Bear away

When to earth I'm creeping.

Goods, nor blood, nor frame, nor living,
Are my own: God alone
Glads me in their giving.
What he gave when he erases,

Part or whole, Heart and soul
Still shall hymn his praises.

Should he give a cross to carry,
Send amain Woe and pain,
Ought my trust to vary?
He will rule them in the sending:
He well knows How to choose
What shall be the ending.

God has oft with many a blessing
Crowned my lot: Shall I not
Feel some burdens pressing?
Good is he, not always chiding:
His decree Works for me
Comforting and guiding.

Death has not the power to slay us;
Does but snatch From their catch
When life's ills waylay us;
Shuts the door of bitter grieving,
And makes way For the day
Of the heavens' receiving.
What is all we here inherit
But a hand Full of sand,
Weariness of spirit?
There, there, is the noblest treasure:
Shepherd-wise, Christ supplies

Without end or measure.

-Monthly Religious Magazine.

Clouds and conflicts round us press;
Would we have one sorrow less?
All the sharpness of the cross,
All that tells the world is loss,
Death and darkness and the tomb,
Only whisper till He come."

I WILL tell you when they met ;
In the limpid days of spring;
Elder boughs were budding yet,
Oaken boughs looked wintry still,
But primrose and veined violet
In the mossful turf were set,

While meeting birds made haste to sing
And build with right good-will.

I will tell you when they parted:

When. plenteous autumn sheaves were brown,
Then they parted heavy-hearted;
The full rejoicing sun looked down
As grand as in the days before;
Only they had lost a crown;
Only to them those days of yore
Could come back nevermore.

When shall they meet? I cannot tell,
Indeed, when they shall meet again,
Except some day in paradise:

For this they wait, one waits in pain.
Beyond the sea of death love lies
Forever, yesterday, to-day;

Angels shall ask them, "Is it well?"
Yea."
And they shall answer,

-Macmillan's Magazine.

GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-MORNING. (A CHILD'S SONG.)

A FAIR little girl sat under a tree,
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work, and folded it right,
And said, "Dear work, good-night! good night
Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying "Caw! Caw!" on their way to bed:
She said, as she watched their curious flight,
"Little black things, good-night! good-night!

The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed:
The sheep's" Bleat! bleat!" came over the road,
All seeming to say, with a quiet delight,
"Good little girl, good-night! good-night!"
She did not say to the sun good-night!"
Though she saw him there, like a ball of light;
For she knew he had God's time to keep
All over the world, and never could sleep.

The tall pink foxglove bowed his head;
The violets curtsied and went to bed;
And good little Lucy tied up her hair,
And said, on her knees, her favorite prayer.
And while on her pillow she softly lay,
She knew nothing more till again it was day;
And all things said to the beautiful sun,
"Good-morning! good-morning! our work is
begun!

R. M. MILNES.

From The Christian Remembrancer. 1. Ernest Renan. Vie de Jésus. Sixième Edition. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères.

1863.

2. Eighteen Sermons of S. Leo the Great, on the Incarnation; Translated, with Notes and with the Tome of S. Leo in the Original. By William Bright, M.A. Fellow and Assistant Tutor of University College, Oxford.

3. The Light of the World. By the Rev. Adolph Saphir. (In "Good Words " for A.D. 1861; p. 24.)

4. Sancti Athanasii Archiepiscopi Alexandrini Opera Dogmatica Selecta. Ex Recens. Bern. de Montfaucon. Præfatus est Joannes Carolus Thilo, Phil. et Theol. in Acad. Halensi Professor. Lipsiæ; T. O. Weigel, MDCCCLIII.

5. Paper ascribed to Napoleon Buonaparte, and said to have been dictated by him at St. Helena. English Translation in the "Gospel Messenger." Vol. V. p. 284. Burntisland, 1857. French original cited in the following.

6. La personne de Jésus Christ. Par Augustus Nicolas. (Etudes Philosoph. sur le Christianisme.) 3 ième Partie. Chap.

II.

writer, born only some thirty years after the event, and consequently contemporary with men who might have actually witnessed it, had occasion to speak of the origin of the appellation given to the much-hated, much-enduring Christians. "The Originator of that name," says Tacitus," was Christ, who was put to death in the reign of Tiberius, by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate." Auctor nominis ejus Christus qui, Tiberio imperitante, per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat.*

Words accepting and reiterating, in different forms, the fact thus stated by the Roman historian, are being constantly read in a myriad homes in almost every quarter of the most civilized portions of the carth, are being repeated by children of tender claimed aloud in buildings erected for the and years, worship of the Most High. Forever, until time itself shall be no more, the name of the judge and the judged One stand side by side. It is everywhere "Jesus Christ.

pro

who

suffered under Pontius Pilate." But those who do not rest content with the

66

8. Papers on the Gospels. By Prince Albert de Broglie. English Translation in the Panoply" for Nov., 1858 (Vol. II. P. 337). Burntisland. Original French at the end of Vol. I. of L'Eglise et L'Empire Roman au quatrième Siècle." 9. Examen Critique de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Par M. L'Abbé Freppel, Professeur d'Eloquence sacrée à la Sorbonne. 3ième Edition. Paris: A. Bray. 10. Observations sur la Vie de Jésus de M.

Ernest Renan. Par Raoul Lecœur. Rouen Cagniard. 11. M. Renan et son Ecole.

Reflexions sur la Par Volusien Pages.

Vie de Jésus. Paris Dentu, 1863. 12. L'Evangile selon Renan. Par Henri Lasserre. 5ième Edition. Paris: Palmé, 1863.

MORE than eighteen hundred years have passed away since there stood before the tribunal of a Roman governor of Judea, One who, to all outward appearance, resembled the rest of the sons of men. The bare historical fact would be known to us even if we had no more than ordinary narratives composed by the annalists of the age; for a

of that trial, they read how the Victim, even in that his hour of humiliation, made announcement to those around him of another day when he should sit on the right hand of power, and come in the clouds of heaven.

solute

Certainly," says one who comments upon that declaration-" certainly it is a great demonstration of the justice of God, so highly to reward that Son of man as to make him world and was judged here; to give him abJudge of all the world, who came into the power of absolution and condemnation, who was by us condemned to die, and died that he might absolve us; to cause all the sons of men to bow before his throne, who did not disdain for their sakes to stand before the tribunal and receive that sentence, Let him be crucified." And the fulfilment of that most just and righteous award we Christians all await. Before that throne we believe that we must all of us fall down, either as conquered rebels or as pardoned sinners. And we pray, in this our day of grace, that it may be granted to us for his sake, to hear the * Annal. lib. xv. cap. xxxxiv.

+ Bishop Pearson on the Creed.—Article vii.

Centuries elapse between the first advent, which is matter of history, and the second, which is the subject of prophecy; and from time to time during that long interval there have arisen, and there will arise, men who again attempt to sit in judgment upon their future Judge. All of us, alas! in so far as we are sinners, contribute, by our daily of fences of thought and word and deed, to crucify Christ afresh; but those to whom we now more particularly advert, take upon them to criticise the history of his life and death, in precisely the same temper as they might discuss that of any among their ordinary fellow-men; to deny his sinlessness, his Messiahship, his divinity-nay, possibly, in some instances, to insinuate doubts respecting his very existence as man on earth.

One such critic is at this moment creating a sensation in France, and throughout the civilized world; a sensation, as we believe, ephemeral, and calculated to die out, at no distant period, from sheer innate weakness. Nevertheless, it is a duty incumbent on a review like this, to try and point out wherein that weakness consists; and thus, so far as may be, to hasten the decline and extinction of M. Renan's line of argument. But before proceeding to any detailed criticism upon this latest Life of Jesus," we shall invite the attention of our readers to a few general considerations, which will be found to have an important bearing on the problem now presented to us.

If man asks any question whatever respecting the existence of something greater than himself, the answer must inevitably take one of four forms; namely, Atheism, Polytheism, Pantheism, or Monotheism. And if, further, he should profess, not only to have decided upon his own reply, but to desire to become an instructor of his fellow-men in the matter of religion, we have a right to demand from him an explicit avowal of his sentiment as a primary condition of our gaining such a position as may enable us to judge the remainder of his teaching. It is easy to mention books which announce on their very front some one of these four replies. Thus, for instance, the famous poem of Lucretius, "De Rerum Naturâ," is a proclamation of Atheism; the "Iliad" is the production of a high-priest

Politicus of Spinoza, is the great modern repertory of the doctrines of Pantheism; the "Koran " of Mahomet puts forth, despite all its faults and erroneous claims, a vigorous, and even, at times, an impassioned, assertion of Monotheism. And of all these works it may be said, that they do not practise any concealment, nor speak with flattering and hesitating accents. If we accept the fundamental teaching of any one of them respecting the divine nature, we do it with our eyes open; we know with whom we are throwing our lot. It will be desirable, before we proceed, to say a few brief words upon each of these four assertions respecting the supernatural order of things.

Our subject happily demands only a passing reference to Atheism. Whatever may have been the extravagances of individuals, such as the unhappy Epicurean poet abovenamed, it may be safely asserted that Atheism never has possessed, and never will possess, any enduring hold upon the human heart. If any tribe or race (as, for example, the Kaffirs) can, with propriety, be termed Atheists, we may predict, without danger, that they will prove to be among the very lowest specimens of humanity. To be “without God in the world" is, indeed, upon even temporal grounds, a degraded and a miserable lot.

Polytheism stands on somewhat different grounds. It does, at any rate, admit the existence of that which is divine. Not only was it the religion of the two greatest nations of antiquity, but it has at moments won a passing glance of sympathy and admiration, though hardly, perhaps, of serious consideration, from one or two sets of thinkers at various epochs in European history. Such was the Medicean set in Florence, at the revival of letters; such the mood, at moments, of Goethe, and even of Schiller; * such, haps, the spirit of some of the actors, especially among the Girondists, in the great and comprehensive drama of the French Revolution. But these exhibitions have been but

per

*The heathenized tone of the Renaissance has been much dwelt upon by living writers, as, for instance, by Mr. Ruskin, Canon Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, and the author of "Romola." Goethe's pagan tastes come out in many of his poems, moro especially in the "Bride of Corinth." Schiller's (we may hope more momentary) lapse in his "Gods of Greece" has been finely and poetically rebuked in Mrs. Browning's poem of "The Dead Pan."

The grossness, however, of certain portions of Polytheism shocked many of the finer minds among the very heathen themselves. Thus Plato, in a well-known part of the second Book of his "Republic," rebukes Homer for several unworthy representations of the deities. Pindar had already preceded Plato in the same path.* At a later period various allegorical explanations of the Homeric mythology were introduced. But the great resource of those who were repelled by the coarse anthropomorphism of Polytheism was to take refuge in the apparent spirituality of Pantheism.

Pantheism, more or less completely, identifies the Creator with the universe which he has created. The personality of God degenerates into the impersonality of a mere anima mundi. Moreover this doctrine leads, as its most logical adherents grant, to the sapping of all sound foundations of morality. For if (to employ the language of the Hindoo philosophers) Siva is everything, and each man's soul only a part of Siva, just as the water in a cup may be a portion of the mighty Ganges, then, as the Deity cannot do wrong, no act of man can be essentially wrong; for it is a part of the divinity that is acting in each man. Hence it follows, as the Hindoos do not scruple to teach, that the distinction between good and evil, however necessary as a convenience for this life, must be pronounced unreal and illusory. We have never wished to shut our eyes to the palliations which may be urged on behalf of those Pantheists whom no nobler and loftier teaching may have reached. In many cases Pantheism, as has been said before in this review, is probably a groping after two great truths; namely, that in Ilim who made us we all live and move and have our being," and that man's highest bliss must consist in union with God. But

* Nemean Odes (vii. 31). Strauss calls attention to these passages of Plato and Pindar.

when adopted because nothing better is known, sadder far when accepted by those on whom the light of a holier faith has beamed; for Pantheism is in fact the denial of a true and living God, and the denial at the same time of the immutable character of morality.

There remains, then, the faith of the Monotheist. He and he alone can be truly said to believe in God. He does not, with the Atheist, deny him; nor with the Pantheist relegate him to a practical nonenity; nor with the Polytheist reduce his sovereign attributes to chaos by supposing them to be distributed among gods many and lords many. To him is God known "not as a Law, but as a Person to be adored and loved."

How much, how very much, is implied in this doctrine we must not now pause to consider. But it is necessary to remark that, whatever else Theism involves, it includes inter alia a belief in the possibility of miracles. Jews, Mahometans, Christians, and all real Theists are agreed in this. A writer who cannot, we fear, be claimed as a Christian, Mr. John Stuart Mill, has justly remarked that a belief in miracles is impossible apart from belief in a personal God. And it is only by abuse of the word God-only by making him a sort of constitutional monarch without real authority over creation, that a disbelief in miracles can be sustained.

When, however, we cast a glance at the condition of the world at the time of the birth of Christ, the region in which the true doctrine of Monotheism was being effectively taught must be allowed by all to have been a very limited one. Only in Palestine, or in cities like Alexandria, where Judaism had been circulated by the dispersion of the race, can wo feel any confidence that people were

*Mansel's Bampton Lectures. Lect. I.: Prof. Mansel's opponent, Prof. Goldwin Smith, agrees heroin with Mr. Mansel, saying: "In vindicating the representation of God given in the Bible, he [Mr. Mansel] demolishes the figment, much in vogue among exclusively scientific minds, of an insensible, inflexible, immovable,-in a word, of a scientific, as opposed to a moral, God." (Postscript to Inaugural Lectures in the Study of History.) Wo have much pleasure in calling attention to this agreement be tween two combatants so highly gifted. Mr. Goldwin Smith's words embody, as we hope to show, the fundamental difference between believers in the Gospol and rationalists, such as Strauss and Renan.