want of our times, out of the church and in it, is a more intimate relationship with Christ, such as the gospel proposes, such as his sufferings and death for us make practicable, and such as those who fully commit themselves to him enjoy. Especially is this the want of the Christian ministry. The stream cannot rise above the fountain, and our preaching cannot go beyond experience. He who tries to make it is only a hearsay expounder of God's word; and his sermons coming without unction, and with only intellectual sincerity, fall powerless. What was it that gave to the words of Peter and Paul, of Augustine and Luther, of Whitefield and Edwards, an influence that could not be resisted? They spoke from the fullness of their experience, and therefore with power. They knew whereof they affirmed. They spoke as by inspiration, and with a glow and energy that men could not gainsay nor resist. So should it always be when Christ is our theme and the soul's salvation the end of our labor. But to speak thus, our hearts, and not rules of rhetoric, love and not logic, experience, not speculation, must be the impelling principle. Colleges and seminaries are indispensable, but they are no substitutes for the school of Christ, and for the teachings of the Holy Ghost. One's mind may be clear and brilliant as an iceberg and also as cold and fruitless. What multitudes have drifted from the right theory of the gospel because they had never experienced its preciousness and power.

4. Our last remark is this: that those persons who deny that the death of Jesus Christ is necessary to the forgiveness of sin are not Christians, and have no claim to the title. Having rejected the foundation of the Christian superstructure they have no right to a place within its sacred temple. They are selfexcluded; for to name themselves after Christ while they deny to him that in which his glory consists, and on which his religion is based, is both illogical and irreverent. To call myself a Platonist while I reject the fundamental doctrines of Plato, or a Mohammedan while I discard the Koran and its prophet, or a Mormon while I repudiate the revelations of Smith, would be a ridiculous or rather an audacious absurdity. Would it not be equally so if we were to call ourselves Christians and insist upon receiving the title from others

while we denied utterly the cardinal principles on which the whole Christian system depends! And this is what thousands are doing. They have torn away the foundation of Christianity and yet they cling to the name. We know not their design in this, unless it be to screen themselves from apprehended reproach. But shall persons professing uncommon independence of mind and logical consistency, prove that they have neither, by asking to be called what they are not? We have no hard names to apply; we do not pronounce them infidels, we would not cover them with odium, but we must insist that whatever else they are, they are not Christians. They may be intelligent persons, refined and moral; they may be good citizens and useful members of society; in their way they may be devoutly religious, but they are not Christians. It is not morality nor sincerity that makes a Christian, though both are essential to it. We must add to these at least an intellectual belief in the fundamental principles of the Christian system. Where that is withheld, the name of Christian, even in its most general sense, must be denied; rather it should not be claimed. We say this in the full knowledge of its logical results. There are many whom we respect and love, and who have many noble qualities of head and heart and life, and who are doubtless sincere in their belief, and we desire to think of them as in some sense Christians, but truth and consistency forbid. We must leave them where they have left themselves, on the cold glaciers of naturalism, beyond the utmost bounds of Christian fellowship. There they stand, walled around by an amphitheatre of snow and ice; yawning chasms, dark and bottomless, open to receive them at every step. The scene is one of awful solitude, and so cold and desolate that the fruits of the Spirit cannot bud and blossom there, much less ripen into maturity. Here we leave them, and, guided by the Divine hand, return to the lowly quiet vale of humility, along which flows the river of life, and there bowing with adoring gratitude at the foot of the cross, join with the redeemed out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation in ascriptions of praise to Him who hath redeemed us by his own blood-to whom be honor, and blessing, and glory, and power, and dominion, forever and ever. Amen.

ARTICLE VIII.-THE BOOK OF NABATHÆAN AGRICULTURE.

Ueber die Ueberreste der altbabylonischen Literatur in arabischen Uebersetzungen, von D. CHWOLSON. (On the Remains of Ancient Babylonian Literature in Arabic Translations. By D. CHWOLSON.) St. Petersburgh. 1859. Folio. pp. 195.

AMONG the most remarkable men of the generation which came upon the stage of life a thousand years ago, was one who bore the name of Ibn Wahshiyyah. He belonged to a people whom the Arabs called Nabathæans, but who claimed descent from the ancient Chaldæans or Babylonians. He had his birth at Kassin, in the flat and marshy country by the lower Euphrates. Endowed with an inquisitive mind, he devoted himself to study, and made large acquisitions of knowledge, especially in natural science. His acquaintance with languages was not inconsiderable: beside the Arabic, he seems to have been familiar with the cognate Syriac; he had some knowledge also of the Persian, and probably of the Greek. He increased his stores of information by extensive travel, and was widely known as a man of learning. Nor, if the general belief concerning him be true, did he remain content within the bounds of legitimate science; but, like too many of his countrymen in earlier times, applied himself to darker arts, and became an adept in the quackish mysteries of sorcery and magic.

The country of the Nabathæans or Chaldæans for more than two centuries before this time had been subject to the successors of Mohammed; and the mass of its people had received the religion of the Koran. Ibn Wahshiyyah himself was to outward appearance a Moslem; but there is reason to believe that he regarded that faith with secret repugnance and aversion. What his real opinions were, it might be hard to determine. Among the Sabians of his time, the last representa

tives of heathenism in Western Asia, many seem to have had little positive belief except a kind of philosophic deism; their heathenism consisted mainly in rejecting the revelations of the Jew, the Christian, and the Moslem. Perhaps the religious position of Ibn Wahshiyyah was not widely different from

this.

His dislike for Mohammedanism may have been in part the result of patriotic feelings. The religion of Islam was naturally associated in his mind with the subjugation of his country. The conquering Arabs had brought from their deserts the sword and the Koran together, and had imposed their yoke alike on the bodies and the souls of the conquered. Though there was no possibility of opposing a successful resistance to this long-established ascendency, he yet submitted to it with an inward protest. The contempt with which his Nabathæan countrymen were regarded by the dominant race, filled his mind with bitter resentment. He longed to show these haughty conquerors that the ancestors of the despised Nabathæans had been the leaders of the world in power, art, and science for many centuries, while the ancestors of the Arabs were roaming over their sand-wastes without letters or civilization. This desire was avowedly the mainspring of his activity as a writer. His voluminous works were intended to reflect the glory of the ancient Babylonians. They purport, in fact, to be almost wholly translations from ancient Babylonian originals. His countrymen, he asserted, for to these facts we have no other witness,-had preserved down to his own time a considerable number of books which were composed in the palmy days of Babylonian greatness. These works were in the possession of a few individuals who still adhered to the old heathen religion, and who guarded their literary treasures with jealous care, fearing that if they fell into the hands of Mohammedans they would be destroyed. Having become aware that a particular person of this class had a collection of old manuscripts, he had sought access to it, being desirous to give the world some specimens of ancient Babylonian literature; but his profession of Mohammedanism made this a matter of no little difficulty. At length, however, partly by persuasion and

partly by money, he gained over the custodian of the manuscripts; and having obtained the much sought-for works, he devoted many years to a diligent study of their contents, and to the task of introducing them by Arabic versions to the knowledge of the world. In these versions he presents the appearance at least, if not the reality, of a careful and conscientious translator. He takes pains in many places to distinguish his own additions and comments from the statements of his original. He often remarks that a person or place mentioned in the original is unknown to him; and often that he does not understand the meaning of a word, or that he cannot clearly make out the drift of a sentence, or that a passage is illegible in the manuscript which he has before him. At the same time it is worthy of notice that these translations were not brought out by Ibn Wahshiyyah himself, and did not appear during his lifetime. They were for the most part written down from his dictation by a pupil named Ez-Zayyat, who gave them to the world after the death of his master.

If we may credit the statements of Ibn Wahshiyyah, the number of Nabathæan or Babylonian works placed at his disposal must have been pretty large. Among them were religious books, some of which belonged to the earliest times of Chaldæa; books of natural history, medicine, astrology; perhaps also books of astronomy and history. Of these works he does not profess to have translated more than a part, selected by himself; and of his professed translations only a part are known to be now extant. What remains, however, is by no means inconsiderable. If printed, for thus far only a few extracts have appeared in print-it would make some twenty-four hundred quarto pages of Arabic letter-press. It consists of three works, which are either complete or nearly so, with fragments of a fourth. The last is entitled "Mysteries of the Sun and Moon;" it treats of the production of plants and animals by artificial processes of a mystic or magical nature. We find here that the Frankenstein of Mary Woolstonecraft's grotesque but powerful fiction was anticipated, thousands of years since, by Ankebutha, a Babylonian sage, who professed to have created a man, and kept him alive for a whole year. The creature may