EVVALD'S HISTORY OF ISRAEL.* ix editing the volumes before us,

which represent the third volume of the last German edition of Ewald's History of Israel, Mr. Car- penter has taken the place occupied by Mr. Russell Martineau as to the earlier portion of the translation, partly translating and partly harmonizing with each other and with his own portions the contributions of the several coadjutors in the work. Like the previous volumes, they are in readable, intelligible English, not, perhaps, quite to he compared with our few masterpieces of trans- lation from German writers, but much above the average stan- dard of translations ; and only they who have tried their hand at turning Ewald's German into intelligible, to say nothing of idiomatic English, can form a clear notion of the difficulty of the task. We have indeed here and there found a sentence which he suggested the question whether if the translator had more fully entered into his author's obscure meaning, he might not have found words more adequate to convey that meaning to the English

*T1i "theory gthraet,by floinrieh Ewald, Mounded from em German. Edited by Etniin Oaraionter, M.A. Vole. 1IL and IV. London: Longmane, Green, and Co. reader than those he has actually employed. However, the fault on such occasions may have been neither iii Ewald nor in his translator, but in ourselves ; and in any case these obscurities are quite exceptional, and in the main the version is excellent reading for those to whom the original is not easily accessible. And many such there are, and must still be, even among real students who yet, whether from want of early opportunity and practice, or from in- aptitude for foreign languages, cannot read German as they do English, and least of all such German as that of Ewald, which even

Germans find difficult. Such students will more than confirm the modest hope of Mr. Carpenter, when he says, " Of the imperfec- tions of this translation, prepared under the pressure of other labours, the editor is only too conscious ; but if it shall at all con- vey to any reader the historian's vivid realization of the truths committed to the Kingdom of Israel to develop; his grasp of the principles of Hebrew polity, and his deep insight into and sym- pathy with the prophetic spirit, faults of workmanship may perhaps be overlooked in the interest and importance of the work."

Thought will always be understood and appreciated by those, and by those only, who think ; and while the profound thought of this History, as of all Ewald's other writings, demands correspond- ing effort on the part of his readers, they will be amply repaid by the new and bright light which he everywhere throws on his subject, and which light cannot easily nor always be found else- where. A comparison of this History of Israel with those of Professor Newman, Dean Milmau, and the Dean of Westminster will, we think, satisfy him who makes it, how real and important an addi- tion the volumes before us are to what we already possess in English upon the subject. In the Histories of Newman and Mil- man a dry intellectual appreciation of their matter is too little quickened into life by the true historical imagination and sympathy, and the cold shade of Biblical orthodoxy—the orthodoxy of the generation now passing away—hangs over them both, giving a tone of painful caution, if not reticence, to the one, and of morbid suspicion and defiance to the other ; while Ewald is not only per- mitted, by the greater freedom of Biblical criticism in Germany, to rise without an effort above these irritations or restraints, but he does, with the proper insight—the vision and the faculty divine—of the true historian, see and enable us to see into the life of the great drama, long since became an epos, while, to adopt his own illustration, he explains it with the calmness of a spectator, though filled with sympathy for each actor and appre- ciation of his part. Ewald loves the old Hebrews as Grote loved the Athenians, or Niebehr the Romans of the earlier Republic. His knowledge of all the facts, all the materials, of his subject is not less than that of either of these great writers was of theirs ; and the result is as might be expected when exhaustive know- ledge is lighted up by an enthusiasm of affection such as that with which Ewald describes "The Rise and Splendour of the Hebrew Monarchy," in the opening words of the portion of the History we have now before us :—

"Happy the nation to which a virtuous youth has imparted such intrinsic strength and courage as may enable it to seize the favourable moment, and obey the Divine signal for adding to all its former blessings yet one other, now become indiaponsable for its continued and honourable existence! Many a nation, it may be, catehos sight in dim vision of some such unattained blessing, which looks like a pure gift of Heaven on the very eve of bestowal, while by some of its members it is longed for even with devouring passion: but while it is busied with gazing and yearning, the barvest-time passes away ; and it strives in vain, in the wintry days that follow, to gain a blessing which it was too great a toil to gather in when ripe. But a nation which is not deterred by the difficulty of the task from carrying out a reform clearly recognized as necessary -- carrying it out not merely experimentally, but with willing submission to all the sacrifices needed for its accomplishment.— such a nation, without losing any substantial advantage belonging to its past life, will triumph over all complications and Hee to now strength, able to cope with the highest problems of human existence. For nations cannot die, like individuals, from mere exhaustion of their powers, after a calculable term of years. Being capable only of moral decay, a nation may, on the contrary, if the higher religion once perfected within it retains healthful vitality, be thereby preserved to pass through an indefinite succession of such new developments, may participate in every gift of heaven and earth, and may continue to exist till its final doom is spoken by the voloo of Him who created it. This crisis of transforma- tion was successfully reached by Israel." (Vol. iii., pp. 1-2.) We look in vain in the Histories of Dean Milman and Professor Newman not merely for such enthusiasm, but for the feeling which lies at the root of that enthusiasm, and gives it life and form. And even in the Dean of Westminster's Lectures on the Jewish Church which form, in fact, a more detailed narrative of the events of Hebrew history than is given by either of those English writers, or even by Ewald himself, and though the confi- dence and the reverence with which he everywhere relies on Ewald's genius, wisdom, and knowledge are far greater than Mil man and Newman show, still there is a difference which makes us feel

that even the Dean of Westminster's volumes have not super- seded those of Ewald for the 13iblical student. We hardly know how to describe that difference, or that feeling, in words that shall not seem to disparage those charming Lectures, in which an ex- haustive learning presents itself everywhere in forms of graceful beauty, and in which, while no feet, no tradition, no criticism, and no illustration is forgotten or omitted, each is touched with new and bright light. But, as Dr. Stanley himself says, they are lectures, and lectures " strictly ecclesiastical," not a complete history of the nation of Israel in all its aspects and developments. And perhaps the different treatment of their subject which Lectures, as such, should exhibit, justifies as well as explains our sense of their being less satisfying than Ewald's History,—the one a substantial loaf, the other a delicious sweetmeat.

But, beyond and above all special and individual differences, Ewald is a German : it is true with history, as the stereoscope has explained it to be with photography, that you must look at every object with two eyes, nearly, but not absolutely, from the same point of vision, to get the roundness and solidity of actual life; and we believe that he will best be able to understand the Hebrew history from the properly English point of view who has also studied it from that of the German Ewald. If we care more for facts, the Germans care more for the relations of fads, and have as superior a skill in the one department as we have in the other ; and a history, to be worthy of the name, should give us not only the facts, but their relations, their meaning, and the clue to their evolution and progress.

We have said that Ewald is qualified for his work by thorough sympathy with the subject of it. He is eminently a religious man. We do not say—for we do not know—how far he may or may not depart from this or that standard of orthodox dogma ; but his whole conception of history is that it has to deal with the relations of God with man no less than of men with each other, while he treats the history of Israel as that of the one nation which did actually, at the cud of a struggle of two thousand years duration, attain to the highest and noblest aspiration of antiquity, Perfect True Religion. "The history of this ancient people is, in reality, the history of the growth of true religion, rising through all stages to perfection, pressing on through all conflicts to the highest vic- tory, and finally revealing itself in full power and glory, in order to spread irresistibly from this centre, never again to be lost, but to become the eternal possession and blessing of all nations. (Vol. i., p. 5.) During the centuries which had elapsed from the days of Moses to those of Samuel the Hebrew nation had been growing up, age after age, in accordance with this the law of its existence ; and the time was now come when it was prepared and required to take a new onward step, by creating "an undivided and firmly established lumen authority within the already existing community of God." It had become more and more manifest that a monarchy was now necessary for the continued maintenance and development of the nation of Israel in the midst of the nations ; but if it were to be effective for its purpose, the people, on the one hand, must surrender much of the wild independence and freedom of their fathers, and the king, on the other hand, must not rule by arbitrary will or force, but in accordance with the laws and usages of the ancient com- monwealth, based and formed as they were upon the living faith in Jehovah as their King. How this monarchy was formed in true accordance with these the real needs of the nation, and rose to its full splendour, in the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, is the subject of the third volume now before us, while the fourth treats of the fortunes of the monarchy from its disrup- tion under Rellobeaus to its fall, and shows how, through all these varied fortuues, and even in that fall at last, the growth of the nation and its progress, its successful progress; to its appoitited goal still went on. Every reader of Ewald knows how justly Mr. Carpenter speaks of "his deep insight into and sympathy with the prophetic spirit" his profound essay on Prophecy in the Introduction to his Prophets of the Old Testament shows how well he understands and can explain the nature and meaning of Hebrew prophecy ; stud here in the History we have a no less profound exposition of its asstual working in the political life of the nation :—" Neither their kings nor their priests" (we are quoting from Mr. Mill, not from Ewald) "ever obtained the exclusive moulding of their character. Their religion gave existence to an inestimably precious,. unorganized institution, the Order (if it may be so termed) of Prophets. Under

the protection geuerally, though not always, effectual, of their sacred character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, often

more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up, in that little corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is the only reel security for continued progress Conditions more favourable to progress could not easily exist ; accordingly the Jews, instead of being stationary, like other Asiatics, were,, next to the Greeks, the most progressive nation of antiquity, an& jointly with them have been the starting-point and main propel-. ling agency of modern cultivation." (Representative Government,, pp. 41, 42.) These words express concisely the idea which Ewald,, in his own religious way, is working out through the whole of hi History, and which he shows to be the key to the whole develop- ment of the Hebrew nation. Thus, after pointing out how the. time had, after long preparation, at last arrived for the establish- ment of the monarchy, he says :-

"But now in this community, face to face with the human King,. stands the Theocracy ; a something still higher and inviolable ; with its long-standing sacred laws and arrangements still continuously' revealing itself through prophets and their words, valid as Divine command. Thus command confronts command ; and. though sometimes these two distinct powers may easily under- stand each other, and 'remain in peace side by aide, at others they may chafe violently against each other. If, then, the royal power' would attain its own proper completeness, without subverting the intrinsic truth of the Theocracy, it must not content itself with a posi- tion equal, still less subordinate, to the prophetic, and least of all must it attempt simply to annihilate it; but must appropriate to itself whatever-

in the prophetic form is true and necessary. The discord between the rules is then composed, and the true human king of such a state is

found. And human monarohy once established within the Theooracty implied strictly the expectation of one who would fulfil all the oonditions, of this Monarchy, and become its ideal man, and the true King (or- Messiah) of the community. We know with sufficient certainty that every King of Israel, immediately upon his accession, was pledged to. the existing fundamental laws of the kingdom ; in token of which he was, required, when the crown was placed upon his head, to lay above it a-- written copy of the law, and with these sacred symbols to show himself to the people, to be anointed. Thus he was not to be a king ruling arbitrarily, as in heathen kingdoms, where at moats few nobles, the popu- lace, or an imperfect oracular system limited his power. Here, if he- desired to be really king, it could only be through his entering more, fully than any one else into the mind and spirit of Jahveh, and becom- ing through Him the proper human ruler in the midst of the Theocracy. If he enters fully into that mind and spirit, he reaches the highest per- fection of which human nature is capable ; a weak being like man becomes, through the powerful operation of Divine grace, himself the strongest and worthiest instrument for Divine purposes." (Vol. pp. 6-7.) The historian goes on to show how by this operation of the forces of the Monarchy and the Theocracy, of the king and the prophets, acting and re-acting on each other, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in opposition, the actual constitution grew up during the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. He depicts, in a narrative RS graphic as philosophical, the struggles of these forces in the reign of Saul, whose endeavours and difficulties and failures he handles with a tenderness and reverence such as Samuel and David had exhibited to him in his actual life, even while they were most strenuously maintaining the cause of Prophetism and of all that it represented against that of mere Monarchy. In the - reign of David we see these forces working in a harmony the reality and the meaning of which are shown in even clearer light when it is broken for a moment, and the king and the prophet brought face to face in opposition by David's sin with Bath- sheba, a harmony which finally culminates in a transfusion and transmutation of the two into one perfect whole : "If, standing at its conclusion, we form a complete picture of his [David's] life, we are forced to admit that his career constitutes the culmination of that general advancement towards which the people of Israel had been aspiring with increasing energy for more than a century, and it is as succeseful a realization of this ideal as the ciroum- stances by which they wore then surrounded rendered it possible for them to obtain. The age did not require in its leader and representative a, tuau gifted with special spiritual activity, though it might be of the very highest kind ; and hence it was not a Prophet that it demanded, for its- most pressing want was the completion of the undertaking begun by Moses at the dose of his career, and carried on by Joshua, which the cen- turies that had since elapsed had not, however, accomplished ; it needed, that is, the possession of an earthly fatherland in which unity might be firmly established among all the members of the nation, and which would secure for that people in whioh the highest religion had taken root that perfect independence and tranquillity in which its nationality and its religion could alike find free room for the utmost expansion. True religion, if it was to appear on earth at all, could not but be im- planted in the bosom of a given nationality, and it then becomes re- quisite for its higher development that the people destined to be its organ should first attain a more oompleto position as a nation among the other nations of the earth. Strengthened by its unity and self- consciousness, the nation might then address itself to higher and- heavier tasks ; just as the individual, however groat may be his spiritual powers, must first reach manhood before these can operate in him with full force. Only a warrior, that is, a man of the people, could serve as the instrument for raising up the nation to that matured strength which became more and more urgently necessary for its existence. But, on the other hand, no man of the people could satisfy the demands which bad been loudly made in the community since the last spiritual movement of Samuel, who did not at the same thins embody all its sacredness, 'If but a hero might spring forth from the people whose strongest weapon is his pure trust in his spiritual God, on which he never- relaxes his hold,'—this was the cry of the age, and in answer to it up-.-.

peared David, the warrior who never alienated himself from the prophetic and other supremo truths of the community, but sympathized vividly with them, and gradually brought his own spirit, as well as the entire national mind, more and more completely under their penetrating in- fluences. Only a man thus gifted could succeed in uniting for the prosecution and attainment of this object the whole power of the people, at that time so highly strained, and in completing that undertaking for which the noblest efforts had long before laid a firm foundation. The new enthusiasm and elevation of the community was not the creation of David. It met him as his noblest incentive, but it is the completeness with which he suffered it to take possession of him, the fidelity which prevented hiel from ever being untrue to it, and the energy with which he overcame even the one error of his life which threatened permanently to alienate him from it, so that he was finally brought more decidely under its power,—it is all this that constitutes the secret of his peculiar greatness, and the charm which never failed to attach to his struggles and triumphs all the strongest and purest spirits of his age." (Vol. iii., pp. 198-199.)

These two constituent powers of the national existence—the kingly and the prophetic—continued to work in unison during the first part of Solomon's reign, but eventually they began to fall apart, and to enter into an antagonism even more serious than that which had marked the time of Saul. Under Saul the monarchy would have degenerated into a mere chieftainship, autocratic and Arbitrary at home, and always at war with its neighbours ; but it was in and through the peaceful splendour of Solomon's reign, and all its blessings of civilization, foreign and domestic, that the germ of political decay was fostered. The conquests of David had been consolidated by his successor into a great empire, supported by alliances and commercial intercourse with Egypt, Tyre, and Damascus, and still more distant countries, while literature and science flourished by the side of wealth and luxury at home; and thus the wisdom and the power of Solomon had established a monarchy which promised to equal, if not surpass, any of the monarchies of antiquity. But the Prophets became dimly conscious that the true spirit of progress towards the goal of the nation's life was wanting in all this glory, and that its civilization (night be arrested here, as we know that of Egypt was. The generation of the prophet Nathan, the counsellor of the young Solomon, as previously of his father, had passed away ; but in the later years of Solomon, Abijah of Shiloah, Shemaiah, and Iddo appeared to reassert the independent power of Prophettem, and so thoroughly did the crisis seetn to them to be one of life and death for the nation that they did not hesitate to promote and effect a revolution, more serious even than that by which Samuel had trans- ferred the crown from Saul to David, when they found that the accession of Rehoboam gave no prospect of a reform without re- course to such a desperate remedy. In the view of Ewald, the history of the disruption of the kingdom, and the establishment of Ole separate monarchy of the Ten Tribes, is the history of an attempt of the Prophets to reassert the theocratic element against that of merely human monarchy. To effect this end, they availed themselves of long-standing rivalries of the tribes, of military ambitions, and of all other means that came to their hands ; and they consented to sever their people from the House of David, from the Temple and the Levitical priesthood, and oven acquiesced at least in the worship of Jehovah—such is Ewald's view—under the form of an ox. They tried not one, but several changes of dynasty, to effect their end ; and how noble that end was, and how grand were the careers of some of the men who worked towards it, we see in the traditions which were handed down of the mighty deeds of Elijah and Elisha, as well as of the lesser, yet perpetual activity, of a numerous body of prophets who are constantly appearing. But for Israel—the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes—it was all in vain. It was not to be expected that the Prophets should, 'without previous experience, have made the discovery that the reform they saw to be needed must be worked out by other means than those of physical violence ; but this, observes Ewald, was the fatal defect in their really noble design, and its end was the utter destruction of the kingdom, at once a prey to its own vices and to the Assyrian conqueror. But the disruption which led to the final destruction of Israel was the salvation of the smaller Kingdom of Judah. Within its smaller sphere, and after that elimination of the more unmanageable forms of the two great powers of its political life, those powers continued to work on, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict, yet ever carrying the Jewish monarchy onward, generation after generation, till when its last hour, too, had arrived, that hour proved to be not merely the hour of death, but also the beginning of a new life, springing

out of that which had passed away, but within which it had itself been all along maturing.

In conclusion, we would say a word in reference to Ewald's habitual assumption that he has succeeded in resolving the existing Hebrew records into their original materials, so that he can

say of each paragraph that it is from the hand of the first, second, third, or even fourth or fifth narrator, and can give it a corres- ponding historical value in his own work. We presume no German, as certainly no English critic, is disposed to grant that such discernment is possible ; and that we are all agreed that Niehbuhr, himself no timid adventurer in such regions, more correctly describes what is the position of the student of ancient history in this respect, when he says that such history is like the walls one sees in Rome, where every variety of brick, stone, and marble, portions of what were visibly once columns, cornices, and pavements, are formed into one comparatively modern building : so much we see and know ; but to restore each fragment to its place in its unknown original, first recover- ing its own missing parts which have been lost or chipped away to make it fit into its new place, is not possible. Yet fanciful as is the manner in which Ewald claims to possess and exercise this power, we must not overlook the fact that he does to a great extent use his materials just as any other equally learned and equally able historian does. The historian who is most "con- tent to be ignorant " of facts of which no record remains must often conjecture or imagine their form, if he will write his history at all, and then the practical difference between his method and that of Ewald will not be very great. It is in the confidence with which Ewald believes himself able to recover the specific events to which the prophets are alluding, and entitled to interweave them into the history of the later kings, that he is most unsatis- factory. Certain as it is that the prophets were dealing with the events of their own day, it is far from equally certain what the events were, as is proved by the great differences among the most learned and judicious commentators on the subject. What the Prophetical Books give us, beyond all question, is a strong and clear light, shed over the whole political condition of their own times, and by the help of which we can read the properly histori- cal records with an understanding which would otherwise have been impossible. But the specific events referred to often remain obscure or doubtful, and we wish Ewald were more ready to re- cognize that this is so. But no man has apprehended the other side of the case so fully or made such good use of it as Ewald ; no one has read the history in the light of the prophecies so com- pletely as he has done ; and after all allowance has been made for a fault which has practically affected his history far less than it has his criticisms on the Prophetical Books, he has shown that, as an historian, he understands his materials more completely and handles them in a more masterly manner than any other historian of Israel has yet done.