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to the sufferings of the present time: "If God had wished to destroy our earth after sin entered into it, He would have left it fair and radiant as at the first; if He had wished to transform it into a hell, he would have left it like a paradise;" an antithesis worthy of Pascal, and which, in our opinion, had no need of the further expansion; He would have given us up to all the corruptions of a licentious happiness, to all the seductions of an impure prosperity (p. 93).*

Speaking of our beloved ones who have left us to be with the Lord, but whose remembrance plunges its roots even deeper into our hearts, the author drops these tender words: "In the family circle the empty place is the place best filled; far from the eyes, near the heart." Yes, our hearts re-echo the words, " dear, and more dear, though now hidden from sight!"

We shall only further quote this one serious warning addressed by Dr de Pressensé to the Christians assembled at Amsterdam, on the 25th of last August; a warning which might well be inscribed upon the walls of all our evangelistic halls and religious committee rooms; "We are quite right to give a large place to practical Christianity, to develope works of charity, and missions; but should the Church become a busy Martha, who has not time to sit, like Mary, at the feet of the divine guest, to hear, contemplate, and adore Him, her activity will take a pharisaical character: charity itself will become a routine, and pride will find its account in the most adimrable works." t

Lastly, there is a word for us, pastors, evangelists, missionaries, Bible-readers, &c., for us theologians, for M. de Pressensé himself, who applies his own words to himself; "We do right to ascribe great importance to the development of religious science, and to aim at the consolidation and purity of the faith, in elaborating a deeply-studied theology, which goes straight up to the living, ever-flowing sources of revelation, without, however, laying aside tradition. This is one of the most serious wants of the Church at the present day. But what is theology as soon as it is separated from Jesus Christ? It is but a vain abstraction, a science without an object, a frivolous amusement of

*This thought recalls to us Lord Byron's lines upon Greece in the "Giaour".

"Strange! that where nature loved to trace,
As if for gods a dwelling place," &c., &c.

But the poet cannot give the explanation of the discordance between nature and man, as the Christian orator does so forcibly.

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The pastor of the Free Church here becomes the eloquent echo of a pastor of the Established Church. The pious Adolphe Monod, complaining, in 1849, with so much reason, of the distractions and worldly occupations which besiege pastors just as much now as they did then, says: We have thrown ourselves, if not into the service of tables,' at least into committees, into deliberations, occupations, editing of journals, managing of charitable institutes, in a word, into many works that do not properly belong to our ministry, and which threaten both to rob us of our precious time, and to weaken our authority. The invasion of outward activity, so apt to take the place of inward life, ought at least to have stopped upon the threshold of the pastor; but it has penetrated even into this sanctuary which ought to be impenetrable. Thus the time to prepare our discourses, to visit the flock, to rule our own houses' (1 Tim. iii. 4), to pray (that is to do our work), fails us."-V. Pourquoi je reste dans l'Eglise établie, p. 57.

the mind, playing with ideas that have neither substance nor reality" (p. 243).

From thoughts let us pass to a few "tableaux vivants," for these evangelical studies offer us, in every discourse, one or two pictures before which we like to linger to reflect, as much as to contemplate. The presence of Christ in the Church is thus drawn: "Present by the tender and sacred remembrance he has left us, by the faithful and marvellous recital the evangelists have furnished us with of his adorable person, He is still more so by his words, unlike those of any other, so simple and so great, so true and so profound; inimitable language of eternal truth, manifesting, instead of demonstrating, itself, perfect expression of a charity as tender as it is sincere, all things to all men, supplicating and vehement, the voice of a God, but of a God become man!" But this is not all that the spiritual presence of Christ in his Church implies: this is more or less the past. He is still present with us; "How beautiful the worship where Jesus presides! He is present when we invoke him; not one of our supplications falls to the ground; He does not leave even to the angels the care of receiving them into their golden cups, He gathers them into His sympathising heart; our prayer mingles with His, He marks it with His seal, and sanctioned by His all-powerful Amen, it opens the heavens above us, to pour down divine graces in mighty floods! He is present when we open the Book of God; it is not a dead letter to us, through which we spell our way; every word resounds anew as from His own mouth, and becomes an arrow from His quiver, wherewith He sharply pierces our heart and conscience. He himself wields the two-edged sword which "pierceth even to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow!" He is present when the hymn of the Church carries to heaven what words with all their precision cannot express, the unutterable groanings of the spirit, the inmost depths of adoring piety! He is present when the ambassador of truth comes forward to declare the counsel of God. Yes, however unworthy we may be of our calling, we believe that He will not abandon us to our helplessness, and that He deigns to speak sometimes through our lips. Without this hope we would not dare to come up into this pulpit, for we should only bring you our barrenness; but, if He comes up with us, the earthen vessel, fragile though it be, does not the less contain a great treasure. His strength is made perfect in our weakness" (p. 233).

The preacher then passes to speak of The presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Supper, and in every place where He is worshipped in Spirit and in truth; and ends by depicting the apostolic age in which the promise, Lo 1 am with you alway, even unto the end of the world, was so gloriously accomplished; an age which he holds up before us as the inexorable judge of ours which does not see the Christ. And why? Have we held Him up to view? Have we shewed Him in the life of the Church? (p. 241.)

We have only one remark to make with regard to the discourse upon Christian mysticism: It is that, while supposing everywhere the action of the Holy Spirit (with which the presence of Christ is doubtless synonymous in the author's mind) he does not name that Spirit

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clearly enough by His biblical name, "The Holy Spirit, the Comforter" (see John xiv. 25, xv. 26, xvi. 13, 14, &c.). And we would here take occasion to ask our brother why he makes, in general, so few direct or verbal quotations from the Bible in his sermons? He is so reserved in this particular, that it must proceed from a fixed determination, for, if we read his first sermon, "Humble yourselves," delivered in 1848, on the occasion of the events that then took place in France, the same silence in regard to Scripture quotations strikes us. Is it a reaction against the loquacity of more than one preacher, who quote texts in order to avoid the trouble of proving what they advance, or, what is worse, to fill up a gap? Such preaching fills the hearer with ennui (but certainly not with the bread of life), while he wonders why he does not feel edified, "for, thinks he, the preacher is quoting Scripture." Adolphe Monod was also anxious to react against this tendency, and yet his sermons abound in passages brought to bear upon one another, which thus throw light upon, and complete each other, and bring out the wonderful harmony of the whole! He neither followed the superabundance of quotations of the divines of the 16th and 17th centuries, nor the unconnected careless way of stringing passages together of some of our revival preachers. But what is the reason why Dr de Pressensé, and with him almost all our young French preachers, avoid quoting Scripture, or only do so in words of their own? Is it because, being well acquainted both with the substance and with the form, they think their gifts are sufficient? But the infinitely greater gifts of their Master did not prevent His appealing continually to the letter of holy writ,I say expressly the letter, because the question is not of appeal to the testimony of the Scriptures,-to that our evangelical brethren always refer. To quote the very letter of the Bible is often a way to drive in the nail, for many thus apprehend what our scholastic or literary language left them in the dark about. To quote the letter when it is done judiciously, is often to lay hold on the sceptre of divine authority, not merely to encourage the timid, but to awe souls which are too proud to bend beneath the word of a man, but feel themselves forced to yield under the divine pressure. "We are obliged to confess that in the preaching of our day, the accent of authority leaves somewhat to be desired." Is it because the authority of the preacher has fallen still lower than when Vinet spoke thus, twenty years ago? Is it because the authority of the Bible, has fallen still lower than ours with some divines (a thing which is indeed infinitely more to be deplored), that we are to silence the voice from heaven, and suppress those words of "grace, seasoned with salt?" Will it be answered that our Protestant audiences are sated with the Scriptures? Not more than the synagogue was with Moses, to whom Jesus referred the Jews.

But to return to Dr de Pressensé. We cannot take leave of him without thanking him for the clear way in which he has declared his faith in redemption by the blood of Christ. Read with all the attention they deserve pages 44 and 53, which we would like to quote in full; the conception of the atonement which they contain may differ from that of such and such a believer, but every believer who is as honest as one of Dr de Pressensé's opponents, the pious pastor Henriquet, must come to

his conclusion, which is, that Mr de Pressensé, who "presents the atonement as necessarily uniting perfect obedience with infinite suffering, believes in a true satisfaction rendered by Jesus Christ to the eternal claims of divine justice."-(Archives du Christianisme, 22d November 1867.) C. de F.

IX.-GERMAN LITERATURE.

Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.

This excellent journal, which is published weekly, has now completed its ninth year. It is under the editorial care of Messner, one of the professors of theology in the university of Berlin. The editor stands among the foremost of the evangelical theologians. One of the

students of Neander, he inherits much of the spirit of his revered teacher, and from the professorial chair, as well as by his ably-conducted journal, and other works that have come from his pen, he exerts a growing influence on the side of evangelical truth.

The N. E. K. is the advocate of the union of the Reformed and Lutheran churches, while the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, edited by Hengstenberg, is opposed to the union, and advocates the cause of the old high Lutheran party. During the past year there has been a great deal of controversy among the theologians in Prussia on the subject of the union. The manner in which the union was originally brought about, and the sufferings endured by those who shewed an opposition to the royal will in this matter, will account for much of the violence of that recoil which has driven the several parties into an attitude of hostility to each other. Party strife during the past year on this question has risen very high. The journals have ever and anon returned to it; pastoral conferences, jubilee celebrations, and royal ordonnances, and diverse publications, have all served to swell the tumult; nor is the subject at all settled, or likely soon to be. In a recent number of the N. E. K. there is a critical notice of a German translation of the now almost forgotten Ecce Homo, which has been published at Erlangen. The reviewer takes the author to task, and exposes the weak points of the book. He sees through the elaborate ornamentation of words in which the author presents his thoughts, and discovers that the book is the production of a man ignorant of what Christianity really is. In Germany they have had much to do with works of such a sort. By a kind of mental chemistry they resolve all the fine words into so much vapour, which passes off into the air, and leaves the residuum of solid thought, which can be taken up and analysed. Tested by such a process, the reviewer seems to find that the residuum of this book is of very little value. "The author," says he, "has gained very little from Christianity. In England the work lying before us has entered its sixth edition. It is doubtful whether it will have a similar success

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amongst us, because we have already enough of such-like bungling compositions, and in a more agreeable form than this one."

Among the many works which issued from the German press during the past year, we mention the two following as works of special interest :—

Dorner's Geschichte der Protestantischen Theologie.

Dorner is one of the professors of theology at Berlin. He is the author of the extensive and valuable Entwickelungs-geschichte von der Person Christi, and is at present entitled to take rank side by side with Hengstenberg, if he is not indeed in many points his superior. His History of Protestant Theology is a contribution of permanent value, and we know none in Germany so capable of doing justice to the subject as Dorner.

Martin Chemintz nach seinem Leben und Wirken. Von Hermann

Hachfeld. Leipzig.

This book belongs to that peculiar class of works, of which the historian Neander was the founder. It is a monography. The design of this style of writing, as introduced by Neander, is to fix upon some leading personage in an epoch, and, in connection with his history, to pourtray the characteristic features of his age, and the tendencies of thought which developed themselves on the field of history. Monographs now hold a very prominent place in German literature, and are of especial value, as affording facilities for the study of church history. His monography is well written, and contains valuable information on the events of the period in which Chemnitz lived. We have here particularly an insight into the once famous Osiandrian controversy on the relation between justification and sanctification, and into the history and character of the Council of Trent. The age to which Chemnitz belonged was one of almost ceaseless agitations and controversy among the theologians, particularly in the Lutheran Church.

Theologisches Universal Lexikon. 1st Lieferung. London: Williams & Norgate.

This is the first part of a Universal Theological Lexicon, now in course of publication at Elberfeld, for the use of the clergy and educated laymen. When completed, it will consist of two vols. of about 1000 double-column pages, large 8vo, each, and cost 5 thalers. It is designed to present a brief summary of information on every subject— doctrinal, historical, biographical, &c., within the region of theology and its related sciences, and to serve as a guide to other sources of information. Its stand-point is that of evangelical Protestantism. It cannot fail to be most useful as a handbook.

Zeitschrift fur die Historische Theologie. II. Heft. 1868.

The first article in this excellent journal of historical theology is on Contributions to the Church History of Holland, and consists of a re