deserves special mention. (Die päpstliche Unfelhlbarkeit und das vatikanische Concil. Kiel, 1871.) In terse and convincing language it sets forth the historical arguments against the new doctrine, and shows that it must lead to serious conflicts between Church and State.

Professor Oscar Peschel, in Leipsic, has published an interesting lecture on the Division of the Earth under Pope Alexander VI and Julius II. (Die Theilung der Erde unter Papst Alexander VI und Julius II. Leipzig, 1871.) As an appendix to the lecture the author gives the two bulls of Alexander of May 3, 4, 1493, and the treaty of Tordesillas of June 7, 1494, which was subsequently confirmed by Pope Julius II, and by which Spain and Portugal agreed upon the line which divided the new world between them. The republication of these documents is opportune, when the infallibility of all the Popes who ever lived has been promulgated as a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

All Biblical scholars will feel interested in the pamphlet in which Professor Tischendorf, of Leipsic, gives an account of the discovery and the publication of the Sinaitic manuscript. (Die Sinaibibel. Ihre Entdeckung, Herausgabe, und Erwerbung. Leipzig, 1871.) During his first journey in the East, in May, 1844, he discovered in the Convent of St. Catherine, on the Mount of Moses, one hundred and twenty-nine leaves, of which fortythree were ceded to him, and published in 1846, under the name Codex Friderico-Augustanus. Another fragment, which Tischendorf had copied in 1844, he published in 1834, in the first volume of the Monumenta. During his third journey in the East, in 1859, he found three hundred and forty-six more leaves, which appears to be all that is extant, the first part of the Codex, comprising about two hundred and seventy leaves, being lost. Tischendorf was authorized to take it to St. Petersburg. His recommendation to present the Russian Emperor with the Codex was complied with by the monks in 1868. The Codex was published in honor of the one thousandth anniversary of the Russian monarchy, at the expense of the Russian Government, Tischendorf having previously (1860) announced it in the Notitia Codicis Sinaitici. The expenses of publication amounted to over twenty thousand thalers. Most of the three hundred copies which were printed were presented by the Emperor to princes and large libraries; seventy copies were given to the book trade, all of which, with the exception of six, have now been sold, (at two hundred thalers each.) Tischendorf speaks at length of the attacks made by the well-known forger, Simonides, who pretended to have written the Codex himself, upon the authenticity of the Codex and the objections made by the Archimandrite Portiri Uspenski against its orthodoxy, on account of the omission of a number of verses. In conclusion, Tischendorf again undertakes to prove that the Codex was written about the middle of the fourth century. The first one contains a specimen of the printed edition, and the second several lithographic fac similes.

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

1871.

The Revelation of John. With Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical, Designed for both Pastors and People. By Rev. HENRY COWLES, D.D. 12mo., pp. 254. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Professor Cowles has published several volumes of commentary, in manual form, which may be safely recommended for popular use. They make little display of erudition; the style is plain, and sometimes diffuse; the doctrines, so far as we have observed, are evangelical, and the sentiments devout and practical. The present commentary, without surrender of the author's independence, coincides to a great degree with that of Professor Stuart; it maintains the earlier date of the Apocalypse, identifies the beast that was slain, to live again, not, as Stuart, with Nero, but with Julius. Cæsar, and sustains the antichiliastic view of the twentieth chapThe untenable, and dangerous if not untenable, character of the Neronian explication we have specified in our note on the "Lutheran Quarterly."

ter.

Professor Cowles reproduces here from his Commentary on Daniel his essay in disproof of "the day-year theory" of prophecy. His argument is essentially identical with that of Professor Stuart, and, from the pen of both professors, it appears to us to be alike a failure. The failure in both cases seems to arise from the same cause, namely, from their being unaware of the true basis of the day-year theory, which we take to be as follows:

When a nation is symbolized by an animal, and the life of the nation is predicted as to endure for centuries, how are those centuries to be symbolized? To represent the beast as to live twelve hundred and sixty years, for instance, would be a monstrosity. Symmetry requires that the period should be reduced to a timesymbol correspondent to the animal-symbol. But this time-period can properly be symbolized only by a time-period. In Pharaoh's dream years were indeed symbolized by ears of corn and by kine; but such symbols cannot well express time as the attribute of an animal-symbol already produced. The only method left is to represent the duration of the nation's life by a time symbol suitable to an animal's life, as a year by a day. This understood, Professor Cowles's entire argument evaporates.

"The word lion," he tells us, even in symbolical prophecy, "means lion, and bear means bear;" and so day must mean day and not year. Very true. As the word lion means lion, so day

means day; but then, also, as the real lion symbolizes a kingdom, so the real day may also symbolize a year. Professor Cowles, like Prof. Stuart, commits the very confusion of idea that he attributes to his opponents. He confounds the signification of the word with the symbolic application of the thing. Both the words lion and day signify the literal things of which they are the names; and then both the things are applied to symbolize some specified object. It follows that both professors are very incorrect in saying that the year-day theory is unsustained by any example in Scripture. The case of Ezekiel (iv, 4-6) is an absolute parallel. He was commanded to lie on his right side forty days, to symbolize Israel under forty years of sin; and upon his left side three hundred and ninety days, to symbolize Judah's three hundred and ninety years of sin— "I have appointed thee a day for a year." Here Ezekiel represented, say, Judah; his lying on his left side represented Judah's sin, and each day of his lying symbolized a year. The propor tion was as Ezekiel to Judah, so a day to a year. Very nugatory is Professor Cowles's argument to invalidate this case: "But observe throughout this passage that in every instance the word day is used for a common day." Of course the word day must be used for a common day in order to bring the common day in as a symbol; but then the common day may be as truly used for a symbol of a year as a beast is for a kingdom.

On the same mental confusion is founded the argument drawn from numerous non-symbolical prophetic passages in which the word day and the word year are used literally. So far as this argument is used we could admit that the word day, like the word beast, is always used literally; but that would not be denying that both things are used symbolically; the beast to symbolize a kingdom and the day to symbolize a year.

The same fallacy reigns in the Professors' argument on Num. xiv, 33, 34. God there threatened the Israelites that as their spies searched the land for forty days, so they should wander in the desert forty years, "a day for a year." The Professors clearly show that the word day here signifies a literal day; but they do not disprove what Jehovah positively declares, namely, that a literal day represents a year. So that our conclusion on the whole is, that there still remains an unrefuted plausibility in the idea that the 1260 days of the Apocalyptic beast do represent as many years. The idea is somewhat sustained by unquestionable examples and by the very nature of the case.

The Life of Jesus the Christ. By HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Vol. I. With 48 fime wood engravings. 8vo., pp. 387. Cloth, gilt. New York: J. B. Ford & Co. As to a work demanding the highest human talent, Mr. Beecher has justly consecrated the best maturity of his powers to the production of a Life of the Christ. It is an offering of faith and love to the sole divine-human One. He has thought it worthy of the best adornment that art could contribute. It is the monument by which he hopes to speak most permanently and most articulately to posterity. We doubt not that in this respect his expectation will be fulfilled. The great preacher of our age will be best known to the future as the great biographer.

tators.

The work is not characterized by surpassingly profound research. He has not gone beyond the circle of a few well-known commenNor do we look to him for the solution of profound theological problems. He has not thought much in the rout of doctrinal systems. It is in his deep and flashing intuitions, his comprehensive grasp, his eloquent dissertations that we recognize the master, and rejoice that he has, as one essayist more, taken the great, inexhaustible, yet simple life to expound to the world in a voice the world will willingly hear. And when, after a few pages of Beecher, frank, loving, and earnestly Christian, we take down from our library shelves the truly Frenchy Jesus of Renan, we feel ashamed of the age that is not disgusted with the factitious.

. Mr. Beecher evinces the earnestness of his faith by adopting that view of the nature of Christ which most tasks our belief, even to the sacrifice of our indestructible intuitions-the theory, namely, that the Infinite minified itself to the finite, and became the human soul of Jesus. He also denies the theory of verbal inspiration, or the necessity of inspired accuracy in details outside the limits of religious truths. The effort to sustain the absolute accuracy of the sacred writer in non-essential points he holds to be conducive to a strain of sophistry tending to produce infidelity far more strongly than the admission of incidental error. Mr. Beecher affirms that miracles are no suspension of the laws of nature, but a disclosure to the view of a higher law of a higher nature, a revelation of the universe-nature above the earth-nature. This we hold to be the true view, and rejoice to find it expressed with so much truth and beauty in these pages.

The State of the Dead. By Rev. ANSON WEST. 12mo., pp. 258. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

This is an able and subtle essay, written by the Pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Huntsville, Ala., maintain

ing, in opposition to the teachings of Pearson, Wesley, and Bishop M'Tyeire, that there is no "Intermediate State" of the dead, but that all souls at death depart immediately to heaven or to hell. The judgment day, however, he holds to be a great future reality at the close of this world's history, at which takes place a resurrection of the bodies of the entire human race, and their presentation before God for a divine personal review and final sentence for eternity. He quotes the Larger Catechism of the Presbyterian Church as a full and complete confirmation of his doctrine. It is an acute and plausible discussion, though we dissent from its conclusions.

Misread Passages of Scripture. By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A.
New York: Carlton & Lanahan. 1871.

12mo., pp. 200.

Baldwin Brown is an eminent minister of the English Independents, and his works are published from our Book Room rather from their general excellence and their great liberalization of old Calvinism, than as authoritative expositions of a true Wesleyan Arminianism. His keen criticisms are suggestive and inspiriting. His views of the relations of divine sovereignty to human responsibility retain some tinge of his hereditary training, yet show a clear intuition of the true solution in the midst of some vagueness. His improvement of the doctrine of substitutional atonement is too indefinite to be either satisfactory or dangerous to the reader. As a whole our ministry and people will find his pages instructive and quickening.

Jesus Christ. His Life and Work. By E. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. 12mo., pp. 320. New York: Carlton & Lanahan. 1871.

This is a popular abridgment from the polished pen of Pressensé himself of his great work, the "Life of Christ." By an arrangement with the enterprising English house of Hodder & Stoughton, Carlton & Lanahan are the sole American publishers. It is divested of those eloquent dissertations by which Christian scholars have been so richly gratified, and with a rapid pen, in fluent and popular style, follows the divine story to its divine result. It is the character of the Saviour once more pictured for the eyes of the people.

Saving Faith; Its Rationale. By Rev. ISRAEL CHAMBERLAYNE, D.D. 12mo., pp. 216. New York: Carlton & Lanahan. 1871.

Dr. Chamberlayne defends our Church from what is called by our Congregational brethren Stoddardism-the practice of forming a Church of unconverted membership. The work is done with a