the parties which a word from either would clear up, a word which you and I would have spoken, and ache to interpolate in the book. Assassin! interpolate that word, speak that most natural thing, and you have made all the rest impossible! But when one can take the natural word and action and then show healthy and noble results, there is a real novel. We will hope for our graphic authoress an early day when she shall see that fiction is a tedious common-place by the side of fact.

The Professor at the Breakfast-Table: with the Story of Iris. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1860. Cincinnati: G. S. Blanchard

Good wine needs no bush.

The Lectures of Lola Montes: with a full and complete Biography of her Life, etc. Philadelphia: Peterson & Co. Cincinnati: Rickey, Mallory & Co. Did Lola Montes write these lectures, or has some one written them for her? We know of nothing out of Edmund About's Tolla and Germaine more piquant, more subtle, more instinct with life. The Lectures on Beautiful Women and the Comic Aspect of Love are worthy of any pen, and could not have been written by a bad-hearted person.

Christian Believing and Living: Sermons by F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., Preacher to the University, etc. Boston Crosby, Nichols & Co. Cincinnati: G. S.

Blanchard.

Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, in twenty-five Sermons. By HENRY W. BELLOWS. New York: Appleton & Co. Cincinnati : Rickey, Mallory & Co. The Simplicity of Christ's Teachings set forth in Sermons. By CHARLES T. BROOKS, Pastor of the Unitarian Church in Newport, R. I.

One need only read these three volumes to appreciate the difficulties which would beset any, even the most experienced voyager who shall start forth to discover the Polar Sea of Liberal Christianity. One can fancy how his adventurous heart would sink within him as he found here a bark frozen in Trinitarian channels, and a little further on a braver one stranded on breakers of illdisguised Skepticism. One can fancy, too, how such a one would be cheered by finding on some shore, not at the goal, but on the way, a true spirit's-home, where the Simplicity of Christ had spread honest and wholesome fare, and kindled genial and reviving fires. We believe in this great Unitarian movement. We know that the masses feel it as yet to be cold and perilous, but we know that beyond the fields of Ice the warm Sea is beating and fruits and flowers growing. Shall we lament over the first two works named in this notice? Or shall we say to young mariner, See what Scylla has done and what Charybdis has done, and whet your eye-beam!

The author of the third of these works, so well known to the lovers of good poetry, whether uttered by the daily beauty of a life or a tongue tuned to lyric song, did not mean to criticise the other two; but he has done so all the more terribly because unconsciously. They have abandoned the simplicity which is in Christ. Mr. Huntington's work shows a fearful lack of moral earnestness, or of any spiritual necessities drawing him to that threadbare costume with its Alexandrian and Bostonian patches. Dr. Bellows' work is the result of a common sense and good-hearted man's effort to be clerical and mystic. Reading it we seem to be listening to the affectations of some French musician, who, having taken a true theme, forgets it in the evolutions of himself, until that over which Beethoven wept in silence and secresy, is exposed to the bravos and noisy uproar of a saloon. Mr. Brooks has done for Unitarianism a Paul's service in writing on its gates the warning of 2 Cor. xi. 3.

WHICH, then, is the historical Christ, that of Matthew, or that of John? In other words, which is the historical Gospel, the first, or the fourth ?- a question this which may be decided on purely scientific grounds. All must assent to the reasonableness of the following proposition: When two biographical narratives of the same person lie before us, historical probability is overwhelmingly on the side of that one which least betrays a speculative interest, that looks beyond the legitimate object of history, and may therefore bias historical representation. And the presumption is very strong that a work which does betray such an interest can not be historical.

Now, the fourth Gospel opens with the formal announcement of a philosophical doctrine. It proposes a Theme: that theme is the Logos, its nature and its manifestation. And this subject, as we have seen, is never lost sight of in a single chapter, but is pursued from the beginning to the end; every fact inconsistent with the ruling thought that Christ is the Logos being carefully omitted, and other matter calculated to illustrate this idea being as carefully inserted. Aiming to exhibit Christ as an angelic being, the writer says nothing of his mortal birth, of his baptism, temptation, physical suffering, intellectual limitation or spiritual grief, -points that are prominent in the more natural and simple story of Matthew; and he throughout ascribes attributes to Jesus of a physical and metaphysical kind which Matthew, it is plain, never imagined. There is a general, antecedent and weighty reason for

questioning the historical character of the Gospel. The book can not be regarded as historical that is written under the guidance of a theory, and deliberately assumes a dogmatical position.

This point demands further illustration. The more closely we examine the Gospel of John, the more evident it becomes that the author, in accordance with his view of the nature and mission of Jesus, not only omits and inserts at pleasure, choosing the materials best suited to his purpose, but takes the liberty of working over his materials, thus compelling facts to acquiesce in theories— a proceeding wholly inadmissible in biography. Take, for example, the miracle at Bethesda. The historical material is borrowed, undoubtedly, from Matthew ix. 2-8, and Mark ii. 3–12; but in John v. the scene is painted in much more vivid colors, the personages are introduced with far more circumstance, and, more than all that, new points are added which more completely adapt the incident to the writer's aim. The sick man, instead of being "one sick of the palsy, lying on a bed," is an "impotent who had an infirmity thirty-eight years;" instead of being a man who is laboriously brought to Christ for cure, he is one of "a great multitude of impotent folk, blind, halt, withered," who has no hope of being delivered from his suffering. The cure, moreover, according to John, is wrought on the Sabbath, and the scene of it is laid at the miraculous pool of Bethesda. These alterations in the original tradition are not made for the sake merely of producing an effect each had its dogmatic significance. Immediately after the healing, Jesus, in answer to the Jews, asserts two propositions touching himself: that he does what his Father does, and that all quickening power is dispensed at his own free will. Can we fail to see that these thoughts have determined the shape of the narrative? Is it not in illustration of the text, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," that the scene of the cure is laid in a spot noted for miraculous influences, which an angel of the Lord" frequented, and where all possible diseases were healed by a supernatural agitation of the water? By working a miracle at this place, Christ puts himself on a line with the continuous working of God, and thus declares in fact what he afterwards declares in word, that he does what his Father does. Again, it is in proof of the Son's prerogative to "raise up whom he will," that Jesus chooses this man arbitrarily from a multitude of invalids, leaving the rest to their fate. Thus the miracle, which in Matthew and

Mark was but a common wonder, such as an Old Testament prophet might have done, is a symbolical act, exhibiting the divine power and the absolute authority of Christ. The literal fact is made subservient to the spiritual idea.

The story of the resurrection of Lazarus offers another and a better instance of this writer's free use of historical materials. It is strange that this very artificial narrative should have so high a reputation for simplicity and naturalness-strange that there should be those who appeal to its naïveté as sufficient evidence of its authenticity. In fact, the Gospels contain no more suspicious narrative than this. The silence of the synoptics alone is a grave objection to its truth. It would seem to be impossible that Matthew, Mark and Luke should have been ignorant of so stupendous and conspicuous a miracle. It is altogether impossible that, knowing of it, they should have passed it by so utterly. They, too, we know, mention resurrections,- but none so astounding as this one. All three of the synoptics tell us that Jesus called the daughter of Jairus back to life, immediately after her decease, when the vital breath had scarcely left her, and the mourners in the deathchamber were raising their doleful cry. Luke tells us how Jesus, near the little village of Nain, raised from the bier on its way to the sepulchre the form of a young man, the only son of his mother, and she a widow ". a more interesting case than the other, inasmuch as the lad had been longer dead than the archon's daughter; and the circumstance of his being the only son of a widow adds to the pathos of the story. But the resurrection of Lazarus is far more interesting and overwhelming than either of these. The account is more circumstantial and more touching. The deceased Lazarus is the brother of two sisters, in whose little household Jesus was a frequent and beloved guest,—and the dear friend of Jesus himself. Nothing that could move the feelings is wanting. The disconsolate Martha, Mary dissolved in tears, the little family circle broken up, the very Jews weeping, Christ shedding tears of compassion-all combine to make the scene impressive, pathetic and memorable. Then, moreover, the miracle is wrought, not in a remote Galilean town like Capernaum, or an obscure hamlet like Nain, but in the very precincts of Jerusalem, in the face of many witnesses who were enemies of Jesus; some of whom believed on him, while others reported the fact to the Pharisees. The risen Lazarus goes abroad at Passover time, when the city

was full of strangers. We hear of him as supping with his sisters and Jesus, some of his disciples, if not all, being of the company. The Jews throng to Bethany to see the man who had come up from the grave. The chief priests form a new conspiracy against his life. All these circumstances distinguish the miracle above any other recorded by either of the Evangelists.

Consider, too, of what moment this act was in the history of Jesus himself. It was the turning point of his career: it marked the crisis of his destiny, whose catastrophe follows immediately upon it with rapid movement. In consequence of this miracle the populace resorts in crowds to Bethany; there is great curiosity and confusion, immense enthusiasm is excited, and Jesus is borne triumphantly into Jerusalem. In consequence of this miracle the chief priests and Pharisees hold counsel, and Caiaphas recommends that Jesus be seized and put to death. Command is given to apprehend him wherever he might be. Lazarus is also doomed. In fact, the fate of Christ is sealed by this act. Nothing stands between it and the arrest save the speeches contained in chapters xii., xiii., xiv., xv., xvi. and xvii., which neither hasten nor retard the conclusion of the drama. Yet of all this the other biographers are silent. They know of no such miracle. They know of no such occasion for the excitement of the populace or the alarm of the chief priests. They ascribe the triumphal entrance of Christ into Jerusalem to the necessity of fulfilling an ancient prophecy. According to them, the tumult, the suspicion, the plots and persecutions, the arrest and crucifixion, are all occasioned by the mere presence of Christ in the metropolis, which he had never visited before, having confined his ministry to the country districts. The other Evangelists, then, had never heard of the resurrection of Lazarus. And if they had never heard of it, we may fairly conclude that no such event took place.

The account of the miracle at Cana is symbolical. The author proposes to describe the first manifestation of Christ's glory, by which he revealed himself to his disciples, gained their belief, and bound them to his person. For the scene of this display he chooses a small town in Galilee, and imagines a festive scene in a private family circle. Jesus, who in Matthew calls himself a 'bridegroom," assumes at a wedding the bridegroom's duty of supplying his guests with the best, and shows the fulness of his grace (i. 14-17) by pouring out streams of costly and miraculous wine.