they can take that point of view, are necessarily very feeble critics. I do not wish to be thought to depreciate the splendid ethics of Judaism; I would not be so foolish, if I dared to be so wicked; but I must protest against the idea, that neither Jews nor Christians could admit, that either revelation is wholly ethical. V. THERE is a minor bearing of the Quarterly article which, minor though it be, may ultimately be of greater importance than any other. The time will come when the relation of Judaism and Christianity will be understood and acknowledged, but it will be long before the value of so difficult a book as the Talmud as a commentary is recognised. It is so much more convenient to have one's commentaries in Greek and Latin, not very difficult Greek or Latin either, than in Hebrew, and a Chaldee which has nothing more than tentative dictionaries and no grammars. The very dates of the redaction of the Talmud lead to the conclusion of its being necessarily a comment on the New Testament, and this essay brings out designed and undesigned evidence, of which I cannot refrain from here giving a few points. The view of Phariseeism in the Quarterly article at first sight seems irreconcilable with the statements of the New Testament. We had been accustomed to regard the Pharisees of the time in question as a sect, or party, comprising but a small portion of the Jewish nation, perhaps not more numerous than the Sadducees. We are now tion. We can now understand the seemingly unqualified condemnation of the Pharisees in the Gospels, and St. Paul's declaration that he was a Pharisee, a declaration no man of his unflinching courage would have made had he not known he could make it honestly and unreservedly. In the controversy as to the obligation of converts to keep the Law, the conservative view was urged by Pharisees who believed. In the account in the Quarterly of the criminal law of the Mishnah there is a deeply touching comment on the most sacred part of Gospel history. The reviewer tells us that the ladies of Jerusalem formed a society which provided a soporific beverage of myrrh and vinegar to alleviate the sufferings of those that were executed.* We can now understand the rejection of the first draught, which was offered to Christ before his suffering, and also a special reason for the presence of the Jewish women, 'daughters of Jerusalem," "who bewailed and lamented him." A very curious inquiry is opened by the suggestion that moral sayings, hitherto considered to have originated in Christian teaching, were already current at an earlier time. Such an idea gives great umbrage to those who are unaccustomed to look at the whole of Revelation in one general view; who, having been delighted with the quotation by St. Paul of some heathen sage, are shocked at the notion that our Lord could have quoted a pious Rabbi. Why should not a pious Rabbi have been quoted when the saying of a narrow ascetic was condemned? There can, however, be no doubt that cer tain popular teachers of the age of Christ and the Apostles stand at a great disadvantage by the side of the teachers of the final redaction of the Talmud. There is no doubt that some of the Jewish doctors of told that the Pharisees were the great body of the nation; the Sadducees a small aristocratic party.” The real state of things will be better understood if we consider a parallel case. In every Roman Catholic country there is a preponderance of Roman that age held aloof, and left instruction to Catholics, and a small body of dissenters or religious impostors, men who then, as in all skeptics, but within the body of Roman ages, thought that religion consisted of Catholics is a Catholic party, or parti prêtre. dresses, services, seasons, days, times of deThe Pharisees condemned in the New Tes-votion, length of prayers, postures, and all tament are not the whole body, but the leading men, the Pharisees who gloried in being Pharisees, the very people whom the Talmud condemns almost without excep that is excluded by the idea of " the faith of the heart," to which the Talmud reduces all the commandments of the Law (page 438). Had any belief not been able, through the kind force of calamity, to throw [Lightfoot, Vestibulum Talmudis Hierosolymitani, p. 28, had told us preeisely this: Pharisaismus stata gentis erat religio." * [Our knowledge of this fact does not date "De schismate Sadducæorum hic non curiose from the article in the Quarterly. Lightfoot, agemus." Indeed, Josephus had long ago said Hor. Hebr., on Matt. xxvii. 34, gives from the the same. See Antt. xii. 10, 7: rv ev Zad- Babyl. Sanhedr. fol. 43, 1: "Traditio est, femδουκαίων τοὺς εὐπόρους μόνον παθόντων . Tinas generosas Hierosolymitanas hoc è sponδὲ Φαρισαίων τὸ πλῆθος σύμμαχον ἐχόντων. Ed.] taneo sumptu suo exhibuisse.” — Ed.] done ? VI. From The Spectator. A SISTER'S STORY.* off much of such withering delusion, and this the Jewish belief had undoubtedly done long ago, it would have perished altogether, eaten up by a miserable crust of formalism. But as the Jews have undoubt- closely printed in two volumes, has in Ir is not surprising that a work which, edly long thrown off very much of this coat-France gone through twelve editions, should ing, why should we not believe their books, be regarded as a fair subject for an English when they show us how long ago this was translation, and we are glad to find that great pains have been taken with it. Any reader, indeed, taking it up as a common three-volume novel, will be apt to think it somewhat of a delusion; and yet, divided as the British public is, and alive to the religious phenomena of the day, it will have parties to its contents. In looking Miss attraction enough to draw people of various Bowles' translation over and comparing it with the last French edition, we find new memoranda which we are glad to have, and it appears to us to be fairly, though certainly not closely, rendered. In more than one page sentences are transposed without any the trouble to compare p. 18 in the French If the reader will take apparent reason. with pages 15 and 16 in the English, our meaning will be plain. WHAT, then, is the result of this evidence brought to bear upon the history of religion? 1. The essential identity of Jewish and Christian morality. 2. The Jewish origin of modern social virtues. 3. The continuity of revelation. But this is by no means all. Ingenious critics, better versed in the literary history of the Greeks than of the Jews, have constructed a chain with Plato at one end, and St. Paul at the other, with the Alexandrian Jews and notably Philo between. This theory must now be abandoned. Thinkers of the same school have been at great pains to derive modern social virtues from a German or a Roman source. Their theories are equally disproved. Most of all has there been a tendency in almost all theologians and critics to draw a sharp line between the Law and the Gospel, if not to consider the Law as in no sense a revelation. This position is now reversed, and the two revelations, as heretofore, must be held to stand or fall together. In the Quarterly article a key-note has been struck. The world has now a right to expect from the author a fuller description of the wondrous realms he has journeyed through in order to produce this heart-moving essay, in which justice is done to an illustrious race, and a grand book, both long oppressed under the weight of suspicion, hatred, and jealousy. As I finish a not easy labour, for it is not easy to form even the slightest estimate of the great problems I have dared to face, I remember it is Christmas-Day, and there rings in my ears its divine message: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.' REGINALD STUART POOLE. strong family attachments, well founded It is perfectly clear that over and above and highly to be respected, there is throughout Mrs. Craven's book a deep desire to serve the cause of the Romish Church. This aspect will be far from recommendatory to any but Romanists. So distinctly, indeed, does the dogmatic object come out, that our first impulse on reading the Recit was to contrast it very unfavorably with the Guérin papers, remembering their ed to formal arrangement for a purpose, sweet, unconscious beauty, never subjectbut given out for affection's sake, wholly unspoiled utterances of the present hour, wheras many of the Ferronnays diaries have been subjected to revision by the authors long after they were written, to say nothing of editorial arrangements. And yet there is a great deal in these Ferronnays papers more full of the knowledge of actual life, more as sincere, as simple even, and certainly far indicative of cultivation, than can be found in the letters and journals of Eugenie de Guérin. Therefore it is that English people generally will, we think, be more curious about the Récit d'une Sour. You there get into a wider social circle. The writers write perfectly well, their thoughts (con *A Sister's Story. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the French by Emily Bowles. 3 vols. Bentley. R-cit d'une Sœur. Souvenirs de famille, recueillis par Madame Augustus Craven, née La Ferronnays. Deux tomes. Douzième Edition. Paris. tracted on the side of Catholicism) have at | traces of self-will peep out. Her own interleast luxuriated in the best writings of the ludes have something of a strained character, highest-minded Catholics of the day. Also and the first part of the book, in which she they travel much and describe beautifully; appears as the chief arranger, introducer, then their warmth of heart, their varied ac- and explainer, is the least agreeable. It has complishments, the liveliness of their natu- something of an elder sister's assumption, ral disposition, which at times carries them and if her advice is appealed to she takes willingly into scenes of worldly gaiety, - care to let you know it, and its result. And all these sources of variety are, no doubt, this must be accepted as a condition of getlikely to be more attractive than the lonely ting at the people themselves. On the other effusions of Eugenie, not by any means hand, one is amused and interested when she such a person as English men or women are writes simply as a narrator, as in the liable to come into contact with in these accounts of her own voyage from and return British Isles, and likely enough, when set to Lisbon. Nothing can be better told than before them in a book, to be spoken of in a this part of the history. tone of some pity and disdain. So let it be. We remain leal and true to the memory of the shepherdess of La Cayla, but not the less ought justice to be done to the many fine points of the Ferronnays book. One objection, indeed, we have heard pretty often stated. The compiler, it is said, is but One, the survivor of many, and we cannot admit the justification of such a survivor in publishing these private letters and journals at all. But we submit that Mrs. Craven's case is an exceptional one. In by far the greater part of the work she had the direct permission of the writers to use their MSS. Some absolutely desired her to do so, and it is quite clear that none of the Ferronnays family shrank from any exposition of their personal doings and thoughts. They lived an open, fearless life, thinking little or not at all of laying bare their minds to others when they conceived that a religious object would be served thereby, and they had all (with perhaps one exception) a devoted, almost amusingly high, opinion of one another, an opinion so naïf, so genuine, and, for that matter, so well founded on the whole, that there is no finding fault with it, while it seems to us quite to exonerate the editor from the charge of violating private sanctities. The exception would be, we think, in the case of the sweet young girl, Olga; also, we should add, the long and often depressing extracts from the private journal of the melancholy Eugenie, which are painfully retrospective, and surely a needless exhibition. Yet even in these instances we should rather have wished for abridgment than complete suppression. One cannot say quite so much for the simplicity of Mrs. Craven as for that of most members of her family. She has evidently been used to feel herself an oracle among them. She has held her own through all changes, and without doubting the genuineness of her love and admiration for them, the As to the family story, it may be briefly given here; but let it be remembered that the value of the book is in the scenes and characters it portrays, in the details of daily life, and the records of inward thoughts and feelings. We have, first, a very charming father and mother, and as they come out in their letters to their children, particularly in the second volume of the Récit, we prefer them to any of the group. They have conscientiousness, sincerity, a blameless anxiety to be true to others and to themselves, an affection, a gentleness, and goodness which are very fascinating. Of the head of the house, the Comte de la Ferronnays, we are told nothing till the period of his marriage in 1802, when he was, himself an émigré, stationed with the army of Condé at Klagenfurth, in Carinthia. His wife was sister to the Duchess de Blacas, whose husband, the Duke de Blacas, was Prime Minister at the Restoration in 1814. For some years the marriage was unfruitful, then one son was born, remaining for a considerable time the only child, but no less than ten followed, of whom four died young. Seven grew up around them, the writer of the Récit being after the first son the eldest survivor of these children. In 1819 the Count went with his family to St. Petersburg, where he had been appointed Ambassador, and here the youthful remembrances were very happy. We have, however, but a brief account of the life they led at this period, but M. de la Ferronnays either resigned or was recalled to France in 1828, and took part in the Ministry des Affaires Etrangères at Paris in 1829. A serious illness compelled him to abandon this position, and to set out for Italy with Pauline, afterwards Mrs. Craven, soon to be followed by his wife and other members of the family to Citadella, near Lucca. An appointment speedily followed; M. de la Ferronnays was credited Ambassador from the Court of France to Rome; but this and all that was public in his career was brought to an abrupt close by the Revolution of 1830. | to his son's marriage. So also at length A thorough Bourbonite, he sent in his resig- does the reluctant mother. They marry nation immediately, and thus closed the then, but it is the beginning of the end. doors to preferment and a lucrative career After a few weeks, a pulmonary complaint, for both himself and his sons. Among these which had before seriously attacked Alsons was Albert, the hero of the book, and bert, sets in severely. They spend the soon we find ourselves in the heart of a most winter at Pisa, where they are joined by romantic courtship, and must bring in the Count Montalembert. The quiet happiheroine without delay. ness of the trio is most agreeably described in letters, and in the journals of both Alexandrine and her husband. We are disposed to think that one of the greatest charms in the young wife is the perfect manner in which she accepts the friends of her husband. Both in early and latter days this seems to us quite one of her most interesting characteristics. She is never unequal to the occasion. She admires and loves Monhal, her adopted brother, but she does not hesitate to make herself merry with an occasional foible. She must have been one of the most winning of mortals; tender, true, and full of joyous spirits, which nothing but the calamity of her life could have checked. Alas! that calamity is but deferred awhile, and the devoted pair carry the certainty of speedy separation with them everywhere. They travel, they make voyages; all in vain. The enemy still follows their steps. With hardly less of certainty comes the event which Mrs. Craven and all the rest of her dramatis personæ miscall Alexandrine's conversion. How, we might ask, by whatever name it is called, should it not come? Clearly it seems to us that the Catholic Church, and no other, realized her ideas of communion, both divine and human, and it must be confessed that so far, at least, her adoption of it was rational, that it really seems to have taken in all the best points of human character with which her own experience had made her acquainted. Not Albert only, but all the members of his family, unless there is intentional concealment, seem far higher in spirit and life than her Protestant friends, and though attached to her mother, it was impossible that she could be satisfied with her reasonings or her preparatory work in education. Looking at a page of her narrative of the preliminaries of her marriage, we find these words (well rendered by Miss Bowles): Alexandrine, the future wife of Albert, is the daughter of a Swedish nobleman, and his beautiful wife the Countess Alopeus At the time the courtship began the Countess was living, a widow, very near the family of the Ferronnays. She held to the Lutheran faith with some tenacity for herself; yet her daughter, born at St. Petersburg, had been baptized in the Greek Church, and was goddaughter to the Emperor Alexander. By and by, the beautiful widow marries again, a wealthy proprietor of estates in the Crimea, Prince Lapoukhyn. Alexandrine and Albert meanwhile meet, and the attachment on both sides is of the deepest; but all this part affords us little that is interesting, and a great deal that is both tiresome and displeasing. We take leave to pronounce that in no possible way can any religious cause be served by a vacillating, semi-conscientious line of conduct such as is adopted by nearly all parties in this matter. On one side, we have the mother professing extreme distrust and dread of Catholicism, yet leaving a young daughter, uninstructed in any other faith, that daughter remaining, in fact, the easiest possible prey to other influences her conscience consisting entirely in fear of making her mother unhappy, while all her esteem and admiration are given to the Ferronnays family. Then, as to the lover himself; he can make a pilgrimage with the object of obtaining Alexandrine's conversion; he has scarcely a hope of her salvation without it; he makes a solemn dedication of his life to God; yet to marry her he is resolved. So by them all. Even Pauline, the relator, marries Mr. Craven, then a Protestant, though afterwards converted. The only person we really sympathize with is, at this crisis, the heroine, Alexandrine herself. With her we feel there is nothing but respect, love, and manifest willingness to belong to the Romish Church. Not an obstacle do we hear of but that we have alluded to, -we mean pain at her mother's reluctance, and a shrinking from the supposed Catholic idea of the hopelessness of salvation for heretics. However, after many conflicts, worldly and unworldly, all is brought into order, and the good M. de Ferronnays, whose objections are at least reasonable, consents -- make this promise, or with how great joy it filled person will presently see the weak points me. Strange to say, at no time of my life would of the book, will feel a reasonable awe of its I have wished to have had Protestant children. false views both of Deity and of human Rather than that, I should have preferred their life; but he will gather up many consoling being Greeks, but always, and above all, I wished them to be Catholics." (Vol. i., p. 199.) tient self-denial, of steadfast adherence to thoughts, pictures of family affection, of paduty, however at times misconceived; and it will be to his honour if he learns more thoroughly from them the lesson, not of abating, but of consecrating, the interests and affections of life by the influence of a purer and sounder estimate of its objects. Thus it really seems to us that to parade Alexandrine's conversion as a marvel is ridiculous; nor can we say much less for any attempts to impugn her sincerity. This was thoroughly proved by the whole course of her after life, and there is nothing to do but to accept the fact. Her outward profession was coincident with her husband's death. From this part, and from the remaining interesting and often affecting narratives, we draw conclusions of a very mingled kind. Life seems to us in great measure a wasted, misconceived thing. The dead are all in all the living world nothing. The Norman residence at Boury, purchased as a family home by the Comte de la Ferronnays, is indeed beautified by domestic virtues, by charitable works, and by the services of its chapel — also it is consecrated by visits to the graves of beloved beings as they drop into them one by one -but in all these we cannot help thinking there is a continual deepening of the shadows, a preparation for that renunciation of human ties and that disregard of the conditions of health which brings the heroine to a premature grave. One after another, members of the family are called away, but whether it be under the influence of extraordinary exaltation or depression, it seems to us all the fruit of the one morbid, mistaken spirit. The good M. de la Ferronnays himself clearly fell a sacrifice to his unseasonable pilgrimages to all the churches in Rome in the month of January, when snow was falling, and he himself suffering under fever. Yet so meritorious is his conduct believed to be in the sight of Heaven, that a miracle of conversion was announced as wrought in the chapel where his last fervent prayers had been offered up. A rich Jew visiting the place declared that a luminous appearance of the Virgin beckoned him on, he knelt down obediently, and became a Christian at once. From Die Presse, Vienna, March 6, THE PRESERVATION OF EUROPEAN PEACE. THE approaching spring will not only not bring us war, but even, on the contrary, a plan of general disarmament. A short time ago the Genève, a paper generally well informed on French affairs, made a statement which it is asserted was drawn from a reliable source, that Napoleon only awaited the moment of the complete application of the Army-Organization Law to then come forward as the Prince of Peace with proposals of disarmament. Lately we heard from Paris that Bismarck interested himself very much with this idea. The end of the play, of all the previous anxiety, suspense, and over-estimating the personal wish for war on the part of certain rulers, may be a general reconciliation, heightened by the electric light of general well-being, and the still increasing prosperity of trade and industry. Indeed, the fact of the maintenance of peace naturally leads to the indispensableness of a general disarmament. Shall all the powers of labour, lamed by armed peace, be always withdrawn from the economic activity of peoples, even when it is no longer to be feared that peace will be disturbed? Does not the shattered condition of the finances of most States call londly and urgently for a change? Are peoples only made to labour to keep up great armies without any object? Who is not disgusted with a diplomacy ever vacillating between arbitrary and violent decisions? Where is the benefit of a statecraft which sows wind in order to reap storms? Some may say, "And is this the book you would recommend to enlightened Christians?" Yes. We sincerely think whoever has leisure and the wish to enter rather deeply into the good and bad of It is true that if this pacific feeling preFrench Catholicism, cannot well obtain his vails, we are indebted for this event not to information at a better source. Such a the good will of Governments, but to the |