however, thus enjoy and amplify the minister of the English congregation in But while giving all due credit to Hopkins, as the zealous editor of the first complete version, and the contributor of fifty-eight translations, many of which are of great excellence, I cannot forget that he is peculiarly chargeable with any rudeness which has been ascribed generally to the volume. We have already observed that extraordinary and sovereign liberties were taken with the compositions of Sternhold after his death, and we may well be suspicious that the editorial supervision of Hopkins might give to the best contributions some inferior attributes. My notes would scarcely be fair, and my meaning would scarcely be obvious, were I not to quote a stanza by Hopkins, which alone has done much to bring the whole version into disrepute : PSALM LXXIV. 10 When wilt thou Lord once end this shame and cease thine enemies strong? Shall they alway blaspheme thy name and raile on thee so long? Why dost withdraw thy hand abacke O plucke it out, and be not slacke WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM, born in the county of Chester, and educated at Oxford, translated twelve of the Psalms, which generally appeared in the old version. He was reputed a man of great learning in England, but was an exile, first at Frankfort, and afterwards at Geneva, during the reign of Mary. He was ordained successor to John Knox, as Geneva, and was one of the translators of the Geneva Bible. In 1563 he was appointed Dean of Durham, but as he had received Presbyterial ordination, some zealous churchmen insisted that he should be re-ordained. This he sternly refused; and it was on this occasion that the Dean of York said. to Archbishop Sandys, that "Whittingham had been ordained in a better manner than even the archbishop himself." His versions of the Psalms are generally in peculiar metre, and are not so smooth as those of Sternhold or Hopkins: : PSALM XXXVII. 34 Waite thou on God and keepe his way The wicked have I seene most strong But suddenly he passed away and loe he was quite gone Then I him sought, but could scarce finde, the place where dwelt such one. Marke and behold the perfect man WILLIAM KEITH, another of the translators of the Geneva Bible, was, according to Warton and Strype, a native of Scotland. He had, however, been residing in England for some time before Mary's accession, and was then compelled to seek refuge on the continent. He translated at least eight Psalms, but there is reason to know that he was the author of others to which no initials were prefixed. After Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, he returned to England, and was a clergyman in Dorsetshire. I have to bespeak special attention to the specimen which I give of his translations; and my readers will at once see that it has been preserved almost word for word in the modern Scottish version,-and well worthy it was of being preserved, for it is the noblest translation that has yet appeared :— PSALM C. All people that on earth doe dwel The Lord, ye know, is God indeed, O enter then his gates with praise For why? The Lord our God is good To God who will his worke in me bring to perfection He will sende down from heaven above From the rebukes of wicked men that fayne wolde me devoure. &c., &c. JOHN CRAIG also translated a considerable number of the Psalms. He was of a respectable family in Scotland, and lost his father in early life on the fatal field of Flodden. The young man, after his father's death, pursued his studies at St. Andrews, and when his education there was finished went to England, and was tutor in the family of Lord Dacres. After a few years' absence he returned to Scotland, and was admitted into the ROBERT PONT, Commissioner of Moray, order of Dominican Friars; but he was and afterwards one of the ministers of suspected of heresy and cast into prison. St. Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh, The charge was found to be groundless, translated six Psalms. He was one of but on regaining his liberty he left Scotthe most notable men of his age, and held land, and after wandering from place to in the highest regard, alike by the Church | place reached Italy. Cardinal Pole took and the Crown, at a period when allegi- an interest in him, and promoted him to ance to the one was generally accounted a position of dignity in the Dominican hostility to the other. With permission of the General Assembly he accepted the place of a Senator of the College of Justice, but still retained and exercised the office of the ministry. James VI. proposed also to appoint him Bishop of Caithness, but he declined to accept the office without the consent of the Assembly. To show the estimation in which he was held, as a man of learning and accomplishment, he alone was, in 1601, instructed by the Assembly to revise the Psalms in metre ; ‡ but there is no notice of anything being done by him. He died in 1606, and was buried in St. Cuthbert's churchyard, where his tomb and epitaph may yet be seen : PSALM LVII. Be mercifull to me O God be mercifull to me For why? my soule in all assaultes shall ever trust in thee, And till these wicked stormes be past which ryse on everie syde, Under the shaddowe of thy wings my hope shall always byde. I will therefore call to the Lord who is moste high alone : • Booke of the Universall Kirk, 1572. monastery, at Bologna. Here he became convinced of the truth of the Protestant creed, and by advice of an old monk, to whom he confided his views, he left the monastery with the intention of taking refuge in a Protestant country. Alas! they knew not the snares with which he was surrounded. He was seized by the officers of the Inquisition, and confined for nine weary months in a dungeon. Then he was brought to trial, found guilty, and condemned to be burned as a heretic. But on the day preceding that which had been fixed for his death, Pope Paul IV. died, and, according to custom, all the prisoners in Rome were set at liberty. Those, however, who were charged with heresy were only formally liberated, and were always seized at the gate of the prison and led back to their dungeons ;-for heresy is the greatest of all crimes at Rome. But, in a tumult which was raised in the city, Craig contrived to make his escape at the very door of the prison, and after many singular adventures he came to Vienna. There, in 1560, he heard of the success of the reformed religion in his native country, and hastened home. He was appointed minister of the Canongate, was after We know so little of the other contri wards colleague of Knox, and eventually minister of Holyrood house. The follow-butors to the old version that nothing ing may not be an uninteresting specimen of the translations of one who had been long a prisoner for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ: PSALM CII. 19 For He from His high sanctuarie Hath looked downe below, And out of heaven hath the Lord That of the mourning captive He That they in Sion might declare Then, when the people of the land Shall be assembled for to doe very satisfactory or definite can be said regarding them. Thomas Norton, an English barrister, was the author of several translations, but, strange to say, his initials were confounded with those of John Mardley, who also translated some of the Psalms, so that now we cannot discriminate them. This old version was used in Scotland for nearly a hundred years, and we cannot look on it without the most interesting and solemn associations. It gave utterance to the intrepid and stern piety of the great men of the Scottish Reformation,-it educated the Scottish peasantry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, -it fostered everything intelligent, devoted, and chivalrous, which we revere in our Protestant annals. (To be Continued.) Notices of Books. of such subjects. The subject of man's bodily constitution is handled in a more satisfactory manner, though the treatment is hardly up to the science of the present day. The principal part of the volume is on God's government of His rational creatures-and a fair statement of the doctrines of revealed religion is given. The form and style are such that we may suppose the various chapters to have been delivered as pulpit discourses, and as such they are good average specimens of sermons suited to a country congregation. If there is no brilliancy, there is at the same time no questionable or novel doctrine. Every point is stated in a homely and unambitious way, and there is nothing to be met with to provoke criticism. It would not be fair to judge of the work as a philosophical performance, as it is chiefly occupied with good practical unpretending matter, such as occupies the attention of most country ministers every Sunday. The volume will repay perusal. A Sabbath School Sermon. By the REV. J. ELDER CUMMING, Minister of the East Kirk, Perth. "It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it."— MARK IV, 31, 32. We can hardly fail to notice the frequency with which Jesus Christ speaks of the natural world. His parables are of two kinds, one drawn from the homes and hearts of men, the other from the scenes and objects of nature. In the one he tells us of the husbandman and the householder, the master and the servant, the king and the subject, the rich man in his hall of feasting, and the poor beggar shivering at the gate. In the other he speaks of the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the sheep wandering into the wilderness, the seed choked by thorns, the fields white unto the harvest. There is always a certain sadness in the one kind of parables-sin, disorder, grief, shade the picture-a low undertone of melancholy breathes in every accent of the Redeemer as he speaks of the homes of men. But when he turns to nature, and portrays so simply, so vividly, the commonest object that we see around, it is almost with a voice of gladness-almost with a lingering admiration that he tells of them. I think no one can meditate on the way in which Jesus turns so often to the scenes of this world without feeling assured that to him they were objects of joy. It was not only that they taught so admirably the lessons of his Divine wisdom. It was not only that they were the pages of the universally read and universally understood book,-pages, whose prose is the farmer's richly laden field, whose poetry is now the music of the stream, and now the burst of the thunder on high-poetry and prose both read and loved, both comprehended and remembered, by the child and by the aged, by the barbarian and by the sage. It was not only that the natural and the 7.-VIII. material are but the rough engraving of the spiritual, embodying divine truths, and only waiting an interpreter to speak of heaven and of God. There was more than this. I cannot but feel that Jesus spoke from his pure love of nature too, and that he yearned for it with more than a poet's heart. Yes, common as they are to us, forgotten, unthought of, unimpressive, yet in the dewdrop there was a mystery, in the leaf there was an endless beauty, in the cloud, in the midnight sky, there was a lasting sublimity for Jesus Christ. The artisan from amid the crowded city, from its din, its smoke, its bustle, rejoices to be among the mountains, breathing the air that is perfumed only by the heather-bell. The sick man, leaving his weary bed and emerging from the chamber into which are crowded so many associations of gloom, of weakness, of apprehension, of the world fading, and of death drawing near, is glad-ah, how glad!—once more to feel the fresh breeze on his cheek, and to tread on the verdure of the field. But how much more must the weary soul of Jesus, that had looked into men's hearts all around, and seen nothing but defilement and enmity—that had striven with the souls of men only to find his love baffled and refused-tha had seen in every human being near him a godlike spirit sunk in debasement to the ground-that had seen his gifts slighted, his servants rejected, his Father dishonoured, his own blood despised,oh, how must that weary soul have turned away from the haunts of men, for a little to gaze on the serene face of nature, so little changed, still so lovely, still so eloquent a witness for God! The text forms one of those parables G taken from the objects of the world without. It is exceedingly simple. It is full of truth; and we can well fancy the force of it on the minds of the disciples, as Jesus might stop in his journey with them beside a mustard tree, and pointing to it, tell them, "The kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than the least of all seeds; but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches," -and adding, as a bird flew from one of them, "and the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it." I believe that our Lord meant by this parable to lead his disciples to meditate on at least three things,-the smallness of the seed or agency which God often employs, the influences which He brings to bear upon that seed or agency,-and the great results which issue from it. I shall endeavour, trusting to His blessing, to help your meditations on these truths. I. First of all, then, let me illustrate the truth, that the seed or agency employed by God in his works is often small. The kingdom of Heaven in its beginning is a grain of mustard seed. This is indeed the ordinary method of God's working. A gradual and progressive advance may be called the great law, according to which Nature and Providence shape their course. Life advances by the minutest changes, but these changes are incessant. The moment that a seed is placed in the ground, or even in water, it begins to germinate, and by the aid of a powerful instrument you can see it evidently shooting forth the beginning of its roots. You have watched this, suppose, in the case of a certain seed. You have thereafter planted it in the earth. Then I can tell you that generations afterwards, when there is a grave in yon churchyard, on whose head-stone the illegible name can no longer be deciphered to tell that it is yours, an oak-tree may wave its hundred branches near some patriarch's dwelling, and the cattle of the field may gather beneath it from the sun;—the tree whose tiny seed you saw first germinate upon your table. The parable of the mustard-seed is the divine symbol of Nature itself! Or look again at history. Who has not read of the great religious change on the continent of Europe-the change that broke the fetters and opened the prison doors of the Papacy, and by means of the glorious Reformation, established first a civil freedom which lasted for generations, and also, which was better far, religious truth and religious freedom, in many countries in Europe. Great was the change; and when the annals of Europe are read with care it is seen that there is not a single nation which does not owe to it some of its chief peculiarities,-that there is not a page in which the influence of it may not be traced. And what then was the source whence sprung the Reformation? With all seriousness, and with all truth, I affirm that the placing by a librarian of a book upon a certain shelf,—and that in a convent library,-was the occasion of it all. That book was the Bible. It was found on that shelf by a young and earnest monk. He read it, hung over it, was converted by it. That monk was Martin Luther, and his biography thereafter is written in the history of the world. But had that book been placed upon another shelf, or been cast aside into a corner, Luther might not have found it at that eventful crisis, and Germany have been still in willing bondage unto Rome. Or we may go still farther back in the long march of providence, to see fully the force of this striking truth. Look abroad upon the world,-its sin,-its misery,—its death, in every age and every country, on every home with its shadows falling over it, and every eye with its tears gathering in it, and every heart with its sorrows and its wounds. Look without at the disorder and the crime of men. Look within at untold sins and griefs. Think of the world's ambitions and its bloody wars; of its fevers and its plagues; of its drunkenness and its vice; of its murders and its crimes. Think of its lonely sick-beds, and its cold ocean-covered graves. A spectacle of woe, over which, we may suppose, the Guardian Angel's eye is hardly ever free from a tear. Yet, speaking reverently, all this has been the fruit of a moment,— |