that there were no such facts; but that the narrators invented the story "to do honour to Jesus."

is "the Christ," "the Messiah," but " an idea?" It is not "the man," but "the principle," which we worship. Jesus was a contributor to human improvement;"

"

land, assumes an air of great moderation, philosophy, benevolence, and expansion of intellect and heart. It quarrels with no man's religion;" it embraces all facts, all theories, all sects; it finds good in everything;-but alas! also evil in everything Christianity not excepted. Yet it professes to have a "Christ" and a "Christology." Christology." It sees "Christ" everywhere;-not indeed "the individual" but "the idea." It also reverences "the church;" for "the church" is a phrase which means "the idea of God." The "idea," we are told, might be more satisfactorily brought out; and it will be, some day, as men grow wiser and better; but nevertheless we have it, and ever have had, from the advent of Adam to that of Voltaire. Every church means to be "the religious sentiment" embodied; and it is so in its degree. Your dogmas, my dogmas, his dogmas, may be, and probably are, wrong; but all in effect mean the same, and are right. Luther was an eminent "Christ;" and so was Rousseau. Such is the pantheistic system; and this, we believe, is in essence the doctrine of Mr. Carlyle, whose " Hero-worship" and "Life of Cromwell" are so highly praised by some who do not understand his meaning. He talks of the eternities, and the infinities; and Cromwell is made "the Christ" of his day; though that pantheistic word is not used.

Mr. Hennell rejoices that the lovers of truth are not obliged to reject what is solid and beautiful, because of the prejudice of a name. The name of Christ is "lovely;" and "If a benevolent Deist feels inclined to honour the Jewish reformer," he may do so without violating historic accuracy; for what

as well as the Christian, may acknowledge him; and so may, and does, the Mussulmaun; and so ought Voltaire to have done, had he been duly enlightened in mythism and pantheism; instead of saying-what we will not quote. "There is," says Mr. Hennell,

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no exclusiveness or dogmatism." "Every nation, whether Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Chinese, may meet on common ground." "Whatever minor predilection each may entertain for his own eminent teacher or prophet, whether Christ, Moses, Mahomet, or Confucius, their great principle is the same;

to seek the knowledge of the universal Mind, and rules for the guidance of man, in the great volume stretched out before all men." "No longer will religion be supposed to consist in absurd tales and incomprehensible mysteries; but it will be the expression of Nature's highest truths, and the hymn ascending from a grateful earth to a beneficent heaven.' Here is union; here is a holy alliance; Plato in his day was the Christ; and so in ours is not Mr. Hennell or Dr. Strauss, but "the idea" embodied by them. Pantheism has no personal God:-its God is the universe; its altar is the soul of

man.

Christ, as a person, did not create "the religious belief of the church;" but as "an idea " he did. Christ did not create faith; but faith created Christ. Men have never knelt to impostors, as used to be asserted by infidels and sceptics; but to their own creations of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

We had not intended to enter so far into this fearful question of modern Pantheism;-it is a topic which we have sedulously avoided;

but having said so much, it may be requisite to add a little more; and we may probably do so in our next Volume.

Do our reverend clergy never look around them-or shall we say beneath them?-to discern what is doing out of their own circles? Do they never con the catalogues of popular Book-societies, Mechanics' Institutions, and "Halls of Science?" Dr. Strauss, if aware of the fact, says the last Number of the " Prospective Quarterly Review" (conducted by a quaternion of Socinian teachers, Thom, Wicksteed, Tayler, and Martineau,) "must regard it as a singular feature in the face of English society, that when rumour had sufficiently made known the appearance of his work as an attack upon Christianity, and the earnestness with which his orthodox countrymen took it up had sufficiently betrayed their respectful alarm, in England it was a bookseller connected with the working-classes, who first published a translation: calculating upon his market, not among the learned and speculative, but among the hard-handed mechanics of our country." That enlightened patriotic bibliopolist was the but we must beware

of the law of libel Hetherington of Holywell Street. It came out in weekly penny numbers. It was done into English, not from the German, but from the French translation; and so much more eager was the craving, than the literary supply, that the Prospective Review says, bad as the translation is, it had like to have been worse; for that the enter prising publisher fixed on a translator who did not understand French, but undertook to learn it in making the translation! The new version from the German is issued by the publisher of the Prospective Review, the pantheistical "Catholic series," and similar works. Dr. Strauss was at first

shy of his "Life of Jesus" appearing in English; for the German mind, said he, and the English are so different. "The Germans," he says-meaning those of the rationalistic as well as the mythical school

"appear to the British impious in theology and superstitious in philosophy;" the very phraseology of the German theosophists is foreign to their ears; and "If they would not listen to their own йennell, how much less to a German?" -But we must cut short the discussion for the present; only saying, If Christ is God, worship Him; --if Baal, worship him. Substitute the word Baal for Christ; and the pantheistical philosophy is sound; for all false "religions" have had their Baal; and Baalism is still rampant; Dr. Strauss being one of his high-priests.

We said at a former page that Dr. Arnold had gone to at least the extreme of what is sober in mythising ancient history; and the continental mythists make no scruple of applying the same system to the inspired history, Mosaic and Christian; but of course Dr. Arnold breaks off from them at this stage of their journey. It will be most fair to him to state his meaning in his own words. He writes as follows in the Prefaces to his Edition of Thucydides.

"The introduction in the first book naturally leads us to consider the question, how far the pretended early history of Greece is really historical or mythical. And here I confess that further consideration has induced me to accede to many of those notions of Niebuhr and Müller which I formerly regarded as unreasonably sceptical. I had not deferred sufficiently to the tact which is gained in these matters by great natural ability aided by long experience. that, if any one on going into BenveNiebuhr's comparison is most true, nuto's prison when his eyes had for months been accustomed to see the objects around him, had asserted that Benvenuto, like himself, could not distinguish anything in the darkness, surely he would have been somewhat presumptious.' Yet still the character of the

6

early Grecian history does not seem to have been completely analysed. Niebuhr has shewn that in the Roman history passages purely legendary occur in the midst of a narration substantially historical; thus the account of the taking of Veii is legendary, while the earlier events of the siege are as clearly historical."

“Niebuhr's religious opinions have been regarded by some persons in this country with great suspicion. I mention this, not with any intention to defend those views of the Old Testament history which have given rise to the feeling against him; but simply to protest against classing him, as some seem inclined to do, with Gibbon, Voltaire, and other real enemies of Christianity. We may be perfectly justified in regarding a man as an unsound guide in matters of opinion connected with the Scriptures, and yet by no means justified in feeling alienated from him, as from one who has abandoned or forfeited his own personal interest in the faith and hopes of a Christian. And it so happens that I have been informed on the most unquestionable authority, by one who knows Niebuhr intimately, and who is himself as earnest and sound a Christian as any man living, that Niebuhr is a sincere believer in Christianity."

If our readers wish to see further illustrations of Pantheistical blasphemies, they may turn to Professor Quinet's Lectures in the College of France. Speaking of "The Koran and the Gospel," he

says:

"Napoleon, in relating the campaign of Egypt, stops to mention a fact which partly explains his power over the eastern imagination. One day, when surrounded by the divan of the Grand Scheicks, he is informed that certain Arabs have just killed a fellah, and carried away his flock. He is filled with indignation, and sends three hundred horsemen to chastise the offenders. Astonished at this sympathy for a stranger, and at the great

number of men who are affected for the

cause of a poor wretch, the scheick exclaims, 'Is this fellah thy relation, that thou art so angry on his account?' 'Yes,' replied Napoleon; all those whom I command are my children.'

Ah!' cried the scheick, falling prostrate, thou speakest like the Prophet!' At that brief moment the Mussulman genius felt itself subjugated by the genius of the Gospel. (!!) What was the reason that these men of the desert bowed at that moment before the representative of Europe? A truly religious speech realised by a powerful arm. If Napoleon had remained satisfied with enlarging upon charity, the bounden duty preached by the apostles, he would have taught nothing new to the people of the East; but this idea of the Gospel bursting forth spontaneously in an action, shone before them like a sacred language. Extend this word to the whole of politics, and you will have the secret of the future power of Europe over the East.

What is fundamentally the question ? To prove to Asia that the Spirit of God has been made flesh. In order to do so, I see no other means than to show her divine thoughts in human actions. (!!) You want to convince the East that wisdom from above was incarnate eighteen hundred years ago. Do better: prove to her that this wisdom, this love, this expected Comforter is incarnate, and revealed this very day in the world, under the form of European society. Every epoch, says the Koran, has its book: show, not by dissertations, but by actions, that the new book is written every day in social life. Display, open France in the desert, like a grand volume, every line of which is realised in a fact, in a higher justice, more potent works, a more splendid glory, and a more holy policy. This is the only means to eclipse in the long run the glittering letters of the Koran. The crusades sought only for the tomb of Christ and the Mussulmans, by remaining possessors of the sepulchre, thought to remain masters of God. Show that he no longer needs a grave, since he has risen, and that he himself is coming back to sit in spirit at the entrance of the desert."

It is known to those who are conversant in literary history, with what jealous vigilance the Romish

church has prevented (not to say prohibited) the publication of the Text of the Greek Scriptures, con

tained in the celebrated Codex Vaticanus 1209, preserved among the manuscripts in the Vatican Library at Rome. At length, however, the curiosity of biblical scholars is likely to be gratified by Signor E. de Muralto, of Petersburgh; who has just printed and published at Hamburgh an "editio minor" of the Greek Testament, "ad fidem Codicis Principis Vaticani." Signor de Muralto, in a brief postscript, after referring to the unsuccessful efforts of Professor Tischendorf, of Leipzig, in 1843, and, in 1846, of our learned countryman Mr. Tregelles (editor of a valuable critical edition of the Apocalypse), as well as of a Swiss divine, whom he does not name-proceeds to state, that in 1844 he (Muralto) had permission carefully to examine the celebrated Codex Vaticanus of the New Testament for three days; which interval was quite sufficient for him, to remove the discrepancies existing between the Bartoloccian collation of it (a copy of which he had obtained from the Royal Library at Paris), and the collation made and published by Dr. Birch, of Copenhagen. Signor de Muralto adds, that he has thus been enabled to exhibit the genuine text of the Vatican Manuscript of the New Testament. The present "editio minor" is not accompanied with any critical apparatus; the prolegomena and critical remarks being postponed until the publication of the "editio major," which is announced to appear at Easter 1847. We may give a more detailed account of Signor de Muralto's biblical labours, on the completion and publication of his enlarged edition; but in the mean time we thought this announcement would interest biblical students.

Should any one of our readers not chance to be acquainted with the character of the celebrated Vatican Codex, he may find, conveniently for access, the chief particulars concerning it collected by

the

Rev. Prebendary Hartwell

Horne, in his "Introduction ;" (Vol. II. p. 100, and Vol. V. p. 45 of the ninth Edition). It contests the palm of antiquity with the precious Alexandrine manuscript in the British Museum. Bishop Marsh, who went carefully into the evidences respecting its date, relegates it to the close of the fifth century. It is written on vellum in uncial characters. It originally contained the whole of the Septuagint and the Greek Testament; but some portions are lost. It has been often collated for various readings by eminent biblical critics. The best collation is that of Professor Birch of Copenhagen, in 1781. Much interest was excited in 1836, by an announcement by Dr. Wiseman, that Dr. (now Cardinal) Mai, formerly Librarian of the Vatican, was employed upon a new critical edition of the Greek Testament, in which the text of the Vatican copy was to be faithfully given; Pope Leo XII. having granted his consent, and also suggested the publication of the Old Testament. Dr. Wiseman stated that the New Testament was finished, and the Old considerably advanced. Dr. Wiseman said that this publication would shew that Rome did not dread the critical study of the Scriptures. The announcement was repeated in 1842, with further particulars, and was circulated throughout Europe in various literary journals. The Roman government, it was affirmed, had determined to publish, at its own expence, a fac simile of the Vatican Codex, and to trausmit a copy to every sovereign in Europe. But, alas! no such work has appeared; or any New Testament edited by Cardinal Mai. And why? Doubtless, as in former instances, because some of the readings of the Vatican manuscript differ from the infallible Latin Vulgate! The reader may find in Mr. Horne further details. No edition of the New Testament in Greek has ever been published at Rome !