1850.] Prospects of English Influence in India. 25

Yet a superior race can never dwell with an inferior one, without making itself felt. And were the British power from this day annihilated, its influence would remain, manifest in ineffaceable monuments in the whole fabric of Indian society, in arms, in arts, in laws, and, what is more potent than all as lying at the basis of all, in ideas,—just as English civilization has taken color and form from every state with which it has held the relation of war or alliance, whose literature it has read, or whose power it has feared.

Should English power maintain itself in India, the result can be foreseen by Him alone who beholds both the beginning and the end. It must be different, however, from what it has been elsewhere. In general, the weaker race melts away before the stronger. In this country, English conquest has been followed by emigration from England, and by the gradual extinction of the aboriginal race. This cannot take place in India. There can never be any emigration of the laboring classes to India which can crowd on the native population, for the Hindoo lives on that upon which the Englishman would starve. They who live on six cents a day need not fear emigration from abroad to compete with them for this miserable pittance. But while the English remain, as they now are, the sovereigns of India, they reach every native; and by institutions and laws, by science and literature, by improved systems of education, by commerce, by the preservation of order, and by religion, it is reasonable to believe that they must gradually reform and reconstruct and vivify with new life the civilization of India.

Under the government of Providence, no evil is eternal. The violence and wrong of men are compelled, ultimately, to come round and accomplish unexpected good. The guiltiest revolutions, and what at first seemed the most disastrous wars, have been compelled to work out the high purposes of Heaven, and many a state which has resisted all better influences has been purified by the baptism of blood. Taught by the past, while we behold the English race circling the globe with its colonies, and spreading over continents from the equator to the pole, we may rejoice, if this work of conquest must go on, that it is in the hands of those who possess the best VOL. XLVIII. - 4TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. I.

3

parts of human civilization, and we may believe that, wherever the English flag is planted and the English mind rules, an advancing civilization will raise men's lot on earth, and a pure religion dawn on them from heaven.

E. P.

ART. II.-PORTER'S PRINCIPLES OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM.*

THERE exists a much better state of the public mind in regard to attempts to obtain a purer text of the Scriptures, than when Dr. Bentley, after having been driven from his plan of publishing a critical edition of the New Tes tament, to which he had devoted years of labor, wrote in the bitterness of his heart to his friend Dr. Clarke,

Nothing will now satisfy them but I must be put by the Professor's chair: AND THE CHURCH IS IN DANGER FROM MY NEW TESTAMENT"; or than when Bengel, in another country, after having borne with equanimity and answered with moderation the assaults which were made upon him up to the time of his death, pathetically exclaimed, in 1747, "O that this may be the last occasion of my standing in the gap to vindicate the precious original text of the New Testament!" But we fear that the feeling of opposition has been succeeded by one almost as discouraging and unfavorable to successful exertion, the feeling of indifference. This latter feeling it is easier to explain than to justify. The intrinsic nature of the subject, compared with the great questions which agitate the public mind at the present day; the general conviction that the principal and most valuable result of modern investigations into the text of the New Testament is, that we now have it in a high degree of purity compared with that of the ancient classics, and that the new readings which affect the sense of a passage are comparatively few; the fact that we have in this country, at least,

*Principles of Textual Criticism, with their Application to the Old and New Testaments. Illustrated with Plates and Fac-similes of Biblical Documents. By J. SCOTT PORTER, Professor of Sacred Criticism and Theology to the Association of Non-subscribing Presbyterians in Ireland. London: Simms & McIntyre. 1848. pp. xviii., 515.

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Importance of the Subject.

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so few of the means for original investigation into the subject; the jealous opposition to the general reception even of what is established by the consent of critics;these considerations, and others which might be named, may serve to account for the prevalent indifference on the subject, both among the clergy and the intelligent laity.

But they do not justify it. These things ought not so to be. Why should it not be regarded as important to have a pure text of writings which have interested the whole world so much as those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, as to have a pure text of Plato, or Thucydides, or Eschylus? If to labor with success in the preparation of correct editions of the Greek and Latin classics has justly been considered as worthy of high praise, and has raised those who have devoted themselves to it to high posts of honor in our colleges and in the Church in England, then surely it ought not to be considered an unimportant, much less an obtrusive and offensive labor, to endeavour to present the writings which contain the revelations of God to man in the highest possible state of purity. If the Scriptures are important, it is important to have them as nearly as possible in the very words which were written by the sacred penmen.

No one who has paid any attention to the subject can suppose this to be the case at present with the received text, or with any text of the New Testament which has yet appeared. Manuscripts exist which have not been collated, or which have been collated imperfectly. Many unsolved questions exist in regard to the facts on which judgment should be founded, much difference of opinion as to the comparative value of manuscripts and the manner in which they should be classified, if classified at all, many doubts in regard to the readings of the ancient versions, and much room for labor in regard to the genuineness and the import of the writings of the Fathers which have a bearing upon the subject.

Nor is there room for discouragement in regard to the progress which has been made. Since the time of Griesbach, there has been a considerable diminution of prejudice, and a considerable approach toward uniformity of opinion. Since his first edition, many editions have appeared in Germany in which his text has been followed to a considerable extent, and some in which his read

ings have been fully adopted. In respect to the three passages which have attracted most attention in this country, on account of their supposed bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity, no clergyman, who has any regard to his reputation, would now quote 1 John v. 7 as a part of the Scriptures. In regard to Acts xx. 28, there is not the same uniformity of opinion, but there is a constant approach to it. Thus the reading of Griesbach, "Feed the church of the Lord," Toû Kupiov, is supported, not only by the editors of more recent critical editions, such as Lachmann and Tischendorf, and by such commentators as Rosenmüller, Kuinoel, Meyer, and De Wette, but by such orthodox theologians as Bishop Marsh, Conybeare, Professor White of Oxford, Dr. J. P. Smith, Dr. Davidson, Mr. Barnes, an able writer in the Eclectic Review, and others.

In regard to the other passage, 1 Timothy iii. 16, the signs of agreement are not so favorable. We do not recollect any Trinitarian writer in England or this country who is decidedly in favor of the reading of Griesbach, except the able critic in the Eclectic Review for March, 1809. But in Germany, where a matter of this kind is more likely to be decided on critical, rather than theological grounds, of the three editions which can properly be called critical that have appeared since that of Griesbach, namely, those of Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf, the last two, though proceeding on somewhat different principles from those of Griesbach in respect to the classification and estimation of authorities, yet support Griesbach's reading, as in place of ecós. Of other editors who have revised the text of the New Testament more or less, Schott, Vater, and Heinrichs adopt the reading ős, and Knapp marks it as of equal authority with the common reading. Other editors, as Tittman, Theile, and Hahn, who retain ecós, profess that they do not always reject a reading of the received text, even when the evidence against it preponderates.* See their Prefaces.

Respecting Lachmann's, Dr. Davidson, an orthodox critic, says, "This is by far the most important edition that has appeared since the days of Griesbach"; and again,-"Were we disposed to follow the text of any one editor absolutely, we should follow Lachmann's." Respecting Tischendorf's, the same critic says,—“ A careful perusal of the editor's able Pref

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Necessity of the Work.

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Since, then, much remains to be done in relation to a pure text of the New Testament, and since there is much reason for supposing that such a text may gradually find a general reception in the Church, we welcome the book which furnishes the occasion for our remarks, as being better adapted than any which we have seen to excite an interest in the textual criticism of the New Testament among theological students and the clergy, and at the same time to throw a clear light upon the subject, and afford the necessary helps to the study of it. A work of this kind, sufficiently elementary to be adapted to the use of theological schools and of the clergy, has long been wanted. It is certainly of great importance that they should be acquainted with the subject, at least so far as to be able to understand the means by which the sacred writings have been transmitted to us from age to age, and the principles and helps by which the text may be brought to a state of purity. They certainly ought to be able to appreciate the labors of others, and to know how to estimate the rash assertions which are often made by partisan theologians.*

ace, and a collation of his text and critical apparatus beneath it, have convinced us of the sound judgment, minute diligence, extreme accuracy, and admirable skill by which this edition of the Greek Testament is characterized." See Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature, Vol. I. pp. 492, etc. It may also be observed, that Tischendorf himself appears to be orthodox on the subject of the divinity of Christ, if we may judge from a remark which he makes in the Prolegomena to his edition of the Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, p. 39:- "Quanquam minime cum istis facio qui tantum non verentur ne ipsa Pauli Apostoli de divinitate Christi doctrína pericletetur, si ab hoc loco destituatur eo quod vulgo habere creditur firmamento." Schulz, the learned editor of Griesbach's New Testament, observes, that "Tischendorf's edition of the Greek Testament is in all respects to be preferred to any other." It can be imported for $2.25.

* Several assertions of this kind occur in the last essay in defence of the received text of 1 Timothy iii. 16 which we recollect to have been published in this country. We refer to an essay, which shows_much more the spirit of a bigoted partisan than of a genuine critic, by Dr. Henderson, reprinted in the American Biblical Repository, Vol. II., and indorsed by Professor Stuart. Some of the important errors of this essay were exposed in a notice of it by an able and fearned English writer in the Eclectic Review, Vol. V., Third Series. One of the assertions to which we allude is that in which Dr. Henderson says that Athanasius, in his Fourth Epistle to Serapion, quotes the text so as clearly to show that Oeós was the reading of it. The passage which he quotes from the Epistle to Serapion is explicit enough, to be sure. But the Benedictine editors of Athanasius have included the passage referred to in brackets, as of doubtful authority, and added a note, in which they say that "it is read only in one manuscript, and there, too, it is written not in the text, but in the margin; whence it seems rather to be the gloss of some other person, than the words of Atha