCARNATION of the ETERNAL WORD; neither suffering it, as the Romanist does, to be obscured by the figment of the Immaculate Conception, nor as some religionists do, merging it in an abstract view of the Atonement. Nor let it be forgotten that with this there must also be set forth, because it depends upon it for its life and meaning, the stupendous verity of the HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, with all its gifts and means, its dower of graces upon earth, its heritage of glory in the heavens.

THE SYRIAC IGNATIUS.

ART. VI.-The Antient Syriac Version of the Epistles of Saint Ignatius to St. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans: Together with Extracts from his Epistles, collected from the Writings of Severus of Antioch, Timotheus of Alexandria, and others, edited with an English translation, and notes; also the Greek text of three Epistles, corrected according to the authority of the Syriac version. By WILLIAM CURETON, M. A. London: Rivingtons. Berlin: Asher & Co. MDCCCXLV.

THE interest that we all naturally feel in the earliest ages of the Christian Church, often causes a regret for the scantiness of materials to gratify our research. The genuine works of the Fathers of the first three centuries, form comparatively but a small library saved from the wrecks of time, and the nearer we ascend to the Apostolic limits, the more do we feel our want of authority to make, what is now reasonable conjecture, also historic fact.

Had we, indeed, all that the industry and zeal of Eusebius have enabled us to see, only as Cicero says, "quasi per transennam strictim aspicere," in mere names, titles, or fragments, we might perhaps fill up the chasms, or restore the links in the broken chain of events. The history of the Church transmitted by Eusebius, is, in truth, as much a valuable anthology of Patristical literature as a record of facts; and where the latter assists us to place our step on some firm foundation, the former helps us to many a promising glance in the opening tract that we survey.

We regret, indeed, the want of an unbroken chain of events on the pages of authentic history there, where we seem to desire it most, after the close of the New Testament; yet happily the points of inquiry are also at the same time, either of minor importance, or else sufficiently determined by Scripture authority. And thus, though we may not be able to see the stream in all the windings of its course, still the living fountain is full in view, and its waters are ever flowing before us.

But besides this sufficiency which the Providence of God has thus anticipated in the wants of his Church, this sufficiency in regard to what we have, there seems also a wise economy, a designed and salutary privation in that which we have not. Who of us would not indeed be gratified, if at

this day we had the undoubted records of the lives and labors of those holy men, who, as the immediate disciples of Christ, were also the founders of His Church? But unless we dignify legends and pious fancies with the name of history, there is a veil drawn over a great portion of the Apostolic age, that Providence has not seen fit to remove.

To whatever causes this may be attributed, whether to the disturbed nature of the times, the omissions of some who might have supplied the want, or the lost labors of those who made the attempt-the very deficiency seems to have been designed as a caveat against subsequent abuse. Total ignorance is, under some circumstances, better than that little knowledge which, like objects in the dim twilight, only deludes us with a vain hope or treacherous persuasion. If superstition has seized with such avidity upon the little that we have, the mere hints that have come down to us respecting times, persons, and events, in the first ages of the Church, to multiply as well as to magnify, ad libitum, whatever happens to come within its reach, we know not what would have been the effect of this rank luxuriance in the midst of more abundance. In whatever light we may regard it, we may one day see as much reason to be thankful for what we do not know, as for what we do; and though we need not make this an apology for willful ignorance, or a "praise of folly," certain it is, what our LORD once said to his disciples, may apply to the Church in more periods than one : there are many things" which, for the time at least, we can not bear.

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Upwards of half a century after the close of the Acts of the Apostles, we lose sight of the connecting links of the Church's history, and are obliged to feel our way, with the help of an occasional hint from Josephus, an allusion from Suetonius or Tacitus, or an inference drawn from some Apostolic Father, down to the days of Trajan and Pliny.

This interval, however, though barren or destitute of his torical, or rather chronological data, was not destitute of testimony to the faith. The Church might lose the thread of her history, she can never lose the ground of her hope. She has the undying principle once imparted by her sacred Founder, and though obscurity, and even oblivion may seem to spread over some periods of her existence, still she lives, and in a sense more noble than pagan Rome,-per damna, per cædes ab ipso ferro-ducit opes.

That such men as Timothy and Titus, Silas and Sosthenes, Apollos and Zenas, not to mention other associates of the

Apostles, would commit some testimony to writing, as well as proclaim it orally, is so probable, that there are scarcely any of those in the Apostolic age whose names have reached us, that have not had some written work ascribed to them. But of these, none have stood the ordeal of criticism, except those commonly known as the Apostolic Fathers. Indeed, even these have not passed without strenuous opposition, and this chiefly on the ground that they are occasionally, in the expression of doctrine, or the exhibition of moral duty, or the application of Scripture, perhaps, not as sound as their inspired teachers. But unless we expect the disciple to be in all things as his master, such objections would disprove more than even these authors would admit. Indeed, it requires but little critical taste or theological perception, to see there is a marked difference between the productions of an Apostle and even an Apostolic man. Much as we may honor the latter for his connection with the former, as soon as we step out of the Apostolic circle, we feel as if we had descended into a different atmosphere, and we rise or step back again, as if by instinct, to recover the genial warmth of the purely Apostolic mind. The latter, as the standard, the true and only infallible exponent of the mind that was in Christ, is also the criterion of all subsequent teaching. Whatever be the veneration with which we regard Fathers, whatever the decisions of Councils, whatever the authority of the Church, all must be tested by the Apostolic mind, the exponent of the mind and the spirit of CHRIST.

Among the five Apostolic Fathers, none has been the subject of more earnest controversy than the Epistles of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch during a part of the first and second centuries. The controversy would not have been conducted with such warmth, or such ability-nay, perhaps, would never have arisen, had it not been for the interests supposed to be at stake. More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since this discussion of the merits of the Ignatian Epistles was at its height, and the learned Daillé on the one side, and the equally learned Pearson on the other, were matched against each other, not without expectations on both sides, that the question would be set at rest. But notwithstanding the learning and critical skill brought to the contest on both sides, still it has remained a vexed question; and whatever be our partialities, it may be said upon the whole there remains much to be satisfactorily settled-adhuc sub judice lis est.

In the Syriac edition of the Ignatian Epistles now before