Marlborough receives hard measure, as he deserves. Mr. Thackeray's estimate of his character is given in a powerfully written passage, exhibiting, in the strongest relief, the strange contrasts of a nature whose memory is associated with so much obloquy and so much renown. The secrets of poor Steele's domestic life are opened to us, and we behold him tippling and henpecked. It is touching to see him filled with such reverence for Addison, without a particle of respect for himself.

This novel, true to the character of Esmond, is serious throughout-presenting scarcely a vestige of that comic element which sparkles at intervals in the other productions of the author. The dénouement is unpleasing. Esmond is the worst in plot and best in expression of all Mr. Thackeray's writings. Female character is even less charitably treated than in former fictions. Mr. Thackeray's portraits are like daguerreotypes, which never represent the faces of men in their most favourable aspect, but are almost invariably unjust to women, owing to the undue strength of shadow. In spite of these faults, the book will win and will retain the attention of the thoughtful by its instructive exhibitions of the pathology of the heart, by many a grave lesson eloquently uttered, -will endear itself to every reader of taste by an indescribable charm, and will probably survive in our literature almost every similar work of its time.

Baumgarten's 'Acts of the Apostles,' &c. German Theology. 'WHAT are the bells ringing for?' asked a man one day of an Irishman he met. Quoth the Hibernian, Faith, and it's only a singing in me ears that I'm troubled with.' Now let the reader gravely mark wherein Pat's mistake consisted. Was it not in this, that he inferred the objective from the subjective? Impressions which had their reality only in his own consciousness, he transferred to the consciousness of others. His individual auditory experience was assumed as the normal and universal one. A similar misconception has prevailed but too extensively, both in the philo

sophy and the theology of Germany. The sage pronounces concerning the harmonies of the universe as though they were but the echoes of the sounds which chime in the belfry of his solitary brain. The discord of the upper and lower worlds-the perplexing interaction of the great antagonisms of existence—is to be reconciled in reality on the principle by which his own imagination sets the rivals at one again. He states their quarrel for them; he commands peace. Like mine host of the 'Garter' appeasing Parson Evans and Doctor Caius, he cries magniloquently, 'Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so:-Give me thy hand, celestial; so:-' and every Justice Shallow says, 'Follow, gentlemen, follow.'

Germany has followed' her philosophers long, to little purpose. We have been happy to observe of late some signs of a disposition to draw back and take another course. Sancho begins to doubt whether his Don Quixote will ever be able really to present him with the island so often promised. A more practical tendency has assumed the ascendant. Even philosophical theologians have learnt to recognise in this excessive subjectivity a fundamental error-to look more duly at facts, less complacently at ideas. On the subjective principle the scientific divine starts with the axiom—I, as a Christian, am myself the material of systematic theology. He evolves his theology, like his metaphysics, out of himself. Christianity becomes, accordingly, either so much mere feeling, or so much mere metaphysical and ethical process. This method has been fairly tried. Its validity has at last been called in question. It has been virtually, if not formally, abandoned by some names of no mean mark in the theological world of Germany. The fact is significant, that the same year which produced the able work before us, witnessed also the publication of a systematic theology by Hofmann, which arrives at results the very opposite of those of Schleiermacher, and is almost everywhere right where he is wrong.*

The reader of German is referred to a discriminating review of this important work in the Theol. Studien und Kritiken.

VOL. II.

Y

In Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre the Christian consciousness occupies the whole of the two octavo volumes. In Hofmann's Schriftbeweis it is done within one-and-twenty pages. All the rest is history. He holds that we can apprehend the nature of Christianity, not by scrutinizing what the individual feels, but by the study of all that God has done and does for our salvation. Accordingly, he refuses to divorce the New Testament from the Old. The Hebrew history is by him as much honoured as it has been undervalued by most of his predecessors. He is not too proud of his intellect to suffer the Almighty to go first. He is willing that the Infinite should have room to speak and to work, while man stands reverently by to hearken and to watch. He does not, like Schleiermacher, play fast and loose with the sacred record; and, while laying stress on the fact of Christ's appearance, tell us that his resurrection and ascension are open questions, and that it is a mere matter of taste whether we believe in a personal or an impersonal God. He acknowledges all the books of Scripture as the Lutheran Church receives them. He justly maintains that the work of Christ can rightly be understood only when taken in connexion with that course of divine instruction which preceded and which followed his personal ministry and sacrifice. But all these consequents and antecedents are left by Schleiermacher in obscurity as non-essentials in our Christian consciousness. Again, ever since the ascendancy of Hegel's system, with its ever-recurring Triads, the scientific theology of Germany has been labouring to establish on philosophical principles the doctrine of an immanent Trinity. The Trinity their philosophy has given them resembles the Trinity of Scripture as little as did the Trinity of Plotinus. But, notwithstanding, their systems of divinity have been ruled and arranged by this dogma. This is the case with Martensen, the case with Liebner. Hofmann has broken away from such influences, and perceives that these structures are built only upon air. He acknowledges that we know nothing whatever of a Trinity except as revealed with reference to the plan of salvation. The

prominence given by Hofmann to the historic element appears to be in some respects excessive, and is certainly inconsistent with a starting-point so nearly identical with that of Schleiermacher. It will rest with some other theologian to advance in the right direc-, tion beyond him, as he (to his high praise be it spoken) has distanced his predecessors.

Thus experience is leading German theology away from its greatest danger. The conflicting responses of the oracular Ego have awakened just suspicion. Setting out from the same subjective point of origin, one man resolves Scripture into consciousness, and another consciousness into Scripture; one man finds religion all feeling, another all fact, a third all process. The results condemn the method. Thoughtful minds begin to ask, can this elastic, this Protean Me, which assumes shapes so various, be possibly the sole and self-sufficient principle it is represented? Can it furnish at all, in itself, an adequate foundation for Christianity? May we not have been wrong in saying all this while that a man must first construct in his own mind an idea of how God ought to act in his selfmanifestation, and then go to Scripture, and receive it in as far as it seems to show that the All-wise has acted according to the scheme drawn out for him? May not our glory prove in the end to have been our blunder, our gain our loss? It is amusing to see Germany beginning to abandon an error into which many among ourselves, at this very time, fancy it so vastly philosophical to rush headlong.

The reader will now understand the position of the author of the work under notice, when we say that he is one of a school or class of interpreters among whom Hofmann may be said to occupy the post of leader. These three volumes are, in fact, an elaborate commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Dr. Baumgarten divides his material into three books-I. the Church among the Jews; II. the Church in transition from the Jews to the Heathen; III. the Church among the Heathen. The books again are subdivided into sections, as, for example, in the second-the Diffusion of the Gospel apart from the Ministry of the Apostles (embracing cap. viii, 1—4);

Philip the Deacon in Samaria (viii. 5—24); Philip baptizes the Ethiopian chamberlain (viii. 25-40); Conversion and Commission of Saul of Tarsus (ix. 1—30); &c. This plan is a good one, and such an arrangement greatly facilitates the study of the narrative as a whole. It would have been an improvement if the headings of the pages, at least on one side, had indicated the chapter and verse treated of below. As it is, the reader who may consult the work for a particular passage has to search about among the closelyprinted pages of an entire section. There should have been also an index to the Scripture passages explained. These matters of convenience are of secondary importance, no doubt; but authors, and especially German authors, should consider how much the acceptance and serviceableness of their productions may depend on their saving readers all unnecessary trouble.

It is only of late years that German criticism, which has left so little unexplored, has begun to devote due attention to the Book of the Acts. The chronology of the apostolic records generally has been scrutinized, but without especial reference to the continuity and import of this particular narrative. Neander did, indeed, bring his great powers to a large department in this field, but, with that exception, the book has met with treatment, from two opposite quarters, singularly inadequate. Those who have believed in the authenticity of its account have confessed that they found in it no plan or consecutive purpose. Those, on the other hand, who have endeavoured to evolve the unity of its design as a whole, have impugned its authenticity. The first class resemble a man who, having to show to wanderers some lordly house and grounds, calls their attention, now to a picture and now to a statue, here to a flower-bed and there to a fountain, but fails to explain the design of the arrangement within or without, and never leads them to the spot from whence, through an opening in the trees, the wood, the water, and the lawn, are seen at a view, forming that landscape of which the stately mansion is the centre. The second class undertake the office of cicerone only to depreciate what they propose to