time declares himself convinced of their utter futility. In a similar spirit he wages constant war with the impostures of magic, which he rejects with great earnestness. Although, as we have seen, credulous to excess respecting remedies for disease, he still rejects many of the absurdities that were in common use amongst the physicians and empirics.* He spurns the idea that events are influenced by the stars and times of our nativity which astrological notion,' he observes, 'begins to gain ground, and both the learned and the vulgar are falling into it: adding, 'We are not so closely connected with the heavens as that the shining of the stars is affected by our death.' To us all this is merely common sense; but in estimating the worth of Pliny's scepticism on this point, we must remember that, with the exception of the Greeks, all the nations of antiquity believed in judicial astrology; and that, even now, the pages of some of our most popular almanacks, published by leading firms, are disfigured by its jargon.

Pliny unfrequently indulges in a little quiet irony, as when condemning, in the spirit of a Napier, the ointments and perfumes that were used in the camp, and even applied to the eagles on the standards. Ita est, nimirum, hac mercede corruptæ terrarum orbem devicere aquila.' Of wit or humour he but rarely avails himself. One of the few examples is seen in the sly rap which he gives one of the Greek philosophers, on speaking of the properties of a chameleon's tail when tied to the double branch of a date palm. He says, 'I only wish that Democritus himself had been touched up with it, seeing that, as he tells us, it has the property of putting an end to immoderate garrulity!' He is always fond of mingling his narratives with moral reflections; and sometimes his comments on men and things rise into the regions of philosophy and eloquence. Ignorant of the one true and living God, he delights to dwell on the beneficence of nature. Himself exercising frugality and self-denial in a self-indulgent age, he misses no opportunity of opposing the luxuriousness that was cankering the hearts of his fellow-citizens. Though, perhaps, scarcely equal in loftiness of moral conception to his distinguished nephew, he is always found on the side of integrity and virtue; and his death, occasioned partly by his philosophical enthusiasm, and partly by his desire to aid friends in danger at Stabiæ, was a fitting close to his earnest life.

It is a curious and well known circumstance that this term, now applied to quacks and ignorant pretenders, was originally used by the Greeks to designate the most philosophical of the medical schools; men who, in the spirit of Bacon, devoted themselves to experimental researches on the action of remedies, instead of accepting the fanciful speculations previously in vogue.

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ART. VII.-1. The Words of the Risen Saviour. By RUDOLPH STIER. Edinburgh: Clark. 1859. 2. Das Leben des Verklärten Erlösers im Himmel; nach den eigenen Aussprüchen des Herrn. Von H. G. HASSE, Evangelisch-Lutherischem Pfarrer, der Philosophie Doctor. Leipzig. 1854. [The Life of the Glorified Redeemer in Heaven; according to His own Sayings. By DR. HASSE.]

MODERN theological literature has succeeded in making 'The Life of Christ' a familiar term, but has scarcely succeeded in obtaining for that term cordial acceptance. The reverent heart is conscious of a certain recoil from the idea which it suggests, receiving it with an undefinable but not unaccountable reluctance. Our best feelings shrink from what seems like an intrusion into a province beyond human ability, and which is already pre-occupied and sacred. The history of the Incarnate Redeemer and the development of His work-towards the cross on earth, and towards the judgment in heaven-has been reserved to Himself by the Spirit of inspiration. None but the Holy Ghost could declare His generation; and He has given us by the instrumentality of the Evangelists and Apostles, the authentic and final record of what Jesus began to do and teach below, and of what He continues to do and teach above. In the New Testament He has finished the volume of the book, written of Christ, which He began by the pen of Moses in the Old. That record He has given in such a manner, and with such limitations, as seemed good to Himself: 'here much and there much,' where much was necessary for our faith; 'here little and there little,' where little must be the measure of our knowledge; speaking to us plainly concerning those things which we are capable of receiving; but clothing in parable, or reserving in mystery, those things which at present it is not given us to understand. And, as we should thankfully receive, diligently study, and weave into our creed and theology all that is clearly made known, so we should reverence the Spirit's restrictions, and bound our curiosity by the limits at which revelation vanishes again into mystery. We should be swift to hear all that the Spirit saith; but slow to speak of that concerning which He keeps silence. There have been treatises on the Life of Christ written in this humble and cautious spirit: they are few, and very valuable. But there are others, the manifold excellencies of which are much marred by the licence of speculation. And when men like ourselves undertake the evangelist's office, setting in order after their own fashion the events of the

Redeemer's history, and the development of His plan and work; when they give us their bold speculations as to the gradual expansion of His mind to the conception and apprehension of His mission, and the slow ripening of His own secret counsels for its prosecution; when they speak with such confident precision of His 'plans,' His changes of purpose, His failures, and His successes; when they conduct Him through a fearful process of probation, ending with the triumph of His human will, and the final decision that He and not Satan was the conqueror; when, moreover, their presumption follows the Redeemer into heaven, decides upon the dread mystery of the conjunction of His glorified humanity with all the attributes of His Divinity, constructs theories to explain the manner of the impartation of His heavenly corporeity, and arranges all the details of the programme of His final re-appearance upon earth,-we cannot but feel that these human biographers of a Divine-human life are guiding us into forbidden and perilous regions, where their light is but darkness, and where we seem to hear a Voice crying, 'And who, as I, shall call and shall declare it, and set it in order for Me?'

The two books named above come only to a limited extent, if at all, within the range of this condemnation. They contain elaborate expositions of those words of our Saviour Himself which teach His people how to conceive of His existence in heaven. Dr. Stier's little volume-which should have had for its title The Words of the Ascended Saviour'-is a sequel to his large and well-known work on the Discourses of the Lord Jesus, and consists of a series of essays on sayings uttered, according to the writer's theory, by the Redeemer Himself from heaven, without the direct mediation of the Holy Ghost. Dr. Hasse's book-which has not appeared in an English form-takes up the entire series of the words spoken by the Lord, while upon earth, with reference to His future work in heaven. Thus the two works supplement each other, and together exhaust that portion of the New Testament which is devoted to the Saviour's ascended life. They contain many specimens of rich expository theology; but at the same time exhibit, especially the latter, occasional traces of the influence of that impatience of the Spirit's restrictions to which we have referred. The result is what appears to us a deviation, here and there, from sound theology concerning the Redeemer's glorified state; or what may be better described as an unnecessary and unprofitable departure from the style in which the Scripture speaks on this subject. A few remarks in illustration of this will occupy the present paper.

And first as to the great event which commences the life of

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the Redeemer in heaven-the Ascension-there is a great deal that is questionable in Dr. Hasse's exposition, and which, as being representative of much current German theology, requires careful notice. He maintains, as every orthodox expositor must maintain, the reality of the recorded fact of the Ascension, and accepts literally the scriptural testimony that it was in some sense a visible event; but he seems very unwilling to receive the further scriptural teaching as to the real departure of the Redeemer's glorified Person to a local heaven, and gives accordingly a very diluted interpretation of the glorious mystery of the session at the right hand of God. This, of course, is a very different thing from the Rationalist absolute rejection of the evangelical narrative; but, however different the spirit of this qualification of the fact of the literal ascension from that which has led many to an entire abandonment of the fact of the Ascension, we cannot but perceive that a false notion of the heaven which received Christ is common to both classes of theologians, the orthodox and the rationalist.

But still there is a great difference; and it is only fair to make that difference plain. The consummate Rationalists, whose only object is to rob the Gospel history of all its reality, altogether reject the account of the Ascension. They seize upon the circumstance that Jesus Himself, in the earlier teaching to Nicodemus, which must, as they think, correct the later, spoke of His being in heaven,' and of His having 'ascended up to heaven,' as meaning one and the same thing: it meant, say they, that He was there in spirit, and affection, and knowledge, even while He was speaking to his hearers. They dwell much upon this as being the true conception, given finally by St. John, of the Redeemer's ascension; forgetting that the same St. John, recording afterwards the offence which Christ's half-believing hearers took at His doctrine of the bread from heaven, mentions another saying of our Lord which utterly refutes their notion. 'Doth this offend you? what and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?'-then they should better understand, through the quickening Spirit, the words at which they carnally took offence. They lay much stress upon the silence of the two apostolical witnesses, St. Matthew and St. John, as to the literal event; refusing to see that the fourfold history must be taken as a whole, and that those two Evangelists themselves most plainly assume throughout their narratives the fact of the Redeemer's return to heaven. St. Mark's testimony they ruthlessly cut out of the record; while St. Luke's double account they as diligently preserve, because, as they think, his two testimonies negative each other by their disagreement; not

seeing, being indeed incapable of seeing, that his two accounts are perfectly harmonized by the relation of the one to the past life of Christ upon earth, and of the other to His future life in heaven. But with these wilful enemies of the evangelical record it is waste of labour to contend; their eyes are holden by the worst of all agency, and in the judicial darkness of their understandings their intellects and their pens are made to them' 'a snare.'

There are, however, many popular expositors, whom it would be fanaticism to call Rationalists, who indeed are sound enough in their acceptance of the other great facts of the Redeemer's life, passion, resurrection, and glorification, but who stumble at the closing wonder of the whole wonderful story. 'On this subject,' says Professor Ellicott, 'it is painful to feel how much half-belief prevails at the present day even among those expositors of Scripture who have in other respects some claim on our attention. The fact itself is not questioned, nay, even the exaltation of the Lord's glorified body is admitted; but the distinct statement of one Evangelist, and the implied statement of a second, (Mark xvi. 19,) that this exaltation took place visibly, and before the eyes of appointed witnesses, is flatly denied. Why so, we ask, when so much is, as it ought to be, accepted as true? If it be replied, that this is no common miracle; but, like the Resurrection, forms an epoch in our Lord's life of the highest importance, the rejoinder seems as final as it is true,-that the sacred writers viewed the Ascension as a necessary part and sequel of the Resurrection, and that it is only the unsound theology of later times that has sought to separate them.'

The vagaries of this 'half-belief' in the historical reality of the final scene of our Lord's human history would of themselves fill a very instructive chapter. Dr. Stier, who, we may be sure, is one of their stoutest opponents, briefly refers to two, which may be quoted as types of many others. Brennecke began his career of stumbling by taking offence at the Ascension. He constructed a theory that Jesus continued His bodily presence upon earth for nearly a generation after His vanishing out of the Gospels, and that He appeared in various forms at all those junctures which introduce His name into the Acts: thus for a season having a co-ordinate presence and jurisdiction with the Holy Ghost, and finally taking His unwitnessed and unrecorded departure when the apostolical age ceased. Most quaint interpretation of Lo, I am with you alway!' Most miserable forgetfulness or perversion of the remainder of the clause, 'unto the end of the world!' Kinkel was a representative of those