wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek as one injured when he kicks his foot through it? Armer Teufel!..... Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a dilettante and sandblind pedant."

We perceive that at this rate we should be long in coming to an end, and will therefore turn resolutely at once towards the latter part of the book. We leave untouched the images of a world without clothes, amusing " enough," but rather too fantastic for the gravity of our Magazine. We will repeat nothing about school-masters and school-days, though there are some things shrewdly spoken of them. We will not describe the boy's first bereavements, when his "mother wept, and her sorrow got vent, but in his heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation." We will stop to copy no flower from the bloomy pictures of young love. We will turn away from the battle-field, at page 175th, though seldom has it been, with a few vigorous pencil-strokes, so fearfully delineated. There is the admirable chapter, too, "The Everlasting Yea." We will but point to it. It makes Christian renunciation look attractive as well as obligatory, and beautifully describes that "low crypt, arched out of falling fragments," where the altar of the "Worship of Sorrow may still be found, "and its sacred lamp perennially burning." Zollikofer has a sermon on the difference between Glück and Glückseligkeit; but he does not set forth the doctrine so glowingly as we find it here, that "there is in man a HIGHER than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness."- We will not look over a stitch in George Fox's suit of leather; nor repeat a word of the dissertation on Symbols, that censures so sharply the "Genius of Mechanism," and man's "self-love and arithmetical understanding."

We will open at the 265th page, and extract a paragraph or two on the taking subject of Ghosts.

"Could any thing be more miraculous than an actual, authentic ghost? The English Johnson longed all his life to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human life he so loved? did he never so much as look into himself? The good Doctor was a

ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well nigh a million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of time; compress the threescore years into three minutes. What else was he, what else are we? Are we not spirits shaped into a body, into an appearance; and that fade away again into air and invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple, scientific fact. We start out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions. Round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity; and to eternity minutes are as years and æons. Come there not tones of love and faith, as from celestial harpstrings, like the song of beatified souls? And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern) and revel in our mad dance of the dead, till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still home; and dreamy night becomes awake and day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon? Does the steel host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? Napoleon, too, and his Moscow retreat, and Austerlitz campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away? Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.

"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful, to consider that we not only carry each a future ghost within him, but are in very deed ghosts! These limbs, whence had we them; this stormy force; this life-blood with its burning passions? They are dust and shadow; a shadow-system gathered round our ME; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse; fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart; but warrior and war-horse are a vision, a revealed force, nothing more. Stately they tread the earth, as if it were a firm substance. Fool! The earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and warhorse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little while ago they were not; a little while and they are not, their very ashes are not."

One word from the chapter on Dandies, who are defined to be "Clothes-wearing men, or men whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes;" in which allusion is made to "an individual named Pelham, who seems to be a mystagogue, and leading teacher and preacher of the sect." "Of their sacred books". fashionable novels-"I, not without

expense, procured myself some samples; and in hope of true insight, and with a zeal which beseems an inquirer into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly to no purpose. That tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at nought. In vain that I summoned my whole energies (mich weidlich anstrengte), and did my very utmost. At the end of some short space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, insufferable Jewsharping and scrannel-piping there; to which the frightfullest species of magnetic sleep soon supervened. . . . . . Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another Fashionable Novel.".

p. 278.

We here part with our author, hoping to meet him again in the book of the French Revolution. We shall probably leave many of our readers in the condition that he has himself described:

"Can it be hidden from the Editor that many a British reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present work? Yes, long ago has many a British reader been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl : Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it?

"In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, O British reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdröckh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true land of dreams, and through the Clothes-screen, as through a magical Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest even for moments into the region of the wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with wonder, and based on wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are miracles, then art thou profited beyond money's worth, and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor." pp. 270, 271.

We started with the acknowledgment that this book would be distasteful to many. But we fearlessly commend it to another many, who will find their hearts greatly in unison with it. It is not a work to be glanced at here and there. It should not be read through in a breath. It must be conned carefully, and not too much at a time. We do not say that it never put our very selves out of patience; but we declare in all sincerity, that we believe few books of its compass will reward the exercise of patience better.

N. L. F.

[For the Christian Examiner.]

ART. VI-Thoughts on the Personality of the Word of God.

To do good and to get good should be the desire and the study of the living man, so long as God continues his mental faculties. At this period of life and with my infirmities it is but little that I can hope to do; but to do according to the ability which God giveth is all that he requires. He yet continues to me some portion of mental vigor, and a heart to delight in the study of his revealed will. Recently my thoughts have been employed on the supposed personality of "the Word " "the Word of God." To write any thing like a thorough review of the subject would be more than I could reasonably hope to accomplish. I may, however, be enabled to record a selection of thoughts, which may be in some degree useful to myself, and to some portion of my fellow men. I will therefore hope in the mercy of God, and, with reliance on him, proceed to state some facts and thoughts relating to the subject, which shall appear to me both true and important.

1. I freely admit that Jesus, the Messiah, was properly a person, anointed of God,—one in whom the Father dwelt in a peculiar and intimate manner,- and that he is the person of whom it is said, "his name is called the Word of God." Rev. xix. 13. Among the Jews it was a custom to give or assume significant names. The angel who appeared to Joseph, the reputed father of the Messiah, said to him, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." As Jesus signifies Saviour, it was properly given to him whom the "Father sent to be the Saviour of the world." As bread is food for the body, so the truths of the Gospel are food for the soul. As Jesus was the medium through which God was pleased to communicate this food to men, the Messiah in one of his figurative discourses said to his hearers, "I am the BREAD OF LIFE "the BREAD OF GOD which came down from heaven"-"the LIVING BREAD." This was figurative language, and on the same principle he might be called the WORD OF GOD. When Jesus instituted the memorial of his death, he said "This cup is the new Covenant in my blood." No Christian perhaps doubts, that by the cup Jesus meant the wine which the cup contained; this was an emblem of his blood. The body or flesh of Christ was the Bread of life, in

the same sense that the wine was called the cup. To give to a vessel the name of the thing which it contains is a common figure of speech.

2. What was written by John concerning the Word in the first chapter of his Gospel is supposed to have been the principal ground on which the hypothesis was formed, that by the Word is meant a second person in the Godhead. Had it not been for what John wrote, no such opinion perhaps would ever have been entertained. Cruden, the author of a celebrated "Concordance," was much disposed to favor this hypothesis; yet he has marked but six cases in which he thought the WORD meant a divine person. Four of these are in the first chapter of John's Gospel. One is found in 1 John v. 7,-the text, which at this day is supposed to be spurious. The other is Rev. xix. 13, were the Messiah has his name "called the Word of God," as significant of his office, or the errand on which he was sent into the world. When on trial, Jesus said to Pilate; "To this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.' This he did during his ministry; and this testimony he sealed with his blood.

3. Some learned men have supposed, that John employed the term logos or Word, in a sense which he borrowed from Plato's philosophy; but who can admit this, that duly considers how often the term " Word," had been used in the Old Testament? Unless John meant to mislead his readers, it is reasonable to believe that he used the term in its Scriptural sense. In the Old Testament as well as in the New, the Word is sometimes personified, or spoken of as though a person was intended. It is said "the Word of the Lord came" to one and another of the prophets, “saying." Then we are told what the Word said to them. Yet in the New Testament the matter is thus explained" Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Pet. i. 21. Who can doubt that what Peter ascribes to the Holy Ghost is the same that was ascribed to the Word in the Old Testament. It is true, that in both forms of speech the agency of a real person is implied; and that person was Jehovah, the living Father. He came by his Word or spirit, and taught the prophets, what they should say or write. Had it been written "Jehovah came to Jeremiah saying," and then by Peter, that "holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Father," the meaning would, I believe, have been the same that was meant by the forms of speech adopted