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occurrences as to connect obedience and blessing, disobedience and judgment. In this way also the peculiar style of these books is explained.

The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version, with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M. A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. II, Joshua to 1 Kings. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company. 1873. Octavo, pp. 624. This is the second volume of the Speaker's Commentary, called thus because the Right Hon. J. E. Denison, Speaker of the House of Commons in England, suggested it. Its aim is to make "accessible to men of ordinary culture" "the latest information" in any department which can throw light upon the sacred text. The expositions are concise, clear, judicious, scholarly, and happily, not the difficult but the easy passages are left without comment. The introduction, though not extended, is very valuable, as are also the "notes," which treat at some length of important subjects, and which are therefore placed at the end of the chapters to which they relate. We are heartily glad that the work is republished in this country, and are sure that it fills a place which no other commentary does. It ought to have a wide circulation. The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. By W. J. CONY BEARE and VERY REV. J. S. HowSON, D. D., Dean of Chester. New edition. London: Longman, Green and Company. New York: A. D. F. Randolph and Company. 1872. Crown octavo, pp. 850.

A comparatively inexpensive edition of a work so well known for its ripe and comprehensive scholarship that any words of commendation would be superfluous. It may not be amiss, however, to remind the young preacher, as he pores over these fascinating pages, of the words of an eminent thinker, whose opinions are not moulded by any sympathy with what might be considered the narrowness of the evangelical faith: It is rather an illustrated guide-book to the apostle's place and time, than a personal introduction to himself. The authors are highly accomplished and scholarly men, and could not fail, in dealing with an historical theme, to bring together and group with conscientious skill a vast store of archæological and topographical detail; to weigh chronological difficulties with patient care; to translate with philological precision and due aim at accuracy of text. They have accordingly produced a truly interesting and instructive book; so instructive, indeed, that by far the greater part of its information would, probably, have been quite new to Paul himself. His life seems to us to be injudiciously overlaid with what is wholly foreign to it, and for the sake of picturesque effect to be set upon a stage quite invisible to him. He was not Principal of a "Collegiate Institution," accustomed to examine boys in Attic or Latin geography; was not familiar with Thucydides or Grote; indifferent to the Amphyctionic Council, and, in the vicinity of Salamis and Marathon, probably read the past no more than a Brahmin would in travelling over Marston Moor. The world of each man must be measured from his own spiritual centre, and will take in much less in one direction, much more in another, than is spread beneath his eye. He cannot be reached by geographical approaches. You may determine the elements of his orbit, and yet miss him after all. It is an illusory process to paint the ancient world as it would look to an ancient Hellenic gentleman then, or a University scholar now; and then think how Paul would feel in passing through it to convert it.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Genesis, with a New Translation. By JAMES G. MURPHY, LL. D., T. C. D., Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. With a Preface by J. P. Thompson, D. D., and an Introduction by Alvah Hovey, D. D. Boston: Estes and Lauriat. 1873. Octavo, pp. 519.

A well-written, judicious and scholarly commentary. Its republication now is specially welcome, for never has the book of Genesis been so generally studied in this country as at present.

The Apocalypse Translated and Expounded. By JAMES GLASGOW, D. D., Irish General Assembly's Professor of Oriental Languages. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company. 1872. Octavo, pp. 611.

The expositor adopts that view of the Apocalyse, which is held probably by the greater number of modern Protestant writers, that it is a continuous prophetical history. In "the times and seasons" a day denotes a year, the first resurrection is spiritual, and the Revelation ends with the age. Those who believe in the chronological, continuative fulfilment of the apocalyptic prophecies, will find here a clear though diffuse exposition of their views, but there is nothing new in the work that is of any importance, and to the scholar it will be of no use.

The Westminster Review, January, 1873:-1. Sophokles; 2. Parliamentary Eloquence; 3. The Decline of the Old French Monarchy; 4. Religion as a Subject of National Education; 5. The Republicans of the Commonwealth; 6. The Christian Evidence Society; 7. The Gladstone Administration. Contemporary Literature.

The British Quarterly Review:-1. The Bampton Lecture on Dissent; 2. Frederick Denison Maurice; 3. The Ironclad Reconstruction of the Navy; 4. The Emperor Alexander and the Policy of Russia; 5. G. H. Augustus Von Ewald; 6. A Contribution towards a Theory of Poetry; 7. Local Taxation. Contemporary Literature.

The Edinburgh Review:-1. The Recovery of Jerusalem; 2. Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin; 3. History of Ancient Manuscript; 4. The Works of Thackeray; 5. Froude's English in Ireland; 6. The English Salmon Fisheries; 7. English State Papers, 1639-41; 8. The Church and Dissent; 9. Administration of Beraz; 10. Middlemarch; 11. The Geneva Arbitration.

London Quarterly Review:-1. Unpublished Letters of the Princess Charlotte; 2. Laws and Customs of Sport; 3. The Two Fredericks; 4. State of the British Navy; 5. Madame De Sèvignè; 6. Exhaustion of the Soil of Great Britain; 7. Froude's English in Ireland; 8. The Sonnet 9. History of British Commerce; 10. Chaucer and Shakespeare; 11. The Ministry and University Education in Ireland.

THE BAPTIST QUARTERLY.

SAINT AMBROSE AND HIS TIME.

IT

Sancti Ambrosii Mediolanensis Episcopi Opera, ad manuscriptos codices Vaticanos, Gallicanos, Belgicos, etc., nec non ad editiones veteres emendata, studio et labore monachorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, è Congregatione S. Mauri, Tomus Primus. Parisiis: ' MDCLXXXVI. Tomus Secundus, MDCXC.

is the history hanging over the Italian cities which gives many of them their peculiar attraction to the traveller. They are sought for the sake of what has been, and imagination re-creates in them the Past which may have left few tangible relics, but which, nevertheless, overshadows all present glory. They are filled with a population of shadows and memories, of great figures and stately names, of emperors and prelates, of writers and warriors, emerging from the dim history in which they have been living, and bringing with them something of the life of the ancient time. In Ravenna, the Roman Cæsar, the Gothic King, the Greek Exarch, kept their state; there begun, in the gift of Pepin and Charlemagne, the power of the Pope as a temporal prince, which has expired under our own eyes; and there is the mausoleum of the daughter of the great Theodosius, and the tomb of Dante, sleeping far from his ungrateful Florence. The shrunk and desolate Ferrara once had the most splendid court in Europe; there is the house of Ariosto, and the prison of Tasso; it was the retreat of Calvin, and the birth-place of Olympia Morata. Wandering into Milan, in the end of the last summer, drawn and enchanted by its great cathedral, I found rising before (257)

VOL. VII.-No. 3.

R

me constantly the stately figure of her great bishop and saint, whose presence, memory and name are still greater than anything in her history. It suggested a slight study of Ambrose and his time.

He was the great ecclesiastic of his age. Chrysostom surpassed him as an orator. Jerome had more learning. Augustine was the greater theologian. Athanasius was a profounder dogmatist, and stood as courageously for his episcopal right, against imperial aggression. But in Ambrose sacerdotal authority first asserted itself with the spirit of Hildebrand, and as Archbishop of Milan he assumed a power which the Bishop of Rome had not yet dared to exercise. He asserted it under feeble emperors, but he maintained it against the mightiest. It was moral ascendancy as much as priestly prerogative. It was the claim for the church of moral dominion, of spiritual supremacy, by one who was a Roman before he was a Christian, and who brought over into the new world which was rising out of the wreck of religion and empire, something of the old Roman virtue-the stern, conscientious, imperious spirit of the undegraded, unconquered mistress of the world.

It was that greatest period in human history, when Rome, when Europe, was changing its religion. The capital, conquering, imperial civilization of the world was passing from Paganism to Christianity. The causes of that wonderful change, of that great religious revolution, have been much discussed. They lie primarily in the religion itself, in moral, vital forces strong enough for conquest. Nothing explains the triumph of Christianity but itself. Paganism was worn out, and ready to die. In the end of the fourth century, and during the episcopate of Ambrose, it received its coup de grace. In the beginning of the century Constantine had gathered the powers of the empire into his single hand, and elevated Christianity to the throne. At the end of it Theodosius had abolished, by law, the old religion, which had been identified with the great periods, the mighty growth of Rome, which was dying with her decay, and only waited the coming of Alaric to be buried in the ruins of the empire itself.

It was also the period of the great conflict in the bosom of the church between the doctrines of Arius and Athanasius, which was to terminate in its consolidation under one rigorous and unbending creed. For a time Arianism maintained itself with vigor, though condemned by the great Council at Nicæa, and bishops and emperors were its defenders. The end of the fourth century saw its suppression by the same hand which was put to the abolition of Paganism. Theodosius had determined on the unity as well as the triumph of Christianity. His edicts went forth against heretics as well as

Pagans. His first act, in conjunction with Gratian and Valentinian II, the two other emperors, was to enjoin the universal acceptance of the orthodox catholic faith. "Thus," says Dean Milman, "the religion of the whole Roman world was eracted by two feeble boys and a rude Spanish soldier."'

1

It was in the midst of this conflict, and apparently in consequence of it, that Ambrose at a leap, or rather-for it was against his own resistance-by a sudden explosion of popular feeling, rose at once into the archbishopric. He was a young man, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. His father had held the post of pretorian prefect in Gaul, where the son was born. He had been educated at Rome for the public service, and in the course of civil promotion had been appointed prefect of the Aemilian and Ligurian Provinces in Northern Italy. His appointment came from the emperor, but he received his instructions from Probus, the prefect of Italy, who, to guard him against the severity common with the Roman magistrates, charged him to rule his province "not as a judge, but as a bishop." The words of his patron and friend, who was a Christian, the event turned into a sort of unintended prophecy. The prestige of Rome, as the capital of the empire, had long before declined, as conquest was extended, and as Illyrians or Spaniards, who perhaps had never seen the metropolis, took the purple. Diocletian and Maximian established their residence in the provinces. Milan became the virtual capital of the Western empire, and Gibbon says, "assumed the splendor of an imperial city." The Bishop of Milan was metropolitan of a considerable portion of the present Lombardy. For twenty years Auxentius, an Arian, had held the primacy against many efforts to displace him. At his death, the bishops made a vain attempt to induce the Emperor Valentinian to name a successor. The choice was remitted to them, and also to the people of Milan, who at that time seem to have had a voice in the election. The contest between the Arian and Athanasian parties was violent, and threatened to break out in sedition. This called for the interposition of Ambrose, as the civil governor of the province, who proceeded to the Basilica, that by his presence and words he might allay the tumult. His address had an unanticipated result. A child, as Paulinus3 tells the

Decline and Fall, Chap. XIII, 4.

1 History of Christianity, III, 101. Paulinus was a deacon and notary under Ambrose, and wrote a brief and superficial memoir of his life, addressed to St. Augustine. It has the merit of contemporary knowledge. It is printed by Gersdorf. Bibliotheca Patrum, VIII. The Benedictine editors have also inserted it in an Appendix, together with a memoir of their own. Opera, II. 2-63. Tillemont gives ninety-five chapters to the Archbishop, and has been the chief source of information for the preparation of this article. Memoires Ecclesiastiques, X. 78-306.

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