faith have, however, long been safely survived. Why should not survival, and even improvement, be likewise anticipated from a brave and calm handling of the new critical discoveries which have recently been committed to our trust? Yet, says Professor Robertson Smith,

'I have met with many persons who admit that they can detect no flaw in the critical argument by which the dates of the codes are established, but who yet suspend their judgment, and are tempted to regard the whole Pentateuch question as a hopeless puzzle, because they cannot understand how the Mosaic history is to be read in the light of the new critical discoveries.' (New edition, p. 389.)

Precisely in the same way, on the first announcement of the Copernican astronomy in 1543, every teacher of the established Ptolemaic system complained that the Universe had become to him a hopeless puzzle.' But the remedy was speedily and entirely satisfactory. He had nothing to do but to transfer his didactic standpoint from the earth to the sun, and to begin by fixing attention on the true centre of all planetary movements, and then the imagination of his pupils was at once enkindled, their intelligence satisfied, their curiosity aroused. And just so it may easily be, at the present moment, in religious teaching--if Christian teachers will only begin at the central point and pivot of all sacred history; will firmly and boldly take their stand on the appearance of Christ in the world; and from that point will look backwards through all the deepening mist and haze of the old world's religious history; instead of hopelessly trying to begin with Adam and Eve at B.c. 4004, and so work their stumbling way forwards towards Christ. Viewed from that centre, everything (as in the Heliocentric system) falls into its true and natural place. The Hagiographa is then seen, at A.D. 1, in the air and in actual process of being precipitated for synagogue reading; while other literary ingredients such as Enoch,' Wisdom,' Maccabees,' Esdras,' Solomon's Psalter,' the Assumption of Moses,' and many curious products of later Jewish piety-were still suspended and regarded as 'Apocrypha,' unworthy of public recognition at the lectern. Then behind that cloudy stratum appears, already formed and canonised, the prophetical collection of narratives and orations, shading off (as all literatures do) from prose into poetry, and from the plain naturalism of the Chaldæan siege in 2 Kings, back to the misty stories of Elijah and the ravens, Samson and Delilah, and Joshua commanding the sun to stand still. Then behind that stratum

again appears the primeval system of legislation, codified under Moses' name and breathing his spirit; but shading off (like the rest) into the mysterious past, and illustrating itself by free use of history, myth, and legend; till, far beyond all ken of clear intelligence, loom large the panSemitic traditions about a universal deluge and the Tower of Babel and the giants and the golden age in Paradise and the divine creation of the world.

Viewed in this way, the Bible becomes the most interesting of all books. It is no longer a magical and infallible oracle verbally and syllabically inspired; but a perfectly veracious and divinely simple record of the growth and developement of God's Church-from the beginning down to the Apostolic age-describing in full its successive essays in organisation, its failures and victories, its achievements of saints and heroes; giving in perfect good faith its legends of Jonah and his whale, of Balaam and his ass, of Samson and his lion; and weaving-in many lovely myths, and dreams, and poems-the angels' ladder, the rainbow covenant of hope and peace for animals as well as men, the garden of sweet innocence and of sad primæval fall. For, as Archbishop Benson so admirably says, 'Are we prepared to lay it down, as a thing not to be credited, that the Spirit of God has used 'what we now call "myth "?'* No one, in these days, after so many surprises about God's methods both in nature and in history, is prepared to do anything so certainly rash, and so possibly blasphemous. And thus the Old Testament becomes, at last,-what it was surely intended to be—a help, and not a hindrance, to the Christian Church; an illustration, and not a perplexing obscuration, of God's ways with man; and a subject for the most enthusiastic study for all lovers of truth and all believers in God's gradual revelation of it to the world. Hence, we are persuaded that, with the key now providentially given, and all the old puerilities ́ and absurdities and misunderstandings fairly set aside, a new era of vigour and joyful progress is on the point of dawning upon the Christian Church. The heathen will no longer have to complain that worse demands are made on their credulity by the missionaries than by their own priests; nor will Jewish pride be any longer encouraged to build up those childish cloud-castles of God's supposed blind favouritism, which have fortified them-more than any other prejudice-against

* Archbishop Benson, Charge at Canterbury Diocesan Conference, 1890.

surrender to their own true Christ. And when by their aid, -scattered as they now are, and in intimate touch with every nation under heaven-Christians shall have learnt, at last, to understand the intrinsic Orientalism of their own scriptures, and by Hebrew aid to translate them truly into Western forms of thought, then perhaps that forecast of St. Paul may find fulfilment, which shall prove him to have been a prophet indeed. Jesus of the New Testament is the Messiah of the Old Testament;' that was to him the central pivot of all his teaching. And if-with far broader practical knowledge of multifarious mankind than was possible to him, with all the profundities and subtleties of German criticism at our disposal, and with the fresh breath of our own liberty to supply energy to all social and mental efforts, -the British school of biblical study should at length persuade the Jews, whom our nation has of late so steadily befriended, to join them in loyal service to the only Messiah whom the world has ever seen, or can now ever hope to see; and to consecrate themselves to a united enterprise in furtherance of a reasonable and Christo-centric study of the Bible; then it may surely come to pass that the twentieth century shall see, what the nineteenth century has failed to understand, the meaning of that hitherto unsolved enigma of the great Apostle: If the casting away of the Jews has been the reconciling of the Gentile world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?'

ART. VIII.—1. A History of Savings Banks. By WILLIAM LEWINS.

2. Origin and Progress of the System of Post Office Savings Banks.

1871.

3. The Law relating to Trustee and Post Office Savings Banks. By U. A. FORBES.

IN

4. Annual Reports of the Postmaster-General. 1862-1892. N an early number of this Journal we devoted several pages to the subject of Savings Banks, and gave an account of the working of the then recently established and still flourishing Edinburgh Savings Bank. We directed attention to the absurdity of using the plural number in describing these institutions, but our protest was too late, and the etymological blunder has been perpetuated in Acts of Parliament as well as in the usage of everyday life. Wherever English is spoken banks for saving are called savings banks, though in other languages they are more correctly designated. The Germans have their Sparkassen, the French their caisses d'épargne, and the Italians their casse di risparmio. Each of these nations claims the honour of having originated savings banks. The claim of Italy rests upon the doubtful assumption that the monti di pietà, founded by St. Bernardino of Siena in the fifteenth century, were banks rather than pawnshops. The claim of Germany is better supported. A savings bank was established at Hamburg at least as early as the year 1780, and considerable sums of money were deposited, but when Napoleon invaded Germany he confiscated the whole of them. In Switzerland savings banks were founded at Berne, Basle, and Geneva between 1787 and 1794. In England two savings banks were in existence before the close of the eighteenth century, at Tottenham and at Wendover in Buckinghamshire. The first was started for women and children by Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield, a benevolent inhabitant of the village, and its scope was gradually enlarged. In 1804 it was more fully organised; Mr. Eardley Wilmot, M.P., became one of the trustees, and it continued until 1866, when the deposits were transferred to the Post Office Savings Bank. About the same time that Mrs. Wakefield began her club the Reverend Joseph Smith, vicar of Wendover, invited his parishioners to entrust to him for safe keeping any money they could spare in sums of not less than twopence. He

VOL. CLXXVI. NO. CCCLXII.

K K

undertook to keep an exact account of all moneys he received, and repay them with interest at Christmas, or earlier if necessary, and, by way of encouragement to depositors, he gave them a dinner once a year. The bank was open on Sunday evenings, apparently to afford the parishioners an opportunity of obeying St. Paul's injunction to the church at Corinth: Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store.' The Wendover bank existed for several years, and had about sixty subscribers, who invested from five to ten pounds apiece every season.

The example of Tottenham and Wendover was quickly followed in other places. Many eminent persons took up the idea of savings banks, and assisted in founding and managing them. Lord Lansdowne was president of the Bath Savings Bank, which was begun in 1808 by Lady Isabella Douglas; Mr. George Rose established the Southampton Savings Bank in 1815, and Sir John Acland the Exeter and Devon Savings Bank in the following year. These banks, and many others started about the same time, were purely voluntary associations, and had no special legal sanction or protection. As early, however, as 1807, Mr. Whitbread, in the course of a long and able speech on the poor laws, suggested the formation of a National Savings Bank. His plan was so bold that we think it well to give it in his own words:

:

'I beg honourable gentlemen not to start at what I am about to suggest, which to many who hear me may be quite new. I would propose the establishment of one great national institution in the nature of a bank for the use and advantage of the labouring classes alone; that it should be placed in the metropolis, and be under the control and management of proper persons; that every man who shall be certified by one justice of the peace to subsist on the wages of his own labour shall be at liberty to remit any sum from 20s. upwards, but not exceeding 201. in any one year, and not more than 2007. in the whole.'

The money was to be remitted, with the intervention of 'the Post Office,' for investment in Government stock, in the names of commissioners appointed for the purpose. Mr. Whitbread also proposed to afford facilities for the purchase of small annuities and for the insurance of lives within certain limits; but he was not successful in persuading the House of Commons to sanction his plan, which was in abeyance for nearly half a century, and he could hardly have foreseen the tremendous impetus it would, when adopted, give to thrift and economy, or that a bank founded