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tached to non-payment. For breaking the Sabbatical and other laws the Jews were stoned-for the non-observance of the command to pay tithes, as for the non-observance of the command to "love the Lord their God with all their heart," they were left to be punished by God himself. There was no compulsion in the matter. The magistrate was armed with no authority to compel payment, much less to imprison as a punishment for non-payment. As the Rev. Thomas Hartwell Horne remarks in his Introduction, "The payment and appropriation of the tithes, Moses left to the consciences of the people, without subjecting them to judicial or sacerdotal visitations." Hence it is found, as a matter of fact, that the Jews were reluctant and neglectful in paying. As their love to God fell, the payment of tithes fell. Hezekiah exhorted them and Malachi prophesied against them, but the tithes remained unpaid.

So with respect to meat and other offerings in religious worship. Many things-meat, drink, burnt, and other offerings were commanded; no offering was enforced. The Tabernacle and Temple were built by free-will offerings, and whenever the Temple needed repair it was done by voluntary gifts. So it was in the reign of Joash, when Jehoida "took a dish, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar," to receive the money" which the people

brought;" and so it was in the reign of Josiah. The spirit of the Jewish law on this subject may be read in the last words of David, " As for me, in the up

offered all these things, and now I have seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto them."

We close this paper in the words of a revered writer-" God loves a cheerful giver, and would no more allow the State to enforce payments in support of religion, than he would allow it to compel men to profess to love him. All duty to him was to be free from human dictation. The support of religion would be degraded if it ceased to be free. A free obedience paid tithesspontaneous contributions first built and then repaired both the Tabernacle and the Temple-and if the sovereigns of Judah contributed to these works, it was from their own property, and not from any public fund raised for that end by the taxation of their subjects. By thus securing, in the Mosaic economy, that all such payments should be free, not even allowing the priests to obtain their tithes by any legal process, God has condemned all compulsory payments for the support of religion." This is the result of an appeal to the Old Testament on the question of compulsory State-churches.

Let, then, State-churchmen conform to the model thus brought into view, and they may then enable their church to pass as a bad sample of what was, but has long since passed away. At present their ground is neither Jewish nor Christian.

INTRODUCTORY-AUTHORSHIP.

THERE was a time when readers of the Holy Book quietly rested in the conclusion that Solomon the King was the author of Ecclesiastes. Such serene,

undoubting conviction might not be the result of elaborate critical investigation, but was rather bottomed upon that profound intuitional good sense by which men mainly enter with trust and confidence into the spiritual inheritance

of our fathers. This conclusion, along with many others of vastly deeper moment, has been assailed in the country where a once mighty faith was supplanted by a restless, deformed, insurgent rationalism. Volumes have been issued with amazing industry which are dark and tangled as tropical forests, bristling with uncouth phraseology, and all with the design of unsettling whatever has been received among Christian men as sacred and veritable. Such works, merely translated, never would have done injury to saint or sinner. The mass of ordinary intelligent readers would have concluded, after some desperate efforts at perusal, that the works in question were very like the peace of God in one phase-viz. "past all understanding"- but very unlike that peace in all other aspects. But a few more daring and resolute spirits have read and re-read, and after mastering serious difficulties have, in the room of translating, reproduced the ideas and arguments of modern Germany. The acceptance has been far too large, and altogether unaccountable. No class of writers more thoroughly set at defiance the fundamental laws of evidence, acknowledged on all grave questions, in all generations, since the dawn of civilization. While the wildest theories are promulged with scarcely any attempt at proof, at other times our indignation is succeeded by laughter when we discover old acquaintance in formidable masquerade-conceptions familiar as the face of a brother disguised in ponderous scholastic phrase for the mirth and wonder of the reader. As to philosophic unity, artistic beauty, or mastery over style, all the works of this class are paupers in rags and destitution. The inner spirit, as vile as the organic form, is wretched and debasing. Would that we had back again Plato or Pascal, or both, to enjoy a feast of irony among the galvanised mummies of Berlin! What with matter and style they would have a richer banquet

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than ever they enjoyed in confounding and scarifying the Sophist and the Jesuit. As to the kind of fruit which has been produced in our own country, the seven Essays from one of our Universities may be taken as a sample.

The speculations of Baden Powell and Professor Jowett are but a reproduction or resumé of speculations which have floated or reigned in Germany from Lessing and Herder to De Wette, Strauss, and Baur. It would be unjust not to recognize the fact, that there has been a healthy reaction in the Teutonic domain. Such men as Neander, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Baumgarten, and Auberlen have done much to stem the torrent of unbelief; but the best of them are far from being safe guides, and Hengstenberg is perhaps the least reliable. He, amongst others, has argued that Solomon is not the author of Ecclesiastes; but this we need not wonder over, for the man who discovered the Millennium in the days of Charlemagne is surely capable of seeing through a millstone, even were it as thick as the wall of China. I thought at first that I would notice his objections seriatim, but a closer inspection convinced me that my onslaught would be like assailing a legion of shadows and spectres; and it is rather painful to ride into the field against an enemy who is suddenly but a cloud of dust or a few flying Arabs-to look for the foe with a telescope, when you expected to meet him with a weapon. His theory is, that the work was written by some unknown person during the time the Hebrews were under the Persian dominion; and he frequently endeavors to find allusions specially designed for comfort and direction under their peculiar circumstances. If my view of the work be correct, it has no more reference to the Persians than to the Patagonians, but is simply a philosophic view of matters which concern all time, modified and narrowed to some extent by the horizon of the age in which it

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was written. If any one should look into my pages expecting a verse-byverse exposition, he will be grievously disappointed. Indeed, I know of no greater nuisance under the sun than works of such a character, and have often wondered how such accumulations could be tolerated, especially in our sanitary times. We should be willing to believe that each great writer can sometimes utter such things as may be at once understood, reserving exegesis for that which is difficult, and reproduction for that which is hopelessly obscure. But if any one come to my chapters in search of the principles which underlie Ecclesiastes, along with the corrections which have been supplied by time and Providence, such a one will not be disappointed. Indeed, he may perchance find himself sometimes transported back to holy land, mingling in the throng of ancient life with Hebrew intensity, passionate and earnest.

How do we know that Paley wrote the Treatise on Natural Theology, which is so deservedly popular - or that Burnet was the author of the Theory of the Earth, a magnificent though not a scientific production- or that Chalmers composed the work entitled, Astronomical Discourses? Or, if these instances are in a field too near, how do we know that Milton was the author of Paradise Lost, Shakespere of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Cervantes of the Exploits of Don Quixote, Camoens of The Luciad, Cicero of The Offices, or Virgil of the Eneid? The reply simply is-First, by notoriety, for the works originally either appeared with their names attached, or the facts were well known by friendly circulation. Secondly, each of the works spake for itself, by wearing the idiosyncracy and impress of its reputed author. Each author has his peculiar signet, separating and distinguishing him from all In this way, without any subtlety, we know that King Solomon

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composed Ecclesiastes. The work has his name affixed, and has been in all ages recognised as his by the great Hebrew people. Secondly, it emphatically bears the impress of its reputed author. As surely as we find Bacon in the Novum Organon, shaping and inspiring as no other man could do, so surely do we find Solomon in Ecclesiastes. The royal signet is there - royal in every sense, for the kingly intellect is as visible as the purple of empire or the great throne of judgment.

CANONICITY.

When we are half stunned and bewildered by the clamour and confusion among modern teachers and their disciples, it is pleasant to find that we have after all some voices of authority and certainty. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. We have a succession of men with the true consecration--professors and masters of the grandest science, that of spiritual and eternal relations. They are not inflated with Delphic gas, to howl and rave from the tripod, belching ambiguous or lying oracles; but inspired and sublimed, illuminated and elevated by the omniscient Spirit of the High and Holy One, who existeth from eternity to eternity. We have already stated that Ecclesiastes was received and endorsed by the great Hebrew people as the genuine production of their celebrated Monarch; but this might be true, and yet the document bear no higher character than a fragment of Hebrew literature. Canonicity leads us away from the human scribe and the earthly aspect, to the supernal fountain of light, the Divine Dictator, and the record which is everlasting through his inspiration. On this point as on the former, the Jewish people are trustworthy witnesses. They have come down the highway of ages, bringing with them the wonderful Book of Law and Revelation, which they always believed had God for its Author and life