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Greece; and if in one country he was aided by a Bulé, or senate, composed of the nobles and chieftains of his realm, the same appearance is presented by the other in its Witena-gemot, or great council." What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? Whom shall we trust, ancient historians or modern critics? Both have their prejudices and partialities, and both abound in paradoxes. Is it not better to leave Roman history where Tacitus left the old German traditions, when he says, quæ neque confirmare argumentis, neque refellere in animo est ex ingenio suo quisque demat, vel addat fidem" ? Or shall we yield an undoubting confidence to the bold assertions of Niebuhr? Is there no danger that men of feeble vision may be blinded by excess of light? or that timid minds may be overawed by authority? It must be remembered that we have had already two recensions of Niebuhr's Roman History, the second containing important alterations and emendations; and, if the writer had lived, we might have had a succession of splendid hypotheses respecting the mythic and poetic age of "the eternal city." When we read the strong affirmations and cumulative arguments of this profound scholar, we would fain yield assent to all his theory; but when we turn from the written record," a strange suspicion haunts us that all is not right." We wonder that the whole course of Roman history should have gone wrong for hundreds, yea, thousands of years, and yet a critic in the nineteenth century, detect the grand mistake. Our understanding revolts from the supposition. We seek for the causes which have given birth to this theory. We inquire whether the spirit of the age does not harmonize with the spirit of the critic. We find that this is not a solitary instance of historic skepticism. The learned public have grown familiar with doubt. Every thing old is suspected. It is popular to talk of myths, legends, lays, ballads, epics, and fables. It is considered scholarlike and wise to renounce old authorities and exercise an independent judgment. Some men even doubt their own existence, and like Des Cartes attempt to prove themselves alive by logic, and though the philosopher's enthymeme, "cogito, ergo sum," proves their own existence, it renders nothing certain prior to their own advent upon the earth. The past history of nations must be reviewed, dissected, and reconstructed. The early his

* Germania, III.

every

torians were children, enthusiasts, bigots. They believed thing. They never attained to the sublime heights of Pyrrhonism. They knew nothing of the pleasures of this ethereal state. They lived in the reign of superstition and "old night." Their credulity has corrupted every page of the world's history. The early records must be expurgated or re-written. Livy, in the esteem of modern savans, was dreamy, poetic, and credulous. He collected old epics, absurd legends, and fabulous traditions, and gave to them the signature of truth. He lacked discrimination and research. He overlooked existing materials which lay within his reach, and chose, instead, the wild and fantastic fictions of a fabulous age. He must be rejected as authority, says the autocrat of modern criticism. Shall we do it? When we reflect upon the fate of this friend of our childhood, we do not thank the learned professor for this literary assassination. We love the" milky sweetness" of the good, gentle, and artless Livy. We cannot willingly consent to his death till we weigh the evidence and ask after the fate of his companions. Dionysius, Plutarch, Appian, and Tacitus have all fallen under the same condemnation. And what says "the spirit of the age" to the authority of the pleasing, story-telling Herodotus? Oh, he is a tolerable narrator of what he saw, but he does not know men. He dreams; he doats; he knows nothing certainly. He is loquacious, and his loquacity betrays him into folly and error;

"For who talks much, must talk in vain."

He is credulous, too; he listens and believes. He follows quacks and impostors, and writes down their shallow fabrications. He has little judgment and less acumen. He cannot distinguish an Egyptian god from a crocodile. Hieroglyphics he could not interpret. It is a wonder he had not passed the pyramids unnoticed, or mistaken lake Moris for a frog-pond. He cannot be trusted. He falsifies his own records to please his countrymen. He multiplies the numbers and exploits of their foes, in order to magnify Grecian prowess and glory. In a word his history is mere romance. Let us turn to Homer.

What says modern criticism of

"The blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle"? What reply comes from the sacred tripod? The return is, "non est inventus." He never had a being. His very name is a lie. His honors are all fraudulently obtained. A hundred birds of

song have plucked away his borrowed plumage, and left him the object of universal scorn. This phantom has ruled on Parnassus too long. He must be cast down to the world of shades. He has deceived the nations almost as long as Apollyon. Let him now be bound for a thousand years, and we shall then have a literary millennium. But there remains one historian still more ancient, whose authority must now pass the ordeal of criticism. It is he who recorded events which ocurred before Jove took his seat upon Olympus; before Neptune raised his trident in the Egean, or Orpheus charmed the grisly monsters of Pluto's realm. It is he who wrote of themes of lofty import-of creation's birth of man's disobedience of a coming Saviour. What says modern criticism to his claims? Ah! he too is an impostor; he is the child of fable; perhaps himself a mythological personage, or, at best, but the representative of a creed or system. The authority of Moses is no better than that of Herodotus or Livy. Such is the goal to which modern skepticism tends. It is in vain to deny the connexion between historic and religious doubts. They are both the offspring of the spirit of the times. They are the legitimate offspring of that widely extended system of German rationalism which retains the names and forms of religious faith, and yet denies its power and substance. A personal God is merged in a blind energy of nature, and becomes a mere anima mundi, or, what is still more refined," the ever streaming immanence of the spirit in matter." The incarnation of the Son of God is but the manifestation of this universal principle in Jesus, the Jewish moralist, and in every man, in an endless succession. The soul's im

mortality is the immortality of the race; individuals die, the race never. Thus the Old Testament becomes, in the hands of historical reformers, a collection of myths, songs, and apothegms, and the evangelical history a mere allegory or fable, till, at length, the full-fledged philosopher "knows no other God than him who, in the human race, is constantly becoming man. He knows no Christ but the Jewish rabbi, who made his confession of sin to John the Baptist, and no Heaven but that which speculative philosophy reveals for our enjoyment, on the little planet we now inhabit."

ARTICLE VI.

EXPOSITION OF MATTHEW 7: 6.

By the Rev. E. BALLENTINE, Prince Edward, Virginia.

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine: lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

THESE words of Christ contain a practical precept-a rule of conduct for his Church. The passage is a metaphor :-its terms have therefore a literal and a metaphoric signification; and the whole has a literal meaning, which is, however, only the envelope of the higher and the true. What is the precept? what does Christ forbid his Church to do?

We will examine the terms of the text in detail, and then endeavor to elicit its meaning.

By" that which is holy" (rò åɣior), said of something which might be thrown to the dogs, a Jewish hearer would naturally have understood something which had been consecrated and offered to God, and which also could be eaten.* Every thing offered to God was holy (aylor, ), and he that violated the sacredness of a holy thing was by the law guilty in the sight of God.

Now, by this term, the Saviour, when addressing his disciples and his Church, must intend something which belongs to the Gospel, which is holy, and which may in some way or other be "given" and (figuratively) "cast" to men. We cannot as yet be more definite than this. If that is holy which is connected with God's name, honor, cause, worship, and will; then the Gospel itself, the Church, its doctrines and instructions, its worship and ordinances, citizenship in its community, its rights and privileges, and its eternal blessings, are all holy.

"Pearls" are very valuable, and therefore have always been

* I pass over without remark the interpretation ear-ring, as being based upon a baseless hypothesis, now acknowledged to be such. See Tholuck, Bergpredigt, on the text.

.

the symbol of that which is very costly and precious. So Job 28: 18. The Gospel with every thing that belongs to it is also precious. The Saviour, in Matt. 13: 45, 46, applies the term to himself and the blessings of his kingdom. As before, we must stop for the present at the general idea. We must survey all the parts of the text before we can judge in what way they are connected with each other.

The dispositions and habits of " swine" have made them to be always and every where the symbol of the morally polluted and vile of men.

"Dogs" are rabid animals, and may attack and tear. They were (and are) numerous in Eastern cities, roving about without masters, hungry, howling, ravenous. In this character perhaps they are figuratively introduced in that interesting passage Ps. 22: 16, 20, to represent the enemies and murderers of Christ.

But dogs, like swine, have been universally made rather the symbol of the morally polluted and unclean. (See Gesenius's Hebrew Lexicon, Article ; Robinson's Lexicon of the New Testament, Art. Kuwv; and especially Winer's Realwörterbuch, Art. Hund.) They were unclean by the law, were held in disgust and abhorrence, and well deserve from their dispositions and habits to be the type of the wicked and abominable. The Jewish name of foreigners, " Gentile dogs," David's calling himself "a dead dog" in reference to Saul, and Hazael's words, "Is thy servant a dog ?" are illustrations of this usage.

Thus dogs and swine are used, as symbols, quite alike—and they are often united. Peter cites the proverb, "The dog has returned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." Instances from the classics may be seen in Tholuck, Bergpredigt, p. 475.

Yet we must remember that both dogs and swine, especially in a half-wild state, are fierce and dangerous as well as filthy and abominable. And their fierceness is an element of their vileness. They are fierce in their filthiness-dangerous in their abomination. To gratify their vile propensities, they will assail whatever promises gratification or stands in their way. This then is probably the very mode in which they are metaphorically employed in the text. Even in Ps. 22 16, 20, this may be the idea.

We must endeavor now to fix as definitely as possible the moral meaning and application of these terms in the passage