because it is of Moses, but of the fathers," which is added to the words "Moses gave you the law," is surprising, for it points us to something earlier than Moses, as do Matt. xii. and xix., in respect to the Sabbath and to marriage. But what is the import and bearing of the added clause ? Does Jesus wish to deprecate circumcision as a form of the law not introduced by Moses, but only handed down from the fathers? (D. Paulus and Baumgarten-Crusius.) Or does He wish, on the contrary, to place it above the Sabbath as a primitive and holy institution, merely confirmed by Moses? (Bengel, Lücke, Tholuck.) Both these suppositions contradict, and equally, the view which Jesus elsewhere expresses of the old covenant, and the latter especially cannot be reconciled with his declaration concerning the Sabbath, Mark ii. 27. Yet we cannot regard the assumption of Stier and De Wette, that only an inaccurate expression was to be corrected by this clause, as worthy of Jesus. Grotius has the right view. Circumcisio est antiquior RIGIDO OTIO Sabbati per Mosem imperato," according to which Christ has not the Sabbatical institution per se, but only the strict Mosaic command respecting it, in mind, when He refers to the antiquity of circumcision, transmitted from the patriarchs, in order to show that the law of the Sabbath cannot withstand it. Hence it was not His design in this place by pointing to that which preceded the Mosaic law, to weaken or abrogate any part of this, but only to determine the proper relation of the divine commands and ordinances, and thus to fulfill the law.

We saw at the beginning of this section, that Jesus honored and observed the ordinances and institutions of the Mosaic law, by sending the healed lepers to the priests, by solemnizing the Jewish festivals, by visiting the synagogue on the Sabbath, and by going into the temple; and we may add, also, in this place, that He does not attack the offering of sacrifice on the altar, Matt. v. 23, sq. But to apprehend the truth fully, we must still remark that Jesus declares Himself, Matt. xii. 6, to be higher and holier than the temple-"A greater than the temple is here"-and that, immediately after, He has in holy zeal purified the temple, which he honors as His Father's

house (cf, Luke ii. 49) from criminal desecration. He declares prophetically, John ii. 19, that the temple will be perfectly destroyed by Israel, but in His own person and by Himself will be raised up again. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again. (cf. the interpretation of Hauff, Stu. u. Krit., 1849, I. 106, 114.) And finally, the language of Christ at the institution of the holy supper offers us a deep glance into His position towards the old covenant. Matt. xxvi. 28, we read: "This is my blood of the New Testament." By these words He glances at two passages of the Old Testament, one connected with the history of the covenant, Ex. xxiv. 8: "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you," and the other in the prophecy of a new covenant, Jer. xxxi. 31-34: "And I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel." (cf. Steir, R. J. vi., 148 sq.) Thus He founds the new covenant which had been already promised, and which does not abrogate or ignore, but rather fulfils and perfects the old. So, then, Jesus assigns to the Mosaic law and the old covenant, with their institutions, their true worth and position. He contemplates the law in relation and connection, partly with the primal revelation in the creation and earliest history of mankind, partly with its fulfilment and completion by the Son of man, and therefore with a religious as well as historical, a divine as well as human view, and he recognizes it as a true revelation of God, needing, however, its fulfilment and completion, and receiving the same in Himself.

(To be concluded)

ARTICLE III.-BRYANT'S POEMS.*

WE avail ourselves of the very convenient law of association by contrast to pass at once from the volume in prose, named below, to an examination of Mr. Bryant's poetry. Mr. Bryant has accomplished at least two things by this timely book. He has furnished the world with a fresh proof that he can write prose as well as poetry, and us with the reviewer's reason for gracing our pages with his name.

It is now, we believe, about the space of a generation since the American public first learned to associate the name of William Cullen Bryant with the Evening Post newspaper. During this unusually protracted term of editorial service, Mr. Bryant has taken frequent recesses from the exhausting demands of his profession. The intervals of leisure thus intercalated in a life otherwise laboriously occupied he has employed variously—in the main, however, dividing them between travel and foreign residence. More lately, if we mistake not, a country-seat on Long Island, beautiful by nature and beautified by art-the possession of a man who, if common fame speak not falsely of two honorable vocations, may be considered doubly fortunate to own it, in his double character of poet and of editor-has drawn him with the lure of leisure and letters.

But within the year past, the newspapers tell us Mr. Bryant has once more returned to do task-work as editor. Remembering that his age, though hale and vigorous still, is now advanced to "reverence and the silver hair," and recalling the fact that for the last decade and longer, his muse has but seldom broken the silence-the very sweetness, too, of these occasional utterances having to our fancy something of a cer

* Letters of a Traveller. Second Series. By William Cullen Bryant. NewYork: D. Appleton & Co., 1859.

tain rare and costly quality going to confirm the omen-we are forced to regard this step as an unwelcome reminder that our favorite American poet has probably accomplished his important poetical labors. It will not therefore be judged premature if we herewith attempt, what has thus far, and properly, remained unattempted, something like a general and exhaustive survey of his genius and achievements.

We shall be confident, at least, that not a line of the thousands which, notwithstanding what we have written, we will hope yet to receive from that honored and practised hand, could modify our estimate, otherwise than to heighten our praise. And thus we beg to avert the ungracious omen implied in contemplating his poetical career for the moment as closed.

1

The frequent vicissitudes of labor and recreation with which the actual years of Mr. Bryant's life have been diversified and relieved, are no doubt to be considered as illustrative of his character. It was hardly to be expected that one who, in the flush of early manhood, according to the common tradition of Bryant (which we hope no one will be at the pains to contradict), turned from the profession of law, to which he had been trained, with an instinctive and noble rebellion against what he felt to be its pettinesses and falsities, should, even in the strenuous season of middle age, have so changed that honorable softness of heart as to become unalterably firm to the at least equally rude contacts and collisions of a partisan editorship. We should half have regretted it if he had done so. It would have gone so far toward marring a favorite ideal of ours (perhaps we got it from Coleridge), touching a certain inviolate youthfulness of feeling waiting ever on the nature of the poet, and making to him the freshness and beauty of the world immortal. We trust never to see the fantasy suffer under any such ruthless iconoclasm. Mr. Bryant, indeed, has always, as editor, practiced a skill which his political antagonists have felt to be even bitter, of straining every relenting chord of his nature to a mood of stern endurance. He is to-day, when grasping the newspaper pen, an almost savage antagonist. But then this tension is far more a matter of the will than of the heart. The will is strong, and can produce

it; but so is the heart tender, and will relax it. This we take to be the secret of Mr. Bryant's alternations between uncongenial toil and studious leisure.

In his last resumption of editorial duty, we make no doubt it is a manly resolution which summons him back once more to the wavering edge of a worldly strife. It suits admirably with that conception in his own grand hymn to freedom in which, boldly amending one of the world's immemorial ideals, he changes her sex, transforming a fair smiling maiden to a bearded man in panoply. We can even believe that he obeys a conscientious conviction of duty in the matter; and if so, then his act is in the spirit of all noblest poetry, let critics say what they will about the absurdity of a moral in song. Every poem has its moral, be it only in the absence of an intended moral. The author, for example, of some musical stanzas, reminiscent, as we recall them, of a day's ramble with friends in the woods, when he took pains to tell us that having spread food of God's sweet bounty, they

ate it with no grace but song,

was unconsciously pointing a moral advantageous neither to his piety, nor yet to his sense of the truest and highest beauty. It is indeed not unfrequently the case that the poet is impressing even the most instructive, while the saddest too of moral lessons, when so far as his own merit of purpose goes, he works

Without a conscience or an aim.

But notwithstanding the reconcilement which we may flatter ourselves thus to have found between two apparently contrasted phases of character, it must still be acknowledged that Bryant the editor and Bryant the poet could hardly be more different from each other if they were numerically distinct. It is like going from the Cave of the Winds to the "island-valley of the Avilion," to pass from a leader in the Evening Post to one of Bryant's more characteristic poems. In truth, the editor Bryant belongs to the world as it isthe poet Bryant to the world as it will be. The editor dwells