that the Vulgate is only three or four times put behind the Greek manuscripts. As to 1 John v. 7, which, since the days of Porson, has here been so generally given up, we are told that Mayer and Sander, independently of one another, maintain its genuineness. So long as it is certain-and Griesbach has by no means refuted it—that Cyprian (258) read the passage in an older manuscript than the oldest we possess; so long as the connection must extort the confession from every unprejudiced expositor that, in case a foreign hand wrote the words in question as a gloss upon the margin, they might have been written from the very heart of John; so long the hope of the venerable Bengel will not be called absurd, that still from the secret treasures of divine providence manuscripts may be brought to light with those original words. We are then told that the whole work is defective in that surrender to the apostolic word, in that Mary-attitude of listening, which so well becomes the expositor. As to the specifically Romish physiognomy of the whole work, the author's main task has been to represent John as the vindicator of the decrees of the Council of Trent. The writer then shows that Mayer does not know what to do with the antipelagian view of sin which the apostle gives from the 6th to the 10th verse of the first chapter. Three sayings are here reproved as lying sayings:-1. The saying of the bold lovers of sin, who walk in darkness and yet pretend to fellowship with God; 2. The saying of the proud finished saints, who have left sin absolutely behind them, and maintain that they are no more sinners; 3. The saying of the Pharisaic and self-righteous, who find no sin even in the past of their life. The author, we are told, can make abso. lutely nothing of this text, and changes its pregnant trichotomy into an extreme tautology; the cleansing blood of Christ, which not merely CLEANSED but CLEANSES from all sin, is removed from the present into the past. He holds that it is not as often as we believe with the heart, that it is not as often as we confess our sin by daily repentance (Luther's first Thesis against Rome), that we have daily and richly life and salvation with forgiveness of sin-this highest consolation of poor sinners is rejected as an abominable and fatal error; but that the righteousness of Christ is once infused into us, and Christians have no more sin! He of course denies, with the Romanists, that concupiscence is sin, and escapes as quickly as possible from the fact that John includes himself in the number of those who need the Intercessor. The writer of the article adds, that it is a just judgment on this doctrine of sanctification in the Romish Church, that she must forbid men ever to be sure of their salvation. Möhler cannot even refrain from saying that something diabolical insinuates itself with the doctrine of assurance! Mayer says, on 3 John 2, "Even in the clause, 'as thy soul prospereth,' the character of the poor-sinner-religion is repudiated, which, as has been said, wishes to be impressed on Christianity from two very opposite sides. True Christians know well that they WERE all sinners, and that the danger of sin always threatens; but they know, too, that they ARE NO MORE SINNERS, that they are reconciled and holy, that they should and that they may keep themselves free from mortal sins (N. B.-Venial sins do not make one to be a sinner), and that daily errors of infirmity do not destroy the life of the children of God in his kindness and grace, but are again DAILY EXPIATED BY EVERY THOUGHT and every deed of believing love." The writer thanks God that our poor

sinner-joy has firmer ground. Mayer, with the usual virulence of a Papist, views rationalism and pantheism as the genuine children of thereformation, and regards it as the calling of the Romish Church-a favourite thought also of Möhler-to conduct men between the Scylla of old Protestant scholasticism, and the Charybdis of new Protestant gnosticism. The writer replies with power, but, in common with all Germans, treats Rome with an excess of gentleness which makes one ask, Where has the spirit of Luther gone?

Another paper, continued through several Numbers, on Roman architecture, is written with great artistic skill and knowledge of the subject. As it is not one of a theological nature, however, we shall not very minutely analyse it. The writer shows that though Roman architecture cannot, in comparison with Greek art, be called original, yet no state understood like Rome how to melt all together, and how to impress her powerful spirit of domination on the medley. The writer describes the Cyclopian walls common to Italy and Greece, traces of which were found by Gell and Dodwell in the solitude of the Appenine valleys among thorns and bushes. A new age dawned when the confederate tribes of the Pelasgi came into Italy from Greece, mitigating manners, ennobling the arts of Italy, and bringing the Greek language. Their architecture is then described, and their tongue, as the mother of the Latin language. In their room came the Etruscans, whose origin is sought by Niebuhr among the Rhotians in Tyrol, but whose manners, whose worship, and whose architecture, were oriental or Lydian. Their style of architecture is next described as consisting particularly in two points: 1. In the arch; and 2. In the application of conical pyramidal forms. Then follows an interesting historical description of Roman architecture, of the influence of Tarquinius Priscus and of his magnificent conceptions. The influence of Greece on Roman architecture is then pointed out; the Greek column was united to the Etruscan arch, and the two styles put in an inward relation to one another. After a full delineation of Roman architecture, the writer advances to the decline of Roman art at the beginning of the third century after Christ; and one is surprised to find, after such a scientific sketch of classical art, a tendency to lose himself in that misty symbolism of Christian architecture which would have found any thing but a response from the puritan. He then makes a transition to Hebrew architecture, and expatiates in a singular manner on the symbolism of numbers. He shows that all depended on theocratic references, and not upon form in detail. Hence, we are told, that no drawing of the temple has hitherto met with general recognition; hence the single pictures of it differ so essentially from one another; hence on single points absolutely nothing definite can be decided. The author then takes particular notice of the work in which the Irvingites give forth their interpretation of the Mosaic tabernacle, of its arrangements, and of its worship, as a pattern to the Christian church. He runs riot in a very fantastic way on what he calls the symbolik of numbers, which he speaks of as one of the most important points which Christian architecture has borrowed from the symbolik of the Old Testament. Very beautifully does he describe, in conclusion, that what essentially distinguishes the worship of Israel from all heathen worship is the strictly ethical principle of holiness which

is imprinted on all, and to which all is subservient. While the heathen only symbolised the course of nature in its manifestations and decays, while the moral aim fell entirely into the back ground, while sin nowhere appears in its terrors, while the divine nowhere appears in its sanctifying power, while no admonition is issued to the people to enter into an inner repentance,-here all imitation of the world's relations is strictly removed, here the super-mundane God rules in his righteousness, as applied to man, the fallen lord of the world; the creation is fallen through him, and its service cannot redeem him. Hence the holy God enters with his love and compassion, and permits mankind to hallow his name in order that they may at the same time receive in his holy place an impulse to inner holiness. How strictly is the sanctuary, the place of God, separated from the stage of a fallen world, intimating that man has no more free access to his heavenly Father; and even after the great atonement, the curtains of the sanctuary and of the holy of holies do not open,-thus teaching us that man is so deeply sunk, that far other deeds were still to be expected, saving deeds, holy deeds of God, before it came to this. If an Israelite approached his Lord in sacrifice, he did it in the consciousness of his guilt as against a personal holy God, who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation, and in holy reverence before the God whom his eyes could not see and could not reach in any earthly image. The article concludes by a more specific allusion to the tabernacle, in which the writer seeks to unite in one the very different views adopted by Hengstenberg, by Bähr, and by others.

In another short paper, bearing the title, Zur Geschichte des Sectenwesens unsrer Zeit, we find a graphic description of the sect called Creglingians, from the place where they have their chief seat. Their adherents go about bare-headed, from a false view of 1 Cor. xi. 4, 7; they observe the Sabbath on Saturday; they keep aloof from church, and from the Lord's Supper, and have introduced a sort of communism among them for mutual support in their necessities. They are properly connected, it is said, with those antichurch sects which have for a long time existed in Würtemberg, and which have found, in the political excitement of recent times, new support for efforts directed to the downfall of the Established Church. They appeal to the writings of Tennhardt, which they declare divine. Tennhardt lived at the end of the 17th and at the beginning of the 18th century in Nürnberg, and was a perruque maker. He began by writing a history of his life and of his conversion, which consists chiefly of visions and voices. By observing the decay of living Christianity, and the dead orthodoxy of the preachers, he was confirmed in the imagination that he was a chosen instrument of God to reform the church. It cannot be denied that he had great earnestness, and a real speech for the lower classes. Yet his calls to repentance were always more directed to the outward than to the inward of man; hence he failed to see how he himself always fell deeper into spiritual pride. What makes his writings particularly dangerous is the prominence given to the inner word before the written Word. He seems in another point to have diverged from the path, by laying emphasis on Christ being born in the man, and entertaining confused ideas of his justifying righteousness. He is opposed to infant baptism. The writer con

cludes by saying, that the number of this sect is but small, yet the antichurch tendency of the times and their zeal cause apprehension as to their spread among the people.

There is another short paper on PASSION-SERMONS, which, we are told, are now again, according to Lutheran use and wont, generally delivered, and for some years have been delivered, on every Friday during the Passion season. This old custom has been very much neglected from the end of last century; and the writer, who confesses that he once preached any thing but the gospel, offers directions as to the nature of these sermons; adding a curious fact, which we suppose partly explains why German preachers so seldom preach on the Epistles, that to the people sermons on the Gospel of the day are far more acceptable than upon the Epistle of the day.

Another paper, entitled, Studien über die Apostelgeschichte, contains a very interesting summary of studies on the Acts of the Apostles. The writer commences with this striking remark of Tholuck in his refutation of Strauss: "The credibility of the gospel history may be proved, too, from the Acts of the Apostles and from the New Testament Epistles, for the two form, with the former, a continued series of the miraculous; in vain does one expect from this time forward a history in the form of the naked unadorned course of nature. Christ's advent is not like the sun of tropical lands, which rises without a dawn and sets without a twilight; but as prophecy precedes him for thousands of years, so miracles follow him; and the powers which he first awoke are still active in a greater or less measure for a period of time. Consequently if criticism will push the sun from the world, it has then also to do with the dawn and twilight. How it intends to set these aside, has not hitherto been disclosed." Thus wrote Tholuck seventeen years ago. The attempt has since that day been made. Strauss found admirers and imitators who were eager to secure a share in the eclat connected with so bold a step. After mentioning the tone and aim of negative criticism, the writer says it is worth while to answer the question, Whether the Acts of the Apostles, which occupies such an important place in the New Testament canon, that we may justly consider its root as lying in the history of the Lord, and its summit as having reached its full development and maturity in the apostolic epistleswhether it does not conceal within itself a very important apostolic proof of the credibility of the gospel history, and thus of its own credibility and that of the Epistles? And we have to answer this question first from the inward indissoluble connection of this piece in the New Testament canon with the previous gospel Jov, and with the fol lowing apostolical superstructure, the advancing oxodon of the church by apostolic writings as documents of the missionary, that is to say, church-founding and church-sustaining, activity. After mentioning that the integrity of Scripture relates to the question that no book is wanting in the canon which originally belonged to it, and that the authenticity of Scripture takes a view of the question whether no book has been interpolated, he lays down the position that the writings of the men whom the Lord immediately chose to preach HIS word and to continue HIS work were worthy, because called, to give contributions to the matter of the New Testament canon. These the Christian church has particularly accepted, but she has also accepted writings which

proceed from scholars of the apostles. The writer adds, "If the Acts of the Apostles give a proof that the grain of wheat which fell to the earth has not abode alone but brought forth much fruit, that to the head a body has been formed, and a habitation of God through the Spirit has been built upon the foundation laid, it seems so indissolubly inserted into the noble organism of the New Testament, that the attempt to separate it must needs do violence to the whole; and it must appear quite inexplicable how the gospel history on the one side ends without result in reference to the work of the Redeemer just mentioned as a prophecy without fulfilment, and on the other side how the noble apostolical epistles hang in the air without historical foundation, and as the manifestoes, as the documents of a conflict, the course of which in detail we should in vain long to behold without this historical testimony." Strikingly, therefore, does Heidegger remark, in his "Enchiredion Biblicum" upon the Acts of the Apostles: "Historia hujus libri quædam evangelii pars eaque non minima est. Illic describitur granum frumenti solo conditum, hic describitur enatum ac suas paulatim aperiens ac proferens opes. Quodsi per Lucam non cognovissemus, quibus modis Christus reliquerit terras ubi, quo loco, quibus modis advenerit promissus Spiritus Sanctus, quibus initiis cœperit ecclesia, quibus modis polluerit, quibus rationibus creverit, certe bonam evangelii partem ignoraremus." The writer then inquires how the book can bear its title when it does not relate the acts of the whole twelve. As no written documents are preserved to us relating to the majority of the twelve, we are to regard the silence as similar to the silence about Melchizedek and other personalities of history. He shows how the catalogue of the apostles given in Matthew, Luke, and Acts, is divided into six groups of two and two. He then shows that the whole subsequent activity of the apostles is put into the same organically indissoluble connection with the manifestation of the Lord, as the latter is in other places with the foregoing preparatory facts and testimonies of the Old Testament. With much beauty it is pointed out that the love of the disciples was not to utter itself in an idle ἐμβλέπειν εις τὸν ὀυρανόν, not in a mere mystic contemplation of this event, but to lead to an activity which had nothing else for its object but the glorification of the Lord in the hearts of believers, his glorification on earth by the coming of his kingdom to men; for nothing else than this can be the sense of the admonition of Acts i. 11. Henceforth the whole life of the apostles was a loud testimony of their faith and of their fellowship with their exalted Master, an explicit attestation of that which was spoken by one of those witnesses, and which may be regarded as the motto of them all, (Phil. iii. 20) nuv yàg πολίτευμα ἐν ουρανοῖς ὑπάρχει. He refers with approbation to the remark of Ecumenius that the Acts of the Apostles delineate the deeds of the Holy Ghost, which he executed through the apostles in the first times of the Christian church. He adduces also the beautiful idea expressed by Chrysostom, and many times by the ancient church, that the Acts of the Apostles is avarrás móds; because the ascension is not a mere departure, but a resumption of his glory that he might fill all things, a COMING with those gifts of the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and who works in believers to the end of the world. Then the writer directs our attention to the prominent personalities in the Acts, together with their career.