See Josh. xviii. and xxii.-To this inter- "This interpretation would not have merited notice, but as a specimen of that noxious pseudo-criticism whose characters are self-admiring arrogance and manifest irreligion, employing a prodigious machinery of perverted learning to compress all in the Scriptures that is most solemn and important, into insignificance and nullity.” pp. 251, 252. We are glad to find that the younger Rosenmüller, who formerly vindicated this untenable version, has recently abandoned it, as well as some other of his pseudo-rationalist expositions. This learned professor and commentator has not, however, given up the wretched system of which this misinterpretation is only a slight specimen. Take, for example, the following instance. Ruperti, in his exposition of the sixteenth Psalm, had boldly declared, and brought Eckermann, Eichhorn, Paulus, Behn, and others, to support him in the opinion, that this Psalm does not apply to the It would be utterly reMessiah. pugnant, he says, to the poetic diction of the Hebrews and their notions of the Messiah: and "I would lay any wager," he adds, "that a person who was not acquainted with the New Testament, and with ancient and modern interpreters, would hardly find in it a single expression that would induce "I. The blessed Jesus and his Apostles, taught and constantly guided by the Spirit of Truth, were infinitely better judges of the meaning of Old-Testament passages, than these persons, who so unblushingly vaunt their own interpretative faculty. "2. If the Apostles believed that any passages contained a reference and conveyed a sentiment which they did not contain or convey, they were ignorant of what they professed to know; they were not adequate (ixavo) ministers of the new covenant, and their whole testimony to the Christian doctrine is rendered uncertain. "3. If, as Eckermann and others (see Rosenmüller in Psalm. ii. Argm.) maintain, the Apostles used a wise policy in convincing and instructing the Jews by the adducing of testimonies and arguments which they knew to signify no such 3T2 thing as they attributed to them, they were false witnesses in the name of God' "4. Were we to admit the hypothesis of these critics; as Christ and his Apostles frequently rested their claims upon the single point of the fulfilment of Old-Testament prophecy, yea, of the identical passages by them assumed to be prophe cies, but which these wise men of our times have discovered not to be so,-they have failed in that on which they staked their cause, and the Gospel is proved to be a cunningly devised fable.' "5. The fair, impartial, and grammatical construction of the passage in question is really such as cannot apply to any other than the Messiah. Not that we suppose such passages to have been otherwise than imperfectly understood at the time of their promulgation: for that would contradict a principal characteristic in the plan of prophecy but that enough of their meaning was from the first appa rent, to convince the men of those times that their proper application was hidden in the darkness of futurity. "These remarks, once for all, will serve as reasons for not noticing, in every instance, the cavils of these infidels or semi-infidels." pp. 319, 320. The critics of whom we are writing-call them Neologists, Unitarians, Anti-mystics, or what we may, for we are not scrupulous as to the minute classifications of infidelity-finding untenable the wild scheme of excluding from the Hebrew Oracles all expectation of a Messiah, have had recourse to another fiction; for they maintain that the passages which are appealed to on the subject refer not to distant events, but solely to circumstances at hand at the time of the prophecy, so that persons then living were to witness them. Gesenius makes this hypothesis a key to his elaborate explication of the Prophecy of Isaiah. Dr. Smith, in his application to Jesus Christ of the prophecy of the virgin who was to bear a Son, has some excellent remarks upon this notion, which not only sets aside the evidence of prophecy, but stultifies the declarations of the New-Testament writers relative to its accomplishment in Jesus of Nazareth. Dr. Smith's own view of the particular prediction just adverted to is, that it was one of those which have "a springing and germinant" accomplishment: that the " virgin" meant a young woman then living, probably the queen of Ahaz; that the promised son was born within a year after the political deliverance promised the prediction, and was a sign that to Ahaz should certainly take place; and that this was the immediate literal fulfilment. But, whereas Neologians and other critics urge that something of this kind was the whole fulfilment, and that there was no reference to Christ, contrary to the express application of the prophecy by St. Matthew (i. 22, 23), Dr. Smith considers that it most certainly did apply to Christ; and this not merely by way of accommodation, but by a designed reference and real fulfilment. The passage, we admit, under every view involves a critical difficulty; and Dr. Smith's solution of it is to our minds not the least difficult: for it is not suggested that there were two miraculous births (which would clearly be an untenable proposition); but it is alleged, and Dr. Smith argues, that the word translated virgin means only a bride, or young woman; which interpretation destroys all the appropriateness or parallelism of St. Matthew's application of the prophecy to Christ. For the express object of St. Matthew is to relate that our Lord's birth was miraculous; and his citation of this prophecy is to shew that it was prophesied that it should be so: but if a birth not miraculous satisfied the alleged primary half of the prediction, why might not a similar birth satisfy the other also?-which brings us back to the borders of Neologism, making St. Matthew apply a passage with a peculiar reference which it will not bear. We would rather remain in suspense as to the primary reference, absolutely forming no opinion amidst conflicting difficulties, than admit a solution which seems to us replete with insuperable objections; which makes a 64 sign" (that is, a portent) of what was no sign, but only in the ordinary course of nature; and makes the Evangelist apply as a miracle to Christ, what is alleged to have been primarily, though subordinately, fulfilled without a miracle by the birth of Hezekiah. The "sign," Dr. Smith considers, was not (at least in the primary fulfilment) in the event, but in the prediction of it; which, he says, was "a manifest proof of Divine omnipotence and agency," and therefore "a sufficient sign: and yet, in the very next page, he conjectures that the female pointed out was the wife of Ahaz, and that at the very period when the words were spoken there was reason to expect the birth of a child at the time the prophet predicted which would reduce the "sign" to little more than a happy guess that it should be a prince, and not a prin cess. But from the political deliverance to be achieved by this infant, who was speedily to be born, he thinks that the pious Jew might possibly attach a prospective reference to the true Messiah, of whom it is certain, from St. Matthew, that the Prophet spake. We fear we must leave the difficulty where we found it; only not accepting our respected author's "probable conjecture," which, he admits, does not satisfy his own mind, but which he thinks, upon the whole, less open to objection than any other hypothesis. The application of the prediction to Christ as the Messiah is, however, so clear, even amidst some minor critical difficulties, that it affords a powerful argument for the Divinity of our Lord; an argument which the Socinian cannot subvert, unless he can succeed in blotting out the first chapter of St. Matthew from the sacred canon. Among other Neological errors relative to the prophecies of Isaiah, our author strongly denounces that of Koppe, Eichhorn, Justi, the younger Rosenmüller, Gesenius, and some others, who imagine the latter portion to have been the pro. duction of one or more persons who had witnessed the Babylonish invasion, the desolation of Judea, and the miseries of the almost exterminated people; who merely personated, that is, falsely assumed, the style and manner of one that had lived long before; and whose language of the most solemn and holy prediction was nothing but the bold utterance of the nation's hopes, the fire and enthusiasm of patriotic poetry. This unknown person they presume to denominate the Pseudoİsaiah. "The advocates of this system," justly remarks Dr. Smith, "belong to another school than that which will seriously inquire into the evidence of any theological doctrine." "Notwithstanding their rich literature and their never-failing industry, they have yet to unlearn their pride and self-righteof the highest concernment for them to ousness; and they have yet much to learn know; their relations to God as the Moral Ruler of men, the holiness of his law, the consequences of despising it, and the grace. Till they have made these moral acquirements, till their reason and their feelings are governed by the belief of the truth which flows from the divine intellect into the otherwise forlorn soul of man,they may be assured that they still want the most essential qualification for understanding and explaining the word of salvation." Vol. i. p. 422. whole frame and evidence of revealed accom The Neologians labour hard to resolve all that is supernatural into mythology, analogy, and modation; but no part of their disjointed scheme is to our minds more impious, than that which relates to what is the subject of the treatise before us,-the person, of fices, and history of our blessed Lord. We have always declined sullying our pages with passages of this kind, even for the purpose of illustration or confutation. Many samples of them have been rendered sufficiently notorious in English, French, and German publications; and some of them circulated in the continental journals, as the last good thing of Mr. Professor A. or B.; each vying with the other how he may best get rid of all miracle, prophecy, and spiritualism, and make the Bible a text-book for profane and flippant comment. Their object is not fairly and naturally to explain, but to torture and get rid of, its meaning. How otherwise, by any perverted ingenuity, could they contrive so profane and senseless a scheme as the following? "The Anti-supernaturalists maintain that Jesus fainted on the cross, and was taken down apparently but not actually dead; that he was resuscitated by the care and efforts of some skilful Essenes; that he spent about six weeks in close concealment among his tried adherents; that, as it became no longer safe or practicable for him to remain undiscovered in or near Jerusalem, he took a favourable oppertunity of going with a select body of his disciples to a retired summit of Mount Olivet; that, while he was there giving to them admirable instructions for carrying into the widest effect his virtuous and philanthropic plan for the improvement of the human race, it happened, at the op. portune moment, that a thunder-cloud rolled along the mountain and cut him off from the sight of his companions, a few flashes of lightning being mistaken, by his honest but ignorant and timorous adherents, for visions of angels, or the men in white clothing might be two or three of the ablest and most trust-worthy of his friends, whom he had privately instructed in this part of his wisely adapted contrivance; that, taking advantage of this circumstance, he descended into the opposite valley; that he lived for some years afterwards in the deepest seclusion, shewing himself only on very few occasions, and to very select persons, but particularly to Saul, whom he accosted near Damascus and prevailed upon to become a leader of the sect, which wanted a man of his character and talents; and that, in fine, where, how, and when this distinguished reformer and philanthropist ended his days, no historical document whatever has come down to us, and, probably, care was taken that none should exist." Vol. iii. pp. 260, 261. "To exterminate, if possible, any ideas of miracle from Matt. iii. 16, some of the German critics affirm that, our Lord having prayed on coming up from the water, his countenance was, as it were, brightened with resolution and dignity, cheerfulness and pleasure; that at this moment a cloud discharged a flash of lightning, or several flashes in succession; that of course it thundered; and that John and the bystanders put their own interpretation upon these natural phænomena. In a similar way they interpret the narrative of the transfiguration." Vol. ii. pp. 473, 474. "Dr. Bertholtd, and some of the writers who follow his steps, have not dissembled their object. They plainly tell us, that their design is to exterminate from the domain of religion the whole doctrine of a Saviour. Thus do they fulfil the very prophetic declarations which their vain and impious labours are directed to subvert the best and wisest and noblest of all those According to these writers, Jesus was master-minds, which have risen far above the level of their contemporaries, as the teachers and examples of virtue, and have laid all posterity under infinite obligations: he assumed to his doctrines and precepts a Divine origin, in accommodation to the prevailing opinions of his countrymen : he claimed to be their Messiah (-a mere ideal being, the offspring of fond patriotism and lingering hope, shaped at last into personality by the enthusiasm of the latter prophets,-) because the admission of the claim would give him a fulcrum upɔn which he could move the popular mind: but nothing was really meant, by his office and kingdom as the Messiah, beyond the establishment of sounder principles than mankind had been accustomed to, and the progressive advancement of truth and virtue, the kingdom of pure reason." Vol. iii, pp. 123, 124. Dr. Pye Smith gives his reader chapter and page for his statements, which we could also too easily enlarge from numerous and prolific stores; but that which gives unity and force to our author's references is, that they bear directly upon the subject of his treatise; and while they shew the delusions of German (falsely called) Rationalists, some of whom have scarcely stopped short of Atheism itself*, afford an awful warning to those who assume similar titles among ourselves. It is our full persuasion, that nothing prevents the great body of the Unitarians of Great Britain from fraternizing with some of the lowest grade of the Neologians of Germany, but their not knowing what a very convenient scheme these philosophists have discovered for melting down Christianity, without rejecting it in name, to a mere system of ethics, and these not of the best quality; for For example, Dr. Fichte, a professor of philosophy in the university of Berlin, says, in a theological journal edited by the late Dr. Gabler, professor of Divinity in the university of Jena, "God himself is the vital and operative moral order: we need no other god, and we can comprehend no other.' deceit and imposture do not appear. to be viewed as crimes by these new moralists, since they boldly tell us that the Apostles of our Lord, nay, our Lord himself, practised them to serve a purpose. Let Dr. Smith bear witness on this subject; and we grieve to say his witness is too true. "Wegscheider, in his chapter' on the Divine method of effecting the salvation of men by Jesus Christ,' remarks, By his excellent teachings and his illustrious actions, Jesus soon became so celebrated that he was by many regarded as a prophet, and even as the Messiah, for whom the Jews of that age were most anxiously looking. Nor did he hesitate to profess himself to be the Messiah or Son of God, and the messenger of God; since God, in his providence, had so directed that the mind of Jesus should be induced, principally by some passages of the O. T., to take up a most firm persuasion, that this dignified Messiahship belonged to him, and that God had especially conferred upon him the office of a Divine teacher; both these notions being in accommodation to the opinions of his age and country.'" Vol. iii. p. 385. "Great minds,' says Eberhard, 'who with the noblest enthusiam pursue so holy an object as the intellectual and moral reformation of their age, cannot but be greatly inclined to ascribe the origin of those rapid coruscations, which out of the dark profound suddenly dart into their_souls, to immediate operations of the Deity.' If therefore Jesus, the sublimest, the noblest enthusiast that ever was upon earth, conceived a personal conviction that he had been called by God to the holy work to which he had devoted his life, he by no means merited the base appellation of a a dedeceived person; neither was he ceiver, when he uttered this conviction to others. He spoke according to his own most inward conviction, of his heavenly mission and the divinity of his doctrine. Rohr's Letters." Vol. ii. p. 289. "The same notion pervades the admirable volumes of Gesenius, so rich in philological and historical elucidation, and generally so faithful in giving the genuine sense of the words, however adverse they may be to his own theory of the prophetic character. That theory, alas! stands insolently independent of the words or belief of Moses or Isaiah, Jesus, John, or Paul. To them it imputes that, being among the wisest and best of men, and being the instruments of God's most beneficent plan for promoting virtue and piety, and enhancing the present and eternal happiness of the human race, either they were mistaken, though noble enthusiasts,' in conscientiously believing that the Supreme Being had actually communicated to them, in a supernatural manner, discoveries of religious truth, and duty; or, knowing that this was not the fact, they deliberately, consistently, harmoniously, and with perseverance to the end of their lives, said so to the world, and were, what one of them expresses horror at the bare supposition of, 'false witnesses of God!' And this latter side of the alternative is put with the utmost coolness, and without any apparent, or at least adequate, perception of its moral turpitude!" Vol. ii. pp. 482, 483. We have now, with much pain to ourselves, laid upon our readers a heavier burden of unhallowed sentiment than we have before dared to introduce into our pages, or intend to introduce again. And we have so done, not merely because the passages are most properly adduced by our author, and are apt to the argument in hand; but because the study of German theology, from "the admirable volume of Gesenius" to the very worst specimens of the class, is becoming common among British theological students, and has already begun to pervert our literary theology. We dread lest, both in the Dissenting theological academies, and at our own Universities, some of these "admirable volumes may prove the bane of many a hopeful student. One such work as Professor Milman's "History of the Jews," though its Neology is copiously diluted, and even then has excited universal pain among all pious readers, is a sign of the times which a CHRISTIAN OBSERVER ought not to overlook: and we, in sincerity and affection, submit to our respected author, as a theological tutor, and spiritual parent to the young men under his charge, whether the familiar domestication of such critics as those alluded to, in divinity classrooms and studies, is not an experiment fraught with danger, even under the most anxious correctives from the professorial chair. We fear that in some quarters a degree of latitude in this respect is allowed, which bodes no good to the next race of students. We are not ad |