within our reach. The introduction gives us some account of the book, and a rapid but well-drawn sketch of Bohemian history extending over about forty pages, and closing with an intimation that the millennium of the Bohemian church will arrive next year; in other words that it is a thousand years since Christianity was introduced among the Sclavonic nations. The history is divided into books, the first of which describes the journey of the imperial embassy to Constantinople. To this embassy Baron Wratislaw was attached, and he records and describes nearly all he saw. The second book contains an account of the residence of the imperial embassy at Constantinople, and most curious. and instructive the story is. The third book tells us of the arrest and imprisonment of the whole embassy in consequence of information given by a base renegade, the steward, who had turned Turk. The account of this imprisonment has all the thrilling interest of a romance, and we are amazed at the hair-breadth escapes from death of which we read. The fourth book is headed "Of our release from prison and return to our own country." The release was sudden and unlookedfor, and the return a perilous journey, which makes us feel thankful that we do not live in such troublous and perilous times. Things have greatly changed since then. The dreaded Turk who had pushed his way so far into Europe, and regarded the right of the sword as true right, is now much more quiet and docile. If his nature has not been changed, his power has been weakened, and he dare not even dream of further conquests in the west. Then he was truly terrible, and acted so capriciously and often cruelly towards all in his power, that he must have been a scourge and a plague. There have been some changes also towards the west. But no one can read this work without seeing that the elements of things remain in many cases unchanged. We are quite sure that, although this work is neither criticism or church history, all who procure it at our recommendation will thank us for noticing it, and the editor for the excellent manner in which he has done his part.

Evangelisch-reformirte Kirchenzeitung herausgegeben von Otto Thelemann und Ernst Stähelin. Erlangen: Deichert.

OUR reason for calling attention to this periodical is soon stated. An article in our last number was written by Dr. Herzog, the learned editor of that valuable work the Real-Encyklopädie. The article in question was originally printed in the Revue Chrétienne, and it related to the Greek text of Erasmus, etc. Dr. Herzog has written to thank us in his own name and in that of Dr. Delitzsch for what we have done. On our parts we have to thank them; the one for discovering and reporting upon the Codex Reuchlin and the other for his interesting article. Dr. Herzog sends us specimens of the E. R. Kirchenzeitung, containing papers by himself on communion at the Lord's Supper between the Lutherans and the Reformed (Abendmahlsgemeinschaft). He says, "I do not aspire to the honour of a translation in your Journal, but I have thought it might interest you to have in your

hands a slight indication of the confessional conflicts which we have to maintain here. The journal in which I find my article, the Reformed Ecclesiastical Gazette, is the only journal specially Reformed, which appears in Germany; all others are either Lutheran or Unionist, and scarcely like to admit theological articles decidedly Reformed. Yet this sort of theology as well as the Reformed church in general, has also a good right to exist. This is why the journal of which I have the honour to speak to you, merits some attention, and if you will speak only two words about it on the subject of my article, I shall be greatly obliged to you. This is the first time during the seven years and a half that I have been here, that I have spoken out publicly in this manner. You see by the article itself, that particular circumstances have induced me to do it. Analogous circumstances have led to my Mittheilungen aus der evangelische Kirche in Bayern in the Neue evangelische Kircheuzeitung of Berlin; 1862, numbers of April 12, 19, 26. These two little works mutually compensate one another.” We quote this extract from the honourable professor's letter, and will merely add that he has discussed the question referred to in a liberal, enlightened, Christian spirit, and with his customary candour and ability. The question is one not very generally understood among us, and in any case is one which we could not introduce to our readers without some preliminary notice. Many of the Lutherans are very decided in their resolution not to hold communion with the Reformed, but others see no objection to it. May the two parties learn the true limits and duties of charity!

Revelation and Science. By the Rev. B. W. SAVILE. London: Longmans. 1862. (Communicated.)

THE publication entitled Essays and Reviews has achieved an amount of public attention which rarely falls to the lot of a book in any age or under any circumstances. Scarcely two years have elapsed since its first appearance, yet already is the twelfth and cheaper edition announced; while the number of copies sold has reached a figure which the most popular of our sensation novelists might well envy. So far as the pockets of the heptad of divines which dwells enshrined in this highly successful work are concerned, we hope and trust that the result of its appearance has been every way satisfactory. We are the more anxious on this point because unhappily it is the only one upon which it is in our power to congratulate them. There is a strong and sad contrast between the success of their book and that of their argument. They have certainly raised the wind from every point of the compass. They have been caught in a perfect cyclone, if this be a consolation. But unfortunately for them they have not weathered the storm. This is undeniable, and they themselves do not deny it. Seldom in the annals of literature has a book sustained such a series of discomfitures. False in statement, false in argument, not in one place but everywhere, logic and information seem equally to have failed its authors. There is scarcely a page wherein they do not stand convicted

of wrong or perverted assertions, or of bad reasonings, and of blunders of one kind or other. The nature of their mistakes is just as surprising as the number of them :-the statement, for example, in a work by men of their mark, that the divines of Germany are all of one opinion in regard of the Hebrew prophets. It was easy for Dr. Mc Caul (Aids to Faith) by a few quotations to shew its utter error, and the same fact was well known before to men of far humbler attainments than Dr. Mc Caul. A very superficial acquaintance with modern German theology will suffice to shew, not only that no such account exists, but that tot homines quot sententiæ would better define the hopeless divergence in the opinions of these divines upon that question. We might largely extend a list of such mistakes as to the fact, by merely skimming over the volume and its replies without going deeper than the surface of the discussion. But the whole matter will be so familiar to the readers of this Journal, that it seems scarcely necessary.

One point, however, has arisen from the controversy which may deserve notice. It is not true that any large proportion of the educated classes in Great Britain sympathizes in the tenets advanced in the Essays and Reviews; confidently as this is asserted and implied by their authors. The proof of our position is unanswerable. The well-timed and admirably written replies of Mr. Griffin first appeared in a weekly review, then but newly begun, and designed exclusively for the educated classes. They have been the means of firmly and permanently establishing that periodical, which now ranks high among the literary and scientific authorities of the day, and has an extensive circulation. Those who are the most familiar with the difficulties of such a feat will be best able to appreciate the strength of this one proof.

We believe it to have been the Westminster Review which betrayed our essayists and reviewers into this blunder. It has been stated in nearly every issue of this periodical for the last fifteen years that rationalism in religion is the predominant mode of thought amongst educated persons in England, and we perceive from a recent number, that not only is its quarterly re-assertion persevered in, but that this very far advanced organ of the negative theology now also rejoices over the progress of infidelity among the working classes; basing its triumph mainly upon the ill-considered platform utterances in the metropolis of certain flighty clerics from the manufacturing districts of the north. To this assertion also a single fact of very recent occurrence will furnish the best reply. In a town in those districts wherein one or two of the "Essays" had been printed and circulated as penny tracts, it was proposed that Mr. Griffin's "Replies" should be similarly dealt with. The point was maturely considered by the proposer, a dissenting minister having a large congregation of working people, and by others equally familiar with their sentiments and feelings. It was unanimously decided that such a step was altogether unnecessary, so very small had been the success of that or any other movement hitherto of the Secularists, as they call themselves, in the locality.

It is also worthy to be recorded here, that in the same town only a few months ago, the public attacks of the Secularists upon Christianity were repelled by a shower of material missiles, from which they were glad to shelter themselves beneath the wings of the police.

We hail the appearance of Mr. Savile's pleasantly written work for its individual merits, and still more because it supplies one or two missing links in the chain wherewith these unfortunates are bound by their antagonists. We have often felt regret that points so vital between them, as chronology and the written remains of Nineveh and Egypt, should be slurred over in the " Replies" with mere appeals to the authoritative dicta of one or other of the few students who have devoted themselves to these uninviting and unremunerative questions. For this reason we the more warmly welcome Mr. S's. book as that of a diligent and successful student of them all. Careful readers ourselves of this book (Essays and Reviews) and its assailants in toto, we claim the privilege to speak with some authority, and we say unhesitatingly that Mr. S.'s work is as patient and scholarly a reply as they have yet received. In some respects he surpasses his fellows. He takes a wider range and broader view of the contents of this strange attack upon Christianity than they; he deals with a greater variety of points, bringing to bear upon them the stores of a varied and extended reading.

Amongst many other questions which we feel to be well and judiciously handled by Mr. Savile, we are especially grateful to him. for the introduction of a valuable catena of ancient authorities for the all-important doctrine of justification by faith alone. That such a series may not be difficult of access to the accomplished theologian is no objection whatever to its introduction here. The Essays and Reviews are evidently not addressed to such, but to crude and immature, though ardent and earnest thinkers, and we know no consideration that with them is so likely to neutralize the sneers of Wilson and Jowett at the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ, as the demonstration that it has been the unvarying belief of all who read the Bible faithfully from the very beginning.

On the question of the Mosaic cosmogony we are bound to say that Mr. Savile's reply to Goodwin yields in completeness to no one of those of his collaborateurs. He has brought to bear upon it very considerable acuteness, and a thorough mastery of the science of geology. For the sake of the memory of an excellent and deserving man, we rejoice to find that he agrees with all the rest of the defenders of the Bible against the essayists, in adopting the theory of the lamented Hugh Miller, who conjectures the six days of the Mosaic creation to have been a series of visions presented to Adam. We are not at all surprised to find that Miller's admirable idea, that the seventh creative lay, or sabbath of God, still continues, has likewise found general acceptance in these replies. It is by far the happiest thought that has yet occurred to any Christian geologist. The especial

We, however, repeat here our former statement.

value of Mr. Savile's reply consists in the honest freedom with which he deals with the chronology and the written monuments of Egypt and Nineveh, whence Bunsen and his eulogist, Archdeacon Williams, profess to derive such large support to their infidel speculations. Already favourably known to the public as a laborious and somewhat voluminous author upon chronology, Mr. Savile comes forward most opportunely to strengthen that which in our judgment was the weak point in the defences of his predecessors. He brings forward a carefully considered and matured system of Biblical chronology based upon the recent discoveries in Egypt and Nineveh. The fact that he does so is itself a valuable contribution in aid of the cause of God's truth. For, as the Rev. H. J. Rose has well shewn (Oxford Replies), never was a work with more rigid exclusiveness addressed to the young and ignorant, than Archdeacon Williams' review of Bunsen's Biblical Researches. We must here, however, make ourselves understood. We do not intend to say that the young men specially addressed are by any means ignorant of Greek, or Latin, or mathematics, much less of reading, writing, or arithmetic. It is of the matter actually under discussion that they are ignorant: knowing little of, and caring less for, the Bible, its assailants and its defenders, multitudes of young people lend a willing ear to the polished insinuations and clever inuendos of a brilliant dashing divine like the archdeacon, and rise from the perusal of his pages with the conviction that the negative theology is "the only wear" for persons of any intellectual pretence whatever, and that none but a few narrow-minded, ignorant, prejudiced bigots are opposed to it. It may be of service to such to discover that Mr. Savile, an accomplished and acute chronologer, ventures nevertheless to impugn the dicta of Bunsen, Williams, and the rest of them. On this account alone we are glad of the publication of his well-considered and astute essay to reconcile the facts on the monuments of Egypt and Nineveh with the history and the chronology of the Bible. The very attempt is under the circumstances meritorious, and calculated to be useful; and for this alone Mr. Savile deserves the thanks of every believer in the Bible.

We ourselves it is true, dealing with the same materials, have arrived at conclusions somewhat different from those of Mr. Savile. This was of course to be expected in a subject which hitherto has been so litttle investigated, and by so few students. We feel, moreover, that this dry subject has been somewhat evaded by the other replicants to the Essays and Reviews. It is a question, nevertheless, which much needs further discussion on the pending controversy. For we happen to be aware that many negative theologians consider chronology the stronghold of their system, which no believers in the Bible dare attack. We will, therefore, give at length Mr. Savile's view of the Bible chronology, and afterwards state the reasons which compel us to differ with him.

Mr. Savile considers the duration of the present economy of man on the earth to be six thousand years from the creation. He brings traditions, Jewish and Mahommedan, in support of this hypothesis (pp.