derings of thirty and nine years in the desert, before entering Canaan. The favorite child and the partial mother have their reward.

We pass on more than four hundred years, and find Israel under David slaying eighteen thousand of the children of Esau. "For six months did Job remain there with all Israel, until he had cut off every male in Edom.”

After a hundred and fifty years more the children of Esau again revolted from the rule of the sons of Jacob, and ten thousand of them were slain, and as many more thrown down the rocks of Petra.

But recovering a national name and spirit afterward they joined with Nebuchadnezzar in the seige of Jerusalem. Hence the bitter prayer against them in the 137th Psalm. This act of Esau, and this prayer of the house of Jacob are the last account the Bible gives of the two brothers and their descendants together.

Thus for about twelve hundred years, this parental partiality showed its fruit. For so long time the plot of Rebekah worked evil between her twin sons. Later record, sacred and profane, shows the decrease of the children of Esau under the persecuting hatred of Jacob, till about the opening of the Christian era, when the name and race of Esau are lost to history. So much did it cost to love one child to partiality, and to the neglect and abuse of the other.

"O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and their children forever."-Deut. v. 29.

GOD has long had a beloved people in Egypt, but, in the circumstances, he could not give them a code of laws, and an order of life. So with great power he brings them out of Egypt, and they are now as far as Sinai toward their home. Valley and hill, ravine and plain are covered with them there, and the Law is given, the law moral and ceremonial, social, private and international. It is a sublime sight, for here are a people of one blood, with one God, one religion, and one destiny.

It is a time for God to reveal himself in a declaration of principles, and the declaration is made, by the text, in four points.

1. The intense compassion of God is declared.

We recall his majesty and glory at Sinai, as the legislator and governor. The scenery surrounding is rough and wild. The mountain is burning, smoking and trembling. Yet the leading desire of God is, love for this people: "That it might be well with them."

The words are full of sympathy, tenderness and anxiety. A father's heart is in them.

2. Divine benevolence, for its best exercise, must take the form of law.

It is a human notion and a weakness to let those we love, and should control, have always their own way. Some parents, and all non-resistants and anti-prison theorists indulge in this folly. But not so God. He loves man too truly for this: "Keep my commandments always," "that it may be well with them." Our sinfulness, weakness, ignorance, and desire for happiness, necessitate the law of God. The highest benevolence, the purest philanthropy takes the form of the most careful legislation, and Sinai shows as true a love for man as Calvary.

3. God would secure human happiness through the free action of

man.

ness.

No almighty, irresistible force compels man to virtue and happi"O that there were such a heart in them." All the means of grace assume our freedom, so that our spiritual joys and our salvation are in our own seeking and keeping, the grace of God being always offered and aiding.

4. The well-being of children is wrapped up in the obedience and disobedience of their parents.

"Keep all

my commandments that it might be well with their children forever." And so "for the fathers' sake" the children of Achan and of the drunkard have woes, while Samuel and Timothy enter into mercies prepared of God for them through devout mothers in Israel. There are laws of physical and moral inheritance, and parents constitute their children heirs by a kind of necessity, and without any last will and testament.

From all which we see:

1. God has a peculiar tenderness for sinful men.

2. The Law of God is not the stern and severe code that some call it.

3. Lost men destroy themselves despite the compassion and good endeavors of God to the contrary.

4. Parental disobedience to God is cruelty to children.

ARTICLE IX.

LITERARY NOTICES.

1.-Critical, Doctrinal and Homiletical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. By JOHN PETER LANGE, D.D., Vol. II. The Gospel of Mark, by J. P. Lange, D.D., edited by, W. G. T. Shedd, D.D. The Gospel of Luke by J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D., edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., and Rev. Charles C. Starbuck, Royal 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1866.

THE full year which has elapsed since the issue of the first volume of the American edition of this work, has given ample opportunity to test its merits, and to determine whether the cordial welcome which it generally received was well grounded and bestowed. Our own trial of the volume, thus laid before the public, has been satisfactory. We have found it a real help toward a richer possessing of the treasure stored in the word of God. We do not mean by this that, here and there, we have not come upon some paragraph which is, in our judgment, fanciful or otherwise superfluous. The German mind is not like ours in some particulars. We occasionally observe, for instance, both in the chief conductor of this Bibelwerk and in his American editor in chief, a tinge of mysticism, and an over refinement of interpretation, which fails to carry our more matter of fact common sense along with it. We are hardly used, moreover, to that freedom of illustration, in a staid and critical work like this, which brings in a long quotation from Professor Schaff's diary, descriptive of Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863, to explain "the wars and rumors of wars" in Matthew xiv. So, it is more pleasing than altogether important, to be informed in the present volume, that the American editor hopes to see his transatlantic co-laborers this summer (1865) which hope, we are subsequently informed (Feb. 1866) was only partially gratified. This gossippy kind of footnotes and postscripts in a commentary, on the Holy Scriptures, is not quite American. Still, it may have a use in showing our public more fully how thoroughly this great work is entitled to their confidence as representing and reproducing the views of the eminent scholars abroad, with whom we are thus forming a more intimate acquaintance. We gather from these confidences that both Drs. Lange and Schaff are highly gratified with the marked success of this publication on our side the ocean, to which we join the hearty expression of our own satisfaction.

The very thorough consideration which was given to the Gospel of St. Matthew, enables the editors to dispose of the next two Evangelists in a single volume of some fifty pages less than the preceding. Dr. Shedd has brought out St. Mark's Gospel with characteristic neatness and good judgment. Whether following the original author or his own excellent taste, we observe less discursiveness of remark, and less amplification of reference to other commentators, than in the other Gospels. The third Evangelist was committed by Dr. Lange to the distinguished scholar and preacher of Holland, Dr. Van Oosterzee. In this edition, hist labors are reproduced through the joint editorship of Drs. Schaff · and Starbuck, the latter accomplishing the much larger part of the work. The same general plan is followed by each of these gentlemen. We have thus unity with much variety of treatment, the scholarship and piety of, many eminent minds conspiring to illustrate, with their best resources, the sacred books of our faith. This conception, faithfully carried out, can not fail to result in a commentary, upon the whole Bible, of hitherto unrivalled attractiveness and value in our language.

It rather increases the interest and value of this undertaking, that the American editors freely dissent from the views of the original authors, wherever they find occasion so to do. In the exposition of St. Luke, we notice several of these instances, the most important of them relating to the premillennial theory of interpretation which Van Oosterzee appears to accept, but which his editor rejects. It is very instructive thus to note the different views maintained by scholars of this grade; and to have a thesaurus like this of high biblical criticism within reach is invaluable, not for dispensing with, but for stimulating independent study. The work has advanced far enough now to justify us in saying that every church should forthwith order a set of this commentary for its pastor's library. The entire series will be a heavier tax than most clergymen can afford to assume. But to a congregation it would be an imperceptible burden. It will be a biblical library in itself, as unique as it is solidly and permanently useful.

2.-Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1866.

A BOOK of great apparent candor, insinuating itself into the mind, so that if it were possible it would deceive the very elect. We have concluded that it is the bold and ingenious attack of one of the disciples of the Paine school of sceptics, upon the fundamental truths of religion. I denies Christ's divinity, rejects inspiration, takes great

liberty with the Gospels, and seeks to reconstruct the narratives of Christ's "Life and Work.”

"Ecce Homo," said Pilate, as he presented the thorn-crowned, scourged Nazarene to the view of the Jews. This author's view of Christ seems to us as inadequate as Pilate's was. He "found no fault in him," and yet delivered him up to be crucified, and so with this author. Either Christ was divine, or he was a self-deceived enthusiast. He ought, therefore, either to be worshipped or rejected. But this man professes to do neither, though we believe the influence of the book will be to lead to Christ's rejection.

Any amount of patronizing epithets may be found in this volume, but no reverence, no faith, no true recognition of the relations of man to God. The author even ridicules the idea of being a believer, in the evangelical sense of the word; calls such persons "the pauper class of the New Jerusalem." A man, woman or child that can read the author's version of the case of the woman taken in adultery, without indignation at the low-lived views of the writer, must be a remarkable person. We have no expectation that the forth-coming (?) volume will be any more satisfactory than the present.

3. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Historically and Logically Reviewed. By RICHARD W. DICKINSON, D.D. 12mo. Philadelphia. Presbyterian Board of Publication.

1866.

On the basis of the credibility of the New Testament, this is a complete defence of the resurrection of our Lord. The whole narrative is carefully sifted, the seeming discrepancies are harmonized, the objections to the fact are fairly disposed of, the whole subject is set in a clear and convincing light. There is no way to meet this argument but to deny the truthfulness of the record. With such cavillers, and they are growing numerous, the author does not deal. And, in truth, if we are to be continually going over that ground, as preliminary to the setting forth of a Scripture fact or doctrine, we shall soon be in as awkward a case as the earlier historians, who felt called upon to begin whatever particular narrative they undertook, with an account of the creation of the world. The "pure theists" have not yet pushed us quite to that extremity.

Dr. Dickinson, it will be seen, stands at a far remove from the Renan school with whom the resurrection of Jesus is only the amiable fiction of an imaginative love. He believes the fact, and in a vigorous style he maintains it, and shows its Christian relations and applications. The ten chapters of the treatise are all comprised within 142 pages, thus combining brevity with adequate