In treating of the moral law, he oversteps the limits set to his task, and enters the field of general ethics. The law, as the specially revealed will of God, is essentially the same as that given in the hearts of men, but is superadded to the latter by an act of grace, and serves to correct the errors into which men fall in deducing inferences from their immediate cognitions. The moral law, contained in the decalogue, is one from which God himself cannot absolve us. When we are unable to deduce the necessity of certain commands. from first principles, these commands are called positive laws, of which, though man does not know the ground, yet God does. The question, what the highest moral principle is, Calixtus does not distinctly answer; he seems to treat as such simply the divine will. After discussing the positive commands of God, he considers human laws, insisting that their fitness to promote the general good should always be clear. Ecclesiastical and civil laws are then distinguished; the former are praised for their simplicity; in treating of the latter, the author loses himsef in a consideration of the history of Roman law, occupying with this theme a fourth part of the whole work, if we consider as not exactly belonging to it the already mentioned digression directed against Neuhaus. It is easy to see that this work is too devoid of symmetry, and that the plan of it is itself too imperfectly carried out, to allow it to rank as a standard work. But it is exceedingly valuable, as containing the germ of much that has since been produced in the same department.

Calixtus wrote several treatises on eschatology. In one, de Supremo Judicis, published in 1635, he discusses at length the signs of Christ's second advent, the resurrection, the judgment, the new heaven and new earth, etc.; he holds in general to a strict interpretation of prophecy, yet is freer than most of his contemporaries. He rejects all chiliastic theories, though admitting some to be not heretical. Kindred to this work is that de Bono Perfecte Summo, published in 1643, in which the highest good is, with Aristotle, found in the Dewpia; the more perfect the object of knowledge, the higher is the knowledge; to see God is the summit of

blessedness. The damned will know God only as an avenger, having no love for him; the risen bodies of the saved will retain, perhaps, the same faculties as they now have, but will be free from all disturbance; the bodies of the lost will be literally burned, and the punishment will be eternal. These two works may be considered as complementing an earlier one, published in 1627, de Immortalitate Animae, a work which he himself esteemed as the most complete and thorough of his monographs.

The last of Calixtus's larger treatises was the one de Factis quae Deus cum Hominibus iniit. It was issued in 1654. Here he discloses some similarity to the views of the Calvinists and Arminians; but the covenants, of which he makes two, the Adamic and the Christian, are considered less as eternally made between the Father and the Son, than as consisting of an established relation between God and man. Here, as in his other works, Calixtus undertakes a comprehensive historical discussion of his theme, including a history of the Jews and a thorough investigation of the significance of the ceremonial law. But he himself felt that the subject was not exhaustively handled.

We must omit even to name the many other treatises which Calixtus produced. Besides his numerous controver sial writings, he wrote on almost all branches of theology, especially historical theology. His style is sometimes heavy; his works often lack clearness of plan; he attempts too much, and, finding the work growing on his hands, is often obliged to break off abruptly. But his learning, his industry, and the breadth of mind were remarkable. He was the Schleiermacher of his age. Not entirely free from prevailing prejudices and errors, yet he was vastly elevated above the most of his contemporaries - too far above them to be appreciated by them. The constant abuse to which he was subjected from his bigoted enemies, for no other crime than that of advocating charity and peace, and the singleness with which, in spite of this abuse, he constantly pursued his object, are an abiding evidence of his catholicity of mind and his purity of heart.

ARTICLE VII.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

GRAU ON THE SEMITIC AND INDO-GERMANIC RACES.

WE gave the title and a brief notice of this volume in our January Number, but have since received from an English clergyman, now residing in Germany, the following more extended comments upon it:

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Some few years ago attention was called to a new and most important field of investigation the psychology of nations- by a journal entitled "Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft," published still in Berlin, and edited by Dr. Steinthal. As there is a psychology of the individual man, so is there a psychology of nations, which manifests itself in their language, religion, arts, sciences, and political and social institutions. That different nations, and families of nations, have very different characters is an old enough observation; but it is new to make these diversities the subject of accurate philosophical inquiry. One plot of this great field — a field as wide as the world and history has been selected for investigation by Lic. Grau, with a view to winning new defences of Christianity against some of its modern German and French assailants, to wit, the psychological relation between the Semitic nations, that is, the Syrians, Hebrews, and Arabs, on the one hand, and the IndoGermanic or Aryan nations, that is, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Hindoos, Persians, Slavonians, and the Romanic and Germanic people, on the other. Now it is a remarkable fact, whatever explanation may be given of it, that the former have been the great representatives and teachers of monotheism, with its belief in miracles and direct revelations, while standing at a low level relatively to art, science, philosophy, commerce, and politics; whereas the latter, though distinguished in other respects, have ever evinced a tendency to polytheism and pantheism. A writer in the "Revue des deux Mondes," for Dec. 15, 1864, remarks: "La science a constaté que la tendance originelle des peuples âryens est le panthéisme, tandis que le monothéisme proprement dit est la doctrine constante des populations sémitiques. Toute l'Europe est à la fois âryenne et chrétienne, c'est à dire pantheiste à son origine et par ses dispositions naturelles, mais habituee par une religion venue des Sémites à admettre le dogme de la création." The believer in supernatural interference and revelations might answer, the fact is the result of the action of God; God's action was not conditioned by any natural tendency to monotheism in the Hebrew. The truth, however, lies perhaps in the middle. Apart even from direct divine interference, Semitic nations have evinced a natural capacity for, and

inclination to, monotheism, witness the Arabs, whereas no Indo-Germanic race has inclined thereto. Of late it has become not uncommon in Germany and France to characterize the Semitic nations, because of their lack of science and so forth, as an inferior race: to say, their utterance regarding God and miracles do not rest on objective realities, but on a subjective, Semitic mode of looking at things; we of the Indo-Germanic nations, therefore, must translate, as Bunsen used to express himself, Semitism into Japhetism; in other words, modern atheistic science is the highest truth, and the Jewish and Christian religions are the product of a lower state of culture.

Lic. Grau concedes the psychological differences from which these conclusions are drawn, but tries to turn the flank of his antagonists, by maintaining that the Semitics being as superior in religion as they are inferior in science, the two great families in question mutually complement instead of contradict each other; both are designed to interpenetrate and mould each other. This explanation coincides, undoubtedly, with the course of history since the rise of Christianity, and would seem therefore to be in the main correct. The work contains many interesting and valuable hints, and though not quite up to the mark in point of logical closeness, is thoroughly deserving of attentive perusal as a new contribution to the apologetics of Christianity.

THE ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED BY THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH FROM THE LATE DISCUSSIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

At the last "Deutsch-evangelischer Kirchentag," held in Altenburg, Professor Beyschlag of Halle delivered a lecture on the subject: "Welchen Gewinn hat die evangelische Kirche aus den neuesten Verhandlungen über das Leben Jesu zu ziehen?" which has since been issued as a book, under the same title. Professor Beyschlag tries to show that the attacks made by Strauss, Renan, and Schenkel on the orthodox view of the person of Christ, are in part the fruit of the undue stress laid on the divine, to the exclusion of the human, element in his nature. The truth in these "Lives," and in the general tendency of German and French thought, is the attempt to get close to Christ, and bring him close to us; they are false, of course, in supposing that if human he cannot be divine, and if divine not human; but, says Professor Beyschlag, we must profit by the lesson here read us, and seek to set forth and comprehend Christ both in his humanity and divinity. To lay exclusive stress either on the one or the other aspect is fraught, as the history of the church abundantly proves, with unutterable danger.

The little book is beautifully and clearly written; as such we commend it to our readers, without, however, by any means indorsing the solution of the great Christological problem suggested by Professor Beyschlag, — a VOL. XXII. No. 86.

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solution which is giving rise to a good deal of criticism. One thought, which, if we understand aright, seems to underlie some of the Professor's reasonings, we must briefly refer to, though our space is limited: that in judging of the possibility of an union of God and man, we ought to start, not with the abnormal man of common history-man defaced and dwindled by sin; but with the normal man, or the man of the divine idea, realized in Christ himself. Inquiry commences ordinarily with man as he has become under the influence of sin, which is as perverse as it would be for one who only knows African Bushmen to say: man could never paint as did Raphael, sculpture as did Angelo, or compose as did Beethoven.

THE WRATH OF GOD.

Vom Zorne Gottes. Ein biblisch-theologischer Versuch von Dr. Ferdinand Weber. Mit Prolegomenen über den bisherigen Entwickelungsgang der Grundbegriffe der Versöhunngslehre. Von Professor Franz Delitzsch Erlangen.The main divisions of the above valuable work are the following: 1. The Prolegomena, which contain a brief summary of the history of the doctrine of the atonement, including a controversy recently carried on between von Hofmann of Erlangen and Drs. Philippi and Thomasius. 2. Of the nature of the divine wrath. 3. The history of the revelation of the divine wrath, in four stadia: a. The beginning of the revelation of the divine wrath, or wrath of God and Adam's sin; b. The revelation of the divine wrath in the time of patience, or God's anger and the day of the Lord; c. God's anger and the work of Christ, or Christ the turning-point in the revelation of the divine wrath; d. The complete revelation of the divine wrath, or the wrath of God and the final judgment. The author's method, it thus appears, is rather historical than doctrinal. The general spirit of the treatise will be best understood from the following extract: "The wrath of God is the manifestation in act, of the jealousy of his love. Only by viewing it in this light can we reconcile the two expressions, ó @eds åyárn ἐστίν and ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν πῦρ καταναλίσκον. Absolute love asserts its exclusive right to the creature, by becoming à consuming fire to the creature which repels it. Fire shows how serious a thing love is. Holiness is the repellent principle in wrath, love the attractive; for wrath includes both. The former removes the enemy, the latter refuses to let him go, till he rends himself completely away. Because God loves his creature, therefore does he keenly feel its apostasy; this his feeling is divine jealousy; because he is holy, he manifests his jealousy in act. In short, anger is not opposed to, but is an expression of, love." Schenkel, and with him Unitarians say: a God who feels anger is a God who does not love." Dr. Weber answers: "God is angry because he loves." This is one of the most beautiful and pregnant ideas of the newer school of theologians in Germany; and with some modifications needs vitally incorporating into our

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