a picture of the old farmer, Joggeli, the obstinate old peasant, who stands, like a dog in the manger, in the way of his own happiness, as well as of that of his wife and children, — a common type of character, well painted, and working its share of mischief in the story, as such people do in real life. We cannot better close our praise of such faithful pictures of the life of the laboring class than by quoting what Ruskin says of the joy of humble life." 66 "In order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life, this at present, of all arts and studies, being the one most needing study. Humble life, that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so, also, not excluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of accumulation; the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure, therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world." "How far this simple and useful pride, this delicate innocence, might be adorned, or how far destroyed, by higher intellectual education in letters or the arts, cannot be known without other experience than the charity of men has hitherto enabled us to acquire." M. MERAY might, as we think, have made better use of his time and skill than in compiling a work on the vulgar and licentious preaching of the three centuries before the Reformation. The exquisite antique style in which the volume is printed deserves material of more decency and more value. There is, nevertheless, a value to the volume, as it illustrates the spirit of the medieval Church and shows what kind of preaching was tolerated and was popular in those so-called "Ages of *Modern Painters, Part V., pp. 344 and 347. † Les Libres Prêcheurs Devanciers de Luther et de Rabelais. Étude Historique, Critique, et Anecdotique sur les XIV, XV, et XVI Siècles. Par ANTONY MERAY. Paris: A Claudin. 1860. 12mo. pp. 223. Faith." It is a fair offset to Mr. Kenelm Digby's Mores Catholici. The book is divided into nine chapters, which severally treat of the monks as critics of Temporal Princes; as critics of the Princes of the Church; as precursors of the Reformation; as Mystics and Legendtellers; as tellers of marvels; in their speculations about the future life; the stories and apologues of the old preachers; the Fantasists and the Rabelaisians; and the details of manners given in the old collections of sermons. This table of contents would lead us to expect a wide range of illustration, both in the topics treated and in the authors cited. But the taste of M. Méray seems to prefer topics of a prurient and lascivious kind, and the details which he furnishes are mostly those which would be quite rejected from a work for general reading. It may be urged, that the small number of copies printed, three hundred in all, restricts the volume from general reading, and confines it to a few libraries. But it might have been made fit for general reading by a wiser selection of passages. The "Free Preachers" of the Middle Age had other qualities to recommend them than their license of language. They were brave, honest, sagacious, and radically more pious than many of the Reformed preachers who were fluent in phrases of piety. The wild absurdities of their speculation were more than balanced by the sound common sense and bold severity of their criticisms of manners and life. Gabriel Barletta was not a mere ribald blackguard, nor was Michael Menot a disgusting buffoon. In the sermons of nearly all the preachers who contribute to M. Méray's collection better things by far may be found than anything that he quotes, if the testimony of those who have specially studied their works is to be trusted. His specimens show not their best, but their worst side, and by no means account for their extraordinary influence. One thing which will strike the reader in a volume of this kind is the singular resemblance of these mediæval vulgarities to the vulgarities of revival and sensation preaching in our own day. The same grotesque paraphrases of Scripture, the same liberties with the sacred history, the same mixing up of Jewish character and life with modern scenes and manners, the same shock both to delicacy and to reverence, which mark the performances of the Burchards and Knapps and Spurgeons of our own time, are conspicuous in the harangues of the Naples and Paris friars of the fifteenth century. The mountebanks of the pulpit have no originality. Their jokes are borrowed, their impudence is a second-hand article, and their indecency is but a faint copy of the bolder grossness of their Catholic predecessors. Bad as are the exhibitions of this company of friars, they are not radically worse, not absolutely lower in tone, than the religious fictions of the late Mr. Ingraham, or the discourses which have made repulsive to refined ears the word "spiritual." In the sketch of the Church of Holland by M. Albert Réville, published in the July number of the Examiner, allusion was made to the isolated position of a Walloon pastor at Leyden, embarrassed in attempting to harmonize his science and his prejudice by obscure metaphysical theorizing. The pastor in question, M. Chantepie de la VOL. LXXI. 5TH S. VOL. IX. NO. II. 24 Saussaye, vexed by this rather provoking notice, has taken occasion to define his position, and to vindicate his theorizing, by giving from his own stand-point a review of Dutch theology and the condition of parties in the Dutch Church. In spite of the heat and vigor of his defence, he has failed, as we must think, to show that Réville has done him injustice. His book is a proof that he agrees with no one of the parties in the Dutch Church, whether of Utrecht, Amsterdam, Groningen, or Leyden. He is alone in the conflict, the unsparing critic of all parties, and apparently not quite sure of his own faith, or of the tendency of his own speculations. And he seems, after all, half conscious of this solitary position, since he argues that such a position is not without its weight and its honor. M. de la Saussaye vehemently disclaims any desire to be called orthodox, and his strictures upon the spirit and methods of the orthodox party are as severe as the most zealous rationalist could desire. He has no sympathy with the Revivalists or the Pietists, and regards their movement in Holland as an exotic, of foreign importation, and not any native growth. The Lutheran Church he stigmatizes as caring more for the form than for the spirit of the Gospel, and he has still less love for the hard creeds of the Calvinist faction. He tells us that the children of Calvinists are often very expert in the dogmas and sound words of the Church confession, when they have no knowledge of the language or history of the Bible itself. He deprecates earnestly that bondage of the people to their pastors which orthodoxy establishes. For the Groningen school, that builds itself especially upon the person and work of Christ, and preaches a practical imitation of Christ's life as better than any speculative faith, M. de la Saussaye has more regard; but even this school of practical Christianity does not satisfy him, and he expresses no regret that it has probably died out. Having disposed of these parties, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, and the Christ party, M. de la Saussaye proceeds to give a history of the Moral movement in the Church of Holland, its origin, its progress, and its result, especially as shown in the fortunes and temper of the society Ernst en Vrede and the journal which it published, in which he flatters himself that he was an important instrument in diffusing light among the Dutch Christians. The journal in question had a short life, and its real influence may be judged from the fact that Réville does not think it worthy of mention in his survey. However lamentable the demise of this organ of moral theology may seem in itself, M. de la Saussaye consoles himself with the thought that the breaking up of the parties of positive faith has been accompanied by the breaking up of the "liberal tendencies"; and he prophesies that the school of Leyden will share speedily the fate that has befallen the schools of Groningen and of Utrecht. Retreating from the field of debate, he sends back a whole quiver of Parthian arrows upon the rationalist host, and lavishes upon them the strong epithets of a not very choice rhetoric. He ac * La Crise Religieuse en Hollande. Souvenirs et Impressions, par D. CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE, l'un des Pasteurs de l'Église Wallonne de Leyde. Leyde: De Break et Smits. 1860. 8vo. pp. 202. cuses them of deception, hypocrisy, denial of Christ, use of words in double senses, arrogance towards all who profess a positive faith, and of a want of spirituality. He says that, with all their rich intellectual resources and their popularity with the cultivated classes, they cannot get the confidence of those to whom religion is the one thing needful. He affirms that there is already a wide-spread discontent with the infidel and destructive spirit of these rationalist theories, and that the multitude complain that it is taking away their Christ and their God. While orthodoxy is ready to lose the world in its effort to save the individual soul, and to give up this life wholly for the sake of the life to come, scientific religion seems to lose wholly from its heed the sanctions and the needs of saving faith. The great antecedent question of theology, however, M. de la Saussaye admits, the great question of the age, is not if miracles be real, or if miracles be possible, but if they have really any religious value,· if they are necessary. And he seems to intimate that the decision of this question in the negative may open a way of harmony to the various parties in the theological warfare, and establish a Church of the Future, not only in Holland, but throughout Europe and the Protestant world. M. de la Saussaye's book, though written in an incorrect style, is able, forcible, and well worth reading. It is wise that the author of "Pentateuchism, analytically treated," has suppressed his name from the title-page of his first, and it is to be hoped his last effort in Scriptural criticism. He has not one qualification for the task he has attempted. He is alike unable to read Hebrew and to write English, and his scholarship is as slight as his assurance is marvellous. He is ready to reject as an interpolation whatever does not suit his notion of fitness, while he accepts without any sufficient reason anything that may justify his hypothesis. This hypothesis is, that the Book of Genesis is a mixed mass of fable, falsehood, and misrepresentation, of facts distorted, of legends misused, and of puerile myths magnified into providential history. It is not difficult, certainly, for a very superficial reader, especially in these years, when the narrative of Genesis has come so much into discussion, to exhibit the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, and the impossibilities of that narrative as literal history, its opposition to physical science, and the contradiction in its own parts. But it is strange that, with so many helps furnished, German, French, and English, a writer, pretending such conscientiousness in his task, should not have produced something better. The high moral stand which the writer takes will not atone for the utter want of the critical faculty. Not a single narrative, from the first chapter to the last, is fully or fairly analyzed. We have expression, in stilted and magniloquent epithets, of the writer's disgust and horror at the crimes and falsehoods of the men he is called to pass in review, and we are favored with his opinions and conjec - * A History of the Creation and the Patriarchs; or, Pentateuchism, analytically treated. Volume I. The Book of Genesis. London: John Chapman. 1860. 12mo. pp. 292. tures most lavishly; but we look in vain for any close reasoning or any mastery of the subject. Things are taken for granted, and stated as well-known truths, which have no place but in the writer's brain. It is assumed that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, and that he contrived its details to suit his own ambitious designs. It is assumed that the children of Israel were the shepherd kings of Egypt. It is affirmed that the religion of Abraham and his successors was as genuine Paganism as that of the Chaldæans and Egyptians, and of the same kind. The story of Isaac on the altar is simply Abraham's stratagem for putting an end to the practice of human sacrifices. As for the characters of the Book of Genesis, they are all more or less detestable to this writer. Abraham is a liar and a knave, Isaac not much better, and Jacob is the incarnation of all that is mean, base, sensual, and devilish. For Joseph he has more charity; but Joseph has his faults, which are faithfully set forth. All idea of any Divine care in the fortunes of this people of God is wholly discarded. Chapter xxxviii., which treats of Judah's sins and the fate of his posterity, is dismissed as "an interpolation, and apocryphal." We cannot see that the Jew rationalist, Kalisch, whose authority in a question of this kind is much higher than that of this unknown writer, has doubted the genuineness of this chapter. That our strictures upon this foolish work may not seem too severe, we give a few paragraphs which may illustrate at once the writer's style and the tone of his thought. Speaking (p. 108) of Noah's sacrifice, he remarks: "The narrative which follows is indeed mournful, and, if unproductive of repulsiveness to the reader, it would betoken a lamentable absence of a sound discriminating faculty. The altar which Noah builded must have possessed enormous dimensions to have afforded space for the vast holocaust which he dedicated to God." Speaking (p. 139) of the promise to Abraham of numerous posterity, he says: "But this prophecy has never been fulfilled, for without stopping to inquire where a population as numerous as the dust of the earth could find subsistence, within a territory of so small an extent as 1,100 square miles, it is a recorded fact that the Hebrew people have been frequently numbered, and have always been found to be few in number." (!) Of the religions of Jacob and of Shechem, he says (p. 237): "It is clear that the dissimilarity in their religion was comprised solely in the outward ceremonial of circumcision; this accomplished, their remaining forms were similitudinary." And once more, in his remarks upon Eve's temptation (p. 61), we have this sagacious criticism of the "serpent": "In ancient times, a mysterious and mythical character was assigned to this early specimen of vertebrated reptiles. There was an epoch in the earth's history at which the Ophidian and Saurian reptiles were the most advanced of its organized inhabitants, and were the highest types amongst the Vertebrata. In the heathen mythology, the ophiological section of natural history occupied a distinguished place, and serpents, both terrestrial and aerial, are subjects for the sacred romance of authors of the Greek and Latin school, as well as of others of greater antiquity." (!) | The most original observation in the volume is on p. 244: "The only |