adopted by the Sanhedrim that condemned him. By a stern necessity this is, and must be, the Jewish argument for rejecting Jesus of Nazareth. It should be remembered also, that this plea is by no means an invention of modern Judaism. As it was used at the time in which Jesus suffered, so it has been used ever since by the Judaistic enemies of our Lord. The nation has holden fast to its own act-perpetuated its own deed-and in its condition has fulfilled the declaration of Moses, that God would require it of them, if they should refuse to hear the great prophet. The Talmudists never call Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. In their dialect he is "a magician, a broacher of strange and wicked worship; one that did miracles by the power of the devil, to beget his worship the greater belief and honor." "Ben-Satda," by which they mean the Christian's Christ, a term of awful reproach, "brought magic out of Egypt by cuttings which he made in his flesh." This "strange and wicked worship," to which this refers, plainly alludes to the divine claims set forth by Jesus, when he was upon earth, and subsequently preached by the Apostles. It is the comment of enemies, showing that orthodox Christians have correctly understood their Lord and Master. Buxtorf, in his Talmudic Lexicon, cites a curious piece of Rabbinical testimony, admitting the subornation of false witnesses against Christ before his crucifixion, and describing the mode: "Against none of those guilty of death by the law are snares to be laid, except against one that has endeavored to pervert another to idolatry and strange worship. And it is thus performed: they light a candle in an inner room, and place the witnesses in an outer, so that they may see him and hear his voice, without his seeing them. And so they did to the son of Satda (Mary); they placed men privately in the next room to witness against him, in Lud (Jud or Judea), and hanged him upon the cross on the evening of the passover. What was this "idolatry and strange worship" taught by him, contemptuously styled the "Son of Satda," and requiring the subornation of false witnesses? It plainly refers to the claim of Jesus, that he was the "Son of God,"-a title understood to imply a divine nature, and so understood by the Sanhedrim, and by their Rabbinical apologists. These Jewish testimonies shed valuable light upon the gospel account of the issue between Jesus and the Sanhedrim. It was a great question about the nature, the constitution of his person. Who was he? He answered this question, and was condemned for the answer.

The merits of this question, as between Jesus and the Jews, or between the Christian and the Jew, it is not the purpose of this article to consider. It would be easy to show, that the divinity of the Messiah was clearly taught in the predictive testimony in re

1 Lightfoot's Works, vol. xi., p. 106.

For this passage I am indebted to Hale's Analysis of Chronology, vol. iii., p. 209.

gard to him; and that, therefore, Jesus being the true Messiah, claimed no more than he ought, according to the prophets. The miracles he wrought were such as to assign the most perfect competency and credibility to his own testimony, though not so viewed by the prejudiced Jews. The miracles subsequently wrought by the Apostles in his name, and the fate of the Jewish nation, are to be added to the proof, that what Jesus said of himself was true. It was no blasphemy for him, being divine, to say so. He knew his own nature, and was competent to speak of it. His condemnation upon his own testimony, is placed in such a relation to the constitution of his person, that the credibility of the Christian religion turns upon the justness of his claim. To make him simply a prophet, an extraordinary human teacher, is to justify the act of the Jews in condemning him, and make a prophet of God give false testimony. Hence the divinity of Jesus Christ is essential to the credibility of the Christian religion. How any sect of religionists can assume to be Christians, profess any respect for Jesus as a teacher of truth, place any confidence in his words, and yet deny his divinity; this is one of those marvels in theology I shall not undertake to explain. It is a fact worthy of notice, that the Jews denied, in respect to the Messiah of prophetic promise, what the different species of "Unitarians" now deny in respect to Jesus Christ, as the Messiah of gospel history. The former, though wrong, are far more consistent than the latter. They repudiate Christianity and its founder in toto-an awful mistakeyet having the consistency of error. If the Unitarians" are right now, then the Jews were right eighteen centuries ago, and are still right. Both agree in a common denial: both are offended with a common affirmation. That, for asserting which the Jews rejected and condemned the Savior, is the very idea which modern Unitarianism equally denies, while it professes great respect for Jesus Christ as a teacher, and assumes to be a true expression of the Christianity he taught. Its inconsistency in this respect is glaring and painful. The condemnation of the Lord Jesus is placed in such historical relations, that whoever receives him as an infallible teacher of irreproachable character, must also receive him as a divine person, or be inconsistent with himself.

With a single explanation I shall now pause in these observations. The death of the Savior, considered as an atonement, as woven into the gospel system and constituting an essential part of the science of salvation, it has not been the aim of this article to examine. The single aspect, which has given shape to this whole inquiry, is contained in the title: "Jesus Christ attested by miracles, and yet rejected by the Jews." This is primarily an affair of history; and in this light purely, we have endeavored to consider the subject. The existence, life, doings, sayings, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Savior, are matters of fact, events

in a wonderful series; they constitute historical Christianity, the "kingdom of God" evolved in the facts pertaining to the great oracle of that kingdom. In relation to human belief, the historical precedes the doctrinal parts of Christianity; the "Evangelicon" (so the fathers styled the gospel memoirs) is necessarily the basis of the "apostolicon" of the New Testament. That there was a Jesus of Nazareth, who appeared on earth, a true original of which the evangelical narrative is a transcript, and that as we see him in this narrative, so he was in the days of his flesh; these are points which are vital in the faith of every Christian. He is set before us as the worker of miracles, yet as rejected by men with the opportunity of seeing and knowing these miracles. The credibility of the narrative, considered as making such a report, has formed the field of the previous inquiry. The writer's object has been, not only to explain the fact of the Messiah's rejection in its relation to second causes, but also to show, that there are no sufficient elements of improbability to invalidate the history which reports the fact. The divine intendment in the Messiah's mission; the doctrinal use made of his history; the inspired exposition of Jesus and his cross-these wonders form the immortal garniture of the history; and for them we more appreciate the history, and for the history, the more appreciate them. In their light we can the better understand, not the motives of the Jews in rejecting the Messiah, but why Jesus, with such high prerogatives, such awful powers, such infallible knowledge, permitted himself to be thes treated. These sublime aspects of the history present to us its final cause, Jehovah's purpose, God's economy triumphing over the madness of men, and amid the fiercest rage of wickedness, announcing peace and pardon in the ear of a ruined world. Great and lowly, lovely and awful, simple and mysterious personage is Jesus Christ, the wonder of history, the Redeemer of men! May we see him, know him, love him, trust him, be saved by him, and dwell with him for ever and ever.

ARTICLE IV.

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF VOLTAIRE.

By REV. SAMUEL M. HOPKINS, East Avon, N. Y.

Lives of Men of Letters and Science, who flourished in the time of George III. BY HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F. R. S., &c.

THE life of Voltaire, with which this series of literary portraits opens, is evidently brought forward by the author with considerable satisfaction. He expected it to create a sensation, both among the friends and the enemies of revealed religion. He accordingly undertakes to show in his preface, why neither class should find fault with him. It should satisfy the latter, that while disapproving Voltaire's method of attacking the Gospel, he has done full justice to the excellence of his heart, and the splendor of his literary merit. The former, if disposed to quarrel with the biographer's extreme tenderness towards the character and principles of his subject, should be mollified at observing that he decidedly condemns the use of poisoned shot in his warfare against Christianity. If after this any sparks of dissatisfaction remain, they must be wholly extinguished at learning that," with powers infinitely below" those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume, he has written nearly as much, in one way or another, for religion, as they have written against it; and that several persons have intimated their conversion from infidel opinions, by reading his notes and Illustrations of Paley.

Occupying this conspicuous post on the walls of Zion, Lord Brougham feels enabled to indulge his amiable tendency towards compliment, and to bestow all sorts of knightly courtesies on his antagonists. Voltaire, to be sure, had his failings, but he also had extraordinary virtues. "His nature was open and ardent." "Jealousy formed no part of his character." This, by the way, agrees but indifferently with the assertion in another place, that "his constant undervaluing of Rousseau's genius can scarcely be ascribed to anything but jealousy, if not of his talents, yet of his success." "He had a rooted horror of envy, as mean and degrading." had an excellent heart;" "It would be unjust, nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which he has laid mankind by his writings." "The impression which this great genius has left will remain; and while his failings are forgotten, and the influence of his faults corrected, the world, wiser and better because he lived, will continue still to celebrate his name."

It stands in rather singular contrast to all this, the hearty good will with which the author, a Protestant and a Christian, comes down upon Luther and Calvin. There are no amiable qualifying

phrases here; no gentle regrets for the "errors" and "failings" of the two Reformers. Courteous after the manner of true knighthood, towards his enemy, he reserves all his terrors for his brethren. We think we see Great-heart flourishing a graceful salute to Giant Slay-good, and then turning round to apply the flat of his sword to the shoulders of old Honest. The one Reformer is "a fiery zealot, who has outraged all taste and decorum by his language ;" "whose coarseness and low ribaldry make the reading of his works in many places disgusting, in not a few offensive to common decency" (nothing of which is true we suppose, with respect to Voltaire); the other is "a gloomy religious persecutor who has scandalized all humanity by his cruelty." These severe blows are put in, we presume, by way of caveat, against the suspicion of too decided and unphilosophical a preference for Protestant Christianity. His Lordship is a believer, but after an enlarged and liberal fashion. He disapproves of atheism; but then, you observe, he looks with great contempt on the Reformers. Supposing our information limited to the present biography, we should conclude the patriarch of Ferney to be a far more respectable character than either the bigot or the persecutor aforesaid. Happily, however, we have some other means of forming a judgment. The Protestant world, with inconsiderable exceptions, is agreed, that although, standing as they did on the edge of revived civilization, a century and a half at least before Voltaire was born, Luther and Calvin fell into mistakes which better views of truth and duty repudiate and lament; yet they performed a ministry bearing more influentially on the emancipation of the human mind, and the progress of society, than any others since the days of the Apostles. The readers of the Repository are tolerably familiar with the title which the leading Reformers possess to the admiration and gratitude of mankind. With the claims of Voltaire they may be less acquainted. It will not perhaps be an unacceptable office, therefore, to give a brief view of the life and writings of this distinguished philosopher.

The life of Voltaire extended from 1694 to 1778-a period of eighty-four years; coupling the reign of Louis XIV. nearly with the Revolution, or the palmiest days of the French monarchy with its downfall. His literary life reached, with the exception of the first few years, through the whole of this long period. For nearly seventy years he was an author. During all this time, plays, romances, histories and historical tracts, controversy, philosophy, poetry, miscellanies in immense variety, infidelity in solid columns, besides that which skirmishes through the whole body of his works, and a perpetual stream of correspondence, flowed with astonishing

1 One would almost conclude, were it possible, from the character of Lord Brougham's criticism on the Reformers, and the particular facts he cites against them, that all his knowledge of the subject was derived from the chapters in Voltaire's Essay. It is well known to be an unfortunate habit of his Lordship's to pronounce magisterially on the basis of a somewhat too superficial knowledge of facts.