ART. VI.-REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

IT is more than twelve years since, in speaking with Mr. John Chapman of the possibility of some portions of Ewald's great work being given to the English public, we learned of a translation already commenced by Dr. Nicholson, the same which makes part of the present publication.* This interval of time gives some hint of the deliberateness with which the task has been done, and also of the circumstances which justify now an enterprise of which the need was felt so long ago. For it is during this interval that the whole Colenso controversy has had its rise and duration; that many works have aimed to sketch, in whole or in part, the great field covered by the Hebrew history; that Bible dictionaries have familiarized the public with many details of the learning bestowed upon it; and especially that Stanley's loose and rhetorical, yet popular and captivating, volumes have quickened the desire of deeper and more accurate knowledge than he could himself undertake to give. The name of Ewald, whether as historian or as critic, stands prominent before all others in this freshly opened field; and the student, who needs a first-hand acquaintance with the leading authorities, will be grateful for this very adequate rendering of one fragment of his principal work.

It is the peculiarity of Ewald's dealing with this topic, that he has recast, in his own fashion, not only the historical material with which he deals, but all the preliminary and incidental matter that gathers about it, putting his own image and superscription on every stone of the edifice, before he would build it into his structure. This work is flanked by a whole library of subordinate works of his own composing. He has his own system of Hebrew grammar, chronology, antiquities, and interpretation; his own theory of the age and authorship of every literary fragment; his own versions and annotations of every ballad, song, prophecy, discourse, idyl, or religious hymn, of which the Hebrew Scriptures are composed. Whenever an interpretation or a date is possible, different from that of every existing commentator, this

* The History of Israel to the Death of Moses. By HEINRICH EWALD, Professor of the University of Göttingen. Translated from the German. Edited, with a Preface, by RUSSELL MARTINEAU, Professor of Hebrew in Manchester New College. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 8vo, pp. 656.

seems sufficient reason for his having a separate opinion of his own. This preliminary task, of which Mr. Martineau gives a very fair idea in the preface to the volume before us, has been performed with astonishing industry and learning; with an eager, positive, polemic temper, often degenerating to the excess of dogmatism; with a fervor of philosophic, religious, and even poetic genius, which makes his volumes, those of them at least with which we are best acquainted, as attractive to the imagination as they are instructive to the mind. The reader is insensibly drawn into a sort of partisanship: siding for or against his author's view, he is never permitted to be neutral; and he gains as much by the mental provocation he receives from the eager and positive temper of the partisan, as by the intellectual satisfaction of the result. He finds a stimulus, too, in the effort he must put forth to attack the vehement and involved rhetoric of the author's style, which curiously combines a certain declamatory fervor, with somewhat more than the average German intricacy, and the solidity and weight of learned argu

ment.

It is, accordingly, one quality of this history, that it is polemic throughout, — aggressive, or else defensive. Each point, however arbitrary or loose the base on which it rests, is argued with a positiveness of conviction and a wealth of demonstration, which take entire possession of the reader. His imagination and judgment are carried captive. The consummate scholar and critic, writing from the stores of a lifetime of accumulation, vindicates his right to impress his conception of the history, entire and complete, upon his reader's mind. It is only when one has yielded himself up to that influence, and taken the matter fairly in, in the shape so given it, and then, with the advantage of time and distance, has reviewed it as a whole, that he feels capable of an independent judgment: and, in passing this judgment, he will be apt not to match himself anywhere against Ewald's massive scholarship, or to meet his reasonings in detail, but rather to state to himself why it is that a view so complete in detail, so grounded in learning, so rich in imagination, and presented with such eloquence of conviction, should fail to satisfy; why it is that he still regards it, in some of its cardinal points, as arbitrary and unsound. It is only the student in Ewald's own school that is competent to criticise his results.

One ground of the feeling to which we refer, is the wilful and polemical character apparent in many of Ewald's opinions. As a provisional theory, for example, nothing could be finer, nothing seems more inspired with a critical genius allied to divination, than his scheme

of the age and authorship of different portions of the Pentateuch: it is a flash of penetrating light, a breeze of fresh, bracing air, let in upon the smothered dulness of the old scholastic exposition.* But, when one finds it not only assumed as true, but perpetually made the ground of reasoning in detail, as to controverted points of history, as if its truth were incontestable and absolute, he is inclined to give the historical scheme itself only a provisional acceptance in his mind; to look on it as a work of art, rather than a work of science; to think of it as if its foundations were laid in the free reason, rather than built into the solid ground of fact.

This feeling is strengthened by what comes more and more to seem an arbitrary and unreal interpretation of facts and documents, that stand out very prominent in their historical significance. How, for example, except by constraint of a theory,can a rationalizing critic, like Ewald, speak with confidence, as a proved thing, of the prodigious numbers ascribed to the exodus, or the detail of desert encampments, or the "ante-Mosaic" date of documents like the Oracle of Jacob, or the extreme antiquity of the Song of Moses? Still further, how can one of clear and unbiassed historical judgment speak of the elaborate detail of the Mosaic ritual, and the intricate system of the Hebrew theocracy, as not merely the creation of one masterly leader, but as actually realized, in its greatest practical perfection, during the disorders and violence of the period of Judges? To a cooler reason, large portions of this skilful and carefully constructed scheme will seem as arbitrary and unreal as the dogmatic supernaturalism which it would supplant. It is an idealizing view, at least, which speaks of Moses whose form is so dimly seen, till brought into relief under the side-light of a far later tradition as "the man who first made the amazing attempt, as national leader and commander, to act upon mind by mind alone; and to whom, if to any one, the staff of command was given and maintained by God himself." It is not the view itself we criticise, but the fact that it is put forth, as the ground of an historical reconstruction, by a rationalizing scholar; too honest to declare any positive belief in miracle, and dealing in utmost freedom with the earlier narrative, as the veil of myth; thinly veiling an ascertainable historic series of events.

In fact, and here is the ground of dissatisfaction with this most

* See a brief statement of this view in the "Christian Examiner" for September, 1853.

learned and valuable work, - Ewald belongs more to the generation of dogmatic and erudite theologians, than to the generation which has succeeded, of patient and scientific builders. At heart essentially, even passionately, devout, and endowed with a religious and philosophic genius far superior to most workers in his field, he is divided in mind between the strong need of a positive religious reading of the history, and the critical results which his fearless scholarship compels. Too honest, and too thoroughly in earnest, to conceal those results, he would draft them into the service of faith under the guise of a religious rhetoric, and force upon them an interpretation as impressive to the pious imagination as the ancient dogma had given them. In the wide and dimly lighted field of the primeval story, which the present volume occupies, this habit of thought shows to best advantage, and has on its side the strength of old memories and feelings, and the venerable obscurity of that early age. It is less satisfactory as we come into the clearer and more positive light of times properly historical, where it ill supplies the lack of a keen political discernment, and a habit of dealing with real events. It is most unsatisfying of all in the later NewTestament period, where the antagonism is sharpest between sceptic rationalism and pious faith, and where the clear historic outline is all distorted and dimmed in the obscurity of a rhetoric that struggles vainly to disguise the conflict. The effort leaves an impression of painfulness and doubt; but in it we seem to see the nobleness of the man, along with his false position in a time whose thought his own cannot adequately meet. It does not detract from the merit or the value of his life-long labor, or from the service which this instalment of his great work will do to the faithful student, to whom it is now first made accessible in an English dress.

The excellent, modest, and too brief preface of Mr. Martineau gives a very interesting view of Ewald's life, in its few outward incidents, of his long service in the cause of sacred learning, his intrepid independence in maintaining the freedom of his university, his banishment and restoration, his untiring toils of scholarship. He is now, at the age of sixty-five, fresh and vigorous in spirit, sparing no labor that may render his life-task more complete, an implacable antagonist of what he deems error, a somewhat dictatorial champion of what lies at his heart as truth, with a certain proud sense of solitude, in the midst of conflicting schools, that seem surrendered on this side to a superstitious bigotry, and on that to a godless science. It is as his testimony to truth and to God that he has wrought out the great tasks of his scholar

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ship. The passion of controversy, that has fired so much of his occasional writings, glows warm here and there upon the pages of his more elaborate composition; and one is drawn even more by the human feeling in them, than even by the treasures of learning that so abound in them.*

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J. H. A.

On one occasion, in criticising the composition of a Cambridge sophomore, the late Professor Channing expressed his surprise that all the lines were "begun with capital letters.". Why," said the young man, "I supposed that it was customary in poetry to begin the lines in that way." "Oh, poetry, indeed!" returned the professor: "I had not thought of that." No one will think of poetry in connection with Van Doren's Commentary on the Gospel of Luke,† though the lines all begin with capital letters. It will suggest nothing more poetical than the hexameters of Tupper. We ask, as we

open the volumes," Have we here a Proverbial New Testament? Is the method of the English bard here applied to the evangelical story? Is this a Gospel epic,- St. Luke's narrative beaten out in a thousand pages of irregular blank verse?" That, certainly, is the

*From notes of a personal visit made several years ago, we take the following: "He is a man of fifty, with soft blue eyes, light hair parted in the middle, a pleasant face, smiling very often at his own errors and hesitations in speaking English, in several ways reminding me, more than any one I remember, of Henry Ware, Jr. His manner was very kind and cordial; and he spoke cheerfully, in imperfect English, in a beaming, earnest way, warming into something of the fervor with which he writes. He speaks of being alone, with enemies in every party; but the truth must have free course! The dogmatists of the Hengstenberg stamp are as alien from him as the Tübingen men, whom he assails roundly, saying they are no true scholars, and are drifting into atheism. Of the practical evangelicals, Wichern and others, he speaks with cordial regard." In the lecture room, "it seemed precisely his written style, delivered with very eager and earnest declamation, but with pauses, as if dictating. It struck me as being very much like his own conception of the prophetic manner. The lecture was only about three quarters of an hour long, closing at ten. The class consisted of eight; and there was one stranger besides myself. Excepting for his very kind and winning manner in personal intercourse, which sets off what one hears of his truculent and arrogant style as controversialist, the impression left of his mind and style is precisely such as I had got from his writings. One is a little saddened to see so much ability and pride, with so slender a hearing."

† A Suggestive Commentary on St. Luke. With Critical and Homiletical Notes. By Rev. W. H. VAN DOREN. 2 vols. 12mo, pp. 520, 558. New York: D. Appleton & Co.