of difference between good gifts and perfect gifts, rather, it may be, to the disadvantage of the former; intimates the inferiority of the one to the other; and makes the latter an advance from, an improvement upon the former; as if any of God's good gifts lacked aught of perfectness, as if every perfect gift had not in itself all goodness. So very strong-minded a man and so close a writer as James was utterly incapable of a mere tautology, or of finding such absurd employment for man's subtlety.

But there is a distinction between doors and dwpnpa, wherein consists the life of the declaration, and which bestows upon it an exceeding fulness and greatness of meaning. As comes from an active, donμa from a passive verb; the latter is the gift, the former the giving; the latter, the thing that comes; the former, the manner of its comingthe perfect gift, the good way of giving. That this is the force of doos here is clear from the necessity of the verse, and from common justice to James as a thinker and a writer. Our translators' treatment is a sin against good Greek, where all nouns derived from active verbs (as those in Es, σis, vis) do not lose the hereditary activeness; nor has it warranty from N. T. Greek, where dors, in the only other place where it occurs, is translated rightly "giving" (Philipp. iv. 15), and where nouns derived from active verbs are always, I believe, true to their origin. (Acts xxvi. 4; 1 Cor. i. 26; Philipp. iv. 15.)

From most Bible translators within my acquaintance, this meaning of doσs, this life and fulness of the verse, has been hidden. Luther has anticipated the tautology of the Common Version. Newcome and Wakefield do not have the word "gift" twice, but, quite inapprehensive of the force of dors, express the difference but by synonyms; the former rendering, "Every good gift and every perfect benefit;" the latter, "Every good gift and every perfect kindness." Diodati has caught the distinction rightly, has made doo the giving and dwynμa the gift" Ogni buona donatione, e ogni buono dono," &c. Mr. Sharpe agrees with my rendering-" All good giving and every perfect gift."

By mere synonyms like those of Newcome and Wakefield, the verse gains nothing, the tautology is not done away with. God's gifts are benefits, his benefits are gifts. A like identity subsists between every gift and every kindness of His. But by simple fidelity to the Greek, by rendering the words, "All good giving and every perfect gift," we give the verse a vast accession of meaning, wonderfully deepen and widen its import; it hereby becomes one of the greatest and fullest utterances in the Book of Life. James has just denied that temptation comes from God; he goes on to assert that every good thing comes from Him, to declare Him the perfect Giver; perfect no less in the giving than in the gift; good in the manner of bestowing, as in the thing bestowed. We have here God working out good ends by good means, perfect altogether in his dealings with us,- -an utterance worthy of the intense moral earnestness and exact moral discernment of him so fitly styled James the Righteous.

T. H. G.

THE TESTAMENT OF ST. JOHN-FROM THE GERMAN OF LESSING. HAVING lately found among a bundle of forgotten papers a translation from Lessing, made forty years ago in Germany, I offer it to you for the Reformer; for it seems to be in no respect obsolete, though founded on those controversies in which Lessing was so great a master. Nor can the idea enforced in it become obsolete until a more entire revolution in religious sentiment has taken place than can be reasonably expected in any age, however desirable.

It is on account of his services to the cause of free inquiry and Christian tolerance, that Lessing's name is pronounced with honour in this country. His immense services to the literature of Germany, when in its very infancy, can be appreciated only there. He lived to witness but the commencement of a great poetical revolution in his country, and of the contemporaneous philosophical revolution could know nothing: for he died in 1781, in which year appeared Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason; Göthe's Götz v. Berlichingin appeared in 1773, and his Werther in 1774. Lessing advanced German literature at the close of his career by the warm recommendation of Wieland's translation of Shakespear, whom Lessing proclaimed to be the single Dramatist who ought to supersede the French authors, of whom the Germans then were the servile copyists. He thus as a man of letters prepared the way for the new career about to be opened by Göthe and his companions and followers.

As a philosopher or thinker, he rather closed a period and a school, than laid the foundation of a new school. Nothing could be more opposed to the common-sense rationality and intelligible logic which run through all Lessing's works, than the metaphysical ideal philosophy which Kant gave occasion to, and which, in spite of his protestations, has since prevailed almost universally.

In liberal theology, as in poetry, Lessing was a disciple of the English. The extreme liberals of the beginning of the last century were his models. His polemical papers read very like the papers of the Independent Whig; and he closed his literary life by his most celebrated work, "Nathan the Wise." That didactic play which Moses Mendelsohn called "a glorious panegyrical poem on Providence," appeared as late as 1779. It was translated into English, about half a century ago, by William Taylor, of Norwich. Lessing pronounced a blessing on the city which would first behold it on the stage. That blessing, if not earned, was at least merited, in 1803, at Weimar, when the writer of these remarks witnessed the first representation, Schiller having adapted the play to the stage. We presume our readers to be acquainted with it.

Lessing's name stands almost alone not crushed, and only partially eclipsed, by the greater poets and thinkers of the next generation. His is the very first reputation, both for eminence of ability and moral worth, in his own country; and his fame has, more than any other of the last age, spread into foreign lands.

We will now record a startling testimony in his favour. It was in especial allusion to him that Pusey made the memorable concession, "that in the sceptical struggle after truth of many who are yet in doubt with regard either to the essential doctrines of Christianity, or to Reve

lation itself, there may be often more of the Christian spirit than in an unhesitating traditionary belief.”*

It was but shortly before his death that Lessing published the celebrated "Fragments from the Wolfenbuttle Library." These raised a storm which none of his own acknowledged writings had excited. Of the speculative theological writings of Lessing, the only one, we believe, hitherto translated into English, is his remarkable little treatise, declared by W. Schlegel to be the profoundest of his productions, “The Education of the Human Race." It was translated, and appeared just forty years ago, in the Monthly Repository, but was not noticed by any one until after many years, when the translator had forgotten it, and then it had the advantage of a copious commentary from the pen of Miss Martineau, in the same periodical.

The trifle now offered to the reader appeared as a sort of supplement to a small tract in the same tone and spirit, entitled, "The Proof of the Spirit and of Power," which treats of the Scriptures in their distinct internal and external characters. We quote the concluding paragraph of that tract, which in the complete edition of Lessing's works immediately precedes the tract now to be published. And with that we conclude an introduction undesignedly long, and excusable only from the high rank of Lessing as an author, and the discreditable ignorance of him and other German notables even by the most liberal class of English thinkers.

Suppose now there were an important and useful mathematical truth, which the discoverer had been led to by means of a fallacy [trugschluss-deceptive inference]. There may not in fact be such, but there might be. Should I be justly deemed to reject this truth, or should I become an ungrateful slanderer of the discoverer, because I would not myself infer, nor allow others to infer, from his sagacity on other occasions, that the fallacy which led him to this truth could not possibly be a fallacy?

"I conclude by wishing that all who are separated by the Gospel of St. John may be re-united by the Testament of St. John. This Testament is, to be sure, apocryphal, but it is not the less divine."

THE TESTAMENT OF ST. JOHN.

A DIALOGUE.

H. C. R.

- qui in pectus Domini recubuit et de purissimo fonte hausit rivulum doctrinarum. HIERONYMUS.

Author and Friend.

F. You dispatched this sheet quickly enough. But we see it in the sheet. A. Indeed!

Vide "An Historical Inquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalistic Character lately predominant in the German Theology. By E. B. Pusey, M.A., Fellow of Oriel Col., Oxford. 1828." This work exhibits, in connection with the writer's subsequent carcer, a remarkable exception to the rule, that

"Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

Its object is to correct the gross misrepresentations of the German theologians by the late Mr. Hugh Rose. Yet at this moment the author's name is given to that section of the Anglican Church which occupies the frontier line adjacent to Romanism. The book is now seldom to be met with: probably it has been bought up by the author and his friends.

F. You usually write more clearly.

A. The utmost clearness was always in my mind the utmost beauty.

F. But you, too, I see, suffer yourself to be carried away, and begin to believe that alluding to circumstances that not one reader in a hundred knows any thing about, and which you yourself became acquainted with but yesterday

A. The instance?

F. Your riddle about the Testament of St. John. I have turned over my Grabius and Fabricius in vain.

A. Must, then, every thing be a book?

F. If it is no book, what is it?

A. St. John's last Will,-the last remarkable, often-repeated words of the dying Saint. May not they be called his Testament?

F. They may, to be sure. But I already care less about it. And yet, what was it? I am not very learned in Abdias, or where else it may be found.

A. It stands in a still less suspected author-Hieronymus has preserved it in his Comment on Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Look for it yourself. It will hardly please you.

F. Who knows? But what was it?

A. What, out of my head? With the circumstances I can call to mind, or those I think probable?

F. Why not?

A. Well, then! John, the good John, who would never separate himself from the congregation he had brought together at Ephesus, to whom this one congregation was a theatre large enough for his instructive miracles and his miraculous doctrine-John was now become old, so old

F. That pious simplicity believed he would never die.

A. Though every one saw him dying from day to day.

F. Superstition trusts the senses sometimes too much and sometimes too little. Even when he was dead, superstition held that John could not die, and only slept.

A. How near Superstition may tread to Truth!

F. But proceed with your story. I do not, however, wish to hear you speak in favour of superstition.

A. Lingering, while he hastens, like one who quits the arms of a friend to embrace his mistress, the pure soul of John was visibly, gradually departing from his equally pure but decrepid body. At length his disciples could not even carry him to church. And yet John did not willingly omit an assembly, and let none pass by without addressing the congregation, who would rather have gone without their meal than lost his address.

F. Which, likely enough, was not studied.

A. Do you love the studied?

F. As it may be.

A. Certainly, the good apostle's speech was never that for it always came from the heart: for it was always simple and short, and every day became simpler and shorter, till at last it was reduced to the few words

F. And they were?

A. CHILDREN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

F. Few and good!

A. Do you really think so? But we grow tired of the good, and of the best too, when we hear it every day. We are soon tired. At the first meeting, when John could say no more than, Children, love one another, it pleased them mightily. It pleased them the second, third and fourth time-for it was always said. The infirm old man can say no more. But when it happened, now and then, that he had cheerful days, and still said the same, dismissing the congregation with his, Children, love another; and as they saw the old man could but would not say any more, then this Children, love another, ap

peared to them quite cold and flat and insignificant. Brethren and disciples could not hear it without disgust; and at length they ventured to interrogate the good old man. "Master," said they to him, "why dost thou always

repeat the same ?"

F. And John?

A. Answered-Because the Lord has commanded it; because that alonealone when it really is-is enough-quite enough.

F. So that's the Testament of St. John?

A. Nothing else.

F. It is well you have called it apocryphal.

A. As opposed to the canonical Gospel according to St. John. But it is nevertheless divine.

F. Much in the same way as you call your beautiful, divine.

A. I have never called the beautiful, divine, and am not accustomed so to misuse the word. What I call here divine, Hieronymus styles, dignam Joanne sententiam.

F. Ah, Hieronymus!

A. Augustine reports of a certain Platonist, that he said that the first words of St. John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word," &c., ought to be inscribed in golden letters on the most conspicuous part of the church.

F. Undoubtedly, the Platonist was in the right; and assuredly Plato himself could never have written any thing more sublime than this beginning of St. John.

A. It may be so. And yet in my mind-as I do not pay much respect to the sublimities of a philosopher—it would be much better to inscribe in golden letters on the most conspicuous part of the church St. John's Testament, "Children, love another."

F. Aye, aye!

A. It was on this Testament that a certain salt of the earth swore formerly. This salt of the earth swears now on the Gospel of St. John; and they say that since this change it has somewhat lost its savour.

F. Another riddle?

A. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

F. Aye, now I perceive.

A. And what do you perceive?

F. How certain folk draw themselves out of a snare: it is enough if they retain Christian charity-the Christian religion may shift for itself.

A. Do you count me among these certain folk?

F. You must ask yourself whether I should be right in doing it.

A. I may at least speak a word in favour of these certain folk.

F. If you feel yourself called on.

A. But it is I now who do not understand. Is Christian charity, then, not the Christian religion?

F. Yes and No.

A. How, No?

F. The doctrines of the Christian religion are one thing, and the practice grounded on it another thing.

A. And how, Yes?

F. Inasmuch as that only is true Christian love which is grounded on Christian doctrines.

A. And which, now, of these is the most difficult? To accept and acknowledge the Christian faith, or exercise Christian charity?

F. You will get nothing by it if I were to acknowledge the last is the most difficult

A. What have I to get by it?

F. For it is only the more ridiculous in certain persons making the path to hell so unpleasant.