NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

THEOLOGY.

Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures. Also, The Holy Word in its own Defence; addressed to Bishop Colenso and all other earnest Seekers after Truth. By Rev. Abiel Silver. (These two volumes contain a sincere attempt to vindicate the Scripture from the results of modern criticism, on Swedenborgian postulates.)

Triumphs of the Bible, with the Testimony of Science to its Truth. By Rev. Henry Tullidge. New York: C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 439. (Interesting in some details, but not fully posted in the science of which it treats.)

Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and other Papers. By Thomas Fuller. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 18mo. pp. 397. (In grave and very handsome style, uniform with Sir Thomas Browne's Writings.)

Woman and her Saviour in Persia. By a Returned Missionary. With Illustrations, and a Map of the Nestorian Country. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 303.

Historical Sketch of the Twelfth Congregational Church in Boston. By Lewis G. Pray. Boston: J. Wilson & Son. 18mo. pp. 123.

Substance and Shadow; or, Morality and Religion in their Relation to Life: an Essay upon the Physics of Creation. By Henry James. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 539. (A remarkable book, which we hope to review in a future number.)

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

The Constitutional History of England 1760-1860. By Thomas Erskine May. & Co.

since the Accession of George III. Vol. II. Boston: Crosby, Nichols,

The Story of my Career as Student and Professor, with Personal Reminiscences of Goethe, Schiller, Schleiermacher, and others. By Heinrich Steffens. Translated (and abridged) by W. L. Gage. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 18mo. pp. 284.

Christopher North. A Memoir of John Wilson, compiled from Family Papers and other Sources, by his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. New York: W. J. Widdleton. Large 12mo. pp. 484. (An account of this charming Memoir appeared in the Examiner for March. In style of typography and illustration, this beautiful reprint is fully worthy of the original.)

Chaplain Fuller: being a Life Sketch of a New England Clergyman and Army Chaplain. By Richard F. Fuller. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. (The story of a career of singular energy and self-reliance, and connected with several of the most striking incidents of the war. Mr. Fuller was a man of fearless and eager devotion to the cause he had espoused; and the spirit in which he at length sacrificed his life in the disastrous movement upon Fredericksburg is affectionately and proudly vindicated.)

NOVELS AND TALES.

The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. By G. A. Sala. Slaves of the Ring; or, Before and After. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. Tales and Sketches. By Hugh Miller. Edited, with a Preface, by Mrs. Miller. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 369.

Two Pictures; or, What we think of Ourselves, and What the World

thinks of Us. By M. J. McIntosh. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 476.

A Glimpse of the World. York: D. Appleton & Co.

By the Author of "Amy Herbert." New 12mo. pp. 428.

Lilian. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. (A brief sketch, unskilled and wildly improbable in incident, but with exquisite glimpses of scenery, and true artistic feeling. The little tale of Italian tragedy introduced in it is told with fine dramatic effect.)

MISCELLANEOUS.

Out-Door Papers. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. (Vigorous and brilliant; full of eloquent common-sense.)

The Crisis. New York: D. Appleton & Co. pp. 95. (A plea for the concession of Southern demands.)

The Natural Laws of Husbandry. By Justus von Liebig. Edited by John Blyth, M. D. New York: D. Appleton. Large 12mo. pp. 387. Appendices and Index. (This very handsome volume contains, along with Baron Liebig's latest views on the science of the subject, some of which oppose strongly the common opinion as to the value of nitrogenized manures, interesting facts as to the history of agriculture, and an extremely curious account of the system followed, with such marvellous results, on the petty homesteads of Japan.)

many

Friends in Council; a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon. Reprinted from the last English Edition. New York: James Miller. 2 vols.

Money. By Charles Moran. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 228. (An exposition of the natural laws of demand and supply of money, and of its purely representative value; which, it is urged, should be left absolutely unembarrassed by legislation.)

The Children's Garland from the Best Poets. Selected and arranged by Coventry Patmore. Cambridge: Sever & Francis. (Another exquisite volume, uniform with "The Golden Treasury"; containing, not poetry about children, nor what is commonly reckoned "children's poetry," but such of the finest poems as intelligent children can enjoy. The series promises to be the most ornamental, and one of the most valuable, issued by the American press.)

* The present number expectation of a paper upon September.

66

of the Examiner has been delayed a few days, in Loyalty in the West," which we hope to present in

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SEPTEMBER, 1863.

ART. I. — TERTULLIAN AND MONTANISM.

1. TERTULLIANI Opera edidit FRANCISCUS OEHLER. Lipsia: T. O. Wegel. 1853.

2. Library of the Fathers.

TERTULLIAN. Translated by the REV.

C. DODGSON, M. A. Oxford: John Henry Parker. 1842. 3. NEANDER'S Planting of Christianity, and Ahtignostikus. Translated from the German by J. E. RYLAND. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1859.

4. The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian. By JOHN, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. London: Francis and John Rivington.

5. Hippolytus and his Age. Or the Beginnings and Prospects of Christianity. By CHRISTIAN CHARLES JOSIAS BUNSEN. Second Edition. 1854. Vol. I. Hippolytus and the Teachers of the Apostolical Age.

IN the first of these volumes we have, in their newest presentation, the heterogeneous writings of Tertullian, just as he coined them out of his fiery heart. Such of them as were written before he became a Montanist, and a few of doubtful character, have been translated by Mr. Dodgson for the Oxford "Library of the Fathers." The translation exhibits no more of the spirit of the original than such an original must needs transmit. All that is given in the shape of notes and dissertations is vitiated by the editor's unfortunate conception of Tertullian's secession from the Church. He regards it as a sudden leap, and a very criminal one at that. The investigation of the Bishop of Lincoln is made very dull, for any one outside his own Church, by its persistency in referring everything to the canons - 5TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. II.

VOL. LXXV.

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of that institution. Bunsen's brief sketch is valuable; but Neander's excellent monograph will do more than any of these towards giving the general reader a clear conception of Tertullian's work and spirit, and the times in which his lot was cast. The treatise, in its revised form, was one of the last results of the great German's Herculean toil. It impresses us as being better in parts than as a whole, perhaps from its very nature as a critique of Tertullian's separate works. It is a matter of regret that, since English theology is so deficient in its criticism of the great tendencies of the early Church, no one can be found to unlock for us the treasures of the German mind in this department of research. The writings of Baur and the Montanismus of Schwegler would be a welcome accession. But the best books do not soonest find translators. Not all the Fathers seem real to us to-day. It is hard to think that some of them were men of flesh and blood, with human hearts and human passions like our own. We would find some point of union with them, but we cannot. If in the darkness of our souls we stretch out our hands to them, they put not forth their own, or it is as if we touched that of a corpse. And then the performance of these men seems so disproportionate to their opportunities. They wasted their strength in believing, and forgot to do and be. The echoes of Christ's footfalls had hardly died upon the earth, when they began to warp his tropes into dogma and his parables into creed, and could find nothing deeper than shallow doctrine in the agony of the Garden and the suffering of the Cross.

Doubtless the records are most unfair to these men, and tell dreadful falsehoods in not telling all the truth about them. Perhaps they were good citizens, and kind husbands, and true friends. Who knows? But we must take them as we find them, and, so taking them, they seem real or unreal to us with reference to two simple questions. Were they or were they not the representatives of some marked idea, truth, or tendency? Did they or did they not subordinate words to actions, and belief to life? As regards the first point, it does not matter whether the idea or tendency is a favorite one with us. We only ask that our writer or hero shall stand for this thing or for that, and not dabble among all things. The ground of

interest in a man is that he be good after his kind, and that his kind be marked distinctly. We are scarcely less interested by the narrowness of Peter's faith than by the breadth of Paul's. Tertullian stands this test. He is a better Montanist than Montanus himself. The object of Neander in the Antignostikus is to show that Tertullian is the proper representative of the Realistic tendency and system, which he sets over against the Idealistic with its ultra and moderate wings, its veritable Gnosticism, and its Alexandrian school. As the representative of this practical system, he must, if true to it, stand our second test as well,- must subordinate words to actions and belief to life. And this Tertullian certainly did.

The conception involved in Montanism has struggled into higher and lower forms of expression at every stage of the development of the Christian Church. It is the world's protest against conventional limitations of faith, an utterance, ofttimes a very imperfect one, no doubt, of man's belief in the immanent working of God. The idea of the Paraclete in the Gospel of John, the rude faith of Montanus himself, the higher and more imaginative expression of it in the writings of Tertullian, the Abbot Joachim's doctrine of the Everlasting Gospel, the belief of the sect of the Holy Ghost, which flourished at the close of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, - namely, that an age of the Holy Ghost was at hand, that it would incarnate itself in entire humanity,*- the mysticism of Fénelon and Madame Guyon, the Quaker's "inner light," and the Methodist's illumination, with Dr. Temple's notion of the "education of the world," these thoughts of periods so widely separated from each other are after all but different faces of this diamond truth, that the heavens are never closed, revelation never ceases, God never dies.

This was the deeper meaning of Montanistic thought. It had another less lofty meaning, which perhaps was more apparent. That was its unconscious truth, this its conscious expression. It is from the second point of view that we perceive that these Montanists were the pietists and "latter-day saints" of the second century. So viewed, their movement

* Neander, General Church History, Vol. IV. p. 448.