appeared in spiritual vision to many of their brethren. On that same day our Lord ascended to heaven, and who can doubt that this very company of risen saints ascended with him, forming the celestial cohort which adorned his advent to the portals of what was in the truest sense the 'holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem.' Indeed we can scarcely doubt that this is the more genuine and true-meant import of the holy city,' into which the risen saints entered. We do not deny that they made their appearance, in the way suggested, to some of the followers of Christ in the literal Jerusalem, but it must be admitted that the designation is a very singular one in this connexion, and seems to savor somewhat of the spirit of prophecy to which it is almost the appropriated title for the celestial Hierosolyma.

"This, as we understand it, is the true character of the wondrous event here recorded. It was, in the main, an invisible resurrection of a multitude of the saints, ordained to honour the resurrection of the Saviour, with a more special and ultimate reference to the invisible glory of his ascension." Pp. 217, 218.

The only other point to which we would direct attention as illustrative of our author's theory, is the explanation of Christ's resurrec

According to Mr Bush, there was no resurrection of Christ's body. Three days after he died on the cross, he emerged out of his defunct state' and ascended to heaven immediately. He did not remain forty days on earth, as the evangelists say. No. Mr Bush tells us that his resurrection and ascension took place on the same day, and were literally the same thing. All his appearances to the disciples during his forty days' supposed sojourn upon earth, were mere optical delusions, his eating and drinking, the same. What became of his body he does not know. It disappeared, or evaporated, or was annihilated. His showing his hands and side was an optical deception, practised upon his disciples to prove that he was alive and in heaven! Does the reader think we are caricaturing? Does he think it impossible that any but an infidel or a unitarian could utter such blasphemy? Then let him read the following extracts.

"It is peculiarly worthy of note, that it is nowhere explicitly affirmed in the narrative of the evangelists, or any other part of the Scriptures, that the identical material body of Christ arose. The language that is used respecting that event, is such as to be capable of being consistently understood without the implication that his material body had any share in the resurrection or ascension." P. 152.

"As to the act of eating, it is certain that it could not be from any necessity of sustaining his body by material food. It was doubtless an optical act, like that of the three angels that came to Abraham-of whom one, by the way, was this same Jesus in his pre-incarnate state-and partook of the entertainment which he served up to them. The resurrection-state of Jesus was unquestionably the same with that of his glorious or Shekinah-state before he tabernacled in the flesh; and if the one was

consistent with his appearing to eat of the ordinary food of mortals, so doubtless was the other." P. 154.*

"The evangelical narrative enforces the belief, that our Lord ascended to heaven first on the very day on which he rose from the dead, and subsequently in repeated instances before the expiration of the forty days mentioned by Luke." Acts i. 3. Pp. 156–57.

"If Christ ascended to heaven first immediately after his resurrection, and repeatedly in the forty days subsequent, he must have ascended in a spiritual body. If he ascended in a spiritual body, he must have arisen in a spiritual body. Consequently, the phenomena indicating a material body to the senses of the disciples must have been miraculously assumed. In other words, they were mere appearances." P. 162.

The following extract is the sum of the blasphemy. The disciples, when going forth full of the Holy Ghost,' to preach a risen Christ, were merely under the influence of carnal apprehensions,' preaching by the inspiration of the Spirit, a thing which was not true! We wonder that a man who reverenced either the Son or the Spirit could have thus spoken

"We may admit indeed that the disciples supposed that the body which they saw and handled was the veritable body of their crucified Lord, and that in their preaching the resurrection of Jesus, they had no other idea than that of the reanimation of his body of flesh. Under the influence of those carnal apprehensions which they then cherished, it was scarcely to be expected that they should have come to any other conclusion. We have no grounds to imagine that without a miracle they could have come to a sudden recognition of a spiritual presence, when all the phenomena addressed themselves in such a manner to their senses as to beget the belief of a material substance. It is reasonable indeed to suppose, that, as they subsequently became more deeply instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom, and were able to penetrate more fully its spiritual character, they may have come by degrees to more correct views on this subject; at any rate, we know no reason why the measure of their intelligence on this point should be the limit of ours. It is sometimes objected that an unsophisticated child, upon reading or hearing the evangelical narrative, would inevitably receive the impression that the body raised and manifested to the disciples was the literal material body of Christ. Granted. We admit the fact, while we deny the inference that would be drawn from it. The same inspired truth which is milk for babes, is at the same time strong meat for grown men. Let each extract from it the pabulum which will sustain the soul. We live at a more advanced period of the Christian economy, and have the advantage of all those ulterior developments of its essential genius which were wanting to the first age of the church, and why should we close our eyes to

If so, then, why was not Christ's eating and drinking during his 33 years on earth a mere optical act also? What proof is there the Word was made flesh? Might not the whole incarnation be a mere make-believe, a pretence? Certainly if Mr Bush's theory be true. And if he be consistent, he will soon advance to all

this.

the brighter light that is shining around us for fear of seeing more than was seen in the earliest dawn of Christianity?" Pp. 165, 166.

We shall now, in concluding, give our readers an idea of our author's prophetical expositions. As might be expected, if he did not spare history and plain narrative, he will not spare prophecy. Literality he abhors, past, present, and to come. His idea of the Apocalypse is a strange one,

"That the Apocalypse in general contains but little in the way of announcement that is absolutely new. The title of the book itself'Apocalypse,' i. e. unveiling-carries the implication of its purport. It is the disclosure of the inner hidden sense of the mysteries, i. e. the symbolical things of the Old Testament.” P. 301..

The millennium he thinks began long since.

“A considerable margin of time may be allowed both before and after the lapse of this Apocalyptic Chiliad, for preceding and subsequent events; but what we confidently affirm is, that it enters into and forms a part of this 'great day of judgment which has already extended over the space of 1800 years. This follows, in our view, irresistibly from the legitimate interpretation of the 7th of Daniel. We have adduced, we think, irrefragable evidence, in our commentary on that book, that the sitting judgment there described does cover the period of the Christian dispensation down to the era of the destruction of the Fourth Beast, or the Roman empire, when the Gospel kingdom begins more signally to assume its predicted character of universality. Consequently, as the sitting of the millennial judgment is described in precisely equivalent terms, we know of no_possible mode of avoiding the conclusion of the identity of the two." P. 303.

He thinks the second advent to be pre-millennial, but then it took place at the destruction of Jerusalem, and there is no other to come. Both millennarians and anti-millennarians may look grave at the following note.

"We may perhaps learn from the view now presented what opinion to form of the doctrine of the pre-millennial advent of Christ. The theory in our judgment is Scriptural, and of course irrefutable. The Saviour's second advent must, we conceive, be pre-millennial; for, as we understand the drift of prophecy, that advent commenced at the destruction of Jerusalem, according to his own declaration. But it was not personal, as every one will admit. Still, as we conceive the millennium long since to have passed, our concession leaves us as far as ever from being classed among the disciples of Mede, and the advocates of what is generally termed the system of millenarianism. Either they or we are the defenders of an enormous prophetical anachronism, and Time alone perhaps can determine which. To time we refer the decision." Pp. 303–4. The much-disputed passage in the 20th chapter he thus interprets,

"I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which did not worship the beast, neither his image, neither did receive his mark in their forehead or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.' That is, there was a succession of such faithful witnesses living, dying, rising, reigning throughout that whole period. Being partakers of that divine principle of eternal life which our Saviour himself declares exempts a man from the triumph of death, they are, of course, the subjects of a resurrection perpetually developing itself; and how could such a favoured destiny be any more pertinently expressed than by the very language which John has applied to it? I saw the souls (úxas) of them which were beheaded,' &c. This is language appropriate to a mental and not an ocular perception, the objects of which were not risen bodies, but risen souls, of which we have already seen that yuxaì is intrinsically the legitimate expression. They are the many' of Daniel, who have awakened from spiritual sleep, leaving the rest of the dead' still buried in the slumbers of that mortal lethargy by which they were overwhelmed, and thus distinguished from the class of the living and reigning. Their state is a true resurrection state, called 'the first resurrection,' for reasons which will soon be assigned. The rest of the dead,' or as Paræus with equal justice renders it, the rest, even the dead,' neither awake nor live during the thousand years, nor at any other time. This, as we have seen from Daniel, is the very point of distinction between the two classes, that the one awakes and lives, and the other does not. This is the view sustained by the whole tenor of the Old Testament representations, viz., that the wicked never awake from the deep death in which they are sunk. Though they continue to exist, yet having no participation in that principle of divine life of which Christ is the sempiternal source and the only bestower, their existence, though perpetual, is penal, and no deliverance ever reaches them from the fearful bondage of their doom.” Pp. 309-313.

We need extract no more. We have done with the author and his book. Its interpretations are so distorted and unnatural, that we do not apprehend much danger from them. But his principles we do dread. They are pernicious in the extreme. Physiology is his god. He seeks unto it instead of seeking to the Holy Spirit to interpret his word. How far on in his rationalistic career he may proceed we know not. He has got hold of principles that will carry him into bold infidelity, or bolder atheism. And though in himself these may never be developed, yet in his disciples they will. His followers will be infidels. Hedged in between the dictates of physiology on the one side, and the utter impossibility of interpreting Scripture in accordance with their ideas of science, on the other, they must of necessity cast aside the Bible, and having cast aside the Bible because it could not be made to accord with their scientific rules, they will not be slow to disown a God, if that should be inexplicable by science also.

We regard the work as thoroughly evil, unsound, and anti-scriptural. No man who reveres his Bible and loves his Saviour will think otherwise. It sets up to be the judge of Scripture. It would establish a separate standard by which to measure the revelations of the divine word. If they accord with that standard, we are to receive them, if not, reject them, and extort some other meaning out of the passages which seem to favour that which science pronounces incredible! Vainman would be wise though he be born like a wild ass's colt.**

We have spoken strongly throughout this review. Nor do we regret it. The matter calls for strong language, and it were an idle affectation of charity to pass it smoothly by. We have spoken out. Let every periodical in Britain and America speak out, and tell the author of his rashness and irreverence, his danger and his sin. It is time to warn the people against these desperate fetches of a neology which having grown somewhat into disrepute in Germany, is stealing over into America in the train of science. Should it once strike its roots into the far-western soil, we venture to predict a harvest of no common abundance there. It is time to point out to the people the approaches of the rising flood, that they may be on their guard against the evil, and may also be led more deeply to ponder, and more fully to prize the blessed doctrine of resurrection from the dead, which has been the church's hope from the beginning. Shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness; and their word will eat as doth a canker; of whom is Hymenæus and Philetus,

WHO CONCERNING THE TRUTH HAVE ERRED, SAYING THAT THE RESURRECTION IS PAST ALREADY AND OVERTHROW THE FAITH OF SOME.'-2 Tim. ii. 16.

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ART. IV. The Inquirer directed to an Experimental and Practical View of the Work of the Holy Spirit. By OCTAVIUS WINSLOW. 2d Edit. London: John F. Shaw.

FOR aught we know, the work of redemption may have given the first notice to the universe of the distinction of persons in the Godhead. Previous to that marvellous course of events which brought them out into separate exhibition, they may have resided, in undis

The great vice of the present day is a presumptuous precipitancy of judgment, and there is nothing from which the cause of Christianity, as well as of general knowledge, has suffered more than from the impatience of investigation and that confidence of decision upon hasty and partial views which mark the literary character of an age undeservedly extolled for its improvements in reasoning and philosophy.'-Magee on the Atonement, Prefatory Address.