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6. Of the Nazarites (persons devoted to the Lord), and their vows (in 9 chapters).

7. Of adultery: its suspicions and proofs (in 9 chapters). Section IV. Of damages and litigation. This section comprises the whole of the civil law of the Jews, and is divided into ten Tractates :

1. Of the damages and injuries suffered by men or beasts (in 10 chapters).

2. Of things found and deposited, of interests, hire, and farming (in 10 chapters).

3. Of neighbourhood, inheritance, legacy, successions, buying and selling, also the forms of legal contracts (in 10 chapters).

4. Of the Sanhedrim (Senate), common law, evidence of witnesses, capital punishment, and of false prophets, etc. (in 11 chapters).

5. Of corporeal punishment (forty strokes), places of refuge for persons who had committed murder by accident, of false witnesses, etc. (in 3 chapters).

6. Of examination of witnesses, etc. (in 8 chapters).

7. Of wrong sentences delivered by the judges (in 8 chapters). This is without Gemarah.

8. Of idolatry and intercourse with Gentiles; of the sorts of food that may be enjoyed with non-Jews; of the prohibition of images, of wine, etc. (in 5 chapters).

9. Of the fathers (N) and their sayings (in 6 chapters). Without Gemarah.

10. Of statutes regulating civil cases, judgments, punishments, etc. (in 3 chapters).

Section V. Of things devoted to God, sacrifices, first-born, and their ransom. This section contains eleven Tractates:1. Of sacrifices, and the animals suited for the purpose (in 14 chapters).

2. Of the evening and morning sacrifices of food (in 13 chapters).

3. Of the first-born belonging to their priests, and of their ransoms, etc. (in 9 chapters).

4. Of clean and unclean animals (in 12 chapters).

5. Of the valuation of things devoted to God (in 9 chapters). 6. Of the changing of the sacrifices; how far it may be effected (in 7 chapters).

7. Of sacrilege, and violation of the laws concerning sacrifices, etc. (in 6 chapters).

8. Of the expiation of sins (in 6 chapters).

9. Of the daily sacrifices (in 6 chapters).

10. Of the size of the second temple (in 5 chapters). Without Gemarah.

11. Of birds'-nests, and birds which the poor may bring as sacrifices (in 3 chapters). Without Gemarah.

Section VI. Of cleanliness, and the various kinds of uncleanliness in man, beast, and food; how cleanliness is to be effected and proceeded with; of leprosy and bathing. This section contains twelve Tractates:

1. Of vessels, garments, dwellings, and house utensils; in what manner they become unclean, and how they are rendered clean again (in 30 chapters).

2. Of tents and houses; their cleansing, etc. (in 18 chapters). 3. Of leprosy (in 14 chapters).

4. Of the red cow and her ashes, i. e., of being rendered unclean by a human corpse, and by ashes of the red cow (in 12 chapters).

5. Of cleanliness and uncleanliness generally (in 10 chapters). 6. Of the erection of baths for both sexes (in 10 chapters). 7. Of female purity (in 10 chapters).

8. Of rendering vegetables clean to be used as food, and of the dishes newly manufactured; how to render them clean (in 6 chapters).

9. Of pollutions, etc. (in 5 chapters). 10. Of daily ablutions (in 4 chapters). 11. Of hand-washing (in 4 chapters).

12. Of the stalks of fruit (in 3 chapters).

The Talmud contains, besides, seven Apocryphal books,

viz. :

1. A commentary, in 41 chapters, on the sayings of the fathers.

2. A Tractate on writers or copyists, which teaches the mode of writing the law scrolls (in 21 chapters).

3. Of mourning (in 14 chapters).

4. Of brides: how to choose, to adorn, and to treat them (in 1 chapter).

5. Of worldly and social intercourse (in two Tractates of 11 and 6 chapters respectively).

6. Of times of peace (in 1 chapter).

7. Of light. (This writing is supposed to have been composed long before the Talmud, by Simon Ben Jochai. It is in the Aramean dialect, and treats of the Cabalah (mysticism).

THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER.«

PREACHERS seem very slow to avail themselves of the advice which has lately been lavished upon them by the "secular " press. Religion and daily life are perpetually coming into contact, in spite of solemn warnings, and endeavours more or less honourable to keep them completely separate. Such journals as The Times and the Saturday Review, though they very frequently pass their judgments upon the Church, and sometimes even upon theological dogmas, do so always under protest, and as if graciously condescending to the weaknesses of common mortals. There are many people in a Christian country who, for some reason or other, spend a good deal of their time in reading the Bible and in the worship of God. Moreover, it has somehow come to pass that the Church, represented by certain lords spiritual, is an Estate of the Realm. It has its place in Parliament, vast possessions, and a status perhaps higher than any other, excepting that of the Sovereign. Indeed, not a few of the Queen's prerogatives belong to her as Head of the Church; while in fact the law refuses to separate the Church from the nation. And so the leading journals are compelled to humour those little weaknesses which are able to express themselves so strongly. The dis-establishment of religion would require a change, root and branch, of all English law and administration. Whether for good or for evil, it would unquestionably alter the royal prerogative, the constitution of Parliament, and the general feeling of Englishmen about religion. Englishmen might be better or worse for the change, but they would certainly be different. Religion, therefore, must needs be discussed in the leading journals; not indeed on the Divine side, as the mystic bond which unites the spirits of men with Him who made them in His own image, but on the commercial side, as a thing the nation pays for with hard cash. The priest and the policeman are equally needed, bought, paid for, tolerated, dismissed, at the nation's will; and for that reason

Sermons on Our Lord Jesus Christ, and on His Blessed Mother. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. Dublin: James Duffy. 1864.

Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of God; with a Preface, addressed to Laymen, on the present position of the Clergy of the Church of England, and an Appendix, on the testimony of Scripture and the Church as to the possibility of pardon in the future State. By the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, M.A. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1864.

The Divine Treatment of Sin. By James Baldwin Brown, B.A. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder. 1864.

Sermons preached in Manchester. By Alexander Maclaren. London and Cambridge: Macmillan. 1863.

they both alike are subjected to the criticism of that noble institution the British press.

But in the superabundance of its benevolence the British press has sometimes condescended to give such advice to the ministers of religion as might prevent their being ignominiously dismissed by the people who pay them their wages. "You are a poor stupid set," says the echo, if not the voice, of public opinion; "but really if you would not mind acknowledging it, and remaining true to what you must know is your character, we don't mind trying to put up with your silliness. The fact is, we don't care a straw about anything you say to us; but Sunday is an extremely slow day, and we shouldn't in the least know what to do with it unless we went to Church. But we never dream of going to Church to be made to think, to be teazed and worried and argued with: much less do we go to Church to be told how to manage our daily business, and upon what principles to buy and sell and get gain. A silly sermon is of course entirely uninteresting, but it doesn't irritate us; we can sit quietly for twenty minutes till it's over, and be thankful that once a week at least we are relieved from the anxiety of consulting price lists and telegrams, and required only with moderate decorum to listen dreamily to subjects which may be either true or false without our losing a single penny."

"On the whole, therefore," say some of our leading journals, "it is decidedly better that sermons should be silly and stupid; people go to Church to rest, to be comforted, to be, as it were, gently patted on the back and sent home again in peace. If a man has spent thousands of pounds in advertising lies in every newspaper in the British empire, he must no doubt have suffered considerable anxiety; and how extremely cruel it would be in any minister of religion, when what the poor victim mainly requires is consolation and repose, to torture him by the ungenerous insinuation that advertising lies is only one of the many ways in which men break the Commandment, Thou shalt not steal.' And the fiery bigot who all through the week has been persuading himself that the perfection of religion consists in hating all those persons who differ from himself in their opinions about innumerable difficult and abstract propositions, does not go to God's house to be reminded that God is love, and whosoever loveth is born of God;' on the contrary, he expects to be reminded that the zeal of God's house is eating him up,' and that to hate the Prodigal Son is the quickest road to the affections of his Father. And the timid believer who is so entirely uncertain about the foundations of his own NEW SERIES.-VOL. V., NO. X.

faith that he dares not on any consideration ask what they are, expects to be told that all is safe and calm, and that every rash enquiry and unholy denial has been long since hushed to silence. Why don't the ministers of religion humour these little weakresses, and let pious people have their own way? They are not paid for troubling Israel, why not let people be at peace?" That is the question which the secular journals have asked so often.

The four books whose titles are at the head of this article, are a clear proof that, whatever the secular press may think, the ministers of religion believe that they have something more to do in this world than to receive wages; that in fact their work would remain exactly what it is, though it would be harder for themselves to do it, if they received no wages at all. One is by a Cardinal; another by an Anglican Rector; another by a Congregationalist; another by a Baptist; and all these preachers are men of note, among the leaders of the several sections of the Church to which they belong. It would indeed be ridiculous to assert that these volumes contain fair samples of the preaching which may be heard every Sunday in church or chapel. They are very far indeed above the average. Nothing can exceed the imbecillity of the sentimental twaddle which is unfortunately to be heard in nearly every Roman Catholic pulpit in this country. Even in the English Church there are many country parishes in which the wearied listener can scarcely fail to be lulled to sleep by the dull monotony and empty verbiage of his appointed instructor. And there are conventicles where sermons are preached, of which it is the very highest merit that no human memory can retain them. And in all sections of the Church there are only too often extravagances of fanaticism, outrages upon taste and decorum and reverence, which are immeasurably more mischievous than the utmost barrenness of clerical imbecillity. But none of the sermons in the volumes before us are feeble or common-place. Widely as they differ from each other, and widely as their authors differ from each other, there is an unmistakeable earnestness and ability; a knowledge of much truth and anxiety to communicate it; a conviction that godliness is the foundation of human blessedness, and that there is a blessedness which we may build upon that foundation; a belief that God and man, separated as they seem to be by an infinite distance, are yet divinely united-there is this, and much more than this, in which they all agree. And it must not be forgotten that if sermons such as these are rare and exceptional, an average sermon is as near to the best as it is to the worst, and that there are as many sermons above the average as there are below it. Nothing is gained by pretending that

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