teachings of Christ. This led an unknown writer, in the first half of the second century, to write another Gospel, and introduce into it Jesus teaching the doctrines of the Alexandrian school. All the narrations peculiar to this Gospel are pure inventions, the story of the woman of Samaria, of Nicodemus, of the marriage at Cana, of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus, the washing of the disciples' feet, the wonderful descriptions of the last days of Jesus, of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. All the sublime teachings of this Gospel are due to this unknown writer; those sayings which have helped to change the world were pure inventions of this heavenly impostor, this spiritual forger of Gospels, this divine liar, this angelic falsifier of the story of his Master's life and death. Jesus never said, “God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth:" our false gospeller put it in his mouth. Jesus never uttered the sublime prayer with his disciples, recorded in the seventeenth chapter, a prayer which has touched the hearts of so many generations. This also was composed, in cold blood, in order to make the story more interesting. The tender words from the cross, "Woman, behold thy son!" and "Behold thy mother!" are an unauthorized interpolation in that sacred agony. The recognition of her risen Master by Mary, by the tone in which he spoke her name, and the "Rabboni!" with its untranslatable world of feeling,—these, too, are the adroit fabrications of our cunning apocryphist. And this new Gospel, thus invented, is accepted without a question, doubt, or hesitation, in every part of the Christian Church. Other books of Scripture they lingered over, doubtful of their right to enter the canon. But this bold-faced forgery all parties, all sects, all schools, all the great theologians and scholars, swallowed at once, without a question; and this, too, when it was written with the express purpose of teaching them what they did not already believe, and which was in direct opposition to all their authentic and received Gospels!

Many of the "smaller sort of objections" to the authenticity of the fourth Gospel we have been obliged to pass by, for

want of room. But we have noticed the principal ones,those based both on external and internal grounds. The result of this examination has been, in our own mind, to show that no historic fact of authorship stands on a firmer basis than this; and that the long-received opinion of the Christian Church is not likely to be reversed in consequence of the investigations and arguments of the school of Tübingen. Were it otherwise, it would seem to us one of the greatest misfortunes which could befall Christianity. However it may seem to those who regard Jesus only as a fallible and peccable man, distinguished in no special manner from other wise and good men, and no more our master than Zeno or Epictetus, to those of us who believe that he was raised by God to teach mankind in word and life the absolute religion of truth and love, and so to be the central figure in the ages of history, this Gospel is very precious, as containing ́no ingenious inventions or cunningly devised fables, but the words and acts of Jesus himself, as reported by his best and nearest disciple.

It is very high testimony to Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," * that it has been selected for republication, under so competent editorship, "as unquestionably superior to any similar lexicon in our language." This phrase is not, as might possibly be thought, an unmeaning form of words; but a distinct assertion of superiority among many rivals, some of them of very high pretensions. We have a list of five such works of various merit, all of them published within the last three years, which we have briefly examined by way of comparison. Lowest in the list we should put the two compact and cheap quartos of Cassells' "Bible Dictionary," whose merits are of a purely popular sort, backed with a rigid orthodoxy. Fairbairn's "Imperial Bible

* American (unabridged) edition of Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Revised and edited by Professor H. B. HACKETT, D.D., with the cooperation of EZRA ABBOT, A.M. New York: Hurd & Houghton. Nos. I.-VII. pp. 784.

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Dictionary, Historical, Biographical, Geographical, and Doctrinal," (Blackie, London), comprises two large and very handsome volumes, in imperial octavo, with particular excellence and beauty of illustration, and a strong list of contributors, including that of Mr. Gosse, author of "Omphalos," in the department of Natural History. The "Cyclopædia of Biblical Geography, Biography, Natural History, and General Knowledge," edited by Lawson and Wilson (Fullarton, Edinburgh), is also contained in two large octavos, handsomely illustrated; and, along with other critical matter, contains an exposition, entitled "Alternative View of the Exodus," which invites the attention of the curious. A new edition of Kitto's "Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature, greatly enlarged and improved, by W. L. Alexander" (reprinted, in three large volumes, from English plates, by Lippincott, Philadelphia), retains the merits of its excellent original, the pioneer in this grand style of compilation, with much new material; among the rest, critical articles by Dr. Davidson on such topics as Revelation," "Chronicles," "Ezra," &c. And, finally, a " Cyclopædia of Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Literature," prepared by the eminent Methodist scholars McClintock and Strong (Harper, New York), emulates, in its plan, scope, and scale of dimensions, the great work of Herzog, as a library of reference on the whole field of topics of special theological interest. These have one feature in common, that each exhibits a list of names, of special eminence in various departments of learning, as responsible for the work in detail; while the editor's part is only to group them in a shapely whole. Taken together, the mass of learning they embrace is prodigiously beyond the competence of any one critic to pronounce upon; and they have, as it were, a monumental value, as showing the results of one great era of biblical scholarship, the record of a period of industry, and of a style of mental occupation, which can never have the same relative importance hereafter as it has had in the past. The time has gone by when the Bible could be the final appeal in controversy, and when its least word could bear a value mysterious and preternatural to whoever should understand it. But that time has left its monument in the prodigious patience of research, and toil of exposition, of which this encyclopedic library bears witness.

We have already twice called attention, at some length, to the characteristic features, and to the fidelity in execution, of the "Dictionary" now before us.* We have only a few words to add, as to

* See Christian Examiner for Jan., 1861, p. 140; and March, 1864, p. 223.

the care bestowed on the present edition. It is a reprint, in the strictest sense, the entire matter being recomposed by Riverside Press, in a style full as handsome as the English edition, with the amplest guaranties of accuracy, and the silent correction of innumerable small errors; together with a minute care in the editorial detail, which gives it, in many points, an independent critical value. A glance at any number of the work will show important additions, in the shape of supplementary paragraphs, or new sources of information, or careful posting of topics and their literature down to more recent dates. All the improvements are made strictly without any sacrifice of the former material; and the American illustrations - some of them new are quite equal in execution to those in the original work. The Prospectus is well deserving of attention, as setting forth the principles on which this very careful and scholarly revision has been made.

J. H. A.

We have already noticed in this review several of the productions of the mysterious priest, whose sharp invectives and whose bold exposure of iniquities are the more annoying to the Roman authorities, that they cannot hinder the stories from circulating, while they are unable to detect the author, and put him to silence. No secret of authorship, in our time, has been better kept. Conjectures are baffled, and all the efforts of the secret police of the Roman Church have not yet brought to light the insolent ecclesiastic. After eleven octavos of this trenchant writing, more are promised; and the "Country Curate" will soon set forth the difficulties which Ultramontane claims and assumptions make for him.

The work which we here notice✶ is specially an answer to that delectable pair of volumes by the champion of the Papacy in France, in which the Perfumes of Rome and the Effluvia of Paris are set in such sharp contrast. In sarcasm, innuendo, sneer, and railing, the unknown Abbé is fully a match for M. Veuillot, whose mastery of those arts is undisputed. The Abbé insists that he has no hatred or contempt for the libeller of France and the dispenser of Roman lies, only pity. But his pitying tone is by no means that of an apostle of Jesus. It is full of wrath and scorn; and there is nothing too savage and bitter to say of this vile defender of the faith. Nearly one-third of the volume is devoted to an analysis of M. Veuillot, who is called

* Les Odeurs Ultramontaines. Par L'ABBÉ ***, auteur du Maudit, de la Religieuse, du Jésuite, du Moine, &c. Paris, 1867. 8vo, pp. 313.

the "Ingrate," the "Bully of the Church," a "Catholic who is not Christian," and all the hard names that the writer can multiply. He accuses Veuillot of making God in his own image. The marks of personal spleen are so abundant in this part of the book, that the reader is disgusted, and sympathizes with the victim more than with the assailant. The Abbé's attack upon Veuillot will serve only to advertise the works of the latter more widely.

But when the writer leaves these personalities, and comes to the demonstration of Ultramontane follies and illusions, his work has more value. He carries the war with terrible force into the enemy's country, and shows how thin and false, and alien from the spirit of the age, are the pretensions of the Roman hierarchy. By satire and unsparing ridicule, he brings the absurdities of the Ultramontane press into bold relief.

He sees, what

But there is a grave meaning under his ridicule. every one must see, the danger to public and personal liberty in these growing assumptions of the Ultramontane writers. It is a singular fact, that, while the Pope is losing power as a political sovereign, and is ceasing to be considered among the nations, except as a vexatious problem, what shall be done with him, the papal assumptions increase in assurance, and devotion to the Pope is becoming more than ever an article of faith among the clergy. While the convents are abolished, and the monks are getting fewer day by day, the secular clergy are fast becoming as close an army of papal militia as ever were the friars of St. Francis or St. Dominic. The Pope has more spiritual power than ever. His decrees are the word of God, the law of the Church; and he has not to wait for the councils, in order to establish dogma. Louis Napoleon defends the Pope, — not because he believes in the Church, in the temporal or the spiritual power, but because he is afraid of the clergy of his own empire, who are almost to a man sworn to the support of the Father of Christendom.

The Abbé, in this volume, pretends to have discovered heresy in the recent council of the American bishops in Baltimore; finds in their resolutions a re-assertion of the old Gallican liberties, of the dependence of the Pope upon the councils. But they certainly meant nothing of that sort. There is no clergy more loyal to the Pope than the Catholic clergy of the United States. They are republicans, with this reservation, that the Pope is their chief ruler. Nearly discrowned as is the successor of St. Peter, there never was a time in the history