BIBLICAL COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL. By Carl Friedrich Keil, D.D., Doctor and Professor of Theology. Translated from the German by Rev. James Martin, B.A. 8vo. Vol. I. pp. 428; Vol. II. pp. 434. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark; New York; Scribner, Welford, and Armstrong.

The learning of Dr. Keil is as apparent in this as in his other works. The plates in the second volume make some of its descriptions more easily intelligible than such descriptions often are. The perspicuity of the work would sometimes be increased by breaking up one paragraph into three or four briefer paragraphs. The author's style requires such aid from the translator.

DR. JOHN PETER LANGE'S COMMENTARY ON EXODUS AND LEVITICUS.

This is the second volume of the Commentaries on the Old Testament in the well-known series, edited by Dr. Philip Schaff, and published by Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., New York. It contains Dr. Lange's Introduction to Exo lus, Leviticus, and Numbers, translated by Rev. Howard Osgood, D.D., Professor in Rochester, New York, pp. 50; The Commentary on Exodus, or Second Book of Moses, by Dr. Lange; translated by Charles M. Mead, Ph.D., Professor of the Hebrew Language and Literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., pp. 179; The Commentary on Leviticus, or Third Book of Moses, by Frederic Gardiner, D.D., Professor of the Literature and Interpretation of the Old Testament in the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Ct.; in which is incorporated a translation of the greater part of the German Commentary on Leviticus, by Dr. Lange. pp. 206. A large part of the Translation of Lange on Leviticus was prepared by Rev. Henry Ferguson of Exeter, N. II. Our own opinion at the commencement of Dr. Schaff's series was, that it were better to adopt the main plan pursued by Dr. Gardiner, than to make the series entirely a translation from the German. An American commentator understands the wants of American readers, and the best method of meeting them, better than a German commentator can understand or meet them.-This entire volume is an excellent one. THE GENIUS OF THE GOSPEL: A Homiletical Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew. By David Thomas, D.D., Author of "A Homiletical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles," etc. Edited by Rev. William Webster, M.A., Late Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, Author of "The Syntax and Synonymes of the Greck Testament," etc. Seventh Thousand. 8vo. pp. 560. London: Dickinson and Higham.

Mr. Webster regards this volume as superior to Chrysostom's Homilies and Simeon's and Lange's Homiletical Commentary. He says of the author: Nil falsi audet, nil veri non audet dicere. We cannot see all

the reasons for Mr. Webster's high praise of the volume; yet we think well of it. We agree with him in regarding it as distinguished by three features," reality, common sense, fidelity."

THE ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the Analogy and Course of Nature. By Joseph Butler, LL.D., Lord Bishop of Durham. Edited by Joseph Cummings, D.D., LL.D., President of Wesleyan University. 12mo. pp. 395. New York: Nelson and Phillips; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden. 1875.

Butler's Dissertations on Personal Identity, and the Nature of Virtue are inserted in this volume; also, Professor Henry Rogers's Biographical Sketch of Butler; also various foot-notes of Dr. Cummings, Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Fitzgerald, and of other editors of the Analogy; also a copious and excellent Index to the whole. The text is that of the second edition of the Analogy, as prepared by Dr. Fitzgerald. We have examined this edition with some care, and consider it an admirable one.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE AND GERMANY. By Robert Flint, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in the University of St. Andrews. 8vo. pp. 609. New York: Scribner, Welford, and Armstrong. 1875.

In this volume Professor Flint has given us the results of much reading and of patient thought. We are pleased with his style, and his spirit is excellent. With many of his criticisms we coincide fully. Of certain German and French writers he has given some interpretations which are different from our own. They may be correct, however, for all that; as there are not, perhaps, ten men who agree with each other entirely in interpreting those writers. We look forward with much pleasure to the appearance of the second volume.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; their History, Condition, and Management. Special Report, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. Part 1. pp. xxxvi, 1187; Part II. pp. 89. [10,000 copies printed.] Washington: Government Printing Office. 1876.

Merely to print the table of contents of this elaborate work the titles of the thirty-nine chapters, would suffice to show that it is a monument of industry in the accumulation of information from a wide, difficult, and comparatively unexplored field, and of skill in reducing and presenting the material thus obtained; that it contains an outline history of the important libraries of every class in this country, from the beginning down to the present time, excepting, for obvious reasons, private libraries and the ephemeral Sunday-school libraries; that it gives the present condition and working-plans of our principal libraries of each class with considerable

fulness of detail; that it is a practical working manual for the librarian and for all concerned in the administration of any considerable library; that it is a directory for the student, the librarian, the publisher, and the reading public; that it is, in a word, an encyclopaedia of library science and a thesaurus of library statistics.

This publication is peculiarly opportune. During the past twenty years our libraries have increased in number, in value, in size, in accessibility, in resources, and in readers, to a degree surprising even to the professional librarian. Private benevolence, which of late bestows upon our endowed schools an average of at least five million dollars annually, has recently been much engaged, under similar motives, in the kindred work of founding public libraries, sometimes as a memorial, sometimes as a monument, usually, also, as a dutiful expression of personal interest in the present and future welfare of the community more directly benefited. The national government in its various departments, the several states, cities, and towns, schools of all grades, the learned societies, are valuing libraries more and more; and the tax-payer accepts the public library as one of the necessities of the new civilization, and votes large appropriations for its establishment and maintenance. The Boston Public Library contains 300,000 volumes, and expends $120,000 a year. This report comes freighted with the experience of the best libraries and the best librarians, to direct this generous expenditure of public and private wealth, and save it from perversion and waste. Justin Winsor and A. R. Spofford and C. A. Cutter and W. F. Poole, and almost a score of other practised hands, discuss in separate papers the chief points of library-administration from the practical side, and in a way which makes the book a course of instruction for library officials, for readers, and for those who would do good by their donations in this direction.

These volumes appropriately issue from the Bureau of Education. General Eaton's organizing mind is seen in every part. There is a competent editorship, an array of able coadjutors, a fulness and a method which bespeak the military spirit applied to the affairs of peace. Private enterprise could not have elicited the information here presented. Certainly private enterprise would not have undertaken it. Competent critics affirm that no other government has issued a similar work of equal research and scope. No other country needs it so much as ours. Mr. Cutter's "Rules for Cataloguing," constituting Part II., will be the classic on that vital point in library work. Other papers- the one on Theological Libraries (Protestant), "by a librarian" too modest to allow his name to attest its excellence will prove, in their way, invaluable to all whom they reach. Scholars, philanthropists, statesmen, and patriots will urge npon Congress generous appropriations for this bureau, to enable it to complete the projected series of special reports on different phases of our education, of which this is the first.

C. F. P. B.

THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

THE FIRST BOOK OF ESDRAS.

BY REV. E. C. BISSELL, D.D., MISSIONARY OF THE A. B. C. F. M., AT GRÄTZ,

AUSTRIA.

THE title which this book bears in the English Bible, and which we here adopt, was first given to it in 1560, by the translators of the so-called Genevan version. The Church of England, however, in its article of religion relating to the Scriptures, promulgated two years later, and again in 1571, following the usage of the Vulgate, calls it the "Third Book of Esdras"; our present canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah being known, respectively, as "First," and "Second Esɗras.”1

In the Old Latin, Syriac, and Septuagint versions, on the other hand, it was designated as the "First Book of Ezra," and held a corresponding position in the order of books. This was doubtless due to the nature of its contents, which include a somewhat earlier period of history than the books with which it is associated, and not, as Movers and Pohlmann 3 strangely conjecture, on account of its superior age. The Codex Alexandrinus and some MSS. of the LXX name

1 Cf. Cosin, Scholast. Hist. of Can., p. xx, and Westcott, The Bible in the Church, 281 ff.

2 Kirchen-Lexicon, Art. Apok. Lit., and Loci quidam Historiae Can. Vet. Test. 30.

3 Tüb. Theolog. Quartalschrift, 1859, p. 257 ff. VOL. XXXIV. No 134.-APRIL, 1877. 27

the work ὁ ἱερεύς, -Ezra being regarded as a priest par excellence; while Jerome, in his Prologus galeatus or " Helmed Prologue" (to give a free translation to this title), reckons the work among the "apocryphal " books of the Old Testament, under the name of "Pastor," and is followed, in this respect, by some writers at a later period (Petrus Comestor, C. A.D. 1170). On the basis of this fact it has been asserted, even by so sagacious a critic as Credner, that Jerome classed the well-known Pastor Hermae with the Old Testament Apocrypha.1

By Isidore of Seville (Origg. vi. 2) the book is entitled the "Second Book of Ezra"; Nehemiah and the canonical Ezra being regarded as the First Book. In times still more modern, writers have inaccurately applied to it such titles as the "Pseudo-Ezra," and the "Apocryphal Ezra," which might easily lead to confounding the work with what is known in the English Bible as "Second Esdras." A fit title, both as it respects convenience and definiteness, would be the "Greek Ezra"; this distinguishes the book alike from the canonical Ezra with its Hebrew original, and from the "Apocalypse of Ezra," which is extant in a Latin text only.

I. Contents and Scope.--The contents of the book are as follows:

Chap. i. agrees in general with 2 Chron. xxxv., xxxvi.
ii. 1-15 agrees in general with Ez. î.

ii. 15-30 agrees in general with Ez. iv. 7-24.

iii.-v. 6 is of unknown origin.

v. 7-73 agrees in general with Ez. ii.-iv. 6.

vi.-ix. 36 agrees in general with Ez. v.-x. 44.

ix. 37-55 agrees in general with Neh. vii. 73-viii. 13.

Different opinions prevail respecting the aim of the work De Wette2 says, that no object of the "characterless compilation" is discoverable. Ewald, Fritzsche, Keil, and others, however, agree that the object aimed at seems to have been to give a history of the restoration of the temple. The Old

1 Geschicht. d. N. T. Kan., pp. 273, 312, 313. Cf. Bertholdt, Einleit. in d. Alt. Test., p. 1006, and Diestel, Geschicht. d. Alten Test. in d. christ. Kirche, S. 182. 2 Einleit, in d. Alt. Test. ed. Schrader, 1869, S. 565.