TIME AND FAITH. * THE double title of this book would
seem to point on the one hand to an exposition of the religious principle in man, as it has manifested itself at various times, under varying circumstances of culture, locality, and race ; on the other, to a critical examination of the materials for the history of the Christian Church. The actual contents of the work correspond very imperfectly to these indications of the author's purpose. He appears to have a notion that all ancient mythology arose out of astronomy, and that all its symbols and legends are nothing but corruptions of zodiacal emblems. So far as we can trace any leading idea throughout the two volumes, this would appear to be the author's patent key for unlocking the mysteries of all religions, from Chaldaism through the worship of ancient Egypt and Judteism to Christianity ; and the theory finds its consummation in a novel interpretation given to the famous standard of Constantine, which has usually been taken to be a purely Christian emblem, but which the author of the work before us attempts to prove was nothing but an astronomical symbol representing the supposed completion of the periodicities of the sun and moon, "the soli-lunar period before described of 600 ordinary years." The same key opens also the vexed question of the names of tribes and nations. Thus, we have been accustomed to consider the S.P.Q.R. of the Roman standards as equivalent to the initial letters of " Senatus Populusque Romanus " ; but the author of Time and Faith tells us that "this explanation is open to doubt, as "not in accordance with the enigmatical and generally religious character of ancient national symbols. In the lapse of centuries, the sense of the original characters may have been lost, and their form changed. It is far from improbable that in the time of Remus. lus the letters were IPE 365." The reader is informed that these Greek characters, taken in their numeral signification and added together, make up 365, the number of days in the solar year. On this principle of taking the numeral force of the Greek characters which make up the names of nations, the author interprets the names into symbols of astronomical significance, and supposes that the names were in each case given because the nations carried these characters on their standards as the S.P.Q.R. of the Romans. Thus, the Greeks were ypaLKot, because the Hellenes bore upon their banners the talismanic word Abraksas, which, written in Greek characters and numerically interpreted, gives the numbers which added together make up 365; and Greens is only a perversion of Graksas, from which the derivation of Grakoi or Greed is easy. The method is applied with equal success to many other national names, belonging to various races of the inhabitants of the world. We hope our readers see the full force and glory of this discovery, which rivals Dr. Forster's famous method of interpreting the Sinaitio inscriptions. In fact, it rests Upon much the same charming assumption. The Doctor supposed, that if by hook or by crook he could make out the characters on the rock into any resemblances to the letters of any known alphabet, he was at liberty so to do, and by this method established that the inscriptions were written by one Semitic tribe at one time. Our author simply assumes that he has a right to represent all national names in Greek characters, and then to interpret them by the system of Greek arithmetical notation. This astronomical hobby-horse is trotted out continually by the author of Time and Faith. If he has a leading idea this is it ; and it is just the sort of maggot that breeds in the brain of a man of extremely inaccurate scholarship who has yet a taste for learning and for research into the beginnings of things. Apart from this notion, we should describe the book as a collection of wornout Rationalistic interpretations of the history in the Old and New Testament, followed by a kind of summary of the history of the Roman Empire till the death of Constantine the Great. In these interpretations the writer follows the exploded school of Paulus, rather than the more recent developments of Rationalism. The principle is, to eliminate from a professedly historical narrative all supernatural elements, and to treat the residuum as true fact. We need scarcely remind readers of the Spectator, of the antiquated nature of a procedure which Mr. Grote 's History of Greece, among ether well-known works, has thoroughly discussed and shown to be fallacious and unsatisfactory. Thus, the writer upon whom we are commenting tells us, that "the history or tradition of one of those moral paroxysms, or religions panics, when a holocaust of human victims was usually called for in ancient times, may be gathered from the account given us of the origin of the Passover ; when the Lord slew all the first-born of the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and the first-born of cattle."' His • Time and Faith : an Inquiry into the Data of Ecclesiastical History. In two isslumes. Published by Groombndge and Sons. explanation amounts in brief to the statement that the plagues mentioned in Exodus were the natural phsenomena of Eastern climates aggravated by accidental circumstances, and accompanied by some visitations that were unusual; that these were referred to Divine displeasure ; and that a state of things which we now meet by a proclamation for a general fast was then usually met by a national sacrifice. "In the temples," he goes on to say, "a nobler burnt-offering than a lamb was to be offered on the part of the nation,—the first-born of man ; to be taken from every house the door-posts of which the priests had not directed to be sprinkled with blood in token of sufficient purification. The Israelites were in a position to learn the secret sign of the families to be spared, and to profit by it ; for 'Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharoah's servants, and in the sight of the people.' Moses communicated the intelligence to his own countrymen ; and, having already successfully impressed the public mind with a belief that the bondage of the Israelites was the national sin for which Egypt was suffering, took advantage of this night of terror to effect their deliverance." We are not well enough acquainted with Rationalistic commentaries on the Old Testament to know whether this ingenious interpretation is original or not ; but it is evident that the only authority we have for the death of the first-born at all as an historical fact knows nothing of such an explanation ; and therefore, if we reject the account given by this authority, we have no reason to believe the fact at all. We may remark further, that as Pharoali and his chief men must have known as well as Moses the real nature of the transaction, we see no reason to suppose that the escape of the Israelites would have been facilitated by the panic. We call this nothing better than ingenious trifling. In fact, though the author of Time and Faith is evidently a person of wide miscellaneous reading, we see good reason to doubt whether he is in any sense competent for the task he has undertaken. The foundation of all investigations into the remote past must base themselves upon linguistic researches ; and unless a man is a good scholar, he is liable to be constantly led astray by fancied analogies which have no foundation in reality. No man is competent to publish works of this kind unless he has laid the foundation of his knowledge deep in the ancient languages. Now we do not pretend to criticize this writer's general attainments ; but in some particulars within our own knowledge we can see that he is most ignorant and superficial. The instance we have given above would alone demonstrate an incapacity for his task : no scholar could have been seduced into such an extravagance as the assumption by which this writer interprets all kinds of national names into astronomical symbols. But throughout his book he proceeds on a similar principle with respect to language, interpreting Semitic names by Gothic, and vice versa ; and while he utterly neglects the higher and more essential considerations offered by the structure of languages, dwelling with the childishemphasis and credulity of the old etymologists upon accidental resemblances of sound. It is, however, in his Greek and Latin that we perceive most clearly how loose and inaccurate his scholarship is. Thus, he tells us that prophets among the Greeks were called. chresmologia—a word which we should have supposed to be a misprint for chresmologi or chresmologoi, if it were not repeated in the same form, and if a note were not appended to inform us that it is derived "from chresmos, an oracular response, and logios, learned "; and, more than all, if Greek words were not written and spoken of throughout the book in the same loose unsoholarlike way. Perhaps the strangest instance occurs among some remarks on the habit of the translators of the New Testament of rendering what are, in this writer's opinion, the titles of sects, into English words corresponding to their etymological significance. Thus, he would have IcXn.rot translated not " called " but the sect of kleti, isXstcroi and assX00L not elect and brethren but the sect of Eklecti and the sect of Adelphi. In the course of this discussion he has occasion to quote from Philo a phrase about the Essenes--Tos Xaxearra OniXov n-un, hraatum ij Inytwv--and this he renders by the astounding English "the Lekthenta company of the Essaioi or Hosioi," apparently not in the least knowing that N-Exesirra is the passive participle of the verb an's,. If this is to be matched at all, it can only be by his own etymology of the word "catholic," of which he says that the authors of our dictionaries have entirely mistaken the ancient signification. He refers to the C'hotti and Gothi as kindred people with a kindred name ; and on this analogy announces that " 'Catholic' is a form of the German GOttergleich," adding, as a reason why the term was first applied to the Church at Smyrna in the Ignatian Epistles, that "the Church of Smyrna probably consisted largely of Asiatic Gets, either as naturalized citizens of Smyrna, or as bond servants or slaves, the prisoners of former wars ; and the incursions of the Parthians and Chatti, at this time renewed, doubtless added to the bitterness felt by the Romans against alien forms of worship ; and against those forms especially which in the common rejection of images seem to have the nearest affinity with the religion of these nations." That is, the term "Catholic Church" was originally applied to the Church at Smyrna as a term of reproach, meaning the church of the savage Chatti ; for that is what the statement reduces itself to in the last result. And this is affirmed without an iota of positive evidence, in the teeth of Christian antiquity, and in utter ignorance that KaSexoces is a genuine Greek adjective formed regularly. Surely the author of Time and Faith must know Greek enough to be aware that the adjectives of that language end in ,K02 not unfrequently ; and that if from Pacasos we have should be made identical with the precious metal it professes to represent—but by the manner in which he prepared the public mind to entertain the principle. From the nature of the contents as already indicated, there is something in the volume that is past as regards substance, much that is desultory in its form. The whole, however, is surprisingly readable to those who are interested in such questions. This arises partly from the singleness of object, the lucid clearness and the easy expression—more, we think, from the reality of everything. There is no beating the air. We are not called upon to gaze at theoretical bladders, which the instant they are pierced anywhere collapse. Nor are we called upon to listen to an exposition of principles which however important are still abstract. In Lord Overstone everything evidently relates to actual affairs and the immediate business of men.
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