to the minister on the subject. He was a smuggler; and while conversing with Mr. Lachlan, he said, "Surely, if the exciseman should ask me where I hid my whiskey, it would not be wrong that I should lead him off the scent?" His minister would not allow that this was a case to which the rule he laid down was not applicable, and advised him, even in such circumstances, to tell the simple truth. The smuggler was soon after put to the test. While working behind his house by the wayside, in the following week, the exciseman came up to him, and said, "Is there any whiskey about your house to-day ? ' Remembering his minister's advice, the smuggler at once said, though not without misgivings as to the result, "Yes; there are three casks of whiskey buried in a hole under my bed; and if you will search for them there, you will find them." "You rascal," the exciseman said, "if they were there, you would be the last to tell me," and at once walked away. As soon as he was out of hearing, and the smuggler could breathe freely again, he exclaimed, "O, Mr. Lachlan, Mr. Lachlan, you were right as usual!"

'The well-known Robert Macleod was Donald Macpherson's devoted disciple. The story of his first prayer in Donald's family has been often told. To Robert's bewilderment, his host abruptly asked him to pray at family worship during a visit which he paid him. He dared not refuse; so, turning on his knees, and addressing his Creator, he said, "Thou knowest that though I have bent my knees to pray to Thee, I am much more under the fear of Donald Macpherson than under the fear of Thyself." Donald allowed him to proceed no further, but, tapping him on the shoulder, said, "That will do, Robert; you have honestly begun, and you will honourably end; and then he himself concluded the service.'

66

'Mrs. Mackay was usually called the woman of great faith." "The woman of great faith!" a minister once exclaimed, on being introduced to her for the first time. "No, no," she quickly said; "but the woman of small faith in the great God."

'Dr. Mackenzie, when minister of Clyne, used, as often as he could, to bring his godly father to preach on a week-day in his church. He invited on such occasions all the ministers of the Presbytery to be his guests at the manse. Mrs. Mackay was present on one of these days; and being seated in the drawing-room, after the service in church was over, the minister of Tongue came in. Rushing up to him, in her own eager way, "Glad I am to see, and still more glad to hear you," she said. "O, you could not have been glad in hearing me to-day," Mr. Mackenzie said with a sigh, "for I had but little to say, and even that little I could only speak in bonds." "Hush, man," was her quick reply; "A little that a just man hath

Is more and better far

Than is the wealth of many such

As lewd and wicked are;

and, as she repeated the two last lines, she waved her hand across the group of Moderates who were seated beside her.'

On the whole, we like Mr. Kennedy. If he have faults, they are

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267

those of a vigorous and earnest man. We shall be glad to shake hands with him when he is a little older.

Mr. Bonar's beautiful Memoir may be commended, without qualification or limit. The story of David Sandeman is that of a young man born in affluence, who, in the first instance, devoted himself to mercantile pursuits, but who, yielding to a call manifestly Divine, prepared himself by much watchfulness and prayer, and by hard study, for the ministry, and went as a missionary to China, under the auspices of the English Presbyterian Church. After two years' labour, he was suddenly snatched away by cholera; leaving behind him the whole of his fortune to be devoted to missionary purposes, and a memory which will attract the more of love and admiration as the public shall become familiar with his biography. Young ministers, and especially those who contemplate foreign service, will do well to put this book on the same shelf with the precious records of the lives of even Henry Martyn, Pearce, and Hunt.

Sunday: its Origin, History, and Present Obligations. The Bampton Lecture for 1860. By the Rev. Dr. Hessey.

Never was

THE Bampton Lecture is one of the standing and permanent institutions to which we look for the defence of the Christian faith. It is avowedly a champion one object of which is to take up the gauntlet of every new phase of infidelity, as it comes forward with its defiance year after year. It has done its work nobly for many years that are gone; the good Cause owes it much respect; and it will doubtless do good service in time to come. Nothing can be more desirable than that this institution should keep to its proper and sacred business; in that it will always find enough to do. The Infidel and the Rationalist we have always with us. there more necessity for Oxford to choose the right men, and for those men to mind their allotted work, than now. The Essays and Reviews are but the beginnings of evils. Their own peculiarity of misbelief has scarcely yet been fairly met by English writers; and the bias which they will communicate to the thinking of the present generation must have such provision made for it as has not yet been made. We earnestly hope that the subjects of the next two or three years' Lectures are already well chosen; and that the prospective lecturers are giving their work the benefit of long deliberation. Not that this institution is our sheet-anchor: far from it:-but because it has peculiar and very important advantages for the performance and for the success of such a service.

Looked at in the light of the considerations just mentioned, the Bampton Lecture of 1860 must be deemed a failure. It has contributed rather to the unsettlement than the settlement of the public mind. It has not aimed to silence objections, but to raise them; or, at least, that has been its effect. We do not deny that the Sabbath question comes within the scope of the Bampton Lecture; or think that its discussion is ever unseasonable, or even unseasonable at the present time. It occupies a large share of public attention; and necessarily so, for it touches at many points the convictions and theories of all who direct

public opinion. Statesmen find it continually obtruding itself in their legislation; philanthropists have their distinctive pros and cons on the subject; and divines of all shades of creed are constantly involved in controversy as to the theoretical place and practical obligations of the day. And a book might have been sent forth that would have done great service to the Faith which is so vitally bound up with the Lord's Day. But, on the whole, Dr. Hessey's is not such a book. It is very learned, being the fruit of many years' labour, and exhausts, or almost exhausts, the historical element of the question. But it is uncertain in its tone; it yields by far too much; and where it is not destructive, its positive theories are erroneous.

Dr. Hessey gives a fair view of the various theories which have been formed and held in the Christian Church on the nature and obligations of the Seventh Day.

First come those who regard the distinction of days as having entirely ceased. Their notion is, that the Mosaic law has been entirely abrogated; that Christ has fulfilled the law, which is, therefore, no longer binding upon Christian believers, left now to the free instincts of liberty and love. The Sabbath, of course, was abrogated with the rest; and it is dishonourable to the spirit of the Gospel that any one portion of time should be invested with more sanctity than the rest. The opposite extreme argues that Christ did not come to abolish any law, especially the moral law of the Decalogue; and, therefore, that the original enactment is still binding, the Old-Testament Sabbath with all its exactness and rigour. Such a Judaic Sabbath as this may be found in some corners of Christendom, but not among us.

Setting these two extremes aside, there remain two distinct views, which may respectively be placed at the head of sundry subdivisions of theory which now prevail, as they have always prevailed, in the Christian Church. The one may be termed the Sabbatarian, or Christian-Sabbath doctrine; the other may be termed the Dominical, or simply ecclesiastical doctrine of the day.

The former, the stricter theory, rests upon the assumption that the fourth Commandment is the ground of the observance. It holds that the violation of the sanctity of the day is as distinctly a sin as the transgression of any other of the Ten Commandments. It holds, however, that our Christian Sabbath is the representative of an earlier Sabbath which dated from the creation of the world; that the modern institute had incorporated that earlier festival, throwing round it many rigorous sanctions; that the Apostles were commissioned to alter the day, but not the ordinance itself; that it is now a day of glad celebration of the resurrection of the Lord.

The other, and laxer, view is based upon the hypothesis that the Sabbath was first imposed upon the Jews a short time before it was formally published in the Decalogue, and therefore expired with the Jewish dispensation. It holds that the fourth Commandment is not a moral precept, (excepting so far as it contains the moral element which asserts that God is to be worshipped at some time,) and, therefore, that it is not binding upon Christians as a law of God. It regards

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269 the Lord's Day as no Sabbath, but as a purely ecclesiastical institution, having an origin, a reason, and an obligation of its own. Some claim for it apostolical, that is, Divine, origin and sanction; others make it purely ecclesiastical in its derivation, the apostolical age bearing no trace of its observance. Some hold that it was a temporary afterthought of the Church, conciliating the weak; others that it was appointed for lasting obligation. Some elevate it to all the festal dignity of the ancient Sabbath; others lower it almost to the level of a mere canonical and kalendar importance.

It will strike every thoughtful reader that the true theory of the Lord's Day is to be sought in the combination of these two hypotheses. Dr. Hessey strives to harmonize them; but his attempt is a failure. He holds that the Jewish festival was abrogated by the New Testament; but that the Lord's Day is a Divine and apostolical festival in memory of the Lord's resurrection. He maintains that in the centuries which immediately followed St. John's death, the Lord's Day was never confounded with the Sabbath; but that Sabbatarianism crept in subsequently, when the Jewish and Christian systems were confused. He denies that the idea of a Creation-Sabbath and Patriarchal-Sabbath can be proved to have had any foundation in fact. He holds that the fourth Commandment was a positive ordinance, and is now annulled; while the moral element which it contained is preserved in the legislation of the New-Testament institution. Thus he mediates between the two systems, though with an evident leaning to the spirit of the second or ecclesiastical view ; the practical working of his theory must needs coincide with that of the laxer, and partake of all its evil results.

But our purpose is accomplished: the great question itself belongs to a more prominent part of this Journal, where it has had, and shall have again, its full discussion.

Notitia Editionis Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici Auspiciis Imperatoris Alexandri II. susceptæ. Edidit Ænoth. Frid. Const. Tischendorf, &c. Leipzic. 1860.

THIS is Professor Tischendorf's own account of the most remarkable discovery of our age, a new Codex, containing part of the Old Testament and the whole of the New. He gives a graphic narrative of the history of the discovery and his preparations for the publication of the text, with specimens of its readings, the entire text of certain pages, and a beautiful fac-simile.

Tischendorf-the foremost living explorer and collator of Biblical manuscripts-visited the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai in May, 1844, and found there a basket of fragments destined for the fire by the monks. He obtained possession of this spoil, and in 1846 published its contents, being part of the Old Testament. This is known as the Codex Friderico-Augustanus. He kept silence, however, as to another secret: viz., that he had seen a great deal more of the same MS. than he had obtained. It appears that the Russian Archiman

drite Porphyrius saw the same MS., and actually observed that it contained the New Testament; but he did not publish his statement until 1856. Meanwhile, in 1853, Tischendorf was again attracted to Mount Sinai; but, to his dismay, the precious MS. was not to be found: doubtless the miserable monks had burnt his prize in the successive fires of the nine past years. A third time he went there, commissioned by the Russian Emperor, Alexander II., to search out and obtain any ancient Greek and Oriental MSS. which might be accessible. His hopes were not defeated this time; but he must speak for himself.

'On the last day of the month of January, I arrived at the monastery of St. Catherine for the third time, and was most kindly received by the Sinaitic brethren. On the 4th of February, when I had already sent one of the servants to fetch camels with which on the 7th I might return to Egypt, while taking a walk with the steward of the monastery, I was conversing on the subject of the Septuagint version, some copies of which, as edited by me, together with copies of my New Testament, I had brought for the brethren. On our return from the walk, we entered the steward's dormitory. He said that he, too, had there a copy of the Septuagint, and he placed before my eyes the cloth in which it was wrapped. I opened the cloth, and saw what far surpassed all my hopes; for there were there contained very ample remains of the Codex which I had a good while before declared to be the most ancient of all Greek Codices on vellum that are extant; and amongst these relics I saw existing not only those which I had taken from the basket in 1844, and other books of the Old Testament, but also (and this is of the highest importance) the whole New Testament, without even the smallest defect; and to this were added the whole of the Epistle of Barnabas, and the former part of the Shepherd. It was impossible for me to conceal the admiration which this caused.'

In his own chamber he examined the MS. at length and with care. All the leaves were loose, which shows how near they had been to destruction. The monks consented that he should be allowed to transcribe the MS. at Cairo if their superior, resident in that city, should consent. At Cairo he did transcribe the MS. for publication; but, in the mean time, the MS. was put into his hands, September 28th, 1859, to be presented to the Emperor Alexander II.

In 1862, a fac-simile edition will be ready for presentation to the several libraries of Europe; and a common edition will be also published, which will throw the Codex open to all the world. Till then, therefore, public curiosity must be content with such preliminary information as these Notices contain; and the good sense of Tischendorf has prompted him to make those Notices so full as to supply the learned world with ample materials to make a collation of the new MS., as it respects, at least, all the more important and crucial passages of the New Testament.

The attributes which give this MS. of the New Testament so deep an interest to the general public are its high antiquity and absolute