the beauty of his renderings. Mr. Ginsburg has used a little too much licence in these respects, and thus has run together, without gain on either side, the functions of the commentator and those of the translator. As an example of the manner in which the sense is weakened, while the Hebrew is none the more faithfully re-produced, we would point to the last two verses of the book. In the authorized version they are true to the original, and they are robust and noble English. In Mr. Ginsburg's translation the latter part of the passage is a paraphrase, and we fear the English will speak for itself: 'In conclusion, everything is noticed; fear God, and keep His commandments, for this every man should do; for God will bring every work to the judgment appointed over every secret thing, whether it be good or evil.' And when we read elsewhere, that 'generation passeth away and generation cometh on,' that 'the advantage of wisdom is, that wisdom enliveneth the possessor thereof,' and that' sinner doeth evil a hundred years and is perpetuated;' we cannot but regret, that our mother-tongue should be made to express so awkwardly and even incorrectly what it has shown itself able to utter in simple, clear, and energetic terms. The form which the author gives to one passage has excited our wonder not a little: 'Happy thou, O land, when thy king is noble, and thy princes eat in proper time, for strength and not for feasting! Through slothful hands the roof falleth in, and through lazy hands the house leaketh. They turn bread and wine, which cheereth life, into revelry, and the money of

a

is made to supply both.' Our readers will probably be as much puzzled to divine what this hiatus-clause means as we ourselves were when we first met with it. According to Mr. Ginsburg, the blank must be supplied by the people,' and the sacred writer designedly suppresses the word he intends, 'because of the danger of speaking plainly to despots? Whatever may be said for the usus loquendi, or the demands of the context, in support of a translation like this, we are not careful to inquire. Sure we are, that Mr. Ginsburg will not stand to the consequences which his explanation involves as to the disinterestedness, the moral courage, and the Divine authority of the Old Testament prophets. Altogether the translation of Coheleth, as it appears in this interesting volume, will profit by revising; and we trust the author will soon have the opportunity, which the demand for a second edition of his book will afford him for doing this. The thrilling and beautiful passage in chapter xii., relating to the days in which man has no joy, takes the following form in the hands of our author; and we quote it as exhibiting at once some of the prominent faults and obvious excellencies of his translation. 'Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the days of evil come, and the years arrive of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them: before the sun becometh dark, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house shall quake, and the men of power writhe, and the grindingmaids shall stop because they have greatly diminished, and the women who look out of the windows shall be shrouded in darkness; and the

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281 doors shall be closed in the street: when the noise of the mill shall grow faint, and the swallow shall rise to shriek, and all the singing birds shall retire; yea, the people shall be frightened at that which is coming from on high, and at the terrors which are on their way; and the almond shall be despised, and the locust shall be loathed, and the caper-berry shall be powerless; for raan goeth to his eternal home, and the mourners walk about the street: before the silver cord goeth asunder, and the golden bowl escapeth, or the bucket breaketh upon the fountain, and the wheel is shattered at the well, and the body returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit goeth back to God who gave it ? '

About half the bulk of Mr. Ginsburg's book is taken up with his Commentary on the text of the sacred writer; and of this we must speak in high praise. The author has brought to his work abundant literary preparations. It has evidently been a labour of love to him. He has not allowed himself the ignoble luxury of gliding airily along the surface of his subject. He has thought and thought again. He has taken pains to catch the subtle threads. which unite the various parts of the Preacher's' sermon into a welldevised and harmonious whole. He has not shrunk from the toilsome craft, by which grammars, and lexicons, and versions, and commentaries may be made the pathway to the highest and most precious truth. Everywhere we see the marks of extensive reading, of patient investigation, of good critical judgment, and of steady purpose in seeking to present the results of careful inquiry in a shape worthy of the subject and of the character of a Christian commentator. We can easily understand, with Mr. Ginsburg's copious grammatical and exegetical notes before us, that his book was not the creation of a month or two, but was wrought at intervals over the term of years through which it lay on his anvil. He will not expect us to agree with him in all his interpretations and arguments. We think we could show reason for differing from him in certain instances, both on the ground of grammar and on that of logic and theology. But we would rather be at issue with many a commentator, whom we could name, than with Mr. Ginsburg; and he has our best thanks for the scholarly pains which he has taken to clear up the difficulties of the difficult book on which he has written, and for the important illustration of every part of its contents, which his sensible, laborious, and well-shaped notes supply. He has a large knowledge of rabbinical literature, and draws upon it at every turn to the great advantage of his reader. It has been the fashion of late to decry the Jewish interpreters of Scripture. We are glad to find Mr. Ginsburg does not share in this tendency. He knows their weak points as well as their opponents. He also knows what few of these do,-what no one, indeed, is likely to know, who is not as much at home with them as Mr. Ginsburg, that even in philological questions they are often our best guides, and that, where Messianic prejudices have not interfered, they are the fathers of nearly all our best exposition of the Old Testament. The free and judicious use which our author makes of ancient

and mediæval Jewish commentary is one of the most striking features of his work, and one of its chief excellencies. The portion of Mr. Ginsburg's book of which we have now spoken, is but the latter of two great halves which make up the substance of it. The former of these is the Introduction, so called,—a section of the work, which does not yield to the Commentary itself in value and interest. It is mainly occupied with a critical and historical conspectus of the Coheleth literature, old and young, Jewish and Christian, foreign and English. Some portions of it are likewise devoted to a formal discussion of those important questions relating to the title, authorship, and scope of the Inspired Book, which necessarily come up again and again in treating of the works that have been written upon it. We hardly know how to speak with sufficient commendation of the learning, the industry, the patience, and the general good taste and ability, with which Mr. Ginsburg has performed this part of his great task. Beginning with the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, he carries us through the weary and often ridiculous, yet much underrated, Midrash, down by way of Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, the Zohar, and a troop of their successors, on one side, and, on the other side, by way of a long line of Christian authors, Catholic, Romanist, and Protestant, to the latest attempts which England, America, and Germany have made to elucidate this important section of Holy Writ. Nor is it a mere catalogue of writers and their productions with which Mr. Ginsburg furnishes us. Now we have a rare and valuable piece of biography-now a full and carefully digested analysis of a theory or interpretation-now again, a translation of a tangled passage of Rabbinic Commentary, with notes and observations. Here the writer expounds the mysteries of the Kabbala; there he discusses the merits. of a Jewish or Christian divine; yonder he gives us, in whole or part, some scheme of Coheleth, which he has lighted upon in his travels, and which he thinks it necessary to endorse or tear to tatters. We scarcely know whether to admire most the acuteness, or the erudition, or the analytical power, or. the good authorship, which nearly every page of this critical history exhibits. The temper, too, with which Mr. Ginsburg writes is worthy of all praise. There is nothing of sourness or dogmatism in the expression of his views. Even when he raps the knuckles of Ewald, as we are not sorry to observe he is fond of doing, or indulges in a little satire on 'Wesleyan warm-heartedness,' and the hyperbole to which, he thinks, it is addicted, we see no trace of theological rancour or of overweening confidence in his own opinions. He writes with manly modesty, and with generous appreciation of the motives, capacities, and attainments of those from whom he differs. Not unfrequently, indeed, he takes occasion to urge upon controversialists and sticklers for theories the lessons of caution, forbearance, and charity, which the facts he brings to view are so well fitted to inculcate; and it is partly for this purpose, that he draws the picture, which we find near the end of his Introduction, of the various and often conflicting notions that have been formed as to the meaning and design of Ecclesiastes. We are

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positively assured that the book contains the holy lamentations of Solomon, together with a prophetic vision of the splitting up of the royal house of David, the destruction of the temple, and the captivity: and we are also told, that it is a discussion between a refined sensualist, or hot-headed worldling, and a sober sage; that Solomon makes known in it his repentance to all the church, that thereby he might glorify God, and strengthen his brethren, thus imitating his father David, in the fifty-first Psalm; and that he wrote it when he was irreligious and sceptical, during his amours and idolatry;' that 'the Messiah, the true Solomon, who was known by the title, Son of David, addresses this book to the saints;' and that a profligate, who wanted to disseminate effectually his infamous sentiments, palmed it. upon Solomon. It teaches us to despise the world with all its pleasures, and flee to monasteries; it shows that sensual gratifications are men's greatest blessings upon earth. It is a philosophic lecture delivered to a literary society upon topics of the greatest moment; it is a medley of detached and heterogeneous fragments belonging to various authors and different ages. It describes the beautiful order of God's moral government, proving that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord; it proves that all is disorder and confusion, and that the world is the sport of chance. It is a treatise upon the summum bonum; it is a 'chronicle of the lives of the kings of the house of David, from Solomon down to Zedekiah.' Its object is to prove the immortality of the soul; if it be not rather to deny a future existence. It is designed to comfort the unhappy Jews in their misfortunes; it contains the gloomy imaginations of a melancholy misanthrope. It 'is intended to open Nathan's speech (1 Chron. xvii.) touching the eternal throne of David;' it propounds the modern discoveries of anatomy, as well as the Harveian theory of the circulation of the blood. It foretells what will become of men or angels to eternity. ......It propounds a view of life inclining to fatalism, scepticism, and epicureanism.' We agree with Mr. Ginsburg, that there is much in all this which administers rebuke to dogmatism; and we thank him for his picture, if it were only for this use of it. We think he might with scarcely less propriety have turned it into a phantasmagoria of human weakness, absurdity, and irreverence within the consecrated sphere of religion. We are glad to find our author himself approving the Midrashic conception of the Book of Coheleth. These misunderstood Rabbins,' he says, 'have given the proper view of the design' of Ecclesiastes, namely, that it was intended to expose the emptiness and vanity of all worldly pursuits and carnal gratifications, and to show that the happiness of man consists in fearing God and obeying His commandments. Elsewhere Mr. Ginsburg expands this simple and general doctrine into a form in which we hesitate to accept it. "The design of this book,' he writes, 'is to gather together the desponding people of God from the various expedients to which they have resorted, in consequence of the inexplicable difficulties and perplexities in the moral government of God, into the community of the Lord, by showing them the utter insufficiency of all human efforts to obtain

real happiness, which cannot be secured by wisdom, pleasure, industry, wealth, &c., but consists in the calm enjoyment of life, in resignation to the dealings of Providence, in the service of God, and in the belief in a future state of retribution when all the mysteries in the present course of the world shall be solved.' We confess we are quite unable to find in the Ecclesiastes that depression of the Church, and that endeavour to rouse and encourage it, which this definition of the object of the book assumes to belong to it. We think this view springs out of Mr. Ginsburg's belief that Coheleth is a production of the Persian period of Jewish history, and that it is not sustained either by the general tenor of the composition, or by the particular passages which are quoted in support of it. If any special class of persons and character is contemplated by the instructions of the book, we should be disposed to think it is youth,-and especially youth in the higher walks of society, with its temptations at once to sensuality and religious scepticism. Much might be said for this view; but we do not insist upon it. It is better, perhaps, to content ourselves with the ancient Jewish opinion. At any rate we demur to the theory, which makes the book a plaintive music designed to soothe and cheer the Church, saddened by the triumphs of its enemies. And this brings us to the last point in connexion with Mr. Ginsburg's work to which we can at present advert, the date and authorship of Ecclesiastes. In common with several modern critics, Mr. Ginsburg holds, that Solomon was not the writer of Coheleth, but that it belongs to the period of the later Old Testament books, and is the work of an inspired author unknown, who personated the great son of David, and delivered to the Church under his name truth 'profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.' He allows, that the 'son of David' who was 'king in Jerusalem' can be no other than Solomon; he allows too that the unanimous declaration of both the synagogue and the Church' attributes the book to him ; but he maintains, with Hengstenberg and others, that it is utterly impossible to reconcile the contents of the book with the Solomonic authorship,' and that it is 'undoubtedly a post-exile production;' and he adduces various reasons drawn from the book itself, in proof that it is the work of a writer putting words of wisdom and truth into Solomon's mouth long after he was gone to his fathers. Now in regard to this theory of personation, we confess to a strong reluctance to allow it to hold in Holy Scripture a hair's breadth further than undeniable facts constrain us. We are compelled to admit the soundness of it to a certain extent. Possibly a rational criticism will find examples of such a mode of writing both in the Old Testament and the New; and, if it be so, we have no difficulty in making the phenomenon harmonize with the proper inspiration of the Bible. But let us not convert apparent history into apologue, unless a strict necessity force us to do it: much less let us be forward to grant, that one inspired writer can superscribe the style and title of another the whole body of his composition. This is the case in question. An entire book of Scripture is admitted into the canon, and goes

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