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no less instructive to the English historian. Sharon Turner found important aid in the poetry of Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hên for illustrating and completing his History of the Anglo-Saxons.' Future historians would do well to search the productions of Iolo Goch and Gruffydd Llwyd for the life and influence of Owen Glyndwr; and to complete the history of the Wars of the Roses, their plots, conflicts, and intrigues, by consulting the poems of Lewis Glyn Cothi, Tudor Aled, and Gestyn Owain. To some Englishmen it might also be both interesting and instructive to see their own characters reflected in Cymric mirrors. It will repay their labour, although they probably will not be able to recognise themselves.

We have no space for giving specimens of the poetry. We heartily recommend this volume to every lover of national literature as being a fair representation of the literature of Wales; and trust that the success which Mr. Stephens has achieved may stimulate some of his countrymen who have more leisure and no less ability to complete and perfect that which he has nobly begun.

A Grammar of the Latin Language, for Middle and Higher Class Schools. By LEONHARD SCHMITZ, LL.D., Classical Examiner in the University of London. Wm. Collins and Co.

Among the very numerous claimants to public favour in the form of Latin Grammars, both large and small, this one, the latest, and of medium size, is perhaps the best. Its great merit consists (1) in its clearness, (2) in its brevity, (3) in its philosophical views of both syntax and inflexion, (4) in its excellent arrangement of matter, the primary facts being in a larger, the subordinate in a smaller, print, headed as 'notes.' With the pedantry and the novelties of the 'primer' the author has little sympathy, to judge by his treatment of the facts or phenomena of the Latin language. The 'declensions' he arranges as the a, the o, the u, the e, and the consonant declension, a system which has great advantages in respect of clearness and simplicity. The modern custom of arranging the cases in a different order, viz., nom., voc., acc., gen., dat., he discards; and it is worth the remark that the ordinary method is as old as Varro, who wrote 'De Lingua Latina' in Cicero's time. The rules and illustrations of the syntax are singularly clear and concise. Indeed, the whole work, including a useful appendix on Roman names, coins, measures, weights, &c., only extends to two hundred and twenty-two 12mo pages, and yet it seems to us to contain everything necessary for even the more advanced students of the upper school-forms.

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THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOLOGY.
A Review of Objections to 'Literature
By MATTHEW ARNOLD. Smith, Elder

God and the Bible. and Dogma.' and Co.

It is difficult in dealing with Mr. Arnold to command sufficient 'intel'lectual seriousness'; and impossible within reasonable limits, if indeed it is possible at all, to deal with him argumentatively. There is in his attack upon Christianity more of sarcastic sharp-shooting and exquisite fooling than there is of measured, not to say serious, meaning. It is, for example, not easy to maintain one's gravity to find the denier of all that is supernatural in Jesus Christ, and even of a personal God, gravely stepping forth in vindication of Christianity, the Bible, prayer, and church-going. Mr. Arnold seems so utterly unconscious of the radical moral contradictions of the positions which he assumes, he constructs in so arbitrary a way the fallacies upon which he impales his victims, and then dances round them and pokes fun at them in an attitude so assured that it is quite inimitable. When a bishop, a Nonconformist, or, as here, a Tübingen Professor, is in hand, it is perfectly delicious to see the gusto with which he cuffs him-we cannot say controverts him-for no man in these modern days so confidently tilts at a windmill, or so skilfully dodges its revolving sails. We have no greater literary enjoyment than one of these exquisitely written theological essays, with its serio-comic tone, its evidential and argumentative surprises, its clever catch-words, and its amazing conclusions, so gravely affirmed, and so sublimely indifferent to facts. In the airiest and most saltatory way Mr. Arnold rebukes the theological world in general, and Tübingen Professors and English Nonconformists in particular, for want of intellectual seriousness.'

The most effective treatment of one of Mr. Arnold's books would be to quiz it. Certainly no recent writer by his superb confidence in himself, his audacious dealing with evidence, and his arbitrary conclusions lays himself so open to such a method of reply. Imagine him for half an hour subjected to Socratic questioning. But the issues that he raises are so grave, that although it is simply inconceivable that any man in any degree accustomed to processes of reasoning should be affected by his advocacy, yet admiration of his great literary skill may induce a sympathy which neither his history nor his logic could command. We must therefore deal seriously with two or three of the points raised in the new preface to this collection of his articles in the Contemporary 'Review,' and to these we restrict ourselves.

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And first, we gladly bear testimony to a great improvement of tone in respect both of courtesy and religiousness, to much keen insight into things, and to many positions of undoubted and valuable truth; as also to the great beauty of literary form in which he presents his criticisms.

Of course, we have two or three clever literary catch-words. A new alliteration, 'vigorous and rigorous,' is repeated so often that clearly its author somewhat prides himself upon it. But his text is a phrase employed

by Celsus, corpórns rāv Xploriavov, which he translates, 'want of intel'lectual seriousness,' and which he adopts as a solvent for all the intractable phenomena of Christian belief throughout its history. All kinds of theological conclusions which are favourable to the popular belief in Christianity, from the doctrine of a personal God and the incarnation of Christ to Papal infallibility, are to be attributed simply to want 'of intellectual seriousness.' No one would deny that this is the explanation of some beliefs; but imagine Augustine and Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and Pascal, and Cudworth, and Butler adopting Christian beliefs through 'want of intellectual seriousness.' Mr. Arnold's characteristic defect as an historical student and a reasoner could hardly be more strongly illustrated. He seems incapable of weighing evidence, and also of discriminating criticism. He deals only in universals, and sometimes, unfortunately, mistakes for them mere accidents. His characterisations are broad and sweeping, and therefore exaggerated and untrue. A striking instance of it we have in almost the first sentence of his preface. He tells us that German critics'in collecting, editing, and illustrating the original 'documents for the history of Christianity, now perform for the benefit of 'learning an honourable and extremely useful labour once discharged by 'Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, but discharged by them no longer.' A more exact writer would have given to German scholars that great preeminence in this department of labour which is their due, but he would not have been forgetful of men like Lightfoot, Westcott, Wordsworth, Alford, Scrivener, Ellicott, Jowett, Sanday, and Dean Smith; not to speak of Davidson, Tregelles, and other scholars, not of the two universities named, who surely have done something towards illustrating the text of the New Testament, and are more than the exceptions which a broad characterisation need take no account of. An indictment should be the exact truth.

Mr. Arnold expresses his surprise that his book, 'Literature and Dogma,' has been so utterly misconceived. It was, he says, its object, as it is also the object of the present book, 'to show the truth and necessity of Chris'tianity, and its power and charm for the heart, mind, and imagination ' of man, even though the preternatural, which is now its popular sanction, 'should have to be given up.' Something may surely be forgiven to simple-minded men for their inability to conceive of Christianity with all that is preternatural discharged from it, and for their mistaking for an enemy an advocate whose method is to discharge it. By the preternatural Mr. Arnold means, not only the miraculous works and character of the Author of Christianity, but also the very existence of a supernatural and personal God. The God of the Hebrew Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, cannot, he maintains, be proved to be a Person, the notion that He is so has been a disabling superstition. He is at the utmost 'the Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.' Surely we are entitled to ask, The Eternal what? A person, a thing, or a subjective tendency? Mr. Arnold, so far as we understand him, maintains the latter. 'We neither,' he says, 'affirm God to be a person nor & 'thing.' There is in our nature, whatever else there may be, and there is

in the order of things around us, together with other tendencies, 'a tendency 'that makes for righteousness,' and of this the ideas of Christianity are, as yet, the highest expressions. It is the greatest and happiest stroke 'ever yet made for human perfection.' But will not men in whom the moral sense is unsophisticated ask, how, on such a supposition, can either Judaism or Christianity be a moral system at all? No teachings in the world are so conditioned upon, so permeated with the doctrine and the sanctions of a personal God,- -a God who governs men, claims their worship and service; forgives them, saves them, rewards them. If no such God exists, exists indubitably, then through the very emphasis and intensity of the claim, both systems are more fundamentally and essentially false than any that the world has known. Is it not, therefore, a wanton befooling of our moral sense and of our just judgment to affirm the truth and necessity of Christianity, and its power and charm for the heart, 'mind, and imagination'? In what sense can it be true when all the facts out of which its ideas spring are not only delusions, but wilful fabrications? in what sense is it a necessity when not only its personal, but its moral sanctions are taken away? Instead of a tendency that 'makes for righteousness,' it is an imposture that provokes resentment and corrupts moral feeling. To give up the popular sanction of the 'preternatural,' to reduce Christianity to mere ethical ideas, is to affirm that the system which, ethically, is the most true, is historically and formally the most false. Is this the religious apotheosis to which Mr. Arnold would bring the world?

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May we not ask him for his precise idea, what he regards as the essence or sanction of the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness'? Is it a person or a thing? He cannot claim, argumentatively, that it is either or both. Not only is there no medium between the two, they are antagonistic. If only a thing, why should it be regarded unless men please? How can it enter men's indisputable religious nature, either as authority or satisfaction? How can we pray to it? And, above all, how can Mr. Arnold hope to determine such a metaphysical problem by an etymological disquisition? It comes therefore to this:-we are to regard as the Eternal that makes for righteousness' the pure ideas of a system that is framed and inwrought with falsehood, that is, a vague, undefined conception, utterly destitute of precision and authority. The power of Christianity has been in the immense emotion which it has excited; in 'its engaging for the government of man's conduct the mighty forces of 'love, reverence, gratitude, hope, pity, and awe.' And yet indisputably this 'immense emotion' has been excited by a supernatural person. And further, we are to use in prayer the language proper to a person. And yet, in all intellectual seriousness,' he tells us that all this is to be inspired by the eviscerated and sublimated Christianity to which he would win men!

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Another thing he tells us,-that on the one hand men cannot do without Christianity, while on the other, through the progress of criticism, men can no longer do with Christianity as it is. We may admit both propositions. It is something that Christianity has compelled a man with Mr. Arnold's

doctrinal tendencies to maintain the first. He justly says that our religious nature cannot be denied, and that the popular answer to such outrageous maledictions on Christianity as those of Professor Clifford is the crowded meetings of Messrs Moody and Sankey. As to the second, men are perpetually outgrowing the forms of their faith just as they outgrow their clothes. No symptom of religious life were more fatal at any moment than intellectual contentedness with Christianity as it is. But what kind and degree of modification existing forms demand is a question admitting of various judgments. Mr. Arnold thinks it is the entire removal of the preternatural, even of the superstition of a personal God; and he strangely thinks that he has established this when he has proved the necessity for any modification. He pours infinite scorn upon certain theories of original sin, and fancies that thereby he has disposed of the fact and problem of moral evil in man. He ridicules Mr. Moody's dramatic conceptions of a controversy and compact between Justice and Mercy respecting redemption, and fancies that thereby he has disposed of salvation by Christ. He thinks throughout that when he has discredited an erroneous form he has disposed of a doctrine. It is strange that a writer accusing others of 'want of intellectual seriousness' should be misled by such a transparent fallacy of reasoning; and yet this is characteristic of the entire book. Mr. Arnold has not a single word to say about the things misconceived, only about the misconceptions of them, and he thinks that when he has sufficiently ridiculed the misconceptions he has disposed of the thing; and yet he tells us that his book is written for those who, won by the modern 'spirit to habits of intellectual seriousness, cannot receive what sets these 'habits at nought.' Mr. Arnold might do real service if, with all ‘intel'lectual seriousness,' he would sit down and tell us what he positively thinks concerning moral evil and deliverance from it; concerning prayer, and church-going, and the Bible. As it is, he only criticises and quizzes what other and more serious men think. The superficialness of his conceptions of their thinking and the fallacies of his arguments make his books absolutely worthless for all purposes of positive construction. At the most they serve to show weak places in other men's theories, a service we by no means undervalue.

Christianity and Morality; or, the Correspondence of the Gospel with the Moral Nature of Man. The Boyle Lectures for 1874-1875. By HENRY WACE, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Ecclesiastical History in King's College, London. Basil Montagu Pickering. Only by a lengthened series of quotations could Mr. Wace's method of treating this vast subject be exhibited. His style is condensed almost to severity, and his habit of smiting an enemy with a delicacy and gentleness that can come only of conscious strength, and which, nevertheless, leaves his opponent wounded very badly near some vital organism, gives the impression of practised force and remarkable self-possession. If he had chosen to wield a battle-axe instead of a rapier, it is clear that the execution would

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