called the greatest orator the world ever saw. This he certainly is not. Ever since they were uttered, his Orations have been blamed as too ornate and too oriental. Place them beside those of Demosthenes, and you feel the difference-exquisite enjoyment in the one, profound impression in the other. The one flashes magnificent sentences with the dexterity of a consummate artist, and plunges himself, to your amazement, in corruscations of fire; the other stands in stern repose, but he pours forth in stately periods words which he seems to have created for his own use, and they come with a force which no man can withstand. A pleader, gamboling at the bar, might prefer to be a Cicero; if he were pleading for your life, he would wish to be a Demosthenes. The decision of ages has ratified the verdict, which will never be reversed.

But the adulation of his admirers has gone farther lengths. Listen to the Christian scholar Erasmus :-"I never can read his works on Old Age, or Friendship, or Duties, or his Tusculan Disputations, without fervently pressing them to my lips, without being penetrated with the profoundest veneration for a mind little short of inspired by God Himself. I feel a better man for reading Cicero; whereas reading the Schoolmen is ice to my soul. I can never take up his works without being struck with the idea that something more than human must have filled a soul from whence productions so noble came forth. Where is that soul now? This is a point on which no man can pronounce a decisive opinion. But I should be inclined to side with those who are persuaded that it is among the blessed in heaven."

But we must not suffer our admiration of genius to betray us into follies of this kind. A greater than Erasmus, a scholar more learned, a divine far more comprehensive, and a man of loftier principles, was as deeply enamoured of the great orator as himself. His worship of Cicero was, if possible, more abject. He lived before the utter decline of the Romish language; Latin was his native tongue, and he wrote it in Cicero's happiest periods. We read it with astonishment. Page after page of Augustine, the great Latin saint, is nothing else but Cicero flavoured with the Gospel. This was the fruit of the early training which Augustine had imposed upon himself. For he tells us that, from the day he heard the name of the blessed Jesus, the name of Cicero first grew pale, and his pages lost their attraction; henceforth all such learning seemed to him but loss for Jesus' sake and the Gospel's. We are not concerned, with Erasmus, to treat upon the question of the eternal state of the Roman orator. It is a painful subject; he comes far short of the standard which would acquit those who, not having the law, are a law unto themselves.

With other illustrious heathens, he has been often brought forward on platforms, and in missionary sermons, as an awful illustration of the universal truth, that the heathen are unholy, unfit to stand in judgment.

Yet Cicero had groped his way far towards the light; he had more than a glimmering of the unity of God. He had almost reasoned himself into the conclusion that there must be a particular providence; he had some confused notion of a day of judgment; he thought it possible, with Tacitus and others, that the souls of a few great men might survive the grave. Beyond these speculations, all is dark; it is a land of darkness as darkness itself. It is a strange thing that, in Christian universities, Cicero's treatise, De Naturá Deorum, should be the least read of all his works !

"BROAD-CHURCH" DIVINITY.

1. A Letter to the Laity of the Diocese of Natal. By J. W. Colenso, D.D., &c. London: Longmans. 1864. 2. Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of God: with an Appendix. By the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A., Rector of Christ Church, Marylebone. London: Macmillan. 1864. 3. A Letter to the Bishop of London. By F. D. Maurice, M.A., Incumbent of St. Peter's, Marylebone. London: Macmillan. 1864.

THERE is, just at the present moment, quite an outburst of "Broad Church" literature,-almost a flood of pamphlets, sermons, and tracts upon the two main questions, of the Authority of Holy Scripture, and the Eternity of Future Punishments. From among a dozen or more of this kind we have selected these three, in order to give some report of the progress of these great questions. And as almost every one of these publications is confined to one or the other of these two main topics, we shall arrange our notice of them under these two heads.

I. THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.-This is the real point at issue. It is of little use to contend for mere "Inspiration;" since all parties, even including Colenso, Rowland Williams, Jowett, and H. B. Wilson, consent to this phrase, but use it in different senses. The main question is, whether the Bible is, from its first page to its last, "the Word of God"? And we deeply regret to hear of some estimable and respectable divines (like Professor Selwyn, in a recent discourse) adopting language of a doubtful and hesitating kind on this

question. The Quarterly Review, as a writer in our last number remarked, threw a doubt on such apparently insignificant passages as that in 2 Tim. iv. 13,-asking, what it mattered whether the cloak was left at Troas or not? and whether we could not still reverence "the Word of God," even if it were proved that the Apostle's supposition was erroneous? But this is merely a device, a temptation of the enemy; an attempt to insert the thinnest end of the wedge. Once admit that there are passages in the Bible which are merely human, and which come down to us with no Divine guarantee, and the next step will be to assail the opening chapter of Genesis, as not intended to teach men science," and therefore not strictly accurate in its scientific statements. And when Genesis i. is thus set aside as not altogether true, who is to insist upon the truth of Genesis iii.,-of the story of the Fall, the serpent's speech, the serpent's sentence, &c.? And when we have thus shaken all assured faith in the creation, and in the fall of man, how much of Christianity shall we finally save out of the general wreck and overturn? We wonder greatly to hear of so discreet and sensible a man as Professor Selwyn venturing to encourage, from the University pulpit, such perilous doubts as these. We feel amazed that it has not occurred to him, that if the Bible is not actually "the Word of God," but only contains such a Word, it is incumbent upon him, and other "masters in Israel," to lose no time in ascertaining which are the books, or the chapters, or the verses in Scripture which may, or rather must, be taken to be the very "Word of God." And if he shall reply, that this is impossible, for that no man can tell, with any certainty, which are the Divine, and which the human portions of the Bible, then we must beg of him a tenable interpretation of Articles xx. and xxxiv. For, upon the face of the thing, it is not easy to see how anything can be clearly "contrary to God's Word," or "repugnant to the Word of God," if nobody knows, or can know, which parts of the Bible are really "God's Word," and which are not.

It often strikes us as being very astonishing, that men of education and men of science, like Professor Selwyn and Professor Owen, should at one moment explain and set forth, with wondering admiration, the amazing wisdom and surpassing power of the Great Creator, in devising and producing the marvels of the visible creation, from the solar system down to the nearly invisible animalculæ of the pool; and yet, in the next moment, ascribe to the same Divine Being such a weak and ineffectual production as a book which is half human, half Divine-a message to man, which it is impossible for man to understand-a declaration of truth, which is not all true-a foundation for faith, which is not all certain!

It seems to us that the following argument has never been answered:

"How would the case stand with respect to any other document ? We call the two main divisions of the Bible, Testaments. Take, then, a will or testament to Doctors' Commons, and apply to have it enrolled. 'You swear that this is the last will and testament of John James, deceased?' says the clerk. 'No,' you reply, 'I do not say that it is actually his will and testament; but I say it contains his will and testament.' 'I don't understand you,' the clerk will reply; 'if this is not his will, what do you bring it here for? Of what use is it? If you want me to receive anything as a public document of force and authority, you must swear that it really is so. A paper which is not the man's will, but only contains it, mixed up and confounded with other matter, is of no use at all.'

"An ambassador goes to a foreign court to conduct a difficult negotiation. He produces, on his arrival, a document which at first sight appears to give the views and demands of those whom he represents. But then he explains that it is not really what it seems to be; that there is mixed up with it foreign and often erroneous matter; so that, though the mind of his own sovereign is really there, it requires much discrimination to find it out. Will not the parties with whom he is sent to treat, deem this a singular proceeding? Will they not say, that it was very strange that those who sent the ambassador could not give him clear and positive instructions, respecting which no mistake could be easily made?

"You have a son in a far distant country, to whom you wish to convey some important counsels and instructions; and you meet with a friend who is going there, and who promises to take your packet. He gives it to the young man, who exclaims, 'Oh, this is a letter from my father, is it ?' To which the reply is, 'Not exactly so; for it was copied out, and in copying it the clerk added many things of his own; but still,' adds your friend,' the mind and will of your father is there.' 'But is it mingled with other matter, and confounded with other people's thoughts? How strange! Why could not my father have given me his own mind, in his own words, and without allowing any other person to interfere in the matter?'

"You go into a court of law to defend some important right. You produce a document, apparently of great importance. You say, 'Here is a paper which contains the substance of an Act of William and Mary, which decides the whole question.' 'Contains the substance!' the Court will exclaim;- What do you mean? If that is an Act of Parliament, hand it up. If it be not, but only something which you suppose to "contain the substance of an Act," it is of no use whatever.'

"A will, to be of any force, must actually be the will itself, and not something deemed to contain a will.

"A dispatch, to receive any attention from a foreign court, must be in the very words of the sovereign, or his minister, who sends it.

"A letter to a son, to be valued and obeyed, must really be the father's own, and not an adulterated thing.

"A statute, to be of any use in a court of law, must be the very document, in the very words which received the sanction of the legislature.

"And how can a thing which professes to be of higher value and

authority than any of these, be received with respect and obedience, if it is deemed to be not the thing itself, but an adulterated document, --not the Word of God' in verity and truth, but only something which has a Word of God contained in it ?" (pp. 72-75.) *

case.

We believe that the illustration or similitude used by the acute and judicious Ussher comes nearest to the truth of the He declared that the writers of the Bible were "God's secretaries;" and this similitude, if not perfect, seems to us to supply a lively picture of the fact.

Queen Victoria employs, like other sovereigns, a nobleman to conduct her correspondence with foreign courts. But that correspondence is overlooked by her, and the very form of expression used is modified, when she so directs, to meet her own views. And thus each letter, so revised and approved, is, in fact, made her own.

But even this "Foreign Secretary" must have his secretary also. A vast amount of formal and unimportant business must be transacted in his office, and it would be impossible for him to write, or to dictate, every letter which goes forth in his name. He therefore instructs or "inspires" a private secretary, who writes a number of secondary letters of daily routine in his name. The "Foreign Secretary" himself then looks over these letters so prepared, approves, or alters and corrects them, and they at last go forth, bearing his signature. In fact, although he never wrote them, they are, really and truly, his letters. And any one, receiving such a communication, and excusing himself from obeying it, under the plea that, though it had something of Earl Russell's in it, it was not absolutely Earl Russell's letter, would soon find himself in an absurd position, and would be deemed by all men of sense to be acting a foolish part.

But it is time that we said a word or two about poor bishop. Colenso. His "Letter to the Laity of Natal" gives us only a fresh instance of his peculiar characteristic as a controversialisthis blindness and deafness to every proof and every argument which makes against his own theory, and his avidity in snatching at every admission of an opponent, exaggerating it into an acknowledgment of the truth of his own system.

Thus, at p. 38 of this "Letter," he briefly notices a learned, able, and candid reply to his first three volumes, entitled "The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuch considered, by a Layman of the Church of England." This writer differs from many others of bishop Colenso's opponents, in that he has dabbled considerably in German criticism, and has gone to the utmost extent which is consistent with safety. He is willing, for instance, to divide the first four books of the Pentateuch

"Have we any Word of God'?" London, 1863.