German Reviews.

STUDIEN UND KRITIKEN. (Essays and Reviews.) 1870. First Number. Essays: 1. BEYSCHLAG, The "Vision-Theory," and its most Recent Defense. 2. KOSTLIN, Religion and Morality in their Relation to Each Other. Thoughts and Remarks: 1. CROPP, The Pericope on the Cananean Woman. 2. LAURENT, The Results of Tischendorf's Imitation of the Alexandrine Manuscript of Clement of Rome. 3. FRIEDLANDER, A Picture of the Saviour from Constantinople. Reviews: 1. MUCKE'S "Dogmatik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" reviewed by BECK. 2. KLOSTERMANN'S Untersuchungen zur alttestament. Theologie, reviewed by Riehm.

The reality of the resurrection of Christ has recently been, in Germany, the subject of an animated controversy. The rationalistic theologians, who deny the existence, and even the possibility, of miracles, have tried three different methods to explain away the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Either after the precedent of Reimarus, the author of the Wolfenbuttel Fragments, the whole narrative was declared to be a fraud, by means of a secret removal of the corpse by the disciples; or the death of Jesus was maintained to have been merely apparent, and his reappearance therefore an entirely natural event; or the reappearance of the risen Christ was finally explained as a vision, produced by the nervous excitement of the disciples. The first two of these explanations have found no keener opponent than Dr. Strauss, and have since had hardly any champion of note, and the present rationalists mostly adhere to the last-named method, the "vision theory." The fullest defense which has yet been presented of it is to be found in a work by Dr. Carl Holsten, entitled Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus, (Rostock, 1868.) The author had, as long as seven years ago, defended this theory in an article of the "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie," (1861,) which was classed by the orthodox theologians among the best productions of the Tübingen school. He was, in particular, answered by Prof. Beyschlag, who undertook to prove that the Apostles knew very well how to distinguish between visionary and real appearances, and that therefore there was no reason to assume a self-delusion. Dr. Holsten, in the above-named work, defends his views against the replies, and develops them further. Prof. Beyschlag was thereby induced to go again over the whole ground, and after fully stating the theory of Dr. Holsten, to undertake anew an elaborate defense of the reality of the resurrection of Christ. The articles are to be continued and completed in the next number.

ART. XI.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

The Epistle of Paul to the Romans. By J. P. LANGE, D.D., and Rev. F. R. FAY. Translated from the German by J. F. HURST, D.D. With additions by P. SCHAFF, D.D., and Rev. M. B. RIDDLE. 8vo., pp. 455. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

IN the Book of Romans, as in Genesis, Dr. Lange comes forth himself, and Dr. Schaff seasonably assures us that both Dr. Hurst, the translator, and himself, the reviser, have taken special care to make Lange always speak intelligible sense. In this effort their success has been scarce complete. Were we to quote any paragraph from Dr. Hodge, it would at once reveal its own clear meaning. But there are plenty of passages of which we freely confess that, though we have performed a considerable amount of reading upon the subject they treat, we doubt what they mean, and which, if quoted, would be scarcely intelligible to our readers. Lange has succeeded well in the Introduction, which is comprehensive and erudite. We know nothing of the kind that surpasses it. The analysis of the book is complex and prolix. An analysis or scheme of a work fails of its object if it is not brief and lucid. We would as readily read the Epistle itself as Lange's summary of it. The textual criticisms are the most valuable parts of the volume. The Homiletical scrip-scraps are entirely out of place in the book. The Exegetical is generally valuable.

As to its theology, which, in a commentary on Romans, is of prime importance, it is exclusively and entirely Calvinistic. Arminian Dr. Hurst is allowed to do the machine work of translation and gathering the homiletical scraps; but he is safely put under keepers, and in the commentary itself no Arminian is allowed to say a word. To the eye of a well-read, clear-minded Arminian the imbecile and self-contradictory attempts to delineate the boundaries between the divine and human in the divine government appear worthy of compassion. Only one thing can be said in their favor; they acknowledge their own failure. But even here they make a sad mistake in not perceiving that the difficulty lies not in the thing, but in themselves, as stultified by a system. They admit that Calvinism is a contradiction, and yet claim that, contradictory or not, it is to be believed. But if Calvinism claims to be exempt from the law of non-contradiction, so may Arminianism or any other ism, and thus all reasoning is at an end. A contradiction asserts the prior of two propositions to be

false; and Calvinism, by contradicting itself, asserts itself to be false.

Dr. Schaff's self-contradictions in his share of the commentary are of the very frankest and most transparent nature. Thus he tells us, p. 329: "Those expositors who would limit the sovereignty of the Divine will by human freedom, and deduce salvation more or less from the creature, must do great violence to the text if they make it accord with their systems." But, 1. There are no commentators who limit Divine sovereignty by human freedom. It is not Divine sovereignty which Arminian divines (for these it is whom Dr. Schaff is here inexcusably misrepresenting) hold to be limited by human freedom, but the exercise of that sovereignty. We believe that God is absolute sovereign both over nature and free agents; but we believe that he does most freely limit the exercise of that sovereignty by the laws which he has established both of nature and of agency. This is all our system claims, and this much Dr. Schaff and Calvinism are obliged to acknowl2. The absolute exclusion of all deduction of edge. 66 salvation," more or less, "from the creature," is the grossest and stupidest fatalism. It is contradicted by all Scripture, and contradicted, on the very next page, by Dr. S. himself, where he exhorts "each to make his own election sure, and to work out his own salvation." If a creature should do as here exhorted, work out his own salvation, would not his salvation be in some degree "more or less deduced from the creature?"

Again, on page 313, Dr. Schaff says, "He only is unrighteous who is under obligations which he does not fulfill; but God is under no obligations to His creature, hence can do with him what he will, (ver. 14-29.) God's will is the absolute and eternal norm of righteousness, and all that he does is necessarily right. There is no norm of righteousness above him to which he is subject, else were God not God."

At this piece of absolutism we stand aghast. A creator, forsooth, is under no more obligation " to pursue one course than another with his creatures! One course is as right as another, and any other course is as right as this one; so the distinction of right or wrong as to the Divine character and conduct is obliterated, and the moral attributes of God are effaced at one fell swoop. Of course, the man who holds this absurd and abominable doctrine need not be troubled at the doctrine that God decrees the sin and damns the sinner. The imagination of a devil cannot conceive a course which God might not just as rightfully pursue as any other

course. Why, then, does Dr. Schaff attempt to show, as he elaborately does, that of all possible courses God takes just the one that is the intrinsically right one? If righteousness consists in the fulfillment of obligation, and God can be under no obligation, then God can possess no righteousness. And if God, as being under no obligation to his creature, can so "do with him as he will"-that any way of willing would be right and equally rightthen, surely, there can be no one particular "norm of eternal right." If a creator, finite or infinite, is not bound or obligated to do right and not wrong to his creature, why need Dr. Schaff take pains even to predicate right of God's will at all? But it is an appalling doctrine that a creator is under no obligation of specific right toward his creature. If a father owes duties to the child he begets, much more a creator to the being he originates. To say that because he created him he could do no injustice to him, that the creature has no claim of justice or goodness from him, is a truly accursed absurdity; absurdity, because contradictory to our intuitive reason; accursed, because absolutely abhorrent to our moral sense. The talk about such an obligation being "above him," and so undeifying God, is the shallowest of ad captandum. It is like an Eastern despot's saying, in an old play, that he is "above slavery to his promise," as if absolution from moral obligation was any elevation, or subjection to it any degradation to any being. Did Abraham think it any degradation in the Judge of all the earth to be obligated to do not wrong but right? Did the Apostle think it any degradation that God cannot lie? Is not God, as the self-existent Being, under necessity to exist; and is not that necessity just as truly "above him" as moral obligation? Does the necessity under which God is to be omniscient and omnipotent, undeify him? Surely he does not cease to be God because he must be God. Neither does he cease to be God because he is under moral obligation to be a righteous God. Nay, the necessity of that very "eternal norm of right," which Dr. Schaff holds, is as truly upon God and " over him," and so undeifies God as truly as the view he opposes. And if "all he does is necessarily right," is he not under a necessity of doing and being right, with a necessity "above him," and, therefore, no longer God? The being morally obligated to right no more degrades Him than the fact that "all he does is necessarily right.”

Biblically, this volume adds something to our literature; theologically, nothing.

The Dogmatic Faith: An Inquiry into the Relation subsisting between Revelation and Dogma, in Eight Lectures, preached before the University of Oxford in the year 1867, on the foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, M. A., Canon of Salisbury. By EDWARD GARBETT, M. A., Incumbent of Christ Church. 12mo., pp. 307. London, Cambridge, and Oxford: Rivington's. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

We think the title of this book would have correctly expressed its import had it been thus worded: Historic Christianity, exhibited in its Central Position, and in its Relation to the Religious Sentiment, to the Intuitions, to Philosophical Speculation, to Modern Civilization, and to Conscience. And as such it is one of the best presentations of the claims of Christianity upon our firm belief, of the present day. The Christian argument is presented, in our opinion, in its true shape, the historical argument as main and central, and all the other as valuable indeed, but subsidiary. The logic of Mr. Garbett is forcible and compact, his style fresh and vigorous, abounding in magnificent periods and brief, sententious expressions, well calculated as permanent embodiments of great principles. The work is worthy to stand by the side of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, as a fit and scarce inferior associate.

Historic Christianity is in our possession, embodied in the Holy Scriptures, and traceable, in a luminous and unmistakable succession, back to the divine Christ himself. The Church of all sections holds those Scriptures in its hand, historically authentic, and a train full and strong of her master-minds extends from Christ to the present hour, showing that while the Church has been the historic custodian of the Scriptures, the Scriptures are the charter and the master of the Church. A scheme of Christian doctrine there is, embodied in the creeds of all the great Churches, ever having been claimed to be authenticated by Scripture, of which the Nicene Creed is a fair average representative, and which is held by the Church of England, and by the forty various confessions of Christendom. This is our concrete, incisive, historic Christian faith, which undeniably did not exist in the year of Rome 747, (the birth-year of Christ,) and did exist in the year of Rome 847 in its full and graphic completeness. This faith, according to all the contemporary documents, came from the lips of the Supernatural One, whose voice was self-pronounced to be the voice of God.

Such is historical Christianity. It is definite, structural, demonstrable. With all the variety of freedoms within its area, admitting full play for idiosyncracies and live discussions, we can draw a rigorous outline around it. By the definiteness and vigor of that boundary line we can unceremoniously cut off the ancient FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXII.—9