Of the Essays, 'On the Abstract Terms of the New Testament,' and On Natural Religion,' we have left ourselves no room to speak. In the former, some ingenious and subtle thoughts on language are pushed into one-sided and hurtful exaggeration, and the distinction is lost sight of between abstract terms like 'λóyos' ' ratio,' or the Kantian' reason' and 'understanding,' whose meaning is an artificial growth; and what may be termed natural abstract terms, such as 'love,' 'obedience,' truth,' which translate into all languages, and retain their meaning ever fresh through all time. In the latter Essay views are unfolded, of whose false and dangerous character, according to our judgment, it would be difficult to speak too strongly. The half-hearted, timid, dishonest compromise between the love of this world and the love of Christ, which forms the opiate of thousands of consciences under the constant teaching of the truth, and a more serious hindrance than open infidelity to the progress of the kingdom of Christ, is here avowedly adopted and defended by a Christian clergyman as the phase of Christianity suited and proper to our own times. The hard lines of demarcation' are denounced, as preventing the God of peace from resting on us (this strange phrase is used by Mr. Jowett as if it were a quotation from Scripture), which have been drawn, nevertheless, not by our hands, but by the Holy Spirit, between all them who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity,' and those who have not the Spirit of Christ' and are therefore none of His.' And we are told, that if, in the age of the 'apostles, it seemed to be the duty of the believers to separate 'themselves from the world, and take up a hostile position, not 'less marked in the present age is the duty of abolishing in a 'Christian country what has now become an artificial distinction."' -(ii. p. 420.) It is well that, if Mr. Jowett has kept in reserve some of his more advanced opinions, he has not concealed the practical conclusions to which they point, and the direction which he expects the Christian Church to take under the leadership of the party which he represents. We shall be more prepared to accept this guidance when we have expunged from our New Testament the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John.

Of Mr. Stanley's work we had not intended to say much, even had space allowed. Compared to Mr. Jowett's it is a feeble performance. The scholarship is what might be expected from Mr. Stanley's education; but there are no indications that the writer possesses the higher requisites of an expositor; and where the meaning is dark or doubtful, he appears to us usually to miss the clue. The exposition generally, is such as would be highly creditable to a clergyman if prepared for his own congregation, and

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delivered in his ordinary ministry, and such as partial hearers would doubtless urge him to publish; but it is to be hoped that there are hundreds of preachers fully competent to produce something equal or superior, who feel no vocation to step forth and claim the mantle of the great expositors of former days. Yet, are there no well-trained, judicious, richly stored, and reverently devout minds in the ranks of the Non-conforming ministry, who would do well to apply themselves to this honourable and responsible task, and who are fully competent to produce works worthy to stand on the same shelf with Alexander's admirable Commen tary on Isaiah, and which might form, not the transiently famous manifesto of a party, but a lasting treasure to the Church of Christ?

ART. VIII.-The Story of the Campaign of Sebastopol. By
LIEUT.-COL. C. B. HAMLEY. Blackwood.

AMONG the truths which discussions about the war have called into prominence, there are two which we hold to be of prime importance, and which we trust will keep their place in the public mind when the circumstances which have given them this prominence shall have passed away. One of these truths isthat in the world's history humanity has been worn down, wasted, and consumed, immensely more by bad government than by war, and that there is not so much to be apprehended accordingly from warlike tendencies on the part of nations, as from tendencies towards despotism on the part of governments. The other truth is, that war is by no means an unmixed evil; that in the providence of God, notwithstanding all the demoralization and misery inseparable from it, there is a highly conservative, retributive, and elevating mission assigned to it; and that while nations have almost uniformly perished from the influence of the comfort-loving, pleasure-loving, and effeminate selfishness incident to a high state of civilization, the results of war, when waged in the cause of right, have generally been to give strength and greatness to nations, by rendering them capable of deeds of generosity, self-sacrifice, and nobleness.

The first of these truths has been so demonstrated, that we may account it as unimpeachable and settled. But the announcement of the second in these pages, though familiar enough to thoughtful men in every age and country, has startled some

gentlemen greatly. We must be allowed, however, to reiterate the statement. And to clear the doctrine from the mist which has been artfully thrown over it, and to show its true relation both to morality and religion, little more will be needed, we think, than that a few simple questions should be asked in relation to it.

1. Is there, then, no such thing as international right or wrong? If right and wrong between nation and nation be really possible, has no attempt ever been made to distinguish between the one and the other by means of international law? If there be really such a thing existing as international law, whether in the shape of written law or common law, does not the existence of such laws suppose the existence of an authority by which they may be sustained and administered? If there is to be any administration of such law by one nation towards another nation, does not this suppose the existence of a national force which may be adequate to that purpose? If there is to be such a force, what can that force be, short of an army? If the true purpose of an army be, then, as we assuredly hold, to put down wrong, and to uphold right, wherein does the province of the soldier really differ from the province of the constable? Is not the vocation of each the same-to be 'a terror to evil doers, and a praise to those who do well'? If the magistrate, with his command of policemen and prisons, may embody the righteousness which exalteth a nation, why may not a central government, with its command of fleets and armies, do the same? If war, accordingly, may be-not an injustice, but a strong protest and effort on the side of justice-on the side of the weak as injured by the strong, then why may not a people who carry on war in the cause of right and humanity become themselves more earnestly just, more thoroughly humane, even by means of

war?

The answer which must be returned to the above questions by all men of sense is so obvious, that we feel almost ashamed of our work as we thus place them upon paper. But if these questions be answered in the affirmative, see what follows. Not only may there be justifiable wars, but much of the mental and moral education of a people may be destined to grow out of the wars they wage. If it be not more in the nature of bad passions than of good passions, that they should strengthen by exercise, surely then the feeling on the side of right and humanity which often rises to such ardour in war, is not an exception to this law.

That the moral and physical evils which go in the track of war are often frightful all men know. We think we see these evils as

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clearly, and feel them as deeply, as the gentlemen who so freely censure us as being indifferent to them. The said gentlemen, indeed, know this very well. It suits their purpose, however, not to seem to know it. We further admit that the effect of war on those immediately engaged in it, however just their cause may be, is often such as should be deplored. But even under such appearances, candour and good sense may see elements of another description at work. Wherever immense costs are willingly incurred to sustain what is believed to be a just cause, there must be an immense amount of large-hearted and unselfish feeling at work somewhere. Armies are not nations, but in all free states they are created by the feeling of nations. Yes-and even unjust wars have not been without their balance of good on the side of humanity. The men who originate such wars are guilty men. But Providence in such cases has often educed good out of evil. When the military power of ancient Rome attained to its colossal height, corruption found ample space beneath its shadow. But the diffused power of Rome was, nevertheless, a diffused benefit; and two things at least are certain concerning it-the space through which Rome advanced, step by step, to greatness, was its war period, and the space through which it descended, step by step to ruin, was its peace period.

But the question may be asked-do you not regard war as an evil even where it is, as you suppose, a necessity? Undoubtedly; but only in the same sense in which we regard the prison, the treadmill, and the gallows, as evils. It is very lamentable, very humiliating, that there should be necessity for any of these things. But a necessity for them there is, and great evils as they may be, they are as nothing compared with the evils which would rush into their place were we to attempt to get along without them. Dispense altogether with war establishments and penal establishments if you can. Our own maxim is, dispense with both to the utmost limit possible consistently with upholding right between man and man, and between nation and nation.

We have had the temerity to say that to proscribe war would be to doom civilization, if not humanity itself, to extinction. We repeat that saying. We see not how a vestige of civilization can be secure except upon a war footing-that is, upon a footing showing that the civilized man is prepared to fight, if needs be, for the protection of his own. The horrors of war through the past are often terrible-but what would have been the horrors of no-war? Suppose all the villains of the past to have been allowed to herd together and to have had none but passive com

munities to deal with. Endeavour to imagine-THAT. To keep up a coercive establishment against the public robber, whether at home or abroad, has always been an expensive proceeding, but a piece of wonderful economy after all. The effect, moreover, of expenditure in this way, as we have seen, has not been simply negative. It has not merely repressed wrong, it has nourished the passion for right, and has realized much of the high moral and social advancement which result naturally from the influence of that passion. War, as we have shown, may be not only lawful, but virtuous; and strange would it be if the good results allied with the right-minded deed in other connexions were wholly unknown to it in this connexion.

These sentences will suffice to indicate the sense in which we account war an evil, and in which we see even the evil of war as having its mission for good. If to teach that war may have such a mission, both as regards the greater evils it may prevent, as well as the good it may confer, be to utter ideas felt to be strange and startling-we can only say we think it high time that the sensitive nerves which may be disturbed by such teaching should be left to survive the shock as they best may.

We know there are passages of Scripture in which war is classed with the direst plagues; and war is all that in the purposes of Providence, as regards the nations which became so criminal through corruption or wrong-doing as to provoke the vengeance of Heaven in that form. But the Scriptures do not teach that war is the same thing, whether as coming upon the guilty, or as waged by the not guilty. Some of our seers when they cite Scripture are not good at making distinctions of this sort. Let war come as a righteous necessity, and a wise and brave people will accept it as a duty, rather than shrink from it as a calamity, and they will expect to find the transient evil the path to permanent good. On this view of the subject the eloquent and philosophical De Quincey wrote as follows, when all Europe was at peace, and little expecting war:

Under circumstances that may exist, and have existed, war is a positive good; not relative merely, or negative, but positive. A great truth it was which Wordsworth uttered, whatever might be the expansion which he allowed to it, when he said that

'God's most perfect instrument,

In working out a pure intent,

Is man-arrayed for mutual slaughter:
Yea, Carnage is his daughter.'

There is a mystery in approaching this aspect of the case which no man has read fully. War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeur in man than has yet been deciphered. To execute