British sovereignty, or of any speedy reception of Christianity? Surely every thoughtful mind must stand appalled at the prospect. There is something inexpressibly painful in the reflection, that when we have counted out one or two hundred thousand from a mass of 33,000,000 children, all of an age to be instructed, we should have told the whole amount of influence which Christian England is exerting over the rising population of India,-a country with which our merchants have traded ever since the days of queen Elizabeth, and over which the late East India Company ruled with an absolute and almost unlimited power during the last century. What might not have been accomplished during that long period, if we had risen, as a Christian people, to the proper sense of our responsibilities? It is in vain, however, to indulge in useless lamentations. The past is irrecoverable. We turn to ask, What are our prospects for the time to come? Is it not imperative on us to do more for Christian education in India? And if so, what? We purpose to return to the subject, not without the hope of being able to throw some light upon it.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, D.D., LL.D., late Missionary to the Jews and Mohammedans in Persia, Bokhara, &c., &c. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Saunders and Otley. 1860.Dr. Wolff belongs to the last generation. Our older readers will recollect him as a Jewish missionary, himself a converted Jew, erratic and eccentric, greatly loved by Mr. Simeon, and wondered at by other men as a religious phenomenon, full of zeal and full of drollery; and now, in the evening of life, he sits down to furnish us with his autobiography. With the main facts and chief incidents he met with in his travels, the public have been long acquainted; and the volume before us does not add much in any way to our stock of real knowledge. More thoughtful writers than Dr. Wolff have since travelled the same ground; and missionary work, as now prosecuted in the East, is a much more intellectual, earnest business, than when he first went out rather to explore than to evangelize. This first volume, the only one yet published, closes with his journey to Bokhara, describing his encounters by the way, and how he was plundered in the desert; a story which he used to tell with infinite humour and pathos on the platform. He gives us previously a sketch of his early life. He was by birth a German and a Jew, born in 1795, and, as he believes, of the tribe of Levi. As a youth, he was energetic, and certainly precocious. At the age of eleven he was permitted to leave home, thirsting with a desire to learn, and anxious to visit learned men and seats of learning. He took an affecting leave of his kindred and his father's house :---

"He paid a visit to his father, who asked him, 'What will you now learn?' He said, 'Greek.' Then he asked him, 'What will you become?' He replied, 'A physician and a preacher, like Maimonides.' The old Jews who were present stroked their hands over their heads, and said, 'Woe, woe, woe! your son will not remain a Jew; he will be mixed with the Gentiles, and go the way of all the Gentiles.' His father gave no reply. He then sought an interview with his uncle Asshur, of Weilersbach, who said, 'Wolff, Wolff, give up studying; it will lead unto Christianity, and I shall disinherit you. You will not have one farthing from me; I will leave everything to my other nephews' (his sister's children). Wolff replied, "They are more deserving of it than myself, for they are a staff to you in your old age.' Wolff then asked the blessing of his uncle. His uncle put his hands upon him, and said with weeping eyes, 'The Lord Jehovah bless thee, and rejoice over thee, as on Ephraim and Manasseh.' Then he said, 'Now go in peace; say the blessing over everything you eat; don't eat with uncovered head; go every day to the synagogue; never lie down without having said, "Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one God," &c. Thus Wolf arrived at Romberg, and was most kindly received by his cousin, Moses Lazarus Cohen, as well as by his wife."

Cohen was a philosophizing Jew, speculative, and with a tendency to infidelity; and young Wolff, dissatisfied with the literary society into which he was introduced,-that of Goethe, Falk, and others,determined to become a Roman Catholic, and so to be at least a Loyola or a Francis Xavier. Falk, who was a pantheist, gave him such advice as we might expect from a man who regarded all religions with equal contempt:-"Remain what you are, you will become a celebrated Jew; but as a Christian you will never be celebrated, for there are plenty of other clever Christians in the world." With more integrity Goethe replied, “Young man, follow the bent of your own mind, and don't listen to what Falk says." Happily for himself, after a visit to Rome, where he narrowly escaped the Inquisition, he found his way to England, and was kindly welcomed by Mr. Henry Drummond, a gentleman no less energetic and not less eccentric than himself; he became a Protestant, conformed to the church of England, was ordained, and in 1821 set out as a missionary to the Jews. His return to England, and marriage with Lady Georgiana Walpole, followed. Of his journeys and adventures among Jews and Mohammedans, in Persia and Bokhara, we have now ample notices in this volume. He appears to have succeeded in making some converts; but we doubt whether any abiding traces of his labours remain. For many years he has been content to work quietly as the pastor of a country parish, and is generally considered to have passed over from the evangelical principles of his youth to the high-church school. The volume, we perceive, is dedicated to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.

The superior character of the publications of our religious societies seems to claim for them some notice at our hands. We have before us two volumes issued by the Religious Tract Society: India, its Natives and Missions; and India, an Historical Sketch; both edited by the Rev. George Trevor, M.A., Canon of York, late Chaplain on the Madras Establishment. Each of these would, some years ago,

have made a handsome volume, and given the author a literary reputation; but he is wisely satisfied to gain a wider circulation, and do more good through the Tract Society, though possibly at the sacrifice both of emolument and of literary fame. The Historical Sketch of India is not a mere compilation. Canon Trevor's personal knowledge of Eastern affairs is considerable, and he exercises an independent line of thought. He defends Warren Hastings in the business of the execution of Nuncomar, who, it will be remembered, was hanged for forgery. Nuncomar was a Brahmin, and, as such, his person was inviolate according to Hindoo tradition; "but that he was a villain of the deepest dye has never been questioned; and it is somewhat to the credit of the authorities in those early days that the course of justice was not allowed to be defeated by the claims of an idolatrous caste."

It is the province of history on the one side, no doubt, to tear off the disguise from successful wickedness, and expose it in all its nakedness, and not less so, on the other, to restore the reputation which faction has defaced. It is not easy for us in England, at this distance of time, to pronounce with justice on the merits of Warren Hastings; but, for the honour of our country and of human nature, we cannot but wish that Canon Trevor's defence of the great Indian governor may be well deserved.

"Warren Hastings was not free from the faults of his age and class. Highly accomplished in classical and Oriental literature, he was devoid of an influential sense of religion, lax in morals, self-confident, and ambitious. But his lofty and sagacious mind was animated more by a passion for his country's glory than for personal advantage. His defects were common to his accusers, and the whole state of society in which they lived. It was the age of the French revolution, when religion and morals were at their lowest ebb throughout Europe. In India, the natives were in reasonable doubt whether their conquerors owned any religion at all. There were but few clergymen, fewer churches, and no Christian missions. Such was the absence, even of the externals of Christianity, that horse-races were publicly run in Calcutta on the Lord's-day. It is vain to expect that human nature will be restrained by its own sense of honour or honesty, where God is denied, and the heart not illumined from above."

History of the Christian Church to the Reformation, from the German of Professor Kurtz, with Emendations, &c. By the Rev. Alfred Edersheim, Ph.D. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 1860. 1 Vol. 8vo.-The title page of this book affords a very imperfect idea of its contents. It is a work of great value; but a history of the Christian church for 1500 years cramped into a single volume could not, except as a school book, possibly be of any great worth. It must be merely a compendium. The French draw a good distinction between a history and Memoirs pour servir, or materials to make a history. This is a volume of materials, and such a one as only German diligence could have put together. We have in the shortest space an account of all the sects which existed, of the authors who treat of their peculiarities, the changes which the church underwent, and a reference to everything that one would wish to know of the church's state for 1500 years. But it is only a book of reference; the reader who takes

it up as a history will be disappointed; the student who places it before him as a book of reference will find it full and satisfactory. There seems to be scarcely a point in the history of the church down to the period of the reformation upon which some information is not given, nor probably an ecclesiastical writer of importance whose opinions, and the character of whose writings is not described.

Mr. Ryle continues his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels. Iunt, Ipswich; and Wertheim and Co., London. In Monthly Numbers.That for the month of June contains the first four chapters of St. John. We perceive that, as Mr. Ryle proceeds, while his expositions lose nothing of their flavour, his commentary, contained in the notes appended to each chapter, gains in strength. Of the former, we can only repeat what we said a year ago on his gospel of St. Luke: Mr. Ryle and the Archbishop of Canterbury are pre-eminent as commentators. Without spiritualizing the text, they draw spiritual lessons from it by the most legitimate process. Their reflections are logical inferences contained within the text itself, not forced upon it. The text is the proof of the thing asserted, and therefore every one who reveres the text as God's revelation feels himself at once compelled to admit the inference, unless he can detect some flaw in the inductive process. How immeasurably superior this method of treating scripture is in every respect to that lazy, slovenly practice of "spiritualizing" which is so common, every hearer of a sermon constructed on the inductive method, after he has been jaded with a "spiritualized" discourse, can determine for himself. He feels that the latter has proved nothing, except perhaps the ingenuity of the preacher; it has not grappled with his conscience because it has not laid hold of his understanding; it may have contained an isolated remark or so which deeply affected him at the time, and reflection may have convinced him that the remark was true and scriptural; but it was the preacher's business to have shown him that it was both, and to have shown it from the text; and this he failed to do. Yet there is a danger, we grant, into which literal commentators are too apt to fall, and into which, unless they are men of eminent spirituality of mind, they must inevitably fall. Their expositions will be correct, but dry; the lessons they extract or the reflections they raise from the text, will be true, and yet but a small unsatisfying portion of the truth, wanting variety, power and unction. "The south wind" of the Holy Spirit will not have breathed upon the word, and "the spices thereof" do not "flow out." The exposition may be true enough as far as it goes, but it is constrained and harsh. It is the high praise of a good expositor that he brings out spiritual lessons and shows them to be legitimate inferences, not mere accommodations, and this rare gift is possessed, we think, in no slight degree by these two eminent expositors.

In his notes, Mr. Ryle seems to have shrunk from no difficulty, and though he speaks with decision when his mind is finally made up, it is evident that he has taken no ordinary pains to inform himself previously of the opinions of other commentators ancient and modern. He has a note of several closely printed pages on John iii. 5, "Born of water and of the Spirit." This famous text has given rise to widely different interpretations, which Mr. Ryle groups under three heads.

The first, and most common one, refers it entirely to baptism, and deduces from it an inseparable connection between baptism and spiritual regeneration. The second refers it partly to baptism, and partly to that spiritual regeneration which a man may receive, like the penitent thief, without baptism: "a view of the text which is maintained by some few of the best Roman Catholic writers, such as Rupertus and Ferus, by almost all the English Reformers, and by many excellent commentators down to the present day." The third refers the text entirely to regeneration, excluding baptism altogether. This view Mr. Ryle believes to be the true one. We have been more disposed to agree with our Reformers in adhering to the second interpretation, but the question is fairly open to discussion; let us hear Mr. Ryle:"Those," he says, "who hold that baptism is not referred to in this text, are undoubtedly a small minority among theologians, but their names are weighty. Among them will be found Calvin, Zwingle, Bullinger, Gualter, archbishop Whitgift, bishop Prideaux, Whitaker, Fulke, Poole, Hutcheson, Charnock, Gill, Cartwright, Grotius, Cocceius, Gomarus, Piscator, Rivetus, Chamier, Witsius, Mastricht, Turretin, Lampè, Burkitt, A. Clarke, and, according to Lampè, Daillè and Paræus. I do not assert this on second hand information. I have verified the assertion by examining with my own eyes the works of all the authors above named, excepting the two referred to by Lampè. On the precise meaning of the word 'water' they are not agreed. But they all hold that our Lord did not mean baptism when he spoke of being born of water and the Spirit.' Dean Alford, I observe, says that the expression 'refers to the token, or outward sign of baptism, on any honest interpretation.' How far it is justifiable to use such language about an opinion supported by so many great names, I leave to the reader to decide. Those who wish to see the view of the text which I advocate more fully defended, will find what they want in Lampè's Dissertations, and Chamier's Panstratio."

In adhering to a view of the text adopted by so few commentators, Mr. Ryle feels a natural desire to give his reasons at full length. This he has done under six heads. We should not do him justice were we merely to give his propositions, without his arguments and proofs; and we must refer our readers to his own pages for these. We would direct their serious attention, too, to his remarks upon the deference paid by our Reformers to the opinions of the fathers. The famous remark of Hooker are, he thinks, "a curious instance of the coolness with which a great man can sometimes draw an illogical conclusion in his own favour from some broad general premise.' "He lays down the general principle, that when a literal construction of a text will stand, that furthest from the letter is commonly the worst.' He then proceeds to take it for granted, that to interpret born of water' of baptism is the literal construction of the text now before us. Unfortunately, this is precisely the point which I for one do not concede; and his conclusion is, consequently, to my mind, worthless."

These are questions, however, upon which some differences must be allowed amongst the best scholars and the wisest Christians. On what follows there can be but one opinion:-" In leaving the whole subject, there is one fact which I think deserves very serious consideration. Those churches of Christendom at the present day, which dis