Wearily, Like a sound from the Dead Sea shrouded in glooms, Crying, "Weep!" Till your tearful eyes glisten: 'Tis the voice of the Past-the dark, guilty Past, Weep tears, to wash out the red, red stains, By brave hearts that rotted, And life ran a deluge of hot bloody rains: Weep, weep, weep! Fearfully, From many a worn, noble spirit, that breaks In the world's solemn shadows, deep down in life's vallies; Crying, "Work!" Till your earnest eyes glisten: "Tis the voice of the Present! It bids us, my brothers, O work while ye may,— O work while 'tis day,— And cling to each other, united and true: Hope, hope, hope! GERALD MASSEY. OF GREATNESS.-If I am asked who is the greatest man? I answer the best; and if I am required to say who is the best? I reply he that has deserved most of his fellow-creatures. Whether we deserve better of mankind by the cultivation of letters, by obscure and inglorious attainments, by intellectual pursuits calculated rather to amuse than inform, than by strenuous exertions in speaking and acting, let those consider who bury themselves in studies unproductive of any benefit to their country or fellow-citizens, I think not,-Sir William Jones. CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY, ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS'S LEBEN JESU.' A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848–9, AND 1849–50. It has already been remarked that we have other historical evidence(that of Josephus)-for the existence and ministry of John the Baptist, besides the narratives of the Four Evangelists. John is termed a Nazarite, by Matthew and Luke; but the religious rite he administered marks him as evidently one of the Essenes,-of whose frequent lustrations, or purifications by water, you will remember, something was said in the first discourse. These practices were apparently founded on some figurative expressions of the prophets, which came to be understood literally: God therein requiring from the Israelites a washing and a purification from their iniquity, and promising that He will himself cleanse them with water. (Isaiah, i. 16; Ezekiel, xxxvi. 25; Jeremiah, ii. 22.) The prevailing idea of the Jews was, that Messiah would not appear until his people repented; and forth came John, filled with religious enthusiasm, cryingRepent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand'-believing that in those times of commotion he discerned sure signs of Messiah's comingand calling on the people to shew their 'repentance' by conforming to the external act of purification, as an open confession that they intended, thenceforth, to live a new and holy life. According to our Gospels, the coming of the 'kingdom of heaven' was associated, by John, with a Messianic individual who would 'baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire;' and the first three Gospels state the case as if John the Baptist understood this Messianic individual to be Jesus of Nazareth. But what doubts arise within us as to the fact that John proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, when we compare the first three Gospels with the fourth! Be it remembered that, according to Luke, the mothers of John and Jesus were cousins, and made supernaturally aware of the destination of their sons; and the Baptist, while in the womb, seemed to acknowledge the greatness of Jesus. Matthew says nothing of their family acquaintance; but he would seem to have some latent knowledge of it, since he says, -"John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptised of thee; and comest thou to me ?" The baptism takes place; and then the spirit of God is described as descending upon Jesus, in the form of a dove. But how different is this to the relation in the fourth Gospel!" And John bare record, saying, I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: (verse 33, and see the same expression in verse 31: John i. ch.) but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see, &c. I saw, and bare record, &c." And How is it possible to reconcile these varying statements? If the Baptist did not know Jesus, either personally or as the Messiah, until the sign was given of 'the spirit descending from heaven like a dove '—of what value were all the supernatural communications made to the mothers of the two? What expenditure of means without purpose, has been attributed to the Almighty, in Luke's narrative: what an utter ignorance of every part of it relating to the birth of the Baptist is manifested by John! Do we not see that we are not reading the records of 'plenary inspiration' here? Have we anything more than the contradictions of different legends? But the difficulties increase,-for in the 11th chapter of Matthew, (v. 2,) and in the 7th chapter of Luke, (v. 18,) we are told that, considerably after Christ's baptism and all the supernatural signs attending it,-John hearing of the ministry of Jesus, sends some of his disciples to him to ask if he were the Messiah ! How strange is this, after what has gone before! Nay, does not the conduct of the Baptist look like rivalry and seem to manifest a wish to detain men from following the Messiah,-since he continues to baptise, and to retain his primitive character, after he has declared Jesus to be the Messiah? Such conduct is not consistent with the statement that he had made that declaration. He cannot have made it; for if he had, he would have attached himself to Jesus. That no such attachment existed is most probable, if the characters of the Baptist and Jesus be contemplated. The reflections of Strauss on this subject are so sagacious that I cannot forbear to quote them :: "How could the man of the wilderness, the stern ascetic, who fed on locusts and wild honey, and prescribed severe fasts to his disciples, the gloomy, threatening preacher of repentance, animated with the spirit of Elias-how could he form a friendship with Jesus, in every thing his opposite? He must assuredly, with his disciples, have stumbled at the liberal manners of Jesus, and have been hindered by them from recognizing him as a Messiah. Nothing is more unbending than ascetic prejudice; he who, like the Baptist, esteems it piety to fast and mortify the body, will never assign a high grade in things divine to him who disregards such asceticism. A mind with narrow views can never comprehend one whose vision takes a wider range, although the latter may know how to do justice to its inferior; hence Jesus could value and sanction John in his proper place, but the Baptist could never give the precedence to Jesus, as he is reported to have done in the Fourth Gospel. The declaration of the Baptist (John iii. 30.), that he must decrease, but Jesus must increase, is frequently praised as an example of the noblest and sublimest resignation. The beauty of this representation we grant; but not its truth. The instance would be a solitary one, if a man whose life had its influence on the world's history, had so readily yielded the ascendant, in its own æra, to one who came to eclipse him and render him superfluous. Such a step is not less difficult for individuals than for nations, and that not from any vice, as egotism or ambition, so that an exception might be presumed (though not without prejudice) in the case of a man like the Baptist; it is a consequence of that blameless limitation which, as we have already remarked, is proper to a low point of view in relation to a higher, and which is all the more obstinately maintained if the inferior individual is, like John, of a coarse, rugged nature." But, if we cannot receive as historical the statement that John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the Messiah, do the gospel narratives permit us to regard the Baptism itself, of Jesus by John, as an historical fact? To conceive the incident as a real one, a cultivated and reflecting mind must feel to be very difficult. How is it reconcileable with the idea of the Holy spirit as the divine, all-pervading Power, that he should move from one place to another, like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove? And then, the idea that the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his descent from his accustomed seat-evidently belongs to the unscientific time when the dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven. The ancients' heavens,' what are they? The atmosphere of the moderns. a notion as that of the Deity uttering articulate tones, in Syriac or HeAnd who, in our age, can entertain such brew, or in the peculiar speech of any nation? It is true that some of the more philosophic Fathers, such as Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, contended that the aggregate of supernatural circumstances here presented, were to be regarded as C6 reality." But the statement of Luke, especially, does not admit of such a vision, and not a an interpretation: his words, it came to pass-was opened and descendedin a bodily shape-and a voice came, are literal renderings from the Greek, in our translation; and such phrases pretermit the possibility of our understanding him to be relating the circumstances of "a vision," or something that has no external existence. We are left then, to conclude that the narrative is but a legend. As Samuel anointed David the forerunner of Messiah, there was an adequate inducement for the Jewish Christians to assume this consecration of Jesus by the Baptist, even if no baptism of Jesus by John ever took place. Malachi, too had foretold that Elias should appear to announce Messiah-at least, the Jews so interpreted the passage (Mal. 3 ch. 1 v. ;) though, to our understanding, Jehovah does not therein speak of sending a messenger before the Messiah, but before himself: for the New Testament quotation "Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee"-is a startling variation from the Old, "Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me!" The New Testament passage is put into the mouth of Christ, by both Matthew and Luke; but from true reverence for his understanding, I must express a doubt that Jesus ever made the quotation. Whether Jesus, in any degree, owed his Messianic idea to the announcement of John the Baptist, that the Messiah was about to appear, these accounts do not enable us to determine: if he ever were baptised by John, the baptism must have taken place without any striking occurrences; and Jesus, in no way announced by it as the Baptist's superior, might continue for some time to demean himself as his disciple. Strauss seems undetermined on this point; but I must confess that, to my own mind, the evidence for Christ's independence of the Baptist preponderates. There is one more remark that must be made before we leave this narrative of the Baptism; and that is,-that it plunges us into a difficulty as it regards its purpose, when we remember what has gone before in the legend. If Jesus was the Son of God' by the miraculous conception,-if the 'Logos,' or Divine Word,' was made flesh, in him, from the beginning of his earthly existence,-why did he yet need, at his baptism, a special intromission of the veμa ayiov-the Holy Spirit? Modern expositors have endeavoured, in vain, to answer this question. A little reflection must convince us, that, like the genealogies, this narrative of the Baptism must have been formed in a region of ideas foreign to that in which the story of the miraculous conception arose. And, in Epiphanius, we have the historic testimony that the Ebionites, a sect of the First Centuries,(as well as Cerinthus, against whom, it is said, the preface to John's Gospel was written)-held that Jesus was really human, and that the Holy Spirit was first united to him at his baptism; indeed, in the Gospel of the Ebionites, the same writer informs us, it was written that the Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon him, but "entering into him became Christ in him." This progressive formation-this retaining of contradictory elements-we shall find common to all legends; and Strauss describes its naturalness with his characteristic acuteness : : "The development of these ideas seems to have been the following. When the messianic dignity of Jesus began to be acknowledged among the Jews, it was thought appropriate to connect his coming into possession of the requisite gifts, with the epoch from which he was in some degree known, and which, from the ceremony that marked it, was also best adapted to represent that anointing with the Holy Spirit, expected by the Jews for their Messiah: and from this point of view was formed the legend of the occurences at the baptism. But as reverence for Jesus was heightened, and men appeared in the Christian church who were acquainted with more exalted messianic ideas, this tardy manifestation of messiahship was no longer sufficient; his relation with the Holy Spirit was referred to his conception: and from this point of view was formed the tradi tion of the supernatural conception of Jesus. By this latter representation, however, the earlier one was by no means supplanted, but on the contrary, traditiou and her recorders being large-hearted, both narratives-that of the miracles of the baptism, and that of the supernatural conception, or the indwelling of the Logos in Jesus from the commencement of his life, although, strictly, they excluded each other, went forth peaceably side by side, and so were depicted by our evangelists, not excepting even the fourth. Just as in the case of the genealogies: the narrative of the imparting of the Spirit at the baptism could not arise after the formation of the idea that Jesus was engendered by the Spirit; but it might be retained as a supplement, because tradition is ever unwilling to renounce any of its acquired treasures." (To be continued.) Reviews. History of the French Revolution of 1848. By A. DE LAMARTINE.~ (Translated.) H. G. Bohn. LAMARTINE has prevented misconstruction of his true character, either by his friends or his foes, by writing this 'history.' We have now his own open confession that he is not an ultra democrat; and yet it is impossible to read this record without a deep admiration of his enlarged humanity. Every young man ought to purchase the book, if possible, and young men should club to buy it, where they have not, individually, the means to purchase it. Nothing can surpass the graphic power of Lamartine's writing. It is truly a power of painting by words. It cannot be expected, now the 'moderate' character of Lamartine is fully known, that his views of the character of Barbès, Blanqui, and other fervid democrats should be very favourable. But one thing is very gratifying: namely, that Lamartine has fully cleared Louis Blanc of the vile charges so often repeated by the Times,' with regard to the National Workshops-repeated, too in spite of all the denials Louis Blanc sent to that paper. The following passage is valuable, not only for its containing this confirmation of Louis Blanc's repeated denial; but, also, for a confession, on the part of Lamartine-who, nevertheless, is not a communist-that the Provisional government's great error was delay in forming agricultural colonies in France. Let English workingmen, especially, note this confession, while thinking of the desirableness of obtaining possession of the 15 millions of Waste Lands in these islands : "At this time, when all trade was suspended, the task of soothing and mitigating the distress of the industrial classes devolved on M. Bethmont, the minister of the departments of commerce and agriculture. No man could be better fitted for this office. His disposition was patient, serene, and resigned; he was gifted with eloquence, and he possessed a heart overflowing with compassion for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures. M. Bethmont reflected on the republic that character for probity, solicitude, and sympathy, which belonged to himself personally. He was regular and attentive in his presence at the sittings, and he profited by his intervals of respite from official duties, to assist at the government council. There he invariably took the side of republican moderation, law, and order, on the model of the great magistrates of the assembly of 1790. His post should have been at the head of the magistracy. "M. Marie, who possessed a more active temperament, greater boldness of conception, and who took a wider and more enterprising range in matters of business, temporized with the public works, which were too much protracted, and kept up with too much routine. One of the political and social solutions of the crisis would have been, in the opinion of certain members of the government, a vast body of unemployed men, suddenly occupied in some great public works for the fertilization of the French soil. Lamartine shared this opinion. Some of the Socialists, then moderate and prudent, though afterwards violent and factious, urged the government to take a first step in furtherance of this scheme. A great campaign, in the interior of France, with agricultural implements for arms, like the campaigns undertaken by the Romans or the Egyptians for digging canals or draining the Pontine marshes, appeared to these persons to be the course marked out for a republic desirous of continuing at peace, and of sav |