bear upon the subject of the Holy Eucharist. And here we seem to observe a vagueness and uncertainty; a want of the full appreciation of the nature of that Sacrament. At this we are the more astonished, after reading the Sermon entitled, "The two Bodies," where the nature of CHRIST's glorified Body is set forth in so satisfactory and clear a manner.

There is no lack of reverence and proper feeling for the Sacrament as such, either as regards its institution or its necessity; no disregard of its full importance to the welfare of every Christian soul; or of its spiritual need for the maintenance of true religious unity. All this is set forth in a manner both attractive and real. The points upon which we observe some obscurity, are as to the manner in which our LORD is present in the Sacrament, and arising out of that uncertainty, the method of its application to the soul of the

communicant.

This difficulty evidently springs from the declaration appended to the Communion Office, and, by a strange mode of argument, the Dean asserts the Sacrament of CHRIST'S Body and Blood to be the means of spiritual communion between the Church and her absent LORD, and that, in consequence, it cannot be right to adore Him as if present in the sacred elements. To give his own words :—

"This is of great importance, doctrinally. The fact that our LORD in His own Person is parted from His Church, is the master-key to many difficulties by which the minds of men have often been perplexed. CHRIST is not here. He is in Heaven. This does not take life from His Church, and make it a soulless carcase from which life is fled, for the Spirit may inhabit the body although the Head is hidden in the sky; but it is fatal to all notions of a local presence. There cannot be any such change wrought upon the substance of bread and wine as to make our LORD'S Body and Blood locally present in them here, because that Body and Blood are locally in Heaven. It cannot be right to adore the elements of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist as though they were our LORD Himself; or to adore Him as locally present on the altar by means of the elements, for, in either case, we must suppose our LORD to be here on earth and not parted from us. Rather, we must adore Him at GOD's right hand in Heaven, and use the elements which our eyes see as a ladder by which to mount to that which is unseen. The presence of the Sacrament is essentially spiritual. Our LORD is in the Sacrament, and if He is there His Body is there in some manner, because His Body is inseparable from Himself; but the essence of His presence is spiritual. He is there by His Spirit. He is present after a spiritual manner, and His Body, though there, is not there locally and as a body, for in body He is parted from us, but by virtue of that presence of the Comforter Who is now His substitute on earth, and quickens all His ordinances as means of life unto our souls. The Spirit of our LORD is here, not our LORD Himself.”—Pp. 188-189.

1 This subject has been ably discussed by the Rev. T. W. Perry. See Ecclesiastic for July, 1863.

Now there is a great difference between the Body and Blood of CHRIST being present carnally in the elements, and His entire absence from them. If He is not essentially present in His natural Body and Blood, He would be here only in name, and the words, 'Lo, I am with you always," would not be true.

"

On the other hand, if we hold that the Omnipresence of the glorified human nature of CHRIST on our altars is as essential for the sustenance of the Church, as the HOLY SPIRIT is to her sanctification, and the Omnipresence of GOD the FATHER to the preservation of the world, then, what can we do but adore Him? not afar off, as only in heaven, but objectively, as being really and truly present in that very glorified Body in which He appeared after His Resurrection. Thus, we apprehend, must this holy Sacrament be regarded; not as a commemorative service of an absent CHRIST, but as a sign of the "immaterial Presence of His natural Flesh and Blood" which He gives to be their spiritual food to all who are incorporate into Him by Baptism. We conclude this subject with an extract from Dr. Pusey on "The Real Presence:".

'Inseparable both from His Body and His Soul was the Godhead of CHRIST. It indwelt His Body when that Body lay lifeless in the tomb. It descended with His Soul into hell, a terror to the powers of darkness. Inseparable is His Godhead from His Body in any way of being, natural or supernatural. This follows from the doctrine of the Incarnation that GOD the SON 'took man's nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin of her substance, so that two whole and perfect natures-that is to say, the Godhead and the Manhood-were joined together in one Person, never to be divided.' Where GoD's Almighty Word causes His Body to be, in whatever mode of being, there His Godhead is, because it is inseparable; there is CHRIST Himself, our Redeeming LORD, the object of our thankfulness, and reverence, and love, and adoration.' "Real Presence," p. 330.

There is no doubt, we conceive, that all uncertainties concerning the mode of the Presence of CHRIST in the holy Sacrament of the Altar arise from imperfect notions of the doctrine of the Incarnation. We have only space just to allude to the 22nd Sermon-" The Witness of Simon Magus," from which we should gladly have quoted. The subject is worked out in a marvellous manner. testimony of the devil, as it were, to the grace given by the imposition of Apostolic hands, is powerfully put forth :

The

"Simon saw it with the flesh, saw it in such a way that even the devils believed in it, and trembled in the courts below, as they knew and felt that the gates of hell were shaking."-P. 286.

We think this Sermon would be useful for circulation as a tract. On the whole, we have had much satisfaction in perusing this volume. Gladly should we see its author advanced to the Colonial Episcopate.

100

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

A Catechism on the Chief Things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Soul's health (Mowbray, Oxford), seems scarcely more than a selection from the well-known "Questions and Answers on the Catechism." In the main, therefore, it must have our approval. We must note, however, (1) that it scarcely seems wise to depart from the established phraseology, and to call the "Precepts of the Church" "Commandments," so as to create a prejudice in the minds of many. (2.) We must also demur to the petition "Remember not our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers," being cited to prove the doctrine of "Prayers for the Departed." A weak argument of this kind damages a cause incalculably.

Tales of Crowbridge Workhouse, with a Preface by Miss TWINING, (Masters,) embody a large amount of practical experience, while they are written with considerable pathos and not a little humour. At the same time they are quite free from exaggeration.

Mr. SKINNER'S Twenty-one Heads of Christian Duty, (Masters,) though new as a publication, is evidently the result of a long experience; and we feel sure that everyone who uses it carefully will find great benefit from doing so.

Mr. FELLOWS' Anglican Diary, (J. H. Parker,) contains many useful hints, but it would have been more suitable five-and-twenty years ago, when people were guessing at Ritualism.

The Kalendar of the English Church Union for 1864, we are sorry to see, has altogether omitted its Rubrical Notes, which only needed a slight revision.

The Churchman's Diary consequently alone remains in possession of the field, as instructing the clergy in the right manner of performing Divine Service.

Archdeacon CoxE's Plain Thoughts on Important Church Subjects, (Rivingtons,) is the title which he has suitably prefixed to five sound out-spoken Sermons based on the Theology of Hooker, Andrewes, and Butler. They are well calculated to strengthen Churchmen in their convictions.

The Politics of Churchmen, (Rivingtons,) is a strong plea in behalf of a Conservative government. We quite think that the time is coming when the Conservatives will show themselves worthy of support, because they are beginning to understand something of the Church's constitution. It is well that we should be prepared for that event. One step that we greatly desiderate, is the improvement of the Conservative Press.

THE BOOKS OF WISDOM AND ECCLESIASTICUS.

THE term Apocrypha, applied to a certain portion of the contents of the English Bible, had been in earlier times used in various senses. As employed in the Anglican version, it denotes certain books possessed of some authority, and having a didactic and moral value, but without an assured claim, or at least only a partial claim, to inspiration, and not entitled to be alleged in establishment of any article of the Faith. In the first ages of the Christian Church those writings were called άróxpupa, whose origin was obscure and destitute of proper authority, and which therefore, though claiming a sacred character, were kept secret, and not placed in the Canon on the same footing as the Jewish Scriptures. The name also included all those works, written under an assumed or forged authorship, which were never of any authority in the Church. With these we are not now concerned. Our English Bibles contain only the higher class of Apocryphal Books, commonly called Deutero-canonical, or Ecclesiastical. Among these the most fanious and the most universally received are the two named at the head of this article-Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. As a connecting link between the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, composed at a time when the more formal utterances of the HOLY SPIRIT for a season had ceased to be heard, their value would naturally have been considerable; but when to this merit, which is owed to the circumstance of their date, are added the intrinsic excellence and importance of their teaching, they are seen to occupy a place in the sacred writings of the Church which is of peculiar eminence, and which is filled by no other supposedly uninspired production. The mistaken zeal of Protestants, which has led them to fancy that they showed their reverence for the Word of God by disparaging and calumniating the so called Apocryphal Books, will be imitated by no true Catholic, who has regard to the sentiments of the undivided Church, or the judgment of his own branch of it. Whatever ultimate opinion may be arrived at with respect to the value of the two writings named above, or whatever be the idea formed regarding their several authors and the various marks of a controlling Providence exhibited by them, no student can doubt that they have always to the very age of the Reformation been held in great reverence, that they formed an integral portion of the Septuagint Scriptures from some time before the Christian era,1 and that they are now received as

1 Grab. Sept. Prol. ad Lib. Hist. c. i. prop. 24, tom. ii. Many of the Books were received at an early period by the Synagogue at Alexandria, and thus obtained currency among all Greek-speaking Jews.

VOL. XXVI.-MARCH, 1864.

Р

inspired by the two great Eastern and Western branches of Christendom. We propose in this paper to call attention to some of the many points of interest which an examination of these writings affords, endeavouring at the same time to correct some misrepresentations to which they have been subjected, and to establish their correct position in the regard of English Churchmen.

The author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus is confessedly Jesus Ben-Sira, son of Sirach, a Jew who flourished at Jerusalem B.C. 310 -270. This date is gathered from the book itself, which concludes the list of worthies mentioned almost in chronological order with Simon, son of Onias, who is made to follow Nehemiah.1 That this is not Simon II., who lived B.c. 217, is obvious from these considerations. This high priest was a man of no note whatever, and could never have had a place in any catalogue of celebrated characters; whereas Simon I. was a large benefactor to the Jewish nation, and was regarded as the personification of goodness and greatness, being honoured with the title of "The Just."2 It is absurd to suppose that Ben-Sira would have omitted all mention of so famous a personage, and contented himself with recording Simon II. as the only great man during so long a period. Further, the author speaks of Simon as "repairing the House and fortifying the Temple,"-acts which are recorded of the first, but not of the second of the name. We know also that Ecclesiasticus had obtained currency, was highly venerated, and quoted with all respect, at least as early as B.C. 150, which shows that it must have existed some time previously, in order to have been so generally received. The actual work which we now possess is not the original text. The Hebrew original, as written by Jesus Ben-Sira, has perished, and our present text is a translation into Greek made by another Jesus, the grandson or great-grandson of the author. Some have thought that the language of the original was the Syriac, or corrupt vernacular of the time; but this is evidently a mistake. The numerous quotations which occur in the Talmud and the Midrashim, themselves composed in the Aramean dialect, are all, or nearly all, given in genuine Hebrew, a distinct proof that this was the tongue used by Ben-Sira. The Greek version appears to have most closely followed the Hebrew. Bishop Lowth has asserted that it is so close and verbally accurate, that a careful retranslation would almost certainly represent the actual diction of the original. As a specimen of this reproduction he retranslated chapter xxiv. into Hebrew; a German commentator has followed out the same idea by a version of chapter 1.; another learned man, Dr. Fränkel, has translated the whole of the Apocrypha

1 Ecclus. xlix. 13; 1. 1.

2 Kitto's Cyclopæd. Bib. Lit., Art. Jesus, Son of Sirach. New ed. Corn. à Lap. Prolegom. in Ecclesiasticum, p. 19.

3 Kitto's Cyclop. ubi supr.

4 E.g., A Lapide in Proleg.