As an illustration of the manner in which the doctrine of the atonement is handled we extract the following:

"The Mosaic dispensation, in which previous types were embodied and new ones introduced, was a system of prefiguration, in which one great truth was always prominent: without shedding of blood there is no remission.' As to the extent of the atonement, the Scriptures speak very clearly. It is unlimited. It reaches to all the sinning race of Adam. If any perish it is because they will not be saved. Christ by his atonement has removed every barrier out of the way of the sinner's approach to God for salvation, not by suffering just as much as all the world of sinners must have suffered had the law taken its course, but by presenting a sacrifice of infinite worth, arising from the divinity of his person. A limited atonement is an absurdity. It is limiting infinity. After all the vain philosophy and speculation of Deists and Socinians to destroy or modify this doctrine, the atonement, by the infinitely valuable sacrifice of the Saviour Jesus Christ, remains, and will for ever remain, the essential principle of the Bible. It will always illustrate the sinfulness of sin, the infinite holiness, justice, and mercy of God, and the love of Christ. There is no other foundation. Reader, see that you build up on it. There is no other mode of escape from the penalty of sin. If you reject this, you trample under foot the blood of Christ. Accept the Saviour and live."

A Short Explanation of the Nicene Creed for the Use of Persons beginning the Study of Theology. By A. P. FORBES, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. Oxford: Parker. 1852.

A MODEST title to a certainly valuable work, undertaken and composed in an earnest and devotional spirit. The mysteries of the faith appear to be adequately set forth and correctly expounded in the main; and there is both force and elegance in the style employed. The quotations from the fathers introduced are not hackneyed, and not used only to round a period or illustrate a sentiment. Much learning and much research are displayed under an unpretending form. The general spirit of the work may, too, we think, be called Anglo-Catholic, or at least consistent with strict Anglicanism. The observations on Nestorianism and tendencies towards it in the present day are peculiarly valuable (See p. 200-1). It is most true that men who appear to realise the Godhead of our Lord, and to reverence this duly, speak nevertheless of his human actions with a painful familiarity; as if they imagined that Jesus of Nazareth and the everlasting Son were two separate Persons or Individuals, the former being "clothed upon" with the latter. Nevertheless, we cannot agree with Bishop Forbes that disinclination to apply the term "Mother of God" to the Blessed Virgin is significant of an unconscious

Nestorianism; for in the first place, knowing how grossly she, the ever-blessed, is idolised by our brethren of the Roman communion, we may well shrink from all expressions that appear to elevate her above the range of humanity: secondly, we object to the use of this expression, because it may be easily misunderstood by the vulgar, and tends to give an impression to all that she is in some sense fountain of the everlasting Son's divine as well as of his human nature: thirdly, we hold the phrase to be intensely irreverent, if used for any other than a directly theological purpose, as a general council used it, in which sense we of course hold it to be both orthodox and valuable: but, in ordinary phraseology, we might as well speak of the cousins, or the grandmother, as of the mother of God: the one phrase expresses an historical fact as accurately as the other; and we trust it needs no arguments to establish the gross effrontery displayed in such a form of speech. Again: there is an objectionable assertion on p. 272-73 of Bishop Forbes' work; and though there are some, nay, many other passages we should have worded differently, this is the only other grave error in our judgment which it behoves us to protest against. The bishop is describing the present glories of the departed: and he says, that "the apostles sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and she, from whom he received his human body, and who was more blessed in that she heard the word and kept it than that hers was the womb that bore him, is there, in the glory given to her, as the mother of him who is God." Now that such distinctive glory will ever be given, in the face of such passages, as "Who is my mother" and "Yea, rather blessed are they" and "Woman, behold thy son"-we have great cause to doubt; but that she has now received that glory, and that the apostles have mounted their thrones, is in our eyes simply heresy, and grievous heresy, because liable to the worst misconstruction and paving the way to all idolatrous practices; and for such the Greek Church proclaims it. The souls of the blessed departed, in whatever degree they may enjoy the beatific vision, will not reign with Christ before the judgment-day. We are sorry that Bishop Forbes should have indicated here that he holds rather the Roman than what he admits to be both the Greek and Anglican phase of doctrine on this important subject (See p. 328-9). The general spirit of the writer, however, is, we trust, affectionate towards his MotherChurch, and also kind and liberal in the main. Witness the following passage with which we shall close our observations: -"Shall the Roman Catholic gainsay the grace which has

been poured out on the Greek obedience, so that nations of heathens or of heretics have since the schism been gathered into the faith in Christ? * * Shall either Greek or Roman speak of the devout Ken, or George Herbert, or Launcelot as devils' blinds, to keep men by a simulated display of goodness from what they term the true Church?" (p. 288).

The Natural History of Animals; being the Substance of Three Courses of Lectures delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. By THOMAS RYMER JONES, F.R S., Professor of Comparative Anatomy in King's College, London; late Fullerian Professor of Physiology, R.I. Vol. 2. With 104 Engravings. Van Voorst.

1852.

IT is not easy to determine to which of the two optical instruments, the telescope or the microscope, science is most deeply indebted; or which of the two has most enlarged our knowledge of the wonderful works of God. If the telescope has brought within our view something more of the infinitely great and distant objects among the works of creation than we could possibly have discovered without its assistance, the microscope has rendered it possible to gain an equally marvellous insight of the infinitely minute works of the Creator which lie close at hand; and which evince, in their exact and perfect adaptation of means to an end, the same divine wisdom which wheels the planets and comets in their orbits and fixes the stars in their places. Nay, in some respects the microscope reveals still greater wonders than the telescope, since living creatures form the most frequent and most important class of subjects brought under its observation; and in these tiny atoms, which are invisible to the naked eye, and their novel forms and their varied instincts, we find the same nice adaptation of means to an end, the same dependence of one thing upon another, the same exact balance and reciprocal compensation which is manifested in the attraction and repulsion of the heavenly bodies, showing that infinite wisdom has adjusted the whole both animate and inanimate, and that the same God is discoverable in the infinitely minute as in the infinitely grand works of the Creator.

These reflections are suggested by the second volume of Mr. Jones's admirable work, of which the first volume appeared so long ago as 1845; and which we had the pleasure of commending to the notice of our readers at the time. The volume before us will be still more generally interesting than the preceding; for that dealt with the very lowest forms of animal life, such as sponges, infusorial animalcules, and those subsist

ing within the bodies of other animals, about which persons in general know and care but little: whereas the present volume is on insects, concerning which all know something, either for their useful qualities, like the bees; or for their destructive properties, like the locusts; and which yet become like newly discovered animals by the many particulars which are here brought to light as to their several instincts which are so unerring, and their several means of overcoming obstacles which are often so ingenious as to cast the boasted reason of man into the shade.

The greater number of insects perform the important office of nature's scavengers, either in devouring substances which would render the air pestilential; or in destroying such as, if allowed to multiply too fast, would render the earth a desert. "Linnæus hazards the somewhat startling assertion that three flesh-flies will eat up the carcase of a horse sooner than it would be devoured by a lion; and, after a little reflection, the most sceptical must admit that this statement is literally correct"(269). "A locust is not, in itself, a very redoubtable foe, and, were it not for dire experience of its ravages, would be as little feared as the grasshopper that chirps in our meadows: nevertheless, as we are told, there is an eastern fable which says that upon the wing of the locust is an inscription to this effect- We are the army of the Most High God: we lay ninety-nine eggs: did we lay the hundredth, we should eat up the world and all that it contains;' and the language of this splendid orientalism, forcible as it is, is by no means too strong for the occasion " (65).

And this is true, not only of the locust, but of all insects without exception; for not one species can be pointed out, however diminutive and apparently contemptible, that might not become a scourge to the rest of the creation if not restricted in its fertility, or not preyed upon by birds, or thinned by other species of insects. The gnat and caterpillar are instances. The insects are all taught by instinct to lay their eggs in the places where they may best fulfil the ends of their creation, as the flesh-fly instanced by Linnæus. But some of these places are, one would think, beyond the reach of a fly; as, for example, when the bark of a tree is to be penetrated. The various provisions for such purposes as these are most astonishing: we select the saw-fly:

"It would be difficult to point out, in the whole range of animal mechanics, an apparatus of more exquisite construction than the saw with which these little insects are furnished. Nothing certainly ever manufactured by human ingenuity is at all comparable to this beautiful

VOL. XXXII.—K K.

mechanism......The cutting edge of each saw is armed with nineteen or twenty teeth: these are very small, and appear at first to be of simple structure, even when considerably magnified; but when examined with very powerful glasses it is found, to the surprise of the observer, that every one of these teeth is itself a saw, armed with eighteen or twenty other teeth of extreme delicacy. Every species, moreover, would seem to have the teeth of its saw constructed upon a principle peculiar to itself, but in all they are equally admirable. Thus, in another form examined by Lyonnet, the saw was armed with sixteen teeth resembling flat cutting plates: when further magnified, each of these teeth was found to be itself minutely serrated, forming a cutting apparatus exactly comparable to an instrument used in surgery called after the name of its inventor Hay's saw. Besides the teeth above described, which give a cutting edge to these exquisitely constructed organs, the whole flat side of the saw is covered with multitudes of sharp points, so small as scarcely to be seen by the aid of the best glasses, but which constitute an extremely delicate file, wherewith the incision made by the saws can be subsequently enlarged to any required extent " (71).

Some of our readers may be more suprised to find that even the invention of artillery has been forestalled in a minute and mimic form by some of the insects. There is a species of beetle called the Bombardier, which, when laid hold of incautiously, discharges to a considerable distance "a burning drop, so caustic in its nature as to be only comparable to nitric acid in its corrosive effects " (113).

The instances of muscular power in the beetles and various other insects would be surpassing belief had they not been attested beyond the possibility of mistake. The stag-beetle not only tears off the bark from the roots and branches of trees, but has been known to gnaw a pole an inch in diameter through the side of an iron canister in which it was confined, and the canister was exhibited by Mr. Stephens at one of the meetings of the Entomological Society. And experiments have been made with the common beetle which proved that it was able to sustain and escape from beneath a load of from twenty to thirty ounces, when the weight of its own body does not amount to as many grains. Some of the grasshoppers will leap a distance two hundred times their own length; but what an astonishing thing it would be if a man could take a leap of three hundred and eighty yards, or a horse a leap of five hundred yards? So it has been observed of a fly, scarcely visible from its minuteness, that it ran six inches in a second, and in that space was calculated to have made one thousand and eighty steps: a man running at the same proportional rate would pass over twenty miles in a minute!