Reviews; Dr. Williams was one of the writers, contributing an article on Bunsen's 'Biblical Researches,' for which he was prosecuted in the Court of Arches, and sentenced to a year's suspension. The Privy Council, however, reversed the decision, and Dr. Williams continued his pastoral labours and studies until his death in 1870. He died at a vicarage he held near Salisbury, but his friends in Wales sent flowers from the land of his birth to be laid on his coffin. The works of Dr. Williams are numerous. The best is his Hinduism and Christianity Compared,' 1856; a learned and able treatise. He was engaged in his latter years on a more elaborate work, part of which was published in 1866 under the title of The Prophets of Israel and Judah during the Assyrian Empire.' A second volume was published after his death, entitled The Hebrew Prophets, translated afresh from the Original,' 1872. He also wrote various essays on the Welsh Church, Welsh Bards, and Anglo-Saxon Antiquities. He was a various as well as a profound scholar, but chiefly excelled in Hebrew and in his ancient native tongue, the Cymric or Welsh. The 'Life and Letters of Dr. Williams' were published by his widow, two volumes, 1874; and Mrs. Williams claims for her husband having done good service by advocating an open Bible and free reverential criticism, and by maintaining these to be consistent with the standards of the English Church. He helped much to vindicate for the Anglican Establishment the wide boundary which he, Dean Stanley, and others considered to be her lawful inheritance.

'Dean Milman,' he says, once wrote to me, that what the world wants is a keener perception of the poetical character of parts, especially the earlier parts of the Bible. "This work," he added, "will be done slowly, but, in my opinion, surely." In other words, what the world seems to me to want, is a perception that the religion with which the Bible, as a whole, impresses us, is a true religion; but that in its associations, accidents, and personal shortcomings, it has had no supernatural exemption from those incidents of human nature which we find in the transmission of our moral sentiments in general, strengthened as these are by historical examples, but having a fresh germ in ourselves, and yet needing a constant glance heavenward, a tone of mind compounded of prayer and of resolve, in order to keep them sound, and free from all warping influences. Again, to vary the expression, the great object to be set always before our consciences is, the Father of our spirits," the Eternal Being; and it is an infinite aid to have the records of words and deeds of men who have lived in a like spiritual faith, and who can kindle us afresh.'

REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

The REV. F. W. ROBERTSON of Brighton (1816-1853) was a clergyman of the Church of England whose life was devoted to the intellectual and spiritual improvement of the working-classes, and whose writings have enjoyed a degree of popularity rarely extended to ser

mons and theological treatises. He was a native of London, son of an officer, Captain Robertson, R. A. He was educated at Edinburgh and Oxford, taking his degree of M A. at Brasenose College in 1844. Having entered the Church, he was successively curate at Winchester and Cheltenham, and incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton. At the latter he continued six years till his death. In 1848 he assisted in establishing a working-man's Institute, and his address on this occasion, which was afterwards published, attracted, as he said, 'more notice than it deserved or he had expected: it was read by Her Majesty, distributed by nobles and Quakers, sneered at by Conservatives, praised by Tories, slanged by Radicals, and swallowed, with wry faces, by Chartists!' Within six months, it was said Mr. Robertson had put himself at variance with the whole accredited theological world of Brighton on the questions of the Sabbath, the Atonement, Inspiration, and Baptism! His talents, sincerity, and saint-like character were, however, acknowledged by all parties, and his death was mourned as a public calamity. His funeral was attended by more than two thousand persons. Four volumes of Mr. Robertson's Sermons' have been published; also his 'Life and Letters,' two volumes, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. Robertson's 'Sermons' have gone through numerous large editions both in England and America.

Christian Energy.

'Let us be going. There were two ways open to Christ in which to submit to his doom. He might have waited for it: instead of which He went to meet the soldiers, He took up the cross, the cup of anguish was not forced between his lips. He took it with his own hands, and drained it quickly to the last drop. In after years the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on it. They did not wait till persecution overtook them; they braved the Sanhedrim, they fronted the world, they proclaimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of the Resurrection and the Cross. Now in this there lies a principle. Under no conceivable set of circumstances are we justified in sitting

By the poisoned springs of life,

Waiting for the morrow which shall free us from the strife.

Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief, or disappointment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that there is not something to be done, as well as something to be suffered. And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws over our life, not a leaden cloud of remorse and despondency, but a sky-not perhaps of radiant, but yet of most serene and chastened and manly hope. There is a past which is gone for ever, but there is a future which is still our own.

The Bible.

It is the universal applicability of Scripture which has made the influence of the Bible universal. This book has spell-bound the hearts of nations in a way in which no single book has ever held men before. Remember too, in order to enhance the marvellousness of this, that the nation from which it emanated was a despised people. For the last eighteen hundred years, the Jews have been proverbially a byword and a reproach. But that contempt for Israel is nothing new to the world, for before even the Roman despised them, the Assyrian and Egyptian regarded them with scorn. Yet the words which came from Israel's prophets have been the lifeblood of the world's devotions. And the teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and

the law-givers of this despised nation spoke out truths that have struck the key-note of the heart of man; and this, not because they were of Jewish, but because taey were of universal application.

This collection of books has been to the world what no other book has ever been to a nation. States have been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a compact based on it. Men hold the Bible in their hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence affecting life, death, or property; the sick man is almost afraid to die unlesa the Book be within reach of his hands; the battle-ship goes into action with one on board whose office it is to expound it; its prayers, its psalms are the language which we use when we speak to God: eighteen centuries have found no holier, no diviner language. If ever there has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart of a nation, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible. The very translation of it has fixed language and settled the idioms of speech. Germany and England speak as they speak because the Bible was translated. It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar with the history, customs, and geography of ancient Palestine than with the localities of his own country. Men who know nothing of the Grampians, of Snowdon, or of Skiddaw, are at home in Zion, the lake of Gennesareth, or among the rills of Carmel. People who know little about London, know by heart the places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet trod which were nailed to the Cross. Men who know nothing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral can yet tell you about the pattern of the holy Temple. Even this shews us the influence of the Bible. The orator holds a thousand men for half an hour breathless-a thousand men as one, listening to a single word. But the Word of God has held a thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell-bound; held them by an abiding power, even the universality of its truth; and we feel it to be no more a collection of books, but the Book.

The Smiles and Tears of Life.

The sorrows of the past stand out most vividly in our recollections, because they are the keenest of our sensations. At the end of a long existence we should probably describe it thus Few and evil have the days of the years of thy servant been. But the innumerable infinitesimals of happiness that from moment to moment made life sweet and pleasant are forgotten, and very richly has our Father mixed the materials of these with the homeliest actions and domesticities of existence. See two men meeting together in the streets, mere acquaintances. They will not be five minutes together before a smile will overspread their countenances, or a merry laugh ring off at the lowest amusement. This has God done. God created the smile and the laugh, as well as the sigh and the tear. The aspect of this life is stern, very stern. It is a very superficial account of it which slurs over its grave mystery, and refuses to hear its low deep undertone of anguish. But there is enough, from hour to hour, of bright sunny happiness, to remind us that its Creator's highest name is Love.

REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

The biographer of Mr. Robertson is himself a popular preacher and author. The REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A., incumbent of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, was sometime preacher in St. James's Chapel, York Street; and three volumes of 'Sermons' (first, second, and third series) delivered in York Street, have been published. Mr. Brooke is author also of Freedom in the Church of England,' six sermons suggested by the Voysey judgment, which were held to contain a fair statement of the views in respect to freedom of thought entertained by the liberal party in the Church of England. One volume of Mr. Brooke's Sermons, entitled Christ in Modern Life,' is now (1876) in its ninth edition. He has also published 'Theology in the English Poets, Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns;' the Life and Work of Frederick Denison Maurice,' a memorial ser.

mon; and a little manual on English Literature,' forming one of a series of primers edited by Mr. J. R. Green. The last sentence in this manual is suggestive:

Tennyson has always kept us close to the scenery, the traditions, the daily life, and the History of England; and his last drama of "Queen Mary," 1875, is written almost exactly twelve hundred years since the date of our first poem, Cadmon's Paraphrase. To think of one and then of the other, and of the great and continuous stream of literature that has flowed between them, is more than enough to make us all proud of the name of Englishmen.'

The Creation (Genesis i, 1).

It was necessary that a spiritual revelation should be given in harmony with the physical beliefs of the period; and when we demand that the revealed writings should be true to our physical knowledge in order that we should believe in inspiration, we are asking that which would have made all those for whom the Bible was originally written disbelieve at once in all it revealed to man. We ask too much: that book was written on wiser principles. It left these questions aside; it spoke in the language, and through the knowledge, of its time. It was content to reveal spiritual truth; it left men to find out scientific truth for themselves. It is inspired with regard to the first; it is not inspired with regard to the latter. It is inspired with regard to universal principles: it is not inspired with regard to details of fact. The proof that it is inspired with regard to principles is that those principles which it lays down or implies are not isolated but universal principles. They are true of national, social, political, intellectual, as well as of spiritual life, and above all, and this is the point which I especially wish to urge, they are identical with scientific principles. Let us test this in the case of this chapter.

The first principle to be inferred is that of the unity of God. One Divine Being is represented as the sole cause of the universe. Now this is the only foundation of a true religion for humanity. Starting from the Semitic peoples, it has gradually made its way over the whole of the Aryau family with the exception of the Hindus; and even among them, and wherever else the worship of many gods exists, it is gradually driving out polytheism and establishing itself as the necessary religion for humanity. The next principle in this chapter is that all noble work is gradual. God is not represented as creating everything in a moment. He spent six days at His work, and then said it was very good. Now there is no principle more universal than this --that in proportion to the nobility of anything, is it long in reaching its perfection. The summer fly is born and dies in a few days; the more highly organised animal has a long youth and a mature age. The inferior plant rises, blooms, and dies in a year; the oak trausforms the storms and sunshine of a century into the knotted fibres of its stem. The less noble powers of the human mind mature first; the more noble, such as imagination, comparison. abstract reasoning. demand the work of years. The greatest ancient nation took the longest time to develop its iron power; the securest political freedom in a nation did not advance by bounds, or by violent revolutions, but in England broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent.' The greatest modern society-the Church of Christ-grew as Christ prophesied, from a beginning as small as a grain of mustard-seed into a noble tree, and grows now more slowly than any other society has ever grown-so slowly, that persons who are not far-seeing say that it has failed. The same law is true of every individual Christian life.

The next truth to be inferred from this chapter is that the universe was prepared for the good and enjoyment of man. I cannot say that this is universal, for the stars exist for themselves, and the sun for other planets than ours; and it is a poor thing to say that the life of animals and plants is not for their own enjoyment as well as ours! but so far as they regard us, it is a universal truth, and the Bible was written for our learning. Therefore, in this chapter. the sun and stars are spoken of only in their relation to us, and man is set as master over all creation.

144

[TO 1876,

The next principle is the interdependence of rest and work. The Sabbath is the outward expression of God's recognition of this as a truth for man. It was com manded because it was necessary. The Sabbath was made for man,' said Christ. And the same principle ought to be extended over our whole existence. Christ, the type of the highest human life, was not all work. Come ye into the wilderness, and rest awhile. Toil and refreshment were woven together. But as in The life of this chapter there were six days of work to one of rest, so in His life, as it ought to be in ours, labour was the rule, relaxation the exception.' Labour always preceded rest; rest was only purchased by toil.

Lastly, there is one specially spiritual principle which glorifies this chapter, and the import of which is universal, God made man in His own image.' It is the divinest revelation in the Old Testament. In it is contained the reason of all that has ever been great in human nature or in human history. In it are contained all the sorrows of the race as it looks back to its innocence, and all the hope of the race as it aspires from the depths of its fall to the height of the imperial palace whence it came. In it is contained all the joy of the race as it sees in Christ this great first principle revealed again. In it are contained all the history of the human heart, all the history of the human mind, all the history of the human conscience, all the history of the human spirit. It is the foundation-stone of all written and unwritten poetry, of all metaphysics, of all ethics, of all religion.

These are the universal principles which are to be found in this chapter. And this, we are told. is not inspiration; this is not the work of a higher spirit than the spirit of defective and one-sided inan. This illuminating constellation of all-embrac ing truths; stars which burn, eternal and unwavering, the guides and consolers of men in the heaven which arches over our spiritual life; their light for ever quiet with the conscious repose of truth, their seat the bosom of God, their voice the harmony of the world'-to which, obedience being given, nations are great, souls are free, and the race marches with triumphant music to its perfect destiny-this is not inspiration! Brethren, it is inspiration.

BISHOP WILBERFORCE.

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D.D., Bishop of Winchester (1805–1872), was the third son of the Christian philanthropist, William Wilberforce. After his education at Oriel College, Oxford, Mr. Wilberforce was ordained curate of Checkendon, Oxfordshire, and rose to be Bishop of Oxford in 1845. In 1869 he was translated to the see of Winchester. As a scholar, a prelate, and debater in the House of Lords, of gracious manner and winning address, Bishop Wilberforce was highly esteemed, and his accidental death by a fall from his horse was deeply lamented. He published several volumes of 'Sermons and Charges,' Agathos and other Sunday Stories,' 'History of the Episcopal Church in America,' 'Hebrew Heroes,' &c. Two volumes of Essays' contributed by the bishop to the Quarterly Review' were published in 1874.

The Reformation of the Church of England.

It bears the mark and impress of the intellectual or spiritual peculiarities of no single man. Herein at once it is marked off from the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Zwinglian, and other smaller bodies. Ou each one of them lay, as the shadow on the sleeping water, the unbroken image of some master mind or imperial soul. The mind of that founder of the new faith, his mode of thought and argument, his religious principles, and his great defects, were reproduced in the body which he had formed, and which by a natural instinct appropriated and banded on his name. might have been with us too, had there been amongst the English Reformers such a leader. If Wycliffe-the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figAnd so it ure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history-if Wycliffe had jived a hundred and thirty years later than he did, his commanding intellect aud