portant benefit, especially to the very young learners; inasmuch as they are the means of introducing them to habits of subordination. In these marches, they are obliged continually to attend to signals or the word of command, and to obey

them. There is, in fact, no part of the school employments so calculated to produce attention and obedience, which are of the greatest importance throughout the various exercises."

A FRIEND TO INFANT SCHOOLS.

SUMNER'S Evidences; BENSON'S Scripture Difficulties; and FABER'S Difficulties of Infidelity.

(Continued from p. 655.)

In our last Number we confined our notice to Mr. Sumner's volume, which is highly important, as affording perhaps a fuller display of the internal evidences of Christianity than can be found in any preceding writer. The lectures of Mr. Benson, on Scripture Difficulties, are now to be considered. These discourses were preached before the university of Cambridge, in 1822, at the lecture founded by the Rev. J. Hulse, and have excited, we believe, very considerable attention both in that university and among the reading part of the clergy. They are indeed of a high order, and present an example which well deserves to be studied by all who may in future be called to occupy the same important station. Amongst much other excellent matter, they abound with some very free observations, and somewhat unpalateable advice, delivered with that boldness which marks a man of a thoroughly independent spirit, and that mixture of firmness, feeling, and moderation, which never fails to produce a bene ficial effect upon candid and reflecting minds. Every one knows that the pulpits of our two universities have been very generally-we are far from saying exclusively-devoted to topics of theological criticism and controversy. They have been too often occupied, rather as a stage

for displaying the skill of the theological combatant, than as a school of instruction for expounding the doctrines, and enforcing the praetical influence, of Christianity. This has been productive both of good and of evil. On the one hand, it has been the means of supplying us with an abundant mass of excellent matter on the evidences of revelation which we might not otherwise have possessed. Our public university lectures, were they to be collected in a uniform edition, would exhibit a sort of armoury of Christian evidence, where the future champions of religion might equip themselves with good weapons and harness, of all sorts and sizes, both for defence and for attack. There is hardly one important subject that has remained unnoticed; hardly one important vantage-ground that has not been seized and secured. And so far is well. "The truth," as Bishop Horsley remarks," must be not only taught, but defended. The stubborn infidel will raise objections against the first principles of our faith: and objections must be answered. The restless spirit of scepticism will suggest difficulties in the system, and create doubts about the particulars of the Christian doctrine: difficulties must be removed, and doubts must be satisfied." And, if all this must be done, not only from the press, but occasionally from the pulpit also, what place is so proper for such discussions as the pulpit of a university? While, therefore, the paro

chial minister should confine himself chiefly to the explanation and enforcement of Christian doctrine and practice, the preacher before a university, especially at an endow ed lecture, may often be allowed to direct his principal efforts against the infidel, the sceptic, and the heretic.

But then, on the other hand, there are serious inconveniences and evils attending the perpetual recurrence of conflicts of this description. Mr. Benson, though a champion eminently qualified for this warfare, gives us to understand how much he lamented the necessity he was under of devoting to it so large a portion of his time and labour. Let us hear the admirable remarks with which he concludes his lectures; remarks which deserve to be noted down in the common-place book of every student, but espę cially of every teacher in our uni

versities.

"It now only remains for us to conclude, by solemnly and finally beseeching all to endeavour to obviate the dangers to which

the constant recurrence of those contro

versial discussions which, whether from choice or necessity, so often abound in this place, must unavoidably lead. For of all modes of life, that which we are here accustomed to pass is, perhaps, as little favourable as any to the attainment of deep sentiments of serious piety. Removed from the softening intercourse of domestic life, our feelings are not mellowed into that tenderness which is so congenial to the spirit of Christian love. Withdrawn from the temptations of society and the world, and restrained from the grosser sins, by station, by character, and the many human eyes that are upon us, we are apt to forget the Eye that is over all, and to feel less sensibly the necessity of God's preventing grace, and the value of continual prayer for his aid. Living in solitude too, the undisputed lords of our dwelling, and with no inclinations to consult but our own, the harshness of our tempers is not worn down by collision, nor the selfishness of our dispositions subdued by the habit of yielding to the wishes of another. Lastly, the uniformity and equality of our days, and the competency of which, without a thought, we are sure to partake, makes us at once insensible of the

insecurity of earthly things, and unacquainted with the best teachers of heavenlymindedness, affliction, disappointment, and grief. To all this we may add, that the edge of the sorrows into which we either the employment of the mind abates fall, and renders religion less essential to our happiness, or else an indolent melancholy shuts up every genial glow of kindli ness, and unfits us at once for every exertion and sympathy, either for the good of others or our own. All these things are against godliness of soul. Independent and intellectual in every thing that we think double need, therefore, of having the holy or do in our ordinary life, we stand in affections of the heart enlivened and spiritualized by practical preaching. But it is not only of ourselves we should think, nor is it only for ourselves we should fear. There are those around us for whose welfare it is our duty and interest to feel. There are those, over whose inexperience we are to watch, as they that must give confines of youth and manhood, with the an account, and who, standing upon the passions of the one unsubdued, and the principles of the other unconfirmed, are in an hour of life most full of temptation, and most dangerous to religion and to virtue. If these, then, when they come within these sacred walls, are condemned to hear from us only of the objections of infidelity, or the controversies of divines; if we reason ever upon the rudiments or mysteries of our faith, and appeal but seldom to their consciences, and press but little upon their affections the spirituality of the Gospel, and the serious and heavenly character of the life it requires, what can they conclude, but that religion is the object of the understanding rather than the heart; a thing of thought, rather than of feeling? And if such should ever be the unhappy imagination they imbibe, a chilness will quench their love of God for ever, and, the bloom of their religious affections being blighted when it should have been cherished, they will grow cold and careless, and mere philosophic Christians, destitute of all warmth of heavenly-mindedness themselves, and the enemies of all display of heavenly-mindedness in others."' pp. 417-419.

After such a quotation as this, our readers, we are sure, will not accuse us of prolixity, if we enter upon a somewhat lengthened review of Mr. Benson's volume. We cannot, however, pretend to give any thing like an enlarged abstract of

its contents. All we can do is, to state the author's general views of his subject, and to exhibit some specimens of his learning, his reasoning, his piety, and his eloquence. These lectures consist of two series; the first relating to Scripture difficulties in general; the second to the moral and historical difficulties of the Book of Genesis in particular. The author begins with the consideration of difficulties which might naturally be expected in the Bible, even on the supposition of its being merely an uninspired work. Among the sources of these difficulties, he notices the various persons by whom it was written, as well as the various periods and countries in which it was composed; the changes which time has produced in the meaning and combination of words; the perplexities attendant upon two languages, the Greek and Hebrew, now dead and disused; the obscurity springing from our comparative ignorance of the manners, customs, and civil and ecclesiastical polity of ancient times; the variety and extent of the subjects which the Bible embraces; its prophetic character; its mysterious nature; its reference to changes both in the physical and moral worlds; and, lastly, its being conversant with events and transactions of a spiritual and divine nature, such as the fall and recovery of man. kind, the conversion and sanctification of the soul, the state of separate spirits, the last judgment, the joys of heaven, and the terrors of hell.

and eternal things. Either these things have been revealed from Heaven, or they have not. If not so revealed, what becomes of their authority? They are then rather plain fancies or delusions, than legitimate sources of difficulty. And, if revealed, as we firmly believe them to have been, they necessarily imply the Divine inspiration of the volume in which they are contáined.

In the three following lectures our author discusses the existence of difficulties in Scripture, considered both as a divinely inspired, and as a religiously instructive, composition. Viewing it in the first of these lights, he contends that the benefits we derive from " things hard to be understood," are not only considerable in themselves, but such as no other obvious method could have supplied; and that these benefits are sufficient greatly to overbalance any alleged concomitant in conveniences;-in short, that by their absence we might have lost much, and gained comparatively little. We give the following passage as an illustration of his views with respect to historical and philological difficulties. It may serve as a good specimen of his reasoning, which we think will be found equally solid and ingenious; requiring some attention from the common reader, but satisfactory when it is thoroughly understood.

"What, for instance, is the character of those internal evidences to which we commonly appeal for a proof of the getures? It is to their philological and hisnuineness and authenticity of the Scriptorical difficulties that for this purpose we most generally turn. It is to the peculi árities of the Scripture style, and to the multiplicity of the Scripture allusions to the manners and customs of the ages and countries in which we affirm them to have been written, and the sentiments and ac

are the topics on which we most strongly and successfully insist. We resort to these themes, because we feel justly convinced, that such difficulties are the best internal arguments we can use upon the subject;

since, had the Bible been so framed that it might have been alike understood by men of every capacity and in every age, it could have had none of the characteristic fea tures which would have fixed its composition to any particular person or period. Strip the Bible, then, of all those peculiarities which so evidently originate in the circumstances under which it was produced, and you will rob it for ever of one of the best internal marks of its having been produced under those circumstances. So far, therefore, as philological and his torical things hard to be understood,' corroborate the external evidences for the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, so far is their permitted existence influential, and, consequently, beneficial, in the formation of every inquiring Christian's faith. Hence we may state it as the first of those disadvantages to which we should have been subjected by the removal of all difficulties from the Bible, that we should have lost a direct and very powerful internal evidence in favour of its genuineness and authenticity.

"But the faith of the Christian requires not only to be formed, but also to be protected and preserved. Amidst the bustle of worldly business the direct and positive evidences in favour of revelation are too frequently forgotten, almost as soon as learnt; and, even where remembered, they are apt to lose their influence over the mind by losing the charm of novelty to the imagination. It is, therefore, highly expedient that we should have a constant opportunity of fortifying the unsteadiness or weakness of our belief by the aid of some indirect and incidental arguments which, arising up from time to time with all the freshness of unexpected discoveries, may strengthen our dependence upon the general proofs of the Divine origin of the Bible, and renew, at intervals, our fading remembrance of their force. Now as the ordinary philological and historical difficulties contribute to give the first origin to our belief in the truth of the Scriptures, so do those of a more arduous nature tend to its preservation and protection when formed. For it is constantly happening that things hardest to be understood are receiving a complete elucidation; and every great obscurity elucidated is an objection removed; and every objection removed affords one of the best, because most unsuspicious, testimonies to the truth and, authority of any writing.-But, instead, of reasoning upon the justice of this remark, let us at once endeavour to illustrate, and apply it by selecting from the

history of theological science one or two of the most obvious examples by which it has been sometimes so irresistibly con firmed.

"It is well known, then, that it had long been a matter of wonder to find St. Paul, when brought before the Jewish Sanhedrim, expressing himself as if ignorant that Ananias, their president, was the high priest; though, at the very moment, Ananias was sitting before him in his judicial capacity, and perhaps also in his pontifical robes. I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest,' said the Apostle, when rebuked for censuring him; and the saying undoubtedly seemed strange, until the researches and ingenuity of Michaelis drew forth facts from the history of the times, which removed the wonder at once. He has shewn that Ananias had indeed been for a very short time in possession of the power, but was still without any just claim to the authority of the pontifical office; and that, consequently, the ignorance which St. Paul expressed, and which, at first sight, appears merely assumed as an excuse for his own conduct, was either, as it easily might be under such circumstances, real, or else was intended as a reproof to the usurpation of his judge.

"Again, it had often been alleged as an objection to the historical accuracy of the New Testament, that it gave the title of proconsul to the governor of Cyprus, when, in strict propriety, he could only be styled prætor of the province. So strongly did this apparent inaccuracy weigh with Beza, that he absolutely attempted to remove it by his mode of translating the text; and our own Authorized Version seems in like manner to have evaded the difficulty by adopting the neutral term

deputy,' instead of the correct title of proconsul. A medal, however, has since been discovered on which the very same title is assigned about the same period to the governor of the same province, and thus the difficulty has vanished for ever. But it has not vanished without leaving a strong evidence of truth behind. For discoveries like these are of incalculable importance to the believer in the evil hour of temptation. When, as in the former instance, a passage which had long puzzled our understanding receives at last an unexpected and satisfactory interpretation, assurance revives with double energy. Or when, as in the latter of the two cases, the learning or ingenuity of some laborious antiquary or divine, has met with an inscription on a marble or a coin which had hitherto been overlooked or unknown, and, by applying