(3620

سان

Hear, O Isracl, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.—DEUT. vi. 4.

You shall have no other God before me.-Ex. xx.: DEUT. V.

Take ye, therefore, good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no manner of likeness on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.-DEUT. iv. 15.

"I believe, with a perfect faith, that God is not corporeal, and that He cannot be likened to any material form, nor be subject to changes incident to

matter."

CYTILOMMY

ONE great fact alone would have been sufficient to induce the Publishers to bring this work to the notice of the American thinking public, even though no other motive had impelled them to this step. This great fact is given expression by the author in the course of the work itself, when he says in his introduction, that "We are living in an epoch of religious crisis."

Such is indeed the case. Strauss and Renan, together with numerous co-adjutors, not only in Germany and France, but elsewhere on the continent, in England and also in this country, have conveyed the many and diverse rays of critical thought into which the exegetic study of the Gospels has divided the Protestant world, into somewhat of a common focus. All methods of criticism, all degrees of analysis, and all shades of belief and disbelief have, in a more or less definite form, found their expression. The interest which has thus been centered upon this field of inquiry has been such as to give the subject-matter of it a degree of prominence to which it had never before attained. The enormous editions of all these works which have found sale since their publication give 442333

some idea of the extent to which this subject, so long the special province of theology, has been relegated to the domain of philosophic inquiry.

We have said that all phases of criticism had found an expression; but no, still another side of the question remained to be discussed. All of the labors above alluded to have started from one or the other of the various standpoints of the Christian world. The discussion concerned Christianity and Judaism, and Judaism had not yet spoken. To use the words of the Chief Rabbi of Paris, Rev. ZADOK KAHN, quoted by the translator in her preface: "Amid the discussions of which the Synagogue alone forms the subject, ought the Synagogue alone to remain silent?" No; and the time has now come, when the light which a review of the subject from this standpoint will shed upon it, can be fully appreciated by the thinking world.

As a most thorough and able exposition of this important side of the great question at issue the work herewith submitted will commend itself to every student of theology, religion and history. It fills a hiatus long known and recognized, and supplies a want long felt and realized in this department of philosophic research.

We cannot refrain from calling attention to the novel and peculiar method of criticism which the subject receives at the hands of the author. As far from following in the footsteps of Strauss and the other prominent writers who, in their review of the subject have laid aside all the claims of the Gospels to authenticity, he has not only admitted this claim, but taken them as his authority and sources of history.

This adds greatly to the value of the work as a contribution to the literature of the subject. His criticism, while searching in its method, and straightforward in its expression has yet none of the flavor of iconoclasm about it. On the contrary the whole work gives expression to a pietist's views, whose very reverence for his subject makes him logical, and whose very object precludes all dogmatism. And while Christianity is everywhere thus reverentially treated, the work is yet a masterly assertion of the great truths of Judaism, and so clearly and forcibly are these principles set forth and illustrated that for those not fully versed in this matter, the book cannot fail to be a source of information not elsewhere to be found.

The author, whom the Publishers have thus the honor of introducing to the American Public ranks high in Paris, as a Journalist, and as an Exegetist and thorough Theologian. His work has passed through several editions in the French original, and we hope this American edition of the English translation will be favorably received by the Public.

BALTIMORE, November 1873.