The whole process of his examination has been given, and some very accurate and beautiful drawings accompany the paper. He tells us that he examined it from a biological point of view, expecting that he should succeed in establishing its organic origin beyond a doubt. But facts' have led him to the contrary conclusion. When he first saw the beautiful stem-systems in Dr. Carpenter's sections, he became at once a partisan to the views Dr. Carpenter held; but the more good sections and isolated stems he examined the more doubtful he became as to its organic origin, until at length the most magnificent canal systems,' taken altogether and closely compared with Foraminifera sections, taught him nothing but its inorganic origin.

He further says that, with the specimens now at his disposal, he has been repeatedly enabled in an hour to produce the same mental change in skilful biologists in relation to it that it took so long to produce in himself. He is manifestly sorry to reach the conclusion he has reached, having been so courteously aided in every way by Drs. Dawson and

Car

penter; but while attributing to them complete honesty of work and inference, he yet claims to have made a more thorough investigation. And he concludes as follows:

'If eozoon......were really remains of an undoubted Foraminifera species, then we should possess in (the specimens) certain proofs that, even during the formation of the most ancient strata of the earth's crust, living beings occurred, and that the first organisms belonged to the lowest animals, by which Biology and Geology would have gained two highly-important facts. The proof that Eozoön is not a fossil rhizopod will perhaps for many persons take away an important link from the beautiful picture of the development of organic life upon the earth, which they have drawn up for themselves. But the object of natural research does not consist in finding reasons for attractive conceptions about nature, but in knowing nature

as it really is. Because only an insight into the real condition of nature can, in the long run, satisfy the scientific mind, which gives up as errors the most attractive hypotheses regarding the essence and action of nature, if in the face of newlydiscovered facts they can no longer hold good; no matter whether these erroneous hypotheses may have reigned supreme for a long time previously, and may have been held to be the best conceptions of nature by the most eminent authorities.'

It should be known, however, that Dr. Dawson and Dr. Carpenter have both written to the scientific journals declaring Dr. Moebius to be but incompetently informed on the subject; and whilst admitting his accuracy of observation and illustration, yet contend that it is not extended enough; at the same time promising us a joint monograph on the subject, opening up new and convincing facts, and very naturally asking for the suspension of final judgment until this paper appears. We think it highly probable that they will maintain their ground fairly, for they are on the whole the most competent experts; but we cannot refrain from pointing out the necessity for caution in making sweeping inferences of a definite kind from either unestablished 'facts' or mere negative evidence. We need not attempt to reconcile' 'geology and Genesis' until we know what geology it is we have to 'reconcile.'

The Committee of the House of Commons appointed to enquire into the value of the electric light has completed its labours and issued its report. It contains nothing specially new. The only region in which electricity has made itself a practical source of illumination is in our lighthouses; and the report fully confirms the opinion we have given in this Magazine, that the electric-light panic was a mere scare, and that in fact very little real progress in its practical application to ordinary illuminating purposes had been made.

Grammatical Commentary completes the work: Mr.Wright, himself a Hebrew scholar of the first class, has consulted Dr. Wright and Professor Delitzsch. The temper of the Lecturer is all but invariably fine, the only exception being the contemptuous tone which he allows himself to assume towards Bishop Wordsworth (p. 256, note). He seeks light from all quarters, from Modernist and Romanist, as well as from orthodox and evangelical expositors. The book is, in fact, a repertory of diverse interpretations; yet he keeps in view his primary object, to take a calm survey of the results of modern criticism.' The result is a firm decision in favour of the oneness of the authorship of the Book of Zechariah, and the direct Messianic reference of many of its predictions.

This volume contains some fine specimens of right workmanly exposition. But it is not without monitory instances of self-reliant blundering. Take his comment on chapter viii. Many of the prophecies which are still viewed by the latterday expositors as unfulfilled have long ago been accomplished. But the ideal of the Prophet has sometimes not been attained through the sin of man.' (P. 181.) On reading this, one naturally asks: Is prophecy, then, absolutely conditional? Does the perversity of any generation of men neutralize the prediction? definitively frustrate its fulfilment ? Or does it only postpone its historic realization? Does prophecy imply no foresight of a time, 'in the latter day,' when the Spirit of God shall overcome at last' the inveterate perversity of man? Is a prophet an idealist only? Latter-day expositors! Who can help being a latter-day exposi tor' who prays believing Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven? But our author, like many others, unconsciously puts on a little sneer when he becomes over-confident in his own opinion. Of course, he himself is obliged to be a latter-day expositor before he reaches the conclusion of Zechariah's prophecy, and comes to treat of "the last things" as seen in the light of the Old Dispensation.' (Chapter xiii.) Take, again, his exposition of chapter x. 8-10, etc. I will hiss for them, and I will gather them......And I will sow them (as seed) among the nations, and in the distant lands they will remember Me, and live with their sons and return. And I will bring them back from the land of Egypt, etc.'-'If they did not return in greater numbers to Palestine, the fault lay with themselves. The blessing was there, had they embraced Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah. The predictions of this chapter were fully realized in the trials,

struggles and victories of Israel during the glorious period of the Maccabees.' If so, the Lecturer must have access to some historical authority, of which we have no intimation, and to which he makes no reference. And what of the authoritative interpretation of that prince of latter-day expositors, St. Paul, in Romans xi. ?

Inconsistency and incoherence are the sure indices of error. The Lecturer supplies several instances of this. Thus, in explaining the vision of the angel-riders' (i. 8, 9), he says: "The variety of the colours in the horses is no doubt significant.' (P. 12.) But, in interpreting that of 'the four chariots' (vi. 6, 7), he writes: 'The truth seems to be that the colours of the horses harnessed to the four chariots, like the colours of those ridden by the angels in the first vision, are of no symbolical significance.' (P. 135.) We are at a loss to think what significance other than symbolical the colours of the horses can have, and Mr. Wright does not tell us. He admits that it is natural that attempts should have been made to compare those passages in the Book of the Revelation, in which similar symbols occur, with this vision of Zechariah,' yet he adds: 'It does not necessarily follow that the symbols in s later prophet are to be regarded as explan atory of those which may occur in passages of an earlier writer.' (P. 13.) True, but there must be some right explanation which is common to both, mutatis mu• tandis. The significance of the colours must surely be the same in both. There must be consistency in the symbolic language of Revelation-in the meaning of prophetic hieroglyphics-else exegesis would be hopeless. Mr. Wright's only reason for denying their significance is that he is not satisfied with the explanations of his predecessors, and yet cannot himself improve upon them. This is the argument from impatience. Was the universe a clumsy, unplanned structure, till Copernicus and Newton studied it? The fact on which the Lecturer lays such stress-that the colour 'speckled ' of Zechariah can scarcely be the same colour as the 'pale' in the Revelation -does not prove that 'white,' 'red' and 'black' have not the same meaning in both.

Again, on vii. 4-6, the Lecturer says that the Prophet's object is 'To bring out into bold relief the truth that fasts and feasts are a matter of total indifference in God's sight......The sense of the reply was, fasting is neither enjoined nor forbidden by God.' (P. 171.) But what of the enjoined feasts? The lesson is, to say the least, very awkwardly put in the following sentence: Men are neither better in God's sight by fasting, nor are they the worse for feasting.' (P. 172.)

Mr. Wright's interpretation of the magnificent description in chapter ix. 13, etc., of the raising up of the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece, is to our mind very unsatisfactory. He insists peremptorily that it refers to the wars of the Maccabees, and waxes warm against Bishop Wordsworth for finding its fulfilment in the triumphs of Apostolic preaching over Greek philosophies and idolatries. After quoting a passage from the Bishop's Commentary, he writes: We feel it a duty to protest, in the interests of Evangelical interpretation, against all such expositions, from whatever quarter they come.' The learned Lecturer will find it much easier to scorn and protest than to make good his own interpretation against that which he despises. Had the protest been against the ambitious juvenile rhetoric of the sentences he quotes from Bishop Wordsworth we might have joined in it, but as 'evangelical interpretation' we cannot but regard it as having greatly the advantage over that which Mr. Wright would substitute for it. As to the purport of the prophecy, all are thus far agreed: 'that a contest would take place between the Greek culture and religion and the religion of the God of Israel." (P. 254.) And it is surely no disparagement to the holy and heroic contest of the Maccabee chieftains with the Greek rulers of Syria,' to say that the contest of primitive Christianity with 'the Greek culture and religion' afforded a far grander and worthier fulfilment of the prophecy. Why reject the nobler and more satisfactory realization in favour of a much inferior? Again, the imagery employed by Zechariah in this passage is so accordant with the language of the New Testament, and so apt as descriptive of the preaching of the Gospel, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,' that it has passed into the very vernacular of the evangelical Churches from Jerome's day to ours; Christian hymnology and homiletics are full of it. His arrow shall go forth as the lightning.' Did not Christ Himself call two of His Apostles 'sons of thunder'? and is not the phrase arrow of conviction' as forcible as it is familiar? 'The Lord Jehovah shall blow the trumpet, and shall walk forth with whirlwinds of the south.' 'Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain.' comparison of the activity of the Spirit of God to the wind and the rain is frequent in both Testaments. They shall drink, and make a noise as through wine, and be filled as the sacrificial bowl.' Who can read this without thinking of Peter's reply at Pentecost to the charge of intoxication, and of Paul's antithesis: Be not drunk with wine;...but be filled with the Spirit'?

The

Still further, Mr. Wright's interpretation arbitrarily and violently detaches the passage from the foregoing context. He recognizes in ver. 9, a prophecy of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and in ver. 10, a prediction of the setting up His spiritual kingdom among the nations' (though he, strangely enough, doubts whether 'the blood of thy covenant,' in ver. 11, refers in this connection to the bloodshedding of Christ). And then he makes the Prophet, without any indication of change of subject, such as invariably mark such change in the preceding chapters, with sudden eccentricity turn back to take up a new subject altogether.

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Lastly, the Lecturer is obliged to brave his own impassioned protest. He cannot blind himself to the fact that, after all, the only adequate realization of this prophetic picture of the war of the sons of Zion' is to be found in the early triumphs of the Gospel.... Our Lord and His Apostles were Jews, and the majority of the early evangelists were men of that nation,-in the wonderful fact that the Jews, though politically crushed beneath the Gentile yoke, conquered the nations of the earth by means of that religion which sprang from their midst; in such facts this prophecy, and other similar prophecies, found a most glorious and real fulfil ment.' (P. 289.) One of Mr. Wright's hermeneutic canons seems to us very unsound: The question is, What sense could have been put upon the passage ("They shall look on Me Whom they have pierced") by those persons who were primarily addressed by the Prophet?' (P. 385.) The Lecturer is not the only recent interpreter who lays too much stress on this consideration. A question, very interesting and not unimportant, it certainly is, but, as certainly, it is not the question. To say that it is the question is to mistake the nature of prophecy, and to forget the fact that the Prophets themselves-as well as those whom they immediately addressed-had to study their own prophecies, and to be content with a very dim and uncertain perception of the meaning of their own words: 'searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, etc.' 'To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves (and then, of course, not to their contemporaries), but to us they did minister.' It was to them an objective revelation, which they themselves had not composed, and in their own consciousness, very faintly comprehended; how much more their fellowcountrymen! To tone down, in any degree, the light which the New Testament sheds on the Old, out of deference to what we

imagine the Jews of a particular date must have been capable or incapable of conceiving is very questionable Christian commenting.

Our readers must not allow these strictures-very reluctantly made-to deaden

the effect of the well-deserved commendation with which we began our notice of this very able book. It is a work of great merit and value, and will be recognized as the standard English Commentary on Zechariah.

The Destiny of the Wicked. By the Rev. A. M. Wilson. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co. 1878.-This small volume is a searching criticism of Mr. Cox's Salvator Mundi. Mr. Wilson tracks Mr. Cox's argument page by page, and point by point, slurring over nothing and omitting nothing. He devotes much space to a careful and minute investigation of the meaning of the Biblical words denoting eternity, punishment, hell, and their cognates. The volume is, perhaps, too exclusively critical for the general reader; but its criticisms are nearly always acute, sensible and scholarly. Now and again, we are compelled to differ from Mr. Wilson, but not often, and even then on matters comparatively unimportant. We trust that our delay in noticing this book will not lead any one to suppose that we have under-estimated its value. It is a useful little treatise.

Handbooks for Bible-Classes. Edited by the Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D., and the Rev. A. White, M. A. The Post-Exilian Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. With Introduction and Notes. By Marcus Dods, D.D. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1879. If this series prove throughout according to the samples which have come to hand-the work now before us, and Dr. Macgregor's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (which we hope to notice next month, our limits not admitting an adequate review just now), -this will be the greatest boon which the

P. MULLETT ELLIS.

judicious and enterprising Edinburgh theological publishers have yet conferred on British students of the Scriptures. Here we have, in a marvellously compact form, at the price of two shillings, the very cream of commenting, on the last three books of the Old Testament. This exposition is at once popular and scholarly, and both in a high degree. The introductions to the three books, though not in every respect unexceptionable, are the work of a master. The notes are intensely interesting, enriched and embellished lavishly with choice and apt quotations from the stores of secular literature. The homiletic portion is marked by robust common sense and manly fearlessness and earnestness. Yet the book has a few strange and grave defects. Dr. Dods is too posi tive in rejecting the older interpretation of 'the Desire of all nations' in Ĥaggai, and makes very poorly ont in the modern gloss he would substitute for it. The most unaccountable defect is his note on They shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced,' makes no reference to the quotation of the passage in the Gospel, or to the allusion to it in the Revelation of St. John! We say again, if these Handbooks keep up to this rank of excellence, they will prove an incalculable advantage to thousands of Sunday-school teachers, Lay Preachers, Ministers and devout, thoughtful men of business, with little leisure and less spare cash,