Mr. Mac Donald is well known in the circles of the Church, for the ministry of which he was educated, as a preacher of remarkable freshness and power. Whatever judgment may be passed upon some points of his theology, there are few living men whose words are fuller of high religious inspiration, and indicate a more reverent and intense love for the Lord Jesus. This is his distinctive claim as a religious teacher. He disregards the conventionalities of sermon-structure, and of sermon-speech, and brings to bear upon his themes the fresh thought of a man of genius, and the penetrating spiritual insight of a man of fervent piety. Whether any of these papers have been preached as sermons we do not know; thousands of readers have become acquainted with them in the pages of the Sunday Magazine, to which they were contributed. Mr. Mac Donald has no difficulty in accepting the miraculous; nay, he justly says that if the Supreme Being 'be a God worthy of being God, yea (his metaphysics even may show the seeker), if He is a God capable of being God, He will speak the clearest, grandest word of guidance which He can utter intelligible to His creatures.' 'The miracles are mightier far than any goings on of nature, as beheld by common eyes, dissociating them from a living will; but the miracles are surely less than those mighty goings on of nature with God, beheld at their heart. In the name of Him who delighted to say, "My Father is greater than I," I will say that His miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less beautiful than the works of the Father they represented, in making the corn to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the hill-sides of the world, with all their infinitudes of tender gradation and delicate mystery of birth.' Whether we agree with every minute interpretation or not, this little volume, precious as fine gold, is full of penetrating spiritual insight, of fine spiritual sympathy, and of suggestions and inspirations greatly helpful to the noblest spiritual life.
Saint Paul: his Life, Labours, and Epistles. A Narrative and an Argument. By Felix Bungener. Translated from the French. Religious Tract Society.
M. Bungener's is one of the numerous books elicited by M. Rénan's assaults upon Christianity. Such have always produced the effect of multiplying defensive exposition and arguments. They are therefore not to be regretted; their resultant good is much greater than their incidental evil. Untenable positions are tested and abandoned, and valued defences are strengthened. M. Bungener's argument is the narrative. He goes steadily through the incidents of the Apostle's history, parrying attacks, and setting forth evidences and arguments as he goes. His French brevity and his religious earnestness give a great charm to the volume.
History and Revelation: the Correspondence of the Predictions of the Apocalypse with the marked Events of the Christian Era. By James H. Braund. Two vols. Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
In the exposition of the Apocalypse, literally everything depends upon a right principle of interpretation. Whether the symbolism of the book has its solution in historic facts or in spiritual principles, determines everything that a writer has to say respecting it. Into these two schools all interpreters of the Apocalypse may be divided. Of the former, Mr. Elliott is the modern Coryphæus, and he has found in Mr. Braund a laborious disciple. 'The Horæ Apocalypticæ,' he says, 'will be found, perhaps, the nearest to perfection of its kind extant;' and these two volumes are devoted to a patient working out of historical coincidences and congruities. Mr. Braund confidently trusts that the proof from such congruity will be so self-evident that it will be impossible to doubt. But clearly it must depend very largely upon the historical knowledge and imaginative ingenuity of the interpreter, whether a fulfilment can be demonstrated or not. For instance, there is much more of ingenuity than of demonstration in the fancy of Mr. Elliott adopted by Mr. Braund, that the white horse of the first seal is the Roman Empire, that the rider is Nerva, and that the bow in his hand is the symbol of his Cretan origin—the Cretans being great votaries of Apollo. It may be so; but the mere statement of it does not, in virtue of its congruity, carry with it demonstrative proof. It is a mere piece of ipse dixitism, which might find a hundred parallels of equally ingenious suppositions. On what authority, again, does Mr. Braund affirm that the 'seven horns of the Lamb symbolize his atoning work, because the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled on the horns of the altar, and the seven eyes, his mediatorial character between God and men'? Horns are usually the symbol of power, and eyes of wisdom. The statement of Mr. Braund, so far from being self-evidencing, provokes our incredulity.
For ourselves, we hold to the opposite principle of interpretation, as substantially adopted by Hengstenberg, Godwin, and others, viz., that the rise, progress, and overthrow of antichristian principles—Jewish, pagan, infidel, worldly and ecclesiastical—are symbolized in the Apocalypse, and that with the development of these, national events have to do in only a very subordinate way. Then much of the symbolism takes its place as mere parabolic drapery. Whether any specific historical event find its type in an Apocalyptic symbol or not, we cannot err seriously if we lay hold upon a great principle; certain it is that every antichristian power in the history of the world has had its strength in the domain of superstition, rather than in mere historic incident; and to be assured of the destruction of this is to be assured of the main thing. We cannot help thinking that such laborious demonstrations as Mr. Braund's are, comparatively speaking, exercises of painful and wasted ingenuity.
Moses, the Man of God. A Course of Lectures. By the late James Hamilton, D.D., F.L.S. James Nisbet.
These lectures have been selected for separate publication from Dr. Hamilton's MSS. They have all the fascinating characteristics of his pen—graceful description, imaginative reconstruction, unconventional, and often very ingenious, sometimes learned, disquisition, with the light, graceful touch of poetic style and delicate fancy which ally all his productions with general rather than with sermon literature. As sermons they seem to us to want point and cogency: they read rather like chapters of a book; but it is a sufficient commendation to say they are James Hamilton's.
Memories of Patmos; or, some of the Great Words and Visions of the Apocalypse. By J. R. Macduff, D.D. James Nisbet and Co.
Dr. Macduff disavows all pretensions to be a hierophant of the mysteries of the Apocalypse. We are left to gather incidentally that he himself inclines to what may be called the spiritualistic, as distinguished from the historic school of interpreters. His object in this volume, however, is to present those 'manifold isolated passages of transcendent grandeur, beauty, and comfort ... which can be see by the naked eye, without the aid of the prophetic lens or telescope.' His selections are made chiefly from the opening and closing chapters. Dr. Macduff's manner of discoursing is too well known to need characterizing; it is enough to say that in these glorious manifestations of the exalted Christ, he has, with due regard to exegesis, indulged, wisely and profitably, in the unction of description and application which have made his books so popular. No man may discourse of the new heavens and the new earth without palpable shortcoming, but he has given to devout readers a wise and edifying book.