"Praised be my Lord for our brother Fire, through whom thou givest us light in the darkness, and he is bright and pleasant, and very mighty and strong. "Praised be my Lord for our mother the Earth, the which dost sustain and keep us and bringest forth divers fruits, and flowers of many colors, and grass."

Our author adds, in the following supplementary stanza, the final touch of perfection needed to render this Assisinine hymn the best expression of Christian piety extant:

"Praised be my Lord for our brothers and sisters the living creatures which thou hast made, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fishes that inhabit the Sea. They, too, are thy children, they praise thy handiwork, and thou blessest them with thy love!"

We must hasten over "Paradise Lost," which is, in fact, no loss, and come to the Cainite genealogy, which is peculiar. We quote:

"Seth is the name of a God, and Enos, his son, means man. genealogy in Genesis v. begins properly with Cainan (Cain). with Adam, and Seth the Creator."

Accordingly the
Enos being one

This is quite a learned note. We did suppose that the old Babylonian God, Set, here dragged up to duty in the fifth chapter of Genesis, properly belonged to some period after the flood. How he gets into the Hebrew records of this date is not mentioned-probably through the arrow-headed, in some way unknown. Cainan becomes Cain by the same process that Middleton is derived from Moses, viz. cutting off the -oses and adding on the -iddleton. So cutting off an from Cain-an, the terminus ad quem, we have Cain, the termiņus a quo, from whom we are all descended through this revised genealogy.

As for Methuselahı, his 969 years were too many for him. He either died of apoplexy from the accumulation of years and ideasor if he lived so long, he was drowned in the flood; but in any event, whether he lived at all, or not, or was only a period, he and the period are both dead now, which is satisfactory, and the moral is, that we must all die sooner or later, which is conclusive.

"The Failure of Primeval Society" our author regards as simply "the crude abortions of immature nature in its first essays." "The Deluge" has undoubtedly some foundation in fact, although the biblical account of it is puerile.

As for "the Dispersion," that, too, has some color of truth, inasmuch as Ethnology traces back the historic races to the alleged locality.

We have, then, "Jehovah and Abraham, a Hebrew Idyl,"

from the text, "And the Lord appeared unto Abraham in the plain of Mamre," with the story of the promise to Sarah, and the conversation concerning Sodom, upon which our author remarks— "The whole narrative, dinner and conversation included, is exceptional, a visible, palpable appearance of God to man is rare in Hebrew tradition, *** but here is a God who is not only seen and heard, but touched, who not only walks and talks, but eats.” This is more than the author can endure. Notwithstanding man is divine and God is human (page 41) the fact of eating destroys the illusion. Such vulgar occupation becomes neither a Jehovah, nor a Christ, after his resurrection.

"The Heritage of the Inner Life" is the poetic title of the final chapter which concerns the meditative character of the patriarch Isaac. It seems the patriarch did not know his letters. He went out in the evening to meditate-" writing had not been invented. If the patriarch experienced intuitions, or formed conclusions, there was no opportunity of recording them, and so they are lost to posterity." We would suggest to Dr. Hedge, that Isaac's grand ancestors beyond the river were possibly familiar with the record of certain events which occurred some four hundred years before Abraham came into the land of Canaan, and which were inscribed upon memorial cylinders in Hamitic arrow headed characters, preserved in the Temple of the Moon, in this same Ur, or Hur of Lower Chaldea, from whence Abraham emigrated. Furthermore, that Abraham sojourned some years in Egypt, and that the Egyptian Book of the Dead antedates, or is at least as old as the time of his visit there. It is also a new idea to us, that the Phenician or Semitic alphabet is younger than either the Assyrian or Egyptian-so that if the patriarch Abraham neglected either his own or his son's education, we think him quite culpable.

But this is not the point of the chapter. It is the tendency to inwardness of the Hebrews, as derived from father Isaac, which strikes the mind of the author. Their outwardness they get from father Jacob. This inwardness flowered outward from time to time in their history, "from Joshua to John the Baptist—in Jesusin John of the Apocalypse-in Maimonides, and in Spinoza "—and our Christianity "is a birth from the interior spiritual life so characteristic of the Hebrew race," from Confucius to Tam O'Shanter.

We have endeavored to skin the cream of these chapters. If our readers desire the milk of the word, let them read the book.

LANGE'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS.-In this volume of Lange's Commentary, Dr. Schaff himself has done a large share of the work connected with the preparation of the American edition. Without expressing any opinion of his associate (Dr. Riddle) we think it is to be regretted that Dr. Schaff did not find himself able to finish what he undertook, and to give to the entire volume the same attention and care which he has given to a portion of it. We hope the learned editor will pardon us if we add that, in our opinion, it would have been better if he had prepared a commen. tary of his own on this Epistle, independently of the work of Lange. In that case, we should have had a volume of greater variety, and one in which his own views could have been presented in a more satisfactory way. There is a fundamental evil or failing in every book which is prepared on the plan of this Commentary, and, notwithstanding all that is or may be said in its favor, this evil or failing will be felt by all who use it. We believe it is felt very widely by those who have examined these volumes. Where a Commentary is translated from another language, with additions, and especially where these additions are borrowed from every good source, and are inserted in the midst of the original work in bracketed passages or in foot-notes, the reader is greatly hindered in getting the full force and impression either of the first author or of his successors. It is to the mind of the student somewhat the same thing as to a hearer would be the attempt to read in his presence the text of this Epistle as printed in this volume-for example, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle [a called, chosen apostle] separated [set apart] unto the Gospel of God, (which he had promised afore [which he promised beforehand] by [through] his prophets in the holy Scriptures) [omit parenthesis] concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, [omit here the words, Jesus Christ our Lord, and transfer them to the close of verse 4], which [who] was made [born] of [from] the seed of David according to the flesh," &c. The hearer certainly would not be greatly edified when

* A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical, with special reference to Ministers and Students. By JOHN Peter Lange, D. D., in connection with a number of eminent European Divines. Translated from the German, and edited with additions, original and selected, by PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., in connection with American scholars of various Evangelical Denominations. Vol. V. of the New Testament; containing the Epistle to the Romans. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869. 8vo. pp. 455.

listening to such a passage. He would prefer to hear the passage without the insertions first, and then the passage as modified by the insertions afterwards; and, in this way, he might hope to form some clear idea of what Paul's meaning actually was. So with the student, though of course not in the same degree. He can master, perhaps, the views of a dozen or twenty authors, and can compare and weigh them in his own mind, but he is rather bewildered than aided when he is so compelled to take the views of nineteen through mere parenthetical passages or foot notes breaking the sequence of the thoughts of the twentieth. We have had occasion to use Commentaries pretty extensively, and, if our experience answers to that of others, we may pronounce a judgment here which will be widely accepted. It has been often objected against German commentators, that they are too minute in their presentation of all views of a Biblical passage. We are not disposed to agree with this objection. But we think Dr. Schaff's German education and tendencies have led him to adopt this method, in these volumes, in a manner which is not desirable. Another mistake, which we think Dr. Schaff has made, in this great undertaking in which he is engaged, is this-that, if he were proposing to adopt the method to which we have alluded, he should not have taken some other work as the foundation for his additions and annotations, rather than that of Lange. Lange's original work, as it seems to us, is not worthy to be made the basis of a great Biblical commentary-to be brought over from Germany to America and translated from its own language to ours. The American world would not have suffered, we think, if Dr. Lange had spoken to none but his German countrymen-or, if we are mistaken in this view, we are sure that there are other German commentaries which might better have been introduced to our readers as the great Biblical work of the age." Lange is not a scholar of the order of many of those whose views are inserted as additions by the American editors, and the consequence is, that we have the more scholarly fitted into and holding a subordinate place in the less scholarly. We do not know why Dr. Schaff selected this work for translation rather than any other; but we fear that it was some influence from his American life, rather than his German education, which, in this point, we cannot help thinking would have been the better guide. We have sometimes said of the other volumes, and we trust that our esteemed friend will not be offended if we say of this one to which he has

contributed so much, that Lange's [American] Commentary would have been a more valuable book if Lange's part of it had been omitted.

Dr. Schaff, himself, is a scholar too well known to the public to need any commendation. It is enough to say of his present work-his additions and annotations in the early part of this volume on the Epistle to the Romans-that it is characterized by his usual research and thoroughness. The serviceableness of the book to all who use it will be largely due to what he has contributed to it, and we hope he may find himself repaid for his labors in every way. We do not wonder that he left his coadjutors to carry on the preparation of other volumes, and himself undertook the work of preparing this, for there is an interest in the study of this Epistle which nothing else affords. And yet the literature connected with it is so vast in amount, and the works of preceding commentators are so numerous, that few men have the patience and enthusiasm combined which are necessary to bear them through so laborious a task. Dr. Schaff, evidently, has both the enthusiasm and the patience. As we have already said, we only wish he had given his personal and minute supervision to the entire volumes.

We can hardly close our notice of this book without expressing our gratification, that so widely-read and so catholic a man as Dr. Schaff should have set forth the baselessness of the interpretation which Dr. Charles Hodge gives to Romans v., 12-19. If Dr. Hodge's claim that his opinions are in accordance with the views of almost all scholars needs any further reply than that given in the New Englander eighteen months ago, such a reply is found in the pages of this volume. The readers of this Commentary will be convinced that our Princeton friends need to revise their exegesis at this point, if nowhere else; and the testimony of this author we commend to our Princeton friends themselves, with the greater willingness, because he does not hold the view of this passage which we hold ourselves. An amusing instance of the careful exegetical study of Dr. Hodge, so far as the views of other commentators are concerned-an instance which we had noticed ourselves before this volume was published-is brought out by Dr. Schaff in his first note on page 179. Dr. Hodge charges Meyer with holding what he does not hold in his last edition of his Commentary, and what he did not hold even in the edition. which was published ten years before Dr. Hodge's work was