unsucces.depths search, so left uponand, whate

his graces as stage manager* of the revels. We then hear no more of him till we learn that by his own hand he passed away to stand before the judgment seat of God. But why, when Mr. Farrar was telling us of the fine Roman contempt expressed by Festus, by Gallio, and by "jesting” Pilate, for the Jews and their religious affairs, did he not allude to another Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paulus, whom the inspired word terms “a prudent man.” We should be curious to know his estimate of him, and whether he does not think that he more fully realizes the idea of a “Seeker after God,” who was not only a seeker, but also a finder, than Gallio or Seneca?

In conclusion, we cannot help expressing our deep regret, that an accomplished scholar, a distinguished teacher of youth, should have produced such a character as Seneca to the world as a “Seeker after God;" and, whatever may have been his intentions, have left upon the mind of his readers that such a search, so carried on, by such a man, through such depths of infamy, should, after all, not have been unsuccessful; nay, that his moral altitude was an exalted one, “Exemplar vitiis imitabile.” As Christian Observers, we protest against such doctrines gaining currency; we account them false philosophy and dangerous delusion. From the wretched and humiliating career of Seneca, a most striking lesson might easily have been gathered of the truth of our tenth and thirteenth articles, but such plainly was not Mr. Farrar's intent. We are not quite sure that we understand the cloudy sentences in the conclusion of the book, and therefore hesitate to comment upon them, for fear of charging him unjustly with consequences which he would repudiate. Such, for instance, as that which reads much like a reductio ad absurdum, where the hatred of Marcus Aurelius for Christians is adduced as an instance of some truth which it was God's good pleasure he should thus set forth.

Rash and presumptuous dogmatism upon such deep mysteries as the ultimate condition of the heathen, is ever a dangerous thing, and we feel most unwilling to venture at all beyond the careful statements made by St. Paul upon this awful subject, in his Epistle to the Romans, and in his address to the Athenians on Mars' Hill. We know full well that God was their God as well as ours; we can rejoice in believing that the "times of heathen ignorance God had winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent ;" but we fail to find warrant, other than the fond fancies of Mr. Farrar, for such sweeping assertions as, that “God's Spirit was with the

lusion of fear of charge. Such,

heathen, dwelling in them, though unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their hearts.” Indeed, we can hardly imagine that he believes his own assertion, as we read a few pages further on, that besides Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, of whose lives, as we have seen, he knows next to nothing, there is only Socrates, “in the whole circle of ancient history and ancient literature, to whom, without a sense of incongruity, he can accord the title of holy.” So again, when he tells us, “Our Saviour was their Saviour too; that through His righteousness their poor merits were accepted, their inward sicknesses were healed; that He, whose worship they denounced as an execrable superstition, stood supplicating for them .... helping them (though they knew Him not) to crush all that was evil, and pleading for them, when they persecuted even the most beloved of His saints, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ;'" we shrink from characterizing such random talk on such solemn subjects in the language which it seems to call for. We feel quite sure that if he had known anything of the condition of the heathen, or witnessed it as we have witnessed it, he would have written in a far different tone and spirit. When reading the carefully wrought passage in which he proclaims that “God taught truth sometimes by the voice of Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of Pagan philosophers, and all His voices demand our listening ear,” despite the legend concerning Caliph Omar, we could not help recurring to the language Milton scrupled not to place in the mouth of the Tempter :

“All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' law,

The Pentateuch or what the Prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write and teach

To admiration, led by nature's light.”
The answer conceived by the Poet, not inferior to Mr. Farrar
in profound learning, in grasp of intellect, in knowledge of
Scripture, in due maintenance of free thought, is,-

“ Alas, what can they teach, and not mislead,

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending ?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none;

Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not; or by delusion,
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets

An empty cloud.” It is with much regret, but under a strong sense of duty, that we have made these comments. Straws, they tell us, show what way the wind is blowing; and the volume we have been reviewing is such a straw. We cannot help fearing, from the prevalence of works written in such a spirit, that the fine Roman contempt for the Jews and their religion has still an existence amongst us. Again, in such an uplifting of Seneca, we are painfully reminded how much talk is the characteristic of those who assume to themselves to be leaders of thought in the present day; the talk is about earnestness, and the talk is about work, but it is still talk. We regret, moreover, and most of all, the attempt at removing those ancient landmarks, which have so long separated truth from error, Christianity from the purposeless dreams of what is called philosophy. When such teaching abounds in our public schools and universities, as it does to a painful extent, we cease to wonder at the strange jumble perplexing the intellects of intelligent young men. When so many clues are put into their hands besides that which God has given, to lead them beyond the labyrinth of life, we do not wonder that many lose their way in the mazes of error. Instead of recommending to the young the perusal of the Sunday Library, as a profitable employment for the Sunday afternoon, we would feel more disposed to say, in warning tones, “Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.”

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, as set forth in a recent

Declaration : a Correspondence between the Rev. Wharton B. Marriott, M.A., and the Rev. T.T. Carter, M.A. Parts I. and II. Rivingtons.

THE Correspondence, which we propose to review, arose out of a paragraph which occurs in a document put forth by Dr. Pusey, Archdeacon Denison, Rev. T. T. Carter, and others, on behalf of persons “exercising the office of priesthood within the Church of England, who have inculcated and defended the doctrines of the real objective Presence, of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and of the adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.” The paragraph is as follows :

“We believe that, as in heaven Christ, our great High Priest, ever offers Himself before the Eternal Father, pleading by His presence His Sacrifice of Himself once offered on the Cross; so on earth, in the Holy Eucharist, that same Body, once for all sacrificed for us, and that same Blood, once for all shed for us, Sacramentally present, are offered and pleaded before the Father by the Priest,

as our Lord ordained to be done in remembrance of Himself, when He instituted the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood."

It is obvious, as Mr. Marriott has shown, that the whole superstructure of doctrine involved in this somewhat complicated statement, rests upon the assumption that “ Christ, our great High Priest, ever offers Himself in heaven;" and, accordingly, it is with this assumption that the Correspondence before us professes to deal.

For the critical investigation of passages of Holy Scripture bearing upon this subject, we must refer our readers to Mr. Marriott's Letter No. III. and the Appendix B, in which he points out with much force and clearness the “wonderful power of distinction which is characteristic of the mothertongue of the Christian revelation ;" and shows, as we think, in a most conclusive manner, that if there be any passages in the authorized English version which, when taken apart from the context, are capable of being understood of a continuous or repeated offering, those passages are, in the original Greek, absolutely incapable of such an interpretation.

The object which we propose to ourselves, at the present time, is, to notice the arguments chiefly relied upon by Mr. Carter in support of his assertion, that “ Christ, our great High Priest, ever offers Himself before the Eternal Father;" and to direct the attention of our readers to the utter incompatibility of such an assertion, not only with the express declarations of Holy Scripture, but also with those very types and symbols to which Mr. Carter has appealed in order to establish it.

Having first challenged Mr. Carter to produce any one single passage of Holy Scripture in which the assertion that Christ ever offers Himself is contained, or from which it may legitimately be inferred, Mr. Marriott proceeds, in his first Letter, to examine the only passage which, in his judgment, might, primâ facie, be thought to favour the views of the Declarants, viz., Heb. viii. 3: “For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: whence a necessity (60ev avaykalov) that this man have somewhat also to offer.” In which words he shows that, so far from a perpetual offering being asserted or implied, there is a marked contrast drawn, in the original Greek, between the continuous or repeated offerings of the Jewish priests, and the one offering once made by Christ.

Having first denied that by the terms of the Declaration it was meant to imply “that any act is being performed” (i.e. in heaven) " similar to the immolation of a victim," Mr. Carter appeals, in vindication of the statement of the Declarants, that Christ ever offers Himself in heaven, to “certain cases” in the Levitical law in which “ an offering was made of the victim, or the blood of the victim, after death, and which Vol. 68.-No. 375.

2 E

Declat, prima fue the only r. Marriott or from a sertion that

was part of the complex idea of sacrifice, though a part subsequent to what took place on the altar itself.” (p. 12.)

How far these cases avail in support of Mr. Carter's theory, may, perhaps, be gathered from the consideration that, in answer to Mr. Marriott's specific request* that the cases referred to should be plainly stated, Mr. Carter contents himself with a passing allusion to “ other fragmentary types in the Old Covenant of offerings connected with a previous death, as a continuance of the sacrifice” (p. 38); whilst the fact, that the offerings thus alluded to conssited of consecration offerings, peace offerings, and that of the shew-bread, suffices, without further inquiry, to dispose of any analogy between such offerings and that of Christ, viewed in that aspect with which alone we are here concerned, viz., as an expiatory sacrifice for sin.

Whilst shrinking, however, from the appeal which he had himself made to those “ certain cases” in the Levitical law, in which an offering was made either of the victim or of its blood subsequently to the sacrifice, Mr. Carter, preferring to draw his conclusions rather from “ general considerations than from single expressions," has recourse, in quest of “ proofs" of the doctrine of Christ's renewal of His own oblation, to what he represents as “a series of symbolic pictures representing what is now going on in heaven.” (p. 33.)

Now, whilst not only freely allowing, but earnestly maintaining, that all Scripture from which doctrine may be clearly proved, or legitimately inferred, is profitable for that purpose, two canons may be laid down for the interpretation of such visions, or symbolic representations of Holy Scripture, which, as we believe, no sound theologian will dispute. The canons of which we speak are these: (1) that the ground-work of the vision, or symbolic picture, as regards time and place, must be clearly determined, before any conclusions on points of doctrine can be based upon it; and (2) that such conclusions must not be inconsistent with others derived from direct and dogmatic statements of Holy Scripture.

Reserving, for the present, what we may have to advance with regard to the latter of these two canons of interpretation, we observe, with reference to the former, (1) that there is probably no portion of Holy Scripture, the interpretation of which is more disputed than is that of those chapters of the Revelation of St. John to which Mr. Carter refers (viz. chapters 4-8); and (2) that it is upon the assumed (and, as we believe, mistaken) interpretation of some of the points most open in them to discussion, that the inferences drawn by Mr. Carter are altogether dependent.t