as this, we will not stay to specify minutely a few blemishes of expression and an occasional hastiness of statement, to which a strict and fastidious criticism might possibly object. The style is clear, vigorous and lively, flowing freely and naturally from the full impulse of an ever-active intellect; deficient perhaps in the power of picturesque effect and a certain glow of imaginative colouring; and therefore better adapted to disquisition than to narrative.

On one important subject we must briefly notice the author's ideas. He regards the Hebrew prophets-if we rightly understand him-as the exponents and assertors of the great general principles of religious wisdom, flowing from the inspirations of a pure monotheism, which have their unfailing fulfilment in the uniform workings of divine providence and the human heart through all ages and among all nations-but as limited in their own view of the specific application of those principles, to the immediate circumstances of their time and country-in other words, as not foreseeing the particular events and individual personages of a distant futurity. He believes, that is to say, in the moral and spiritual, but not in the historical, completion of prophecy. The divine spirit put a great universal truth into the prophet's soul; and while it penetrated to his inner consciousness, and gave a religious hue to his whole conception of the world, his human understanding grasped it according to the extent of its capacity, and by such light as it directly yielded, applied it earnestly and faithfully to the men and things that were about him. As this view, which we hold to be just, differs much from the ordinary one, we are glad to fortify it by an extract from a living author, who combines in a very remarkable degree, freedom of thought and immense learning with great depth and tenderness of Christian feeling-the pious and orthodox Neander of Berlin. Speaking, in his life of St. Bernard, of the Abbess Hildegard, a contemporary of that Saint's, he thus notices corresponding manifestations of the

* The figure in the passage about Nathan (p. 112) is painfully harsh. The opening words of ch. vii. hardly sound to our ears like English. In p. 229, the assassination of Joash is with great probability ascribed to sacerdotal vengeance. But this is only an inference. Our author seems too broadly to assume it as a fact. In the note p. 200, the transactions between Hazael and Elisha are too summarily disposed of. We miss an ampler criticism of the sources. The English reader is disposed to ask, why the whole tale is treated as apocryphal.

prophetic spirit in different periods of the world's history, and traces them to a common source in the laws of the spiritual world. An interior feeling of the affinity of the human spirit with the Deity, and an earnest aspiration after moral and religious ends, marked all the effusions of Hildegard. She fearlessly rebuked even in the highest quarters the vices of the clergy; and while she thus drew on herself the hatred of a portion of that body, she exhorted all men to the duties of an active piety. From lamentations over the corruptions of the Church, prophecies naturally sprang forth. The idea of a continuous, everthickening conflict between good and evil, with a glorious victory at last on the side of good, consequent on the highest growth of evil-pervades the whole history of mankind. Among the Jews, under the special leadings of Providence, it acquired its most vivid influence as a national idea. From Judaism it passed into Christianity, and was by that religion diffused in its highest significance of universal application among the human race. But the idea has a deep foundation in the very essence of the human spirit. From that inner root all great prophecies have their issue. In the case of Hildegard, the sight of waxing corruption in the Church caused the expectation of the near approach of a still hotter strife between good and evil, of a purification thence arising in the Church, and of a final catastrophe in the triumph of good and the annihilation of evil. Vivid images come at length before the soul as actual sights and visions; and so prophecies arise, which may be looked upon as the announcements of a coming genius, and which therefore recur with increasing vividness, till the great day of manifestation breaks. A great truth lies at the bottom of these views. Error results solely from the application of such images in detail, from the attempt to determine them within the limits of a particular time. In the language of Platonism we might say, it is not the Nous, receptive of ideas and soaring above all the limitations of time, that errs-but the fux with whose aspect of things these higher ideas intermingle.'*The application of this general view to the oracles of the Hebrew prophets, every one who has read them with attention, and in an unbiassed spirit, will at once perceive.

* Der Heilige Bernhard, pp. 213, 14.

There are doctrines advanced in the History of the Hebrew Monarchy, and in the foregoing review of it-which will appear, we cannot but apprehend, to some excellent persons whose sympathy we value and would not lightly discardstartling and even presumptuous, wanting, according to their conception of the subject, in a due spirit of religious caution and reverence. But the true bearing of these obnoxious views cannot be fairly judged, except in connexion with the whole theory of religion of which they form a part and in that connexion they approve themselves to us as deeply religious, far more so indeed than any other views. In the popular theory, the direct working and manifestation of the Divine Spirit are limited to one particular series of human development. With us, on the contrary, all history, like all nature, is full of God; and all the highest forms of human wisdom and virtue, with that mysterious access of spiritual power which breaks at times into the affairs of men and produces such wonderful effects-are to us inexplicable, except on the supposition of some intimate communion between the human and the divine mind, and without a clear recognition of the essential affinity and mutual sympathy of all spiritual natures. These manifestations of a higher influence are mixed indeed in their actual results, from the unavoidable constitution of things, with much error and Collateral evil; but preponderant good is continually evolved out of the enduring strife. And if, in one important particular, we claim for the prophets of Israel an exemption from blindness and corruptions, which darkened the fairest forms of heathen civilisation, and joyfully own in this a provision of the Sovereign Intelligence, fraught with incalculable results of good to the latest generations of mankind,-yet in other respects we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that the growth and unfolding of the Hebrew mind, as recorded in its history and literature, was limited by the invincible conditions of our ordinary humanity, and that ferocity, intolerance and superstition have had their share of influence in the most decided, and ultimately the most beneficent, developments of a sublime Monotheism. In this wider view, if we give up on one hand, we gain on the other. We plant the interests of religion on the broad ground of universal history, and identify them with the unchanging laws of thought

and moral sentiment. We abate the exorbitant demands of the Biblical zealot, but render powerless, by the same course, the irritating shafts of the narrow-minded infidel. The whole Past is one continuous lesson-the expression under endless forms of one great fundamental idea which the prophet's insight discerns, and according to his place and function in the world's history, variously applies. Our present amount of spiritual wealth comes not from a single fountain, but has flowed down to us through divers channels. To the wise and eloquent words with which the author of the Hebrew Monarchy' concludes his work, we yield our full assent of mind and heart.

"If Greece was born to teach art and philosophy, and Rome to diffuse the processes of law and government, surely Judea has been the well-spring of religious wisdom to a world besotted by frivolous or impure fancies. To these three nations it has been given to cultivate and develope principles characteristic of themselves; to the Greeks, Beauty and Science; to the Romans, Jurisprudence and Municipal Rule; but to the Jews, the Holiness of God and his Sympathy with his chosen servants. That this was the true calling of the nation, the prophets were inwardly conscious at an early period. They discerned that Jerusalem was as a centre of bright light to a dark world; and while groaning over the monstrous fictions which imposed on the nations under the name of religion, they announced that out of Zion should go forth the Law and the word of Jehovah. When they did not see, yet they believed, that the proud and despiteful heathen should at length gladly learn of their wisdom, and rejoice to honour them. In this faith the younger Isaiah closed his magnificent strains, addressing Jerusalem :

'Behold, darkness covereth the earth,
And thick mist the peoples;

But Jehovah riseth upon thee,

And his glory shall be seen on thee:

And the Gentiles shall come to thy light,

And Kings to the brightness of thy rising.'

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 39.

D

ART. II. RECENT GERMAN POETS. FREIL IGRATH AND HERWEGH.

Gedichte von Ferdinand Freiligrath.

Ein Glaubensbekenntniss. Zeitgedichte von Ferdinand Freiligrath.

Ca Ira! Sechs Gedichte von Ferdinand Freiligrath.

Gedichte aus dem Englischen von Freiligrath.

Gedichte eines Lebendigen. George Herwegh.

To the thoughtful mind there can hardly be presented a spectacle of graver interest than the present aspect of the Prussian monarchy, where we see, on the one side, a noble and reflective people, bent upon the extension of their political rights, and on the other an absolute government, grudgingly acknowledging the popular claims, and hesitating to fulfil the solemn pledges given to the nation at the time of the great national struggle in 1813. In a country so enlightened as Prussia, and where consequently the force of public opinion must eventually prevail, we can entertain no doubt as to the ultimate issue of the conflict; meanwhile the great danger to be apprehended is, that the people, exasperated by the unmerited jealousy of their rulers, which, penetrating into the innermost recesses of society, persecutes those who are even suspected of liberal sentiments, should finally lose their patience and plunge the country into the horrors of revolution. Under these circumstances it is the duty of those to whom is entrusted the sacred privilege of influencing the popular mind, to aim at the formation of a lofty tone of national feeling,at the generation of that spirit, which, while insisting with unconquerable stedfastness upon the establishment of the right, will not suffer itself to be betrayed into the commission of the wrong;- -a spirit, which if once universal no government could resist; for rulers would cease to offer bribes to servile compliance, where none could be found base enough to accept them. With these feelings we perceive with regret the revolutionary tone which pervades many of the political poems of Ferdinand Freiligrath, a