part of our historical knowledge? To the objection of the French Encyclopedists, that the notion of a miracle involves an absurdity, as consisting of parts which are irreconcileable, Dr. Marsh judges it to be a correct and full reply,-that if the same power which made the laws of nature, is able to suspend them, it cannot be true, that the notion of a miracle destroys itself. Mr. Hume's argument, which denies the competency of testimony to establish miracles, is examined more at length.

A more powerful and a more seducing argument is the argument from experience, as explained by Mr. Hume in his Essay on Miracles. He begins by asserting what is very true, that" a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature." He then proceeds in the following words. "As a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.” In the next page he proceeds in the following words. ""Tis a miracle, that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must therefore be an uniform experience against every miraculous event; otherwise the event would not merit the appellation. And as uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle." In the second part of the same Essay, he compares the value of human testimony when opposed to general experience in regard to miracles. And to render the parallel more obvious, he founds the value of human testimony on experience also. ""Tis experience only" (says Mr. Hume)" which gives authority to human testimony and 'tis the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do, but to subtract the one from the other." Since then experience is against a miracle, whereas experience does not always decide for the veracity of a witness, the experience which operates against a miracle can never, in the opinion of Mr. Hume, be overcome by any testimony in its favour.' pp. 82, 3.

Bishop Marsh meets this objection, not by denying the parallel which Hume has drawn between the two kinds of experience, nor by resisting that part of this argument, which makes the value of testimony dependent on experience, but by resisting that part of the argument, which connects experience with miracles. If,' the Bishop remarks, there is a flaw in this part of his reasoning, the whole of it falls to the ground.'

It appears from his own words, which have been already quoted, that he argues on the supposition of "a firm and unalterable experience" in regard to the laws of nature. He takes for granted, therefore, that those laws are unalterable, at the very time when the question is in agitation, whether they were altered in particular cases.

The argument therefore postulates what it professes to prove. When we argue for the possibility of a miracle, we argue for the possibility of a deviation from the laws of nature; and we argue on the ground, that the same Almighty Being who made those laws, must have the power of altering or suspending them. If, therefore, while we are contending for an alteration or suspension of those laws, with respect to the miracles ascribed to our Saviour, we are told that those laws are unalterable, we are met by a mere petitio principii. In short, the argument from experience, as applied to miracles, includes more than the nature of the argument admits. Though an event may be contrary to common experience, we must not set out with the supposition, that the rule admits of no exception. We must not confound general with universal experience, and thus include beforehand the very things for which an exception is claimed.' pp. 85, 86.

Paley has replied to Hume's objection in the same manner. To state, concerning the fact in question, that no such thing was ever experienced, or that universal experience is against it, is,' he remarks, to assume the subject of the controversy.' In what circumstances the aberrations of the human mind originate, it is impossible always to discover; but when prejudice has early and strongly obtained the power of directing its speculations, an argument or a hypothesis, which its author shall deem conclusive against the reception of a system that he dislikes, shall be as paradoxical, and demand for its acceptance as much credulity, as would satisfy any experimenter on the simplicity of mankind. Thus Hume, after denying the competency of testimony to establish a miracle, admits that a miracle may be proved by human testimony, and that miracles are possible; but this admission he withholds when the miracle and the testimony are made the foundation of a system of Religion, which is in fact the only case that requires such vouchers, the only case that serious inquirers would consider as worthy of such extraordinary proofs. It is idle to talk of experience when the occurrences are remote, both in respect to time and place, from our own personal acquaintance. Experience excludes history. And if the testimonies on which we believe the miracles, and receive the facts of the New Testament, be discarded as insufficient to warrant our confidence --if such testimonies be not valid authorities for the belief of whatever is not impossible-then the credence of men must be identical with their own consciousness, and nothing can be an object of their knowledge that is not an object of perception to their senses. The world can have no other history than that which every individual obtains in the events of his own experience.

With the thirtieth Lecture, the Author concludes his proofs

of the Authenticity and Credibility of the New Testament; and in Part VII., which comprises four Lectures, he treats on the Authority of the Old Testament. His first object is to state the reasons for which an arrangement has been adopted, which inverts the order of time in respect to the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. If,' he remarks, the authority of a later record can be established without a previous inquiry into the authority of a former record, and the authority of ⚫ the later record will assist us in establishing the authority of ⚫ the former record, the later record becomes of necessity the 'first object of inquiry.' To all the books of the Old Testament, the term authentic,' as used by the Bishop of Peterborough, cannot be applied, since several of them are the composition of unknown writers. The books to which it is applicable, are first described, and the credibility of their contents is argued from their authenticity. But, as this mode of proof cannot be adopted in respect to those books the authors of which are unknown, the Lecturer proceeds to shew on what ground the credibility of the latter rests. In Lecture XXXII., the books of the Old Testament are considered collectively; the term authority,' as including both authenticity and credibility, where both terms are applicable, and as denoting credibility or truth, where the former term cannot be used, is applied to the whole of them; and the testimony of our Lord to the books of the Old Testimony, is asserted as the proper and sufficient evidence of this authority. It appears, then,' Bishop Marsh remarks after an induction of particulars, that all the • Hebrew Scriptures, as they existed in the time of our Saviour, received the sanction of his authority. If then the Hebrew Scriptures, as they existed in the time of our Saviour, con'tained the same books which are now contained in our Hebrew Bibles, we have the sanction of our Saviour for every book of the Old Testament.' This identity, it is the object of the thirty-third Lecture to establish; and the proof of it is deduced from a comparison of the catalogue of the Hebrew Scriptures which Jerome has given in his "Prologus Galeatus," with the account contained in the treatise of Josephus against Apion. The last Lecture is devoted to the integrity of the Hebrew Bible, for the purpose of establishing the fact, that the books which it contains, have descended to the present age without material alteration. In this part of the work, the charge of wilful corruption of the Old Testament writings, so frequently alleged against the Jews, is shewn to be without foundation, and the origin of the charge is very distinctly stated.

With the exception of the first two parts, the publication

nd, we suppose, the delivery of these Lectures have proceeded regularly and at considerable intervals. Three years were riginally assigned as a probable period for the completion of he course. Fifteen years have elapsed, and four, out of the even branches of Theology into which the system is divided, emain to be discussed. We shall, probably, therefore, have to wait for some years to come, before the opportunity shall be afforded us of perusing in detail the opinions of Bishop Marsh on the Divine Origin of the Religions contained in the Bible,on the Inspiration of the Scriptures,-on the Doctrines of the Bible,-and the branch relating to Ecclesiastical History. With his opinions in Divinity, however, he has already made us sufficiently acquainted, and we shall probably find ourselves less at liberty to applaud his labours as an Expositor of the Bible, than we now are to commend the critical ability displayed in his treatment of the preliminary subjects. As outlines of the studies which invite the attention, and will reward the diligence of every person desirous of making progress in Biblical learning, these Lectures are truly valuable. They would be still more so, were it not for the deficiency to which we have already referred. Neither the department of the Interpretation of the Bible, nor that which includes the Authenticity and Credibility of the Bible, is accompanied with an enumeration of Authors who have treated on those subjects. It was announced, in the preface to the first series of the published Lectures, to be an essential part of the Professor's plan, to give a description of the principal books in Theology; and his readers were prepared to expect, at the conclusion of each branch, an account of the principal authors who have illustrated the subjects which it includes. Why this pledge has not been redeemed, we are unable to state, the omission being neither noticed nor accounted for by his Lordship.

Art. III. The Birds of Aristophanes. Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, A.M. With Notes. 8vo. pp. xxxvi. 180. Price 9s. 6d. London. 1824.

TRANSLATIONS have been appropriately called the wrong side of the tapestry.' The expression is applicable in the highest degree to translations from the ancient languages, and most especially from the Greek. Language is the conventional instrument by which mankind express their desires, their affections, their dispositions; but these again are influenced by customs, laws, manners, religion, in a word, by all the circumstances which modify the character of nations.

Words that are symbolical of peculiar feelings, whether inspired by religious ceremonials or by political usages, must lose all their effect in the very act of transmission into another language which has not received the impress of the customs, the state of society or manners, and the habitudes of thinking, by which they were primarily produced. This is an impediment which no qualifications for his task will enable the translator to evade; since it arises out of the great changes which time has effected, by introducing new modes of feeling, with great and signal revolutions in religion and in morals. Even the scholar can go no further than the dim lights of lexicographers and commentators will conduct him. They enable him, indeed, to become acquainted with the dead text, the mere letter-press, in short, of an ancient language; but what more is this, than an inert and mute image of that language, compared with it as it once operated with living activity upon the great mass of feeling and intelligence among the people by whom it was spoken? And if all that, comparatively speaking, can be done by the learned in exploring the Greek language, is to grope an obscure and uncertain way by the help of the glossary or the lexicon, what chance has the English reader of tasting the great master-pieces of ancient composition, who can only find his way to them through the medium of a translation? The text, indeed, if skilfully rendered, may be conveyed to him in his proper tongue; but it must be taken into consideration, that the mere text (of a Greek play for instance) is not the composition itself, nor can it give him an idea of the effect produced by it. When the poet built his drama, he calculated upon the effect of the whole, resulting both from principal and accessory, design and execution, on the organs of his sensitive countrymen, to whose senses and fancies the intonation of a living sound vibrated with an intenseness which the mere printed Greek word can never excite, even in the most finished scholar, how highly soever indued with susceptibility and taste.

The difficulties also of translating a Greek author, and of all Greek authors Aristophanes, in a mode so intelligible to the English reader, as to convey a tolerably adequate impression of the original, are not a little augmented by the necessity which drives the translator to a sort of forced compromise between his readers and himself, whereby they agree to take as much as he can give them of some of those qualities in his original, by which, as the principal instruments, his piece obtained popularity and honour. But it is an unequal bargain; for we must necessarily be losers in regard to many happy strokes of by-play raillery, and many lyrical beauties, for want