give a short account of one of the books of the Old Testament, in the shape of an outline of its contents, and a general indication of its authorship, aim, and relation to the whole. If the author's purpose as a preacher be borne in mind, as it ought to be, these lectures deserve praise; otherwise, they are manifestly insufficient for a student. No introduction to the Book of Genesis, for instance, could, in the space of a dozen small pages, do any great service. Mr. Fraser has subjected his matter to rigorous compression, and has put more into his pages than is at first sight apparent. Ministers will find this book useful in suggesting to them a kind of pulpit teaching which may do great good.

The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is the title of a volume of sermons by an Irish Methodist Preacher well known in Ireland some years ago as a preacher and controversialist of indomitable courage, and remarkable ability. In the leisure of advancing years, Mr. Macafee has issued a collection of sermons which are no unfitting memorial of his past days, and will give those who do not know him a high estimate of his powers as a theologian and a preacher. In bulk and fibre they are in remarkable contrast with the majority of sermons now published. How many produced in these degenerate days each one of them would outweigh, we cannot precisely tell; but young sermonmakers and sermon-hunters will do well to consider how much minute exposition and collocation of Scripture, what careful trains of reasoning, what laborious investigation of great theological questions go to make the well-wrought structure of a single sermon. We commend this volume to thoughtful readers.

Mr. Thomas Cooper's Plain Pulpit Talk is a collection of discourses delivered in various parts of the country during the last fourteen years. Since he repudiates for them the name of "Sermons," we will not call them such, though the disclaimer is a little unnecessary. They are Christian addresses, founded on texts of Scripture, very interesting, very earnest, and differing only from ordinary sermons in a certain platform raciness, and a readiness of argument and illustration due to Mr. Cooper's long experience as a lecturer. They would tell, indeed they have told, on many an audience for which an average preacher would have little attraction. Mr. Cooper has been for many years a good soldier of the truth.

The last name upon our list is that of an American preacher, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of whom we find it difficult to give a fair account. In his sermons sensationalism is rampant; simile, metaphor, illustration, analogy, scorn the restraints of logic and good taste, and run positively wild. The secrets of heaven and hell are matters of the utmost familiarity, and the page is almost livid where he treats of subjects usually mentioned with sober sadness. There are passages which must have caused roars of laughter, others to make the flesh creep, others which, we doubt not, drew tears. For in spite of the thousand absurdities, and perhaps the most exaggerated style that even America has produced, there is unmistakeable power in these sermons.

Where his illustrations do not run away with the preacher, they have surprising force, and they follow in succession and variety that give the hearer no rest. And even where they are spoiled by extravagance, a certain sublimity of imagination is apparent. "As when the factory band slips at nightfall from the main wheel, all the small wheels slacken their speed, and with slower and slower motion they turn until they come to a full stop, so this great machinery of the universe, wheel within wheel, making revolutions of appalling speed, shall, by the touch of God's hand, slip the band of present law, and slacken, and stop; " and immediately he adds, "that is what will be the matter with the mountains." We will quote the opening words of a sermon on the trials of Job, from which we may take occasion, while acknowledging Mr. Talmage's remarkable powers, to express the hope that his style will not be imitated on this side of the Atlantic. "Job had it hard. What with boils, and bereavements, and bankruptcy, and a fool of a wife, he wished he was dead; and I do not blame him.”

The Book of Genesis and part of the Book of Exodus. A Revised Version, with Marginal References and an Explanatory Commentary. By Henry Alford, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury. London: Strahan and Co. 1872.

No one Englishman, perhaps, has of late years given greater impulse to the critical study of the Scriptures through the English-speaking world, than the late lamented Dean Alford. It was not simply that he wrote learnedly, affluently, and with a certain enthusiasm on Biblical subjects. Others-Bishop Wordsworth and Bishop Ellicott, for instance-have done this. But Dean Alford struck the times and the temper of the times, as no other writer of his class did. With full faith in the Divine Authority of the Bible, he threw himself unreservedly open to the lights of modern discovery and research. He poured the results of the toilsome, subtle, and often audacious criticism of modern Germany by armfuls into the willing lap of our younger divines and scholars. Remarkable neither for taste, judg. ment, or depth of feeling, he was free from all theological bitterness and clerical conceit, and he had at once that reverential practical sympathy with his subject, that earnest desire to challenge for it the interest of his generation, and that ready talent for writing in a manner neither too ponderous nor too refined, which fitted him to become what his works have made him in the realm of contemporary Biblical learning. "In February, 1870, Dean Alford undertook to write an explanatory Commentary on the Old Testament. The first volume was intended to include the Pentateuch. In the course of the year he completed the Book of Genesis, revised it for the press, and placed the first sheet in the printer's hands; he also wrote the Commentary as far as the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Exodus." On the 12th of January, 1871, he died. The work named above is this same Commentary, "published exactly as he

Literary Notices.

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left it." The editor states that "it was the Dean's intention to prefix to the Book of Genesis a general introduction, but no part of it was actually written. Many important questions, at which he only glances in the Commentary, were to be discussed in the introduction. Among them were all general matters respecting the creation of the world and man,' science and revelation,' the use of the name Elohim in the first chapter,' the distinctness of the accounts of the creation in the first two chapters,' Paradise and the Fall,'' the trees of life and knowledge,' the Sons of God,' the flood and its extent,' 'the confusion of tongues and dispersion,'-also the Anthropomorphism of the early part of Genesis,' and the hypothesis of the composition of the book by two writers, distinguished as the Elohist and the Jehovist, or even by more than two." Although lacking its introduction, the work as it stands will subtract nothing from the fame of Dean Alford as a Biblical critic and interpreter. In clearness and vigour of style it compares favourably with some of his earlier writings, and every part of it suggests the intellectual and literary growth which comes of experience and years. The revised translation is for the most part admirable, the crucial passages being treated with caution and good sense. Here and there we mark blemishes. For example, a flaming sword" in Gen. iii. 24, should be the flaming sword; and "two of his officers" in Exodus xl. 2, should be his two officers. As to the Commentary, it is luminous, well-proportioned, and rich in the fruits of the latest Biblical scholarship and criticism. A young man who uses it, however, must not take all as gospel. Here, as in his other Commentaries, Dean Alford's resolution to be honest sometimes makes him too ready to sacrifice the old to the new; and he is, not unfrequently, confident, where it would better comport with the true spirit of science to doubt and question. Still a wise man will not fail to become wiser by reading this beautiful volume. If it serve no other good purpose, it will at least add force to a lesson, which Divine Providence is just now teaching us by many voices, that truth is an eternal and immutable reality, too large for time, or philosophy, or systems, often in seeming contradiction with itself, yet ever one, and only to be really known by the little children of the kingdom of heaven. If it is sad to think that the gifted, laborious, devout, and amiable author of our "Genesis" is no longer occupied with the sacred serviceable tasks to which he gave the best years of his life, his readers may very well rejoice on his behalf, that he is now where parables, whether those of the Bible or those of Providence, are no longer parables, and where wisdom is fully and finally justified of all her household.

The Doctrine of Christ Developed by the Apostles. A Treatise on the Offices of the Redeemer and the Doxology of the Redeemed. By Edward Steane, D.D. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. 1872.

DR. STEANE does not so much discuss the doctrine of Christ as discourse upon it. Much of the charm of the book is due to the fact that the author writes to teach and not to controvert. He says that "neither the intention nor the spirit of the volume is polemical." It is an unhappy necessity of the times that in teaching truth there should be such frequent allusion to error; fortunate are they who neither by conviction nor by circumstances are driven to controversy. The author is evidently one of these, although it would not be fair to say that his disposition to be positive and didactic results from any unconcern about the spirit and tendencies of the age. Though he does not enter the arena of controversy, he makes allusions that will be understood to some modern notions, as in the following passage :"And hence, also, the essential defectiveness and unscriptural character of those views of human redemption which see in it nothing but an exhibition of Divine mercy. The mercy of God is, indeed, manifested in the redemption of man, so as it is manifested nowhere else; but, so also is the justice of God; for sin is not pardoned without a satisfaction; guilt is not cancelled without an expiation." And, again, "with such a declaration before us, it is worse than useless, it is mischievous to reason, as some do, on the abstract possibility of sin being pardoned without a sacrifice; and more pernicious still, as being utterly subversive of the revealed method of salvation, to assert that sin is actually pardoned in consequence of the general mediation of Christ, but not because His death made an atonement for it."

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We cannot follow the author closely through his work, and with a remark or two we may commend the volume to our readers. In the chapters on "The Prophetical Office of the Redeemer," the comparison between Christ and the ancient prophets does not seem to us to bring out the contrast with sufficient force. They were His 'predecessors," no doubt, but only as John the Baptist was, not in any equality of person or office. Speaking of the qualifications of the elder prophets, it is said, "In each of these respects they were equalled, and, indeed, surpassed, by Our Lord." "Indeed, surpassed." Surpassed, indeed! However convenient such phraseology may be, it does not do justice to Dr. Steane's ideas of the distance to be marked between the prophet of God and those who gave witness to Him. And scarcely sufficient prominence is given to the truth that it was the Spirit of Christ in the prophets that signified to them of His times and coming. In the chapters on the Royal Office of the Redeemer there is much to instruct and cheer, to admonish and guard, and move us to close thought and research. The relation of modern churches to the kingdom of the Redeemer is, in

particular, a question of vital moment, and one which is attracting to itself the attention of many devout minds. We trust that those, "his younger brethren in the ministry," for whom it is chiefly written, will give this book a thoughtful perusal, and, as Dr. Steane desires, "carefully consider if the doctrines here advocated are not the doctrines of the New Testament before they suffer themselves to be seduced by the fascinating but misleading light of modern theology."

The Sacrifice for Sin as revealed in the Law and the Gospel. With a Critical Examination of certain Modern Views. By J. M. Denniston, M.A., Author of "The Perishing Soul, &c." London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1872. THE author of this book is of those who interpret sin's penalty to be annihilation; or, as he prefers to call it, "destruction of being," though when the bodies and souls of the impenitent shall cease to be, is a question he does not attempt to answer. The first three chapters are intended to prove that the death which is the penalty of sin means cessation of being. The argumentation on this subject is in marked contrast with that on the Atonement, which is the principal theme. Indeed, while some parts of the book evince considerable acuteness and learning, it would not be difficult to suppose the chapters on Destruction and Death to be the work of another and feebler hand, or of the same author in his early days. He adduces little or nothing to show that his definitions of the terms employed are right; and as upon these definitions the conclusions depend, we feel as though we were being trifled with. Arbitrarily determining that "death means termination of existence, he argues thence that its opposite, "life," means existence. We deem it more logical to argue that as life is a state of being, so must death, its opposite, be a state which presupposes being as its necessary basis. Moreover, if the penalty of sin were annihilation, it would follow that when Christ died instead of the sinner, He utterly ceased to exist, a conclusion from which we presume the writer would shrink.

We must also protest strongly against the unnatural connection in which the grand doctrine of atonement is here placed with destruction. Neither annihilationism nor universalism will harmonise with the true doctrine of Christ's sacrifice for sin.

The chapters in defence of Our Lord's properly vicarious death as against the theories of Maurice, Macleod Campbell, Robertson and others, may be recommended, though a more extended treatment of Bushnell's teaching on the subject would have been an improvement. The Science of Theology; or, the Order of Universal History.

By Robert Gregory. London: James Nisbet & Co. 1872. THE former part of this title is wholly misleading, and may be at once disregarded. The latter part will, perhaps, prepare the wary