Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts. By Francis Jacox. Hodder and Stoughton.
This volume is the result of very extensive and discursive reading. Sixty or seventy passages of Scripture have been annotated by the author from the copious stores of his secular erudition. Choice fragments of poetry, philosophy, and history, the analogies of life and thought, with the high themes suggested by the sacred text, are heaped in almost prodigal affluence of illustration upon the foundation of each text. Thus, on 'the Tempter's it is written,' our author quotes in illustrative vein not only Bunyan, and the criticism on the Dublin Synod of Irish Catholics, but Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice,' Gray, Coleridge, Burns, Diderot, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Dickens. In his beautiful comment on 'Consider the lilies,' we have Tennyson, and Justice Shallow, Leigh Hunt and Mr. Proctor, Bishop Copleston, Isaac Taylor, Shenstone, and Dr. Croly's Salathiel, Mr. Hannay, and Mrs. Browning, all laid under contribution, and a very charming mosaic is the result. We might imagine the book to be the work of a life-time, or the hobby of a highly-cultured and devout man. Many a sermon and many a platform-speech may hereafter benefit by Mr. Jacox's labour of love; but none will take the pure delight in it which it must have given to the author in his quiet hours. The annotations of the words 'Strangers and Pilgrims,' 1 Peter ii. 11, are peculiarly rich and beautiful.
Rain upon the Mown Grass, and other Sermons, 1842—1870. By Samuel Martin, Minister of Westminster Chapel. Hodder and Stoughton.
The ministry of the Rev. Samuel Martin has now for nearly thirty years exerted a spiritual force upon an ever widening circle. Westminster Chapel has constituted a focus of holy influence, where his varied, thoughtful, continuous instructions have not only gathered around him one of the largest congregations in England, but have conferred upon it a character for wise effort, liberal sympathies, and Christian devotedness. It would be impossible to measure the circumference of that influence. Few nonconforming churches in the kingdom have failed at least to seek Mr. Martin's presence and assistance when any great thing was to be done; when any difficult enterprise needed a special consecration, when a young pastor at his ordination, or a church entering on a new career of usefulness, craved sanctifying counsel and tender sympathy. It would be difficult to convey to a stranger, or to an unsympathizing critic, any conception of the strange fascination, the deep thrill of holy excitement, the solemn hush of spirit which the spoken words of Samuel Martin have produced on susceptible minds. It is quite beyond our power to analyze or account for the overwhelming impression we have known him produce by his mode of quoting some well-known words of Holy Scripture, or by iterating and reiterating in a manner almost unique, the key-word or clause of some discourse on which he has put forth all his strength. His sermons are often characterized by an exceeding quaintness which from any other lips than his might provoke a smile; by a subtle ingenuity of illustration which reminds one of Brooks, or Sibbes, or even of Thomas Adams; by an elaboration of argument which seems to throw a disproportionate weight on some minor truth of God's word; by a fulness of illustration bordering on the efflorescent; and by a tone of meditation, fitted, as it might seem, to the cloister or some learned leisure rather than to this busy, world-harassed, distracted age: yet it is almost impossible to listen to one of those exceptional discourses without an intense desire for a higher, more beautiful, more self-sacrificing life. The exquisite sensitiveness of the preacher to all the sorrows of men, his obvious personal distress over the breaking heart of suffering humanity, his quivering sympathy with the weak and diseased, the poor, the out cast, the prisoner, 'the publican and the sinner,' the old man and the little child, make almost every sermon a lesson in the 'enthusiasm of humanity.' Much of every good sermon, is beyond the power of reproduction by the press; and this noble volume of Mr. Martin's discourses has to some extent the effect upon the reader which a volume of Beethoven's symphonies might have upon a musical student who had lost the power of hearing. Notwithstanding this necessary peculiarity disparaging the printed and revised report of all the noblest productions of the pulpit, we render Mr. Martin our unfeigned thanks for the volume. It contains thirty-two discourses. Many of them have been preached on special occasions, and demand a little imagination from the reader before he can understand their full significance. Take, for instance, the sermon preached at the opening of the new church at Halifax on the text, 'Then the king said unto Nathan the Prophet, See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.' The three sacred places, 'the home,' 'the grave,' 'the sanctuary of God,' have never been more admirably described, and the sketch given of 'the history of places of true worship' has never been drawn with more graphic force or spiritual beauty; but all the circumstances of the day and the place of that discourse gave it tenfold meaning. It would be well for those who disparage the Puritan theology and its professors, to understand that the high strain with which the volume opens on the genial influence and character of the Gospel, was preached with electrifying power to one of the great gatherings of Nonconformist ministers and churches in the North of England.
The sermons on 'The Saving Name,' 'The Precious Blood of Christ,' 'The Fulness of God,' show how Mr. Martin handles some of the great theological problems, and there is hardly one which is not charged with deep emotion, with carefully expressed thought, and spiritual force. This last element is the distinctive virtue of a volume which can scarcely be touched without perceiving some electric flash of light, some new pulsation of holy, Christ-like feeling.
The Shepherd of Hermas. Translated into English, with an Introduction and Notes. By Charles H. Hoole, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Rivingtons.
It is not long since we called the attention of our readers to the admirable translation, from the Greek test, of the 'Shepherd of Hermas,' which was published, together with other writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. The Greek text of this ancient Christian allegory or romance was found, together with the epistle of Barnabas, attached to the Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament; and this may account in part for the revival of interest among the students of ecclesiastical history in this once popular but long-neglected fragment of antiquity. Mr. Hoole has executed his task with great care and painstaking, and has given in his 'introduction and notes' some very valuable information bearing on its interpretation, and on its reception by the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Church. We are brought by it 'into the earliest period of Christian antiquity.' It was doubtless quoted by Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius, with a decreasing respect; and we can only admire the fine tact and good sense which ultimately led the later writers and the Church Councils unequivocally to exclude it from the Canon of the New Testament. The question of the authorship is enveloped in great obscurity, and the apparently explicit statements are easily refutable. It is not even certain, but indeed very doubtful, whether the author was an ecclesiastical officer of any kind. The supposed Ebionitic tendencies of his doctrine have been maintained strongly by Hilgenfeld, but refuted by Dörner and Donaldson. We are surprised that in virtue of the non-appearance in Latin translations of the main passage on which this charge rests, Mr. Hoole has thought fit to omit it. Dr. Donaldson shows at length that there is 'nothing in the teaching of Hermas with regard to God, Christ, the Church, or the work of salvation, which is contrary to the truths or spirit of Christianity.' It is interesting also to observe from various passages, that Hermas identified the office of bishop and presbyter, and makes no reference to the Eucharist.
Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Vols. XVII. and XVIII. Edited by Rev. A. Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
These two volumes are extremely valuable; one is the third and last volume of Tertullian, and the other contains 'The Clementine Homilies' and 'The Apostolical Constitutions.' The Homilies are a translation by the Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., by Peter Peterson, M.A., and Dr. James Donaldson, and the 'Constitutions' have been carefully revised from Whiston's translation. If Bunsen's theory be correct, that they take us into the end of the second century or beginning of the third, and can be almost conclusively shown to be the work of one to whom the interpolations of the Ignatian literature were familiarly known, we obtain a valuable additional test of the quality of second century literature, and another assurance that the Gospel of John must have preceded them by more than a generation. It is not merely the abundant quotation from the fourth Gospel, but the profound difference of tone between these documents, that is so remarkable. If this is the second century theology and ecclesiasticism, how comes it that an author living in that century could rise such an untold height above them and omit what unfortunately had become the chief features of his time? Krabbe, in his elaborate work on the Apostolical Constitutions, concludes that the eighth book could not have been written before the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. Bunsen thinks that the law of interpolation may account for the several references to later customs and offices which are to be found there. At all events, throughout the earlier books, we hear nothing or next to nothing of the sacerdotal order, and no other officer is mentioned intermediate to bishop or deacon. In the eighth book we have full-blown sacerdotalism and episcopacy, and the several apostles are made responsible for all the innovations. We owe a great debt of obligation to the careful editors of these translations now approaching their term. The admirable indices of all kinds greatly enhance the value of the work thus accomplished.
The Miracles of Our Lord. By George Mac Donald. Straham and Co.