DR. PALFREY'S LECTURES ON TIIE JEWISII SCRIPTURE S.

Tins (second) volume has reached us from America. Its author, a Doctor of Laws and of Divinity, appears to be a teacher in some American University, anti the work befbre us to have been addressed to a class he was in the habit of instructing yearly, since he speaks in his preface of " nine successive examina- tions of the New Testament, in as many successive years." It has been preceded by a first volume, containing twenty lectures on the Mosaic Law, and is to be followed by a similar exposition of the New Testament. Both these circumstances must be remembered in the account we proceed to give of Dr. PALFREY'S Views, sitICO it is possible their Ibrin may eventually receive (if it has not already received) some modification, though it is scarcely probable that their substance can be affected.

According to the theory laid down in the Lectures before us, Dr.

PALFREY confines revelation to the Law and the Gospel. In all that MOSES did or wrote as leader and lawgiver of the Jewish people, be is to be considered as an inspired teacher : the passage of the Red Sea, and the various miracles during the sojourn in the wilderness, are to be held as effected by supernatural power; the Command- ments, and the directions of the Mosaic ritual, are to be received as direct emanations of the Divine mind speaking through Mons, But in all the historical parts of his writings, Mosns is to be consi- dered as a mere historian ; using, like any other historian, such materials as he could obtain, open to the same laws of' criticism as any profane writer, and subject in the same way to have his pur- pose considered. It therefore follows, that the whole of "Genesis," in Dr. Patranr's opinion, is of no higher authority than what human criticism may discover it to be worth ; and he places all the other writers of' the Old Testament in a similar category.

" From remarks in the twenty-sixth Lecture, and other parts of the volume,

it will be seen, that I regard the books of the Law as standing upon very dif- ferent ground, in point of authority, from the rest of the banks in the Old Tes- tament collection. Upon evidence which satisfies my mind, I recognize Moses as a teacher supernaturally instructed, anti empowered to proyc his divine mission by miraculous works; while I do not find proof that the other Hebrew writers had either received, or pretended to have received, supernatural corn- munications or endowments of any kind. " The origin of the error, which confounded the later books, in point of authority, with those of the Lttv, 1 thillk is properly to be referred to t he time when, being forbidden, during the persecutions in the second century before our ;era, to read the Law in their synagogues, the Jews substituted the prophe- tical writings in the public services of thc Sabbath. But, hoirever this im-ty be, I am satisfied that all the reasons of the case call for a discrimination between the Pentateuch and the later books, similar to that Which the Reformers made between the writins of Apostles and Evangelists in the New Testament and the works of the Pathers.of the Church. I acknowledge two supernatural dis- pensations; the one introduced by Moses; the other by Jeollg, and those whom Ile immediately commissioned and taught. The Catholic insists that the latter revelation was continued, with its proper attendant, evidence of lairecle, through the subsequent ages ; but I tl,nnot see that he produces proof of this; and ac- cordingly, with all ill s, I Catholic mid Protestant alike affirm, that the form :r miraculous disp-btation was not tini:,lied in the same age in which it wai begun, but was still maintained through a thousand years; and I withhold my assent equally front this proposition, on the same ground of the insufficiency of the evidence advanced in its behalf. To place the books of Kings, for instance, on a level with those of Moses, is to my mind no more reasonable than to confound the authority of the writings of Eusebius, or of Ephrem the Syrian, with that of the Acts or the Apostles."

Dr. PALFREY'S opinions with respect to " Genesis" shall also be stated in his own words.

" In the argument contnitted in the second Lecture of this volume, I can Scarcely be misunderstood a-. proposing a theory of my own in respect to the Creation, or in respect to any ,tibsequent diluvial changes. I aill only treating of the purpose and meaniog ii 110s,2A in preserving the accounts of those events which we have in his book of UeneAs. 1 by no mums deny that the first race er men b Weil inhabited this planet Wag Cut off, whit it rew excciOions, by a flood of water. I murely inquire, wilvtlier Moses is In 111, nuileroond as having, or as pretendin, to have, slip,rnattind information respectin, this vviol,Which supernatural infbronit ion must, frOM its nature, have liueri correct in all it8 tletailfl. Ni. One wi,1 ri i, riuiy 1101ibt of the (bet of the Creation to he iM• plied in a &Mad of Mo., t' lut..ing had an extraordinal:: sumrlititanee ruth itS .1 - 111,, is I he denial 01.3111 ancient iii rcr ibrlo:o. involved in the opisioe :1st Lose' no more coneerning it than what t unlition had reported, sod had a far different oltieet from I hat oh vouch in:! for its ta.co LOOlill:',4nt tIO,M.IlljoCI 111 this point of view, the ohjectiens of scepticism, and the difficulties siipposed to sprils; fisql, the dis- Cl.,Verlea (11* 1110derll aCielil:e, are got over. The dffloule ;ma contradietory ac(3,,unt of the Creation, in the earlier ehaid i r:, of Genesis-- the argemera that death is essentially involved in the organic struc- tore of nom, awl thereflire llIllst have dem:ceded oism Adant and Wet posteri'y, whethur he had eaten of the tri.e of knowledge or refrained the long le•rioil which geology prom to have elapsed before the world attained its present condition-- and vorioloi other diffieulties whtloin ougge: t themselves to the attentive reader of the earlier parts of Genesi : —all vanish whon conaidered 88 an author reporting things whose exact truth he neither vouched for nor inquired into provided they answered his purpose. This purpose, according to Dr. PALFREY, was not to produce either a ge- neral or a religious history of man, but simply to stimulate an obedi- ence to the Divine law and to forward his own ends as a lawgiver. Dividing Genesis into two main parts, Dr. PALFREY considers that the object of the first, (chap. i. xi.) which gives an account of the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, the Building of Babel, and the dis- persion of the race, was nterely introductory to the history of Abraham. From a critical analysis, derived perhaps from the profound scholarship of German writers, Dr. PALFREY infers, that in the earlier p.trts of his work Moses followed two authorities, disregarding the contradictions between them, since his purpose was simply to show the opinion of antiquity as to the creation of the world by one God and his direct agency in worldly affairs, in order to impress the Jews with a belief in a pure Theism and a moral government of the universe,—" a purpose," says Dr. PAL- FREY, " which I conceive would be equally served whether or not Moses gave implicit credit to the details of the statements he has thus preserved." The same object of " an undivided sovereignty and a moral government," Dr. PaLrany traces in the remainder of Genesis, which narrates the history of the Patriarchs. He also perceives in some of the individual anecdotes that are introduced, without any apparent historical necessity, a purpose of warning the Jews against some of the sins to which they were addicted. A further purpose of Mosns was to impress upon them their right to the land of Canaan whither they were bound, by the acquisition of Abraham, the inheritance of Isaac and Jacob, and the reten- tion of that acquisition by the burial of the dead, and, it is probable, by frequent pilgrimages from Egypt. Doubting as to whence or from whom NOSES derived his materials ibr the earlier parts of Genesis, Dr. PALFREY has no doubt but that all which relates to the history of the Patriarchs had a Jewish origin ; and he notes how the narrative gets fuller, and the appearances of the Deity partake less of an anthropomorphitic character, as it ap- proaches nearer and nearer the time of MOSES. Such are the views of Dr. PALrarx on the Old Testament gene- rally, and of great part of Genesis, to the exposition or which last we have confined ourselves. His critical investigation into such of the other books as Ile discusses--including " Joshua," "Judges," "Kings," and some of the Prophets—are less elaborate, as he seems to consider their mere human character more decidedly established, whilst much less is theclogically dependent upon them than upon Genesis. His mode or composition is everywhere the same. After stating the leading reasons why he dissents from acknowledging the writer as inspixti, he proceeds to give a suc- cinct account. of the cements of the book, intermingling his narrative with commentary : of which we quote a few examples.

CHARACTER or SAMSON.

The narrative which next follows is of the most extraordinary description. It does not, like most of the preceding, relate any general rising of the lerael. hes against their oppressors, nor an emancipation of then', by any meane, front a foreign yoke. It details a series of the most singular incidents in the life of a wayward individual, dietiontished hy a superhuman site:11.'6, which he em- ployed in r, ays apparently as unprofital,le as they were marvellous. The elm- racier of Samsou is but a wild compound of the butfoon, the profligate, and the bravo. With a sort of childish cunning, and sock physical fin-Ethics as a fan- taztic itot ti ion has aecrihed to the Ogre, he is ii ithout a cm non measure of capacity te provide I., ,r his own protection ; and, ii lien IIC undertakesany thing agaimt I.e enemi.., ei hie people, it does nor appear to he with a view to any public object, but under sotte unaccountable prompting uf a lunatics caprice.

Leerr.vrtox or INSPIRATION.

Nor does the fitct, that we rceard Moees as keno, for one pent purpose, a divinely-ton iti•eiohed tome alford 01%. reesou why we should consider him as being precluded from employing himself, if he saw reason, as a lucre uninspired compiler of ancient 11 is r oeiteil materials.

There is a great yagueneee of thought upon this euljeet. Because a man is under supernatural 14oldence for the eXerution of a religious tulice, it does not follow that he is uktler that guidance in respect to older parts of conduct, or that be must refrain from :oiling or w ritingiii eaS.'S ohere he has no inspira- tion to direct him. Pent needed no inepiral ion, and hot none. Ihr the transac-

tion of his common ninths—fur inditing a letter of 1•1;eini to Philemon, for sending to Trope fir Isis books and parchments; nor, if lie had had taste and time fiur such (A:emelt hies, S is there any thing to prevent hi supplying himself to the squaring of the cirele, or to the colopoeitiou of a history of Cdliii, or of

fitheral oration or plant upon Camaliel ; laboore in which, had he nude:it:ikon them, he would have eujeyed no supernatural aid, and would have pretended to none, and emthl have sulfered injustice at the hands 4 any critic who had undertaken to judee of his work under flint prep,es, -ion. 'II edivine mes- senger is eupern totally endowed thr flue furtherance of o relioionn object. Iiis peeuliar powers extend not to any thiog independeat ef the purpose for which they were given ; 1101%, 011 the other haml, in there ney reason for suppeeine that he is :let tit liberty to do, say, curit ri!c. ii, the ceereise of his eatural faculties, any thing which may be lawfully done, sel.1, or written by another man.

CI] knAcTEn or 7110S:, The office of Mose.% oes specifically that of th,: ',milder of a new relieione in- stitutioli, to which, in hie case, as ey have seen ill a prevent, part of our in • (pities, true ineideut the (elite: if roitnder tilt, Ilt•11 stile 4111tI 11011I v. ():11,'1:11IV 11(.1V:1S 01 his destine:tire and mission end work. historical writing made no pert. any more that' it made ;met of tln: olive and minietry or di en, Or 4a. Paul. Let its 14 t.,trijulnut to losenichti of the cha-

racter whiclit we alive t: _nom cause to ascribe to him.

ANT 1; o ro Nom uric et t tt men: o 1"rti t; v 're)

No

carelut reader can tail to be :struck with the strongly untliropo:norphiti,• cast of thin passage, ,teletvale journee•ing un opulent tot...ell:I. 111111 1Nlo talellillin1,4, 4,1)10.01,11es Ahrall:1111':.: I tilt 111 lite htiit uttnoon and 41CeellIS Ills

hospitality olfere it e atm: for his Let, und reit:eel:1m et tiir hie lintuier. In v.:-

comp:nee Ot flits col: 41,11 llllll 'Ilt, 111:11.1,4 ii 111,1111,c lo IO. 41110,1ire hosts of teneee, or each s.":t. iee: that btu esing on which their heerts are inost se1, he rebukes Smolt for her 3, and sa to the tee: et' the incredulity And 'he indecorum: leVily u I j1: The interview over, term them. th, tie i% t'•,: -• • he proce,,i,on his eee 10e arda 801144111. NMI lulls.‘111111141111. who has respect- ut lu ui lii th: ,

been hronelit to hint of the iniquity of that place, ere well-toutumuk,l. Like

obliged and grateful guest, he listens patiently, as they walk, to Abraham's solicitation for mercy for his neighbours. Ile sends his servants forward to make the scrutiny on which he is intent ; and, the truth of the unfavourable reporte bein,g ascertained by their experience, he proceeds to the accomplish- ment of his work of vengeance, sparing only the family in which his messengers haul found safety and protection. What intelligent friend to the divine mission of Moses will be prepared to say that such views of God and of his agency as are presented in these particulars, were set down by him as just representa- tions? Is he not far more satisfactorily understood to have preserved them as traditions relating to a distant period—traditions exposed through the inter- vening ages to all those influences which in such cases accumulate circumstan- tial errors upon a basis of essential truth, but still deserving to be remembered on account of their containing the belief of an ancient time respecting the cha- racter ofJellovali as the witness and punisher of wickedness, and respecting his relation, on the one hand, to Abraham as his friend, and, on the other baud, to the nations at large as their righteous and all-powerful governor ?

Let us turn to a subject, if not of more general interest, yet more adapted to our columns than Scriptural character.

WHAT IS POETRY.

But on what ground shall we give the name poetry to the books just now speeilkd, or to any other writings of the tato:lent Jews? This question evi- dently invites us to fix on some definition of poetry, for a standard by which to try their several titles to that character.

There is scarcely any thing else so important, belonging to their department, which the rhetoricians have left so little fixed its the meaning of this word. It is in nail! to leek for a defelition of poetry in any firms of language in which thought is clothed. Certainly rhyme is not (essential to it. Rhyme is a modern invention of barbarous tribes, bearing., some would nay, the clear signature of its barbarous origin ; and it is not of universal use even in our modern and Western poems. Nor is redlon essential to imetry, or the recurrence, at pre- scribed intervals, of the same quality told proportion of syllables; thouga to say this is to contradict a canon of Longinus. Pocticel thoughts are not solely " thouehis that voluntary meet. Irani-widens tiumhere;" for no one hesitates to give the name of poetry to the remains of Oesian, so called; and some of the best critics have reekotted reticle:1's Telemachus as an epic.

lf, abandoning the form, we look to the meth:: of poetry to sustain a defini- tion, we shall find at least a great diversity of judgment among those who bare treated such questions. Following the. bieheet authority. Aristotle, we should have to make the essence of poetry to consist in .fictiwt; but no one hesitate to give the name to warm expressions of the sincerest feeling, or to faithful descriptions of existing objects; and the more graphic and true to the reality such expressions and deseriptions are, the higher poetry tlo we account them. To call poetry an illatatirc art is not satisfactory ; and this, not so much because tliere are other arts which itnitate, as becattee it is not distin- guished by any such characteristic from many forms of prose. Horace cannot be thought to give a good definition in the him

" :tat volunt, aut deleetare paste'''

For to give profit or pleasure, or rather to give bath, ought to he the aim not only of every other writer, but of every other man as well. In another place, I apprehend, he gives us the truer idea : it is where he describes the poet as one, in.samin, eta sit, cut meus diviuior, atque os

Ataatet sonaterum."

There must be " genius" in the poet, There must be " the mind divinely touched." But there :nest sill ue sotnethine- addel. Else the mau mar be great, or canattle cut' greatness in some ii liar walk, and not in this. There ill list be the os Magna $0:1,liqr11111. ilIC t! aa ornot, r.rprr$:,;.-tn, and then the poet is fully furnielled and inaeifeste.l. Tite " ingenitim." the " miens divinior." all natiotis will look for in their : ; and accordingly we may find it ineliuled, jIm sonic way, In all deiinit;,m, ..f no art. Tile forms cut utterance of the is magnit SOli,litintilf, in di:fere:it ee; eels. e ill 11 %tee reference to the ap- proved fashions of tee nations to Shicii in prel .11;, And according y,

in this part Of the deiiiiItiui we 111:::::t rt::■-•• - • A tor the diversity of rei. tie actually end.

eteteinef,t which, tor want ot ina.leteg ..

Where the f-rnis regarded were th:

:tifliet.1011 :mil of inii:ation would naturaliy rat it hien- • • tif hug 111.-.11.,,elves with the idea of the ne: are- in countries and times where the range • Was • - of tu ider, butt the inanner of verbal come -it i.•:. it. : t uniformity, the distinction of poetry I!: .

; more thana u ireful analysis would warren% in the .1:ceps ticits being pre,;ented hi the clothing of rhyme or , Ie ; In arrain:ing the form of elevated tit teranee. in wle. •I rem elleuld speak—the form %vhich reobe 12 •

poetry, SO tl.at whoiever the come5 ptioes of eetil

' name of poetry ellatild uniformly be iteelied.—:!.., one scheme. :old we have a lopte.1 aion11.•:: ' ierence to the nunever and acraeeenteur . • • " : . feet kid rely once to the tuniali...r.

the number. not of feet in a v....rse. .; ,iiimitny mete Ilablee. hut to theer accent Tiler

at much in the. formal structure ce surprise if the llebrors. more foreie

other, should be found to ditfer from Ili, en: rn ; :IS we from Greeks and 1:ontans.

nr.unr.w. rot:TRY.

Neither traditions nor books !.••• , % col:coming tl.; structure of Ilelir%xv

only 1::.4111:.' 11-ol•.1!,1“.•. fr0:11 the coesi !. • and nee!' En, have had their lie, t:e. herder eel to eultieate. it : it is not it tech inattifeetiy every %%thee exe, iit the; oe 111, aented Ituulle•rs. uI histere . 11131 David mede In 1"!'il'''• "111:1 3":""1` 1" •

'Iso reco% yr the structure of •-•••• , • . eteouctit

uot fail to exercise the : ore, me.; fie . ■CS.r. Zli• a lii th.tt prlY1,10'.1tilt m us,. •••■,1

.

place in the alphabet. In the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, three clauses or lines begin each with the same letter, the three succeeding lines with the next letter, and so on. In the twenty-fifth, thirty-fourth, and hundred-and-forty-fifth Psalms, the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs, and fourth chapter of Lamentations, every other line only, or every stanza of two lines, has its Millet letter in its order. In the hundred-and-nineteenth Psalm, eight tench successive stanzas begin emit with the same letter, and the next letter introduces each of the eight fhllowing. In the first and second chapters of Lamentations, the stanzas thus discriminated are found to consist each of three such clauses or lines, and in the thirty-seventh Psalm of four. We further remark, that the clauses so designated are of two different descriptions as to length. Those used, for instance, in the hundredeind-cleventh and hundred- and--twelfth Psalms, contain only about two-thirds as many syllables as those of the elegy in the third chapter of Lamentations.

The style of Dr. PAr.rauy, as may be inferred from our quota- tions, is sufficiently clear and powerful; his arrangement distinct ; and his manner as attractive as the subject admits. His acumen is sound and penetrating, and his reading extensive ; but whether he is indebted to his own research or to the works of others fits his materials, and for many of his secondary views, is perhaps a matter of question. Entertaining, as Dr. PALFREY appears to do, a tho- rough belief in the Mosaic and Christian dispensations, it is super- fluous to observe that there is nothing repulsive in his method and style of argument, or any ill-tinted levity to offend a reader, beyond the general iew of the subject.

but how far the whole of' this general view is tenable consistently with the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, admits of question. It has been the frequent habit with theologians, hard pressed by sceptical objections, to have recourse to various explanations to solve their difficulties. This has been especially the case with Genesis ; front the Fathers. who " spread the veil of allegory over every tender part of the Mosaic dispensation," to modern divines, who deny the filets of geology, or endeavour to explain away the statements of Mosus. A little consideration shows the error of these proceedings. The key-stone of Christianity is the natural corruption of mankind through the fall of Adam, and the offered means of restoration by the death of Christ and a belief in his merits, called in theology, "justification by fah." It may an- swer the purpose of Unitarians, who deny the divinity of Christ, or of sceptics, who deny his inspiration, to adopt Dr. PALFREY'S line of argument upon Genesis; but the great body of Christians, whether Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Dissenters, must per- ceive that the whole question hinges upon the fall of man. If human nature is not corrupted throng/I die disobedience (ge Adam, the Divine justice seems open to challenge in condemning the race to a spiritual death. If human nature is not so corrupt but that it is able to attain its own justification, the redemp- tion was a work of supererogation—of high Willey in a worldly sense, from the humanizing doctrines of Christianity, as we may see at once by a comparison of modern and ancient times ; but not necessary in a spiritual sense, since if man's nature admitted him to attain sufficient virtue to justify himself, the grand and mysterious scheme of the covenant with Abraham, the Mosaic law, the chosen people, and the incarnation, agony, and death of the Son of God, was set in motion to achie%e a purpose capable of being accom- plished by other means.