This theological dearth will appear more extraordinary when compared with the fertility of the English Church. The books that have created eras in Christian Apologetics have all issued from Episcopalian Divines, e.g. Samuel Clarke's "Lectures on the Being and Attributes of God;" Bishop Butler's "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed;" Paley's "Hora Paulinæ." The most eminent exponents of Christian dogmatics have also been Episcopalians, as Bull, Waterland, Horsley, Barrow, Magee, and Whately. The founder of modern criticism, Bentley, was also an Episcopalian, though his scheme for a critical edition of the New Testament was abortive. Then all the eminent recent workers in this field have been English, not one of them Scottish-Alford, Ellicot, Wordsworth, Stanley. The fact is indisputable--both Biblical and theological science has owed incalculably more to English than to Scottish Divines.

How can this striking contrast be explained? The Scottish intellect is not habitually barren. In philosophy it can boast the names of Reid and Stewart, Hume and Hamilton, M'Intosh and Brown; in political economy, Smith, Mill, and M'Culloch; in science, Black and Wilson, Miller and Brewster; in poetry, Ramsay, Ferguson, and Burns; in fiction, Scott and Galt; in painting, Wilkie, Watson Gordon, and David Scott, and many other eminent names in each department. Now, how comes it, that the Scottish intellect has been so barren in theology while so prolific in other things? Must not the reason be something like this-that in other departments it has been free; but in theology bound by a fetter that has cramped it into the numbness of death.

The Westminster Confession has thus had a most repressive influence has crushed all independent thought out of the Scottish Calvinistic churches. It has left no room for the exercise of the individual mind—has almost destroyed the right of private judgement. It has shut up the Scottish ministers to the articles of a detailed and permanent creed, and so has virtually foreclosed all independent inquiry. It has so bound them to a series of doctrines as to compel them to look at every question that has arisen in its relation to these doctrines rather than to Christianity in general, and the Bible in particular. It has debarred them from philosophical inquiries, lest their philosophical principles should invalidate their theological; from critical, lest their critical conclusions should conflict with their creed. Hence there have followed these consequences-either all independent investigation has been abandoned, or it has been pursued for purely party purposes; or critical, philosophical, and theological opinions have been held at variance with the subscribed Confes

sion, or it has driven those who would not receive its doctrines into errors, lying at the opposite extreme. Its influence has been in each respect most pernicious.

This last result has been very frequent. Two strongly corroborative facts may be adduced. (1.) The history of the English Dissenting Churches that adopted the Confession. The same dreary moderatism that afflicted the Scottish Calvinists also afflicted the English, only, the result in their case was much more deplorable. The Socinianism that broke out so fiercely in England in the later half of last century, was chiefly among the Calvinists. Theophilus Lindsay was the only distinguished pervert from the Episcopalian Church, while the_leaders of the movement, Nathaniel Lardner and Pierce of Exeter, Joshua Priestly and Thomas Belsham, were all reared in the strictest sect of Westminster Calvinism.* (2.) The peculiarly large number of eminent Scotchmen that have been sceptics, or, at least, scoffers. The father of Modern Scepticism, German and English, was undoubtedly Hume ;† the two men now living whose influence is most powerfully anti-evangelical--Thomas Carlyle and John S. Mill-are Scotsmen; and on each Calvinism has certainly acted repellantly. Scott was an Episcopalian, and that along with his healthy manly nature, may have helped to save him, but Burns in "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "The Holy Fair," has embodied in everlasting satire his opinion of Scottish theology and religiosity.

Here, surely, we may claim to have made out the conclusionthat the influence of the Confession on subsequent religious thought has been positively injurious.

Had our design admitted it, we could have farther shown how Calvinism had issued in Socinianism in Ireland, Switzerland, America, and, indeed, almost wherever it has held sway.

† After a careful re-perusal of Hume's Essays, we are persuaded that among the outer circumstances that contributed to the formation of Hume's scepticism, were these two. (1.) The indifferentism, amounting in certain cases to insincerity, of the professedly Christian ministers with whom he fraternized. And (2) the repugnant doctrines, such as unconditional election and eternal reprobation, which constituted, as he was led to believe, the essence of Christianity. Their influence continually appears in his Essays. Thus, for instance, he says:-"Hear the verbal protestations of all men. Nothing they are so certain of as their religious tenets. Examine their lives; you will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them." Thus, again, he protests against the "barbarity and caprice" "which form the ruling character of the Deity in popular religions." And to render the allusion unmistakeable, he refers in a note to the doctrines of eternal reprobation and predestination, and he quotes approvingly a long polemic against them by the Chevalier Ramsay. (Essays vol. ii., pp. 507, 497. Ed. 1768). Those who wish to verify the above, may consult, in particular, his "Natural History of Religion."

Carlyle's sarcastic allusions to the Assembly of Divines, or, as he calls them, "Dry-vines," and their endeavours after uniformity, in his "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," sufficiently indicate his opinion of them and their work, and the influence the Confession has had on his mind. The celebrated paragraph from J. S. Mill's "Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy," which recently went the round of the newspapers, gives his judgement on Calvinism.

We cannot now begin to trace its influence on ecclesiastical action. The narrative of that influence would be one of the saddest pages of Church history. of Church history. We can but appeal to the number of secessions from the Scottish Church-the number of sects into which it has been split, and the rancour with which they have regarded each other. Sum up the various sects that exist, or have existed, in Scotland: Established Church, Free, Original Seceders, Reformed Presbyterians, Relief, Secession, once split into Burghers and Anti-Burghers, each with its New and Old Light branches-and it will be seen that ecclesiastical action in Scotland has been at once intolerant and intolerable. Perhaps when the sins of the Confession come to be reckoned up and balanced, it may be discovered that the narrowness it has engendered, and the frigid uniformity into which it has tried to freeze our national life, are not the least.

Here we end. We have eschewed theological discussionhave done nothing more than pass the Westminster Confession through the crucible of historical criticism, with what result we must leave thee, O reader, to judge.

A. M. F.-B.

THE ORIGINAL INSTITUTION OF THE SABBATH.

THE Sabbath question is always an important one. But special times and circumstances make the discussion of particular branches of it specially opportune. Such, to some extent, is the character of the present time, when strenuous efforts are being made to secularize the Sabbath by the running of railway trains, and attempts to open botanic gardens, museums, &c. An unfortunate day will it be for Britain, when the Sabbath shall be regarded as not one whit more sacred than any other day, and when men shall use it for their business or their pleasure as they feel inclined. The Times newspaper, not by any means a Sabbatarian organ, said in an editorial, on July 14, 1848, "If the sacred character of the day be once obscured, there would not remain behind any influence strong enough to keep a thrifty A man tradesman from his counter for twelve hours together. who would observe the day as a Sabbath, would retrench it as a holiday, and thus competition and imitation would at length bring all to the common level of universal profaneness, and continuous This witness is untoil." (Gilfillan on the Sabbath, p. 498.) doubtedly true; and from its relation to the general question, it is all the more valuable. Man needs a Sabbath. But secularize

the Sabbath in any way or degree, and by what means shall the boon be preserved for the human race?

The aspect of the question to which we would at present confine our attention, is, the original institution of the sacred day. Two opinions obtain on this subject. The one fixes the institution at the giving of the law on Sinai; or, at the earliest, a fortnight earlier, at the giving of the manna. The other finds it in the second chapter of Genesis, when God rested from the six days' work of creation. If the former of these views be accepted it will be difficult to prove that the Sabbath was other than a Jewish institution, which, with other Jewish regulations, waxed old, and has now vanished away. If the latter be accepted, then the Sabbath is an institution for man without any reference to distinction of race or varieties of dispensation; and, whether its institution be moral or positive, it is, and must be of perpetual obligation.

Dr. Paley thus states the bearing of these two views of the original institution of the Sabbath on the extent and duration of its obligation :

"If the divine command was actually delivered at the creation, it "was addressed, no doubt, to the whole species alike, and continues, "unless repealed by some subsequent revelation, binding upon all who "come to the knowledge of it. If the command was published for the "first time in the wilderness, then it was immediately directed to the "Jewish people alone, and some thing farther, either in the subject or cir"cumstances of the command, will be necessary to shew that it was "designed for any other. It is on this account that the question con"cerning the date of the institution falls first to be considered. The "former opinion precludes all debate about the extent of the obligation; "the latter admits, and prima facie induces a belief, that the Sabbath "ought to be considered a part of the peculiar law of the Jewish "polity."—(Works, edition 1846, p. 92.)

Was then the Sabbath first instituted in the wilderness?

It is needless to attempt to shew that the promulgation of the moral law, with the fourth commandment as a part of it, and indeed at the very heart of it, was not the original institution of the Sabbath. Not very much stress, indeed, is to be laid on the opening word of the fourth commandment, Remember. Such a word does not necessarily indicate a previous acquaintance with the Sabbath, on the part of the Jews. It may look forward as well as backward. It may have an exclusive reference to the future behaviour of the Jews with respect to the duty enjoined. Its force might perhaps be represented thus:-"In all time to come never forget the Sabbath day, but keep it holy unto the Lord." We do not then suspend any portion of our argument

on this word. But it would seem to be impossible to account naturally for the mention of the Sabbath at the giving of the manna, if its first institution took place subsequently amid the sublime and terrible display of Sinai.

If it be the case that the Sabbath was first instituted in the wilderness, it must assuredly have been at the giving of the manna. (Ex. xvi., 16-30.) And yet the narrative carries on its front the idea, not of the institution of a new law, but the application of a law well known by the people, and which must have been previously instituted. Of their own accord, and without any direction, and even apparently in the face of injunction, the people gathered double on the sixth day. They must then have had some reason for their procedure. What was that reason? If Moses had expressly told them to gather double on the sixth day, it is inconceivable that the rulers of the people should have come to him in such consternation about the fact. What reason, then, could the people have had for this double gathering, but their knowledge of a divinely instituted Sabbatic law? And yet, again, would not the rulers know this Sabbatic law? And if so, why did they run to Moses? We must suppose, undoubtedly, that the rulers knew the existing Sabbath law, but as in all likelihood they had been employed by Moses to communicate to the people the specific regulations about the daily gathering of the manna, their minds would seem to have been full of these regulations, and the necessity of strictly observing them. This seems satisfactorily to account for their surprise when they saw the people gathering double on the sixth day. And then, the language of Moses, in his reply to them, is not like the language of institution; while the complaint of God, when some of the people went out to gather on the seventh day, distinctly suggests the prior existence of the Sabbath law,-"How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days." (Ex. xvi. 28, 29.)

In support of that view of the subject which postpones the original institution of the Sabbath till the Israelitish sojourn in the wilderness, Dr. Paley adduces two passages of scripture,- "Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness: and I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgements, which if a man do he shall even live in them. Moreover also, I gave them my sabbaths to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." See Ez. xx. 10-12, and Neh. ix. 12-15. Dr. Paley says:

"This interpretation [that the Sabbath was instituted in the wilderness] is strongly supported by a passage in the prophet Ezekiel where