subjects, robbed of their all, another million of savings' bank depositors equally plundered of that little pittance, (amounting, however, in all, to £32,661,924 in 1845,)* which their confiding and hopeful frugality has economized from their ceaseless toil, and laid up against a rainy day; suppose all this remorselessly confiscated by the counsel and procurement of this friend to the poor, and advocate of the rights of labour-the evil would not stop there; every contract and engagement, public or private, either in or with this country, would be wiped out-so essentially is credit become a part of our industrial existence, so necessarily is solvency of all kinds linked with the maintenance of public faith, that we not believe our manufacturers could continue their business, or that Manchester and Glasgow, in the general moral ruin of the national character, would be secure even for one month in occupying the working masses now dependent on their wages for their daily bread.

Diris agam vos: Dira detestatio

Nullâ expiatur victimâ

seems to be Mr. Doubleday's inclination.

"Individual villanies are often permitted to die in prosperity and unpunished-their retribution being reserved for another state of being; but corrupt national systems always meet their punishment here. God has never yet failed to give this lesson to the world, from Tyre and Babylon downwards-nor will this government be an exception. The hand-writing is now evident on the wall."

We earnestly hope that the hand-writing may not be Mr. Doubleday's.

In 1845, the number of depositors was 1,063,418-the amount £32,661,924, of whom 597,631 had sums of less than £20, amounting to £3,851,027.

De Wette's Introduction.

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ART. III.-A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. From the German of W. M. L. DE WETTE. Translated by THEODORE PARKER. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1843.

THE continually increasing influence exercised by the Infidel Theology of Modern Germany upon the literature of Great Britain and America, must be a matter of no slight or transient importance to thoughtful observers. It is not merely to the halflearned pretender that German Theology presents strong temptations. Doubtless a literature such as it presents, with its redundant supply of text-books, manuals, and dictionaries of reference-rich in all the helps which ambitious sciolism requires, and teeming with the appliances necessary for learned parade-strange terms, strange languages, strange theories, (suited to every variety of taste,) and strange authorities-must possess invincible attractions to men who are in haste to teach, but have little time to learn, and who prefer the glitter of the surface to the solidity of the substance. But the literature of German Theology has attractions also for a higher class of minds than these; minds stimulated to inquiry by an ardent love of real knowledge; minds that cannot be satisfied with the poor and schoolboy exercises which in England have so long filled the place of criticism with their shallow and formal pedantry of minute scholarship, nor yet with the profound researches in Rubrical and Legendary lore which compose to so great an extent the more serious theology of that country. German Theology attracts such minds by the richness of its universal learning, by the manliness with which it wields that learning for higher and nobler purposes of investigation-measuring their value by their usefulness, and not by the fantastic standard of a foolish and capricious national prejudice-by the boldness and originality of its speculations, grasping, as they do, the grandest subjects of human thought, and embracing themes upon which British literature has been too long silent. We must not dissemble the truth: The danger to be dreaded from the influence of German theological literature arises from the miserable deficiencies of our own. There are, to be sure, some splendid exceptions to the general poverty. There are some universal minds that may recall to us the good days when British theology was cosmopolitan, but they stand alone like tall trees in a barren landscape, and make the general desolation more remarkable,

If Christianity is to continue, this state of things must not continue. Christian learning and Christian thought must keep pace with the progress of the times. The Church must make all Science, and all Art, and all the lore of past time, and all the experience of the present, her own. She must show herself as that Eternal City into which "all the forces of the Gentiles" shall be brought, there to be consecrated to God's honour, and wielded in his service. It is shame enough to the Christians of these islands, that, possessing so many advantages, in a pure faith, a free constitution, such large endowments for the support of learning, and such ample means of acquiring it-it is shame enough for us that we have not been the leaders, instead of the followers of the rest of Europe;-that the honest and generous love of truth for its own sake, has not been sufficient to stimulate us to thought and exertion, without waiting for a crisis wherein the very safety of religion demands that we should rouse ourselves from our dreams and inactivity.

The proper remedy against the evil influence of an infidel literature is to supply a Christian literature, equally opulent in all the resources that make its rival valuable. The proper remedy against false reasoning is right reasoning. Contemptuous silence will not do. Threats and attempts at coercion, whether moral or physical, will not do. Nothing but argument can refute argument; nothing but truth can displace falsehood. The evil cannot be met by periodical essays such as ours; by a few hours' thought and study, or a few hours' labour in composition. It must be met by the creation of a literature, not merely directly apologetic, but compensatory ;-such a literature as that which the Cudworths, the Clarkes, the Warburtons, the Lardners, the Butlers of a better age produced, when English Deism was as formidable as German Pantheism is now. In the meanwhile, however, we-the light battalion-the TEATAσTIKOì avdρες μισθοφόροι ἐν λογοῖς-may be able to do something in the good cause. We may draw attention to the sources of really useful information which reviving Christianity has begun to open largely upon the Continent; we may occasionally be adequate to single out some particular error and expose it, or warn the reader of concealed danger where he might not at first suspect it.

It is with the hope of being able to do some little good in this way, that we enter at present upon a brief examination of the work on Biblical Criticism, now extensively circulated in England, the title of which we have prefixed to this article, De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament, translated, enlarged, and improved by a Mr. Theodore Parker, " Minister of the Second Church in Roxbury." In introducing this work to our

Mr. Parker's Translations.

357

readers, we naturally feel that Mr. Parker himself has the first claims upon our notice, as being of the two least likely to have enjoyed the pleasure of a previous acquaintance with them. He has invited us to speak freely by his motto-which, like the rest of his ancient lore, is somewhat the worse for the wearπάταξον μὲν, ἄκουσον δέ. And we will treat him better than he expects, for we have heard him patiently before we struck. Mr. Theodore Parker, then, (to speak our minds with becoming plainness,) is grossly ignorant of German, and no great master of English; and, therefore, when he undertakes to translate out of the former language into the latter, his version cannot reasonably be expected to be either elegant or correct. He has, however, a great deal of diligence and activity-which it were well if he would bestow aright; and a tolerably sound, though narrow understanding, which, if he would add to it a little. modesty and sense of religion, might make him ultimately useful, or at least inoffensive.

We shall give a specimen or two of his qualifications as a translator and critic. A very little will suffice; and the reader will readily calculate the stature of the Hercules of Roxbury from the measure of his foot. In vol. i. p. 390, we are astounded by the information that the Jews distinguish the characters used in their MSS. into the TAM and the WELSH. "Of a noble race was Shenkin :" yet we guess that the warmest-headed antiquarians of the Principality would be somewhat surprised to find that their country had played so conspicuous a part in Hebrew literature. The word which Mr. Parker had before him was Welsche, which a very slight knowledge of German (not to require even a slight knowledge of biblical criticism) might have taught him to translate " Italian." But he was writing a book of reference, and therefore felt it unnecessary to consult authorities. In the same volume, p. 153, he gives the following translation from Eichhorn: "Epiphanius, or rather an apocryphal writer, to judge from the foolish things with which his narrative is overlaid," &c. The work referred to is Epiphanius' book De ponderibus et mensuris, the authenticity of which the reader, who trusts (as hereafter few readers will) to Mr. Parker's accuracy, will be surprised to find questioned by Eichhorn-especially upon such grounds. But if he will compare the original, he will find a fitter object for his astonishment: "Epiphanius-leider ein apokryphischer Schriftsteller, wegen der vielen Albernheiten womit er seine Erzählungen überladen hat," &c. Could not Mr. Parker turn a dictionary, and find that leider meant happily?" Indeed, he is specially unfortunate in his attempts upon Eichhorn. In vol. ii. p. 31, he makes Eichhorn say of the book of Genesis: "Read it as two historical works of the old

66

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world, the air of its age and country breathes in it. Forget the age you live in, and the knowledge it affords you-still you cannot enjoy the book in the spirit of its origin; dream not of that." Eichhorn's own words are: "Lies es als zwei historische Werke der Vorwelt, und athme dabei die Luft seines Zeitalters und Vaterlandes. Vergiss also das Jahrhundert in dem du lebst, und die kenntnisse die es dir darbietet : und karst du das nicht, so lass dir nicht träumen, das du das Buch in Geist seines Ursprungs geniessen werdest."* Again, at p. 82: "It Again, at p. 82: "It stops with God, the ultimate cause, as if he were supposed to be the immediate cause. And even for us, who have inquired into the causes of things, the name of God, in these cases, is often indispensable to fill up the blank, when we do not design to say, that God has interrupted the course of things!" "Und für uns, die wir die ursachen der Dinge erforscht haben, ist in diesen Fällen der Name Gottes oft ein entbehrliches Füllwort, und keine Anzeige dass Gott den Lauf der Dinge immer unterbrochen habe."† Yet Mr. Parker is not without a rival as a translator in the great Republic. He has at least an equal in a Mr. Kaufman, who has done Tholuck the honour of rendering his commentary upon St. John's Gospel into English, wherein he felicitously turns the Latin word "Theologastri" into the elegant newEnglish compound "Belly-theologues."

De Wette himself is a very different sort of a person from his conceited and ignorant translator. Indeed, the German and the American have hardly any thing in common, except their contempt for orthodoxy, and disbelief of Revealed Religion. But these are much more calm, settled, and rational in the former than in the latter; less noisy and offensive, and perhaps, too, more hopeless. De Wette is one of the best learned and most painstaking compilers of a learned and painstaking generation. With less of imagination in his temper than some of the more vivacious of his brethren, and consequently seldom dazzling his readers with new hypothetical discoveries, he has, where his unchristian prejudices do not warp his judgment, a considerable share of masculine good sense and discernment, and possesses no small share of those sound sterling qualities of a critic to which Gesenius owed his well-earned reputation. The real utility of his work in many respects-and it is indeed an admirable digest of critical information-makes it only the more dan

"Read it as two historical works of the ancient world, and breathe in it the air of its age and country. Forget the century in which you live, and the knowledge that it affords you. If you cannot do this, dream not of enjoying the book in the spirit of its origin."

“And to us, who have searched into the causes of things, the name of God is, in such cases, often a superfluous expletive, and no indication that God has ever interrupted the course of things."