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    PALESTINE. *

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    is least known ; sad thus to the ancient and the foreign . The sons of the fatherland should not be forgotten ¦ ¦ : but the more illustrious they , are , the less is it needful that ought but the outline of their lives ' should be presented ; , for it is to be presumed that readers are already acquainted wiihevery incident in their career . From histories of India and from other sources , we have learned the minutest particulars connected with Warren Hastings . But with the doings of Albuquerque we have not had the same means of becoming intimate . It is Albuquerque ^ therefore , and not Warren Hastings , whose biography should be delineated in detail . Who is ignorant of the parts played by Johnson and Goldsmith in England p How few , even among the intelligent , are aware what . Jjessing and Herder were to Germany—to mankind ? In the " " New General

    Biography , " we have further to condemn an insane ^ exaggeration , whenever Frenchmen whose renown has really pierced beyond France come on the scene . We never speak of the great Milton , or the great Shakspearej but the declamatory CorneiUe is t 6 the French the great Corneille . We never speak of the great Marlborough , or the great Wellington , ' but the French have the great Conde . We have kings superior to Henry IV ., and to Louis XIV . © f France but we have never thought of signalizing them by the unfortunate and ill-used adjective employed to introduce to us Henry the Great , and Louis the Great . When dealing with Bossuet , the " New General Biography" staggers under the burden of

    superlatives . Bossuet was a gifted rhetorician : whose rhetoric , ho werer , was continually exploding into bombast . Eloquent in any sense , but a French senise he certainly was not . The pliant tool of Louis XTV ., a persecutor , and the promoter and defender of persecution , a man with all the wisdom of the serpent , and but little of the iiarmlessness of the dove , Bbssuet is as unsatisfactory to us in his moral as in his intellectual aspects . But here we have him depicted as the ' unrivalled orator , and as the--last , and we suppose the loftiest , of the Christian fathers . We detest Ibis idiotic extravagance , 'which could impose On no nation but a nation so vain and childish as the French . In the " New

    General ; Biography'' we , in addition , are inclined to quarrel with the French standard / which is applied to everything . A Freiichman makes his own individuality the test of creation ; a German , by an instinctive metempsychosis , transfigures himself into everything he communes with , even if it were only the paltriest of inorganic substances .. An Englishman 'does neither the brie nor the other , but does something between the two . This hitting of the lsppymean is not instinctively noble nor sage ; it may be explained in fashion unflattering enough . In any case you are nearer the truth ' with either a , German or : an English standard than . with' a French standard . A Frenchman cannotreader understand Richter or Jeremy Taylor , or , the magnificent rhapsodist John Wilson ,, or ought that Nature has stupendously endowed . Give him a man of science to describe , or the performances of a man of science to chronicle , and he is unsurpassed . Iu the lucid , vivid exposition of scientific discoveries , the French are . easily and sublimely masters . A Frenchman can render even the scientific facts interesting which

    you do not distinctly understand— -do not , indeed , care to learn anything about . Frenchmen alone , therefore , can write the biography of a primordial scientific genius . Perhaps , also , in what relates to wai' as a science they cannot , as writers , be equalled . Read "Foy ' s History of the Peninsular War , " you seize with your sharp and sudden brain war as a science . Read " Napier ' s History of the Peninsular War , " you seize with the poetry and sympathy of your soul war as an art * But how confined is the range of subjects to which the brilliant French mathematical method can be applied ; aaid therefore how defective and deceptive must be the French standard of biography ! Nothing of what precedes have we

    intended in the way of depreciation . We are grateful to the Didots for their comprehensive work , and for the many admirable articles which we find in every one of the volumes . We have simply wished to herald and to help the coming of a similar work : in England , which should avoid th& faults of its French predecessor ; . which should be more fruitful , complete , and perfect . Criticism has no worth , except as a creative force . Biography is an essential part of a nation ' s food ; and the more that a nation excels in biography , the more abundantly it finds a precious and indispensable spiritual nourishment . The best modem historiana are ours ; let ours likewise be the best modern biographers .

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    THE moat hackneyed subjects are often those which a gifted man can make the freshest , and for a very simple ronson . Having 1 passed from hand to hand till they are no longer recognisable , they stir his heart to irush back with a- great bound , toward their source and essence . Few subjects are so haokneyed as Palestine ; it seems as if the thousand books published year after year about Palestine were b \ it different editions of the same book , M . Munk , n distinguished scholar of Israelitish descent , has contrived to give us a volume with the breeze and the odour of life gladdening every page . The work is marked by vast erudition , by a reverent spirit , by n onthplio sympathy , by patriotic ardour , by courageous criticism , and by a popular style . It perhaps could only have been produced either in France , or Germany j for hitherto , m England * everything relating to Palestine , has been treated with a slavish superstition , as hostile to piety as to truth , or with a rabid infidelity intolerably offensive . The superstition and the infidelity are the incessant reactions against

    Palestine. *

    each other , and both aHke remote from ^ rea ijty , "Whatever becomes of creeds , Palestine will ever remain one of the world ' s great central facts . , The striking physical features of the land ; the indestructible vitality of the Hebrew race ; - ^ the strange destiny of this race , as inwoven with the destiny of &p many other races ; jfche peculiarities of the Bible and the influence of its teachings on religious developments , —enthrone Palestine on a pinnacle which must eternally remain unassailable by scepticism . But the more conspicuous the position which Palestine has achieved , the more sacred the garment in which it hath enwrapped itself , the bolder , if the devouter , should be our brow as we draw near to this puissant agency , this fruitful memory . Such a free offspring of the desert , on the verge of the desert , should be approached with freedom , a freedom scorning both a cold rationalism and a mechanical faith . The friends and foes of Palestine and the Bible in England

    determine to find nothing in either but their own meagre misconceptions or absurd fore-conceptions . Not what Palestine is , but what they resolve it shall be , —not what the Bible says , but what they compel it to say , this is the Palestine , this the Bible which they offer us . Now M . Munk conies with no pedantic scheme whereto he forces Palestine , and the Bible to adapt themselves ; lie comes with genial glance to see , with loving heart to interpret . His conclusions do not agree with a rigorous orthodoxy , but they must just be as little to the taste of those who regard the whole of . religion as a priestly imposture . There is a strong presumption against the notions held by many bigoted Christians respecting Palestine and the Bible , in the circumstance that those notions contradict the ideas uniformly held by the

    Hebrews on Hebrew things . Surely we should suppose the Hebrews to be best acquainted with Hebrew institutions and customs , with llosaism , and with the meaning and design of Hebrew books . But Christian zealots practically maintain that nbne are so ignorant of Hebraism as the Hebrews . What meets us on the threshold of all but inquiries ^ is the question touching the hdmogeneousness and unity of the Bible . This is a question which the fanatics of our day refuse to discuss . Till , however , it is discussed as M . Munk , with immense learning , with admirable taste , and with what we may almost call -filial tenderness ; , discusses it , religion , as derived from the Bible , has no more powerful pillars to rest 011 than the cant of the conventicle , the selfishness of the

    hierarchy , and the fear and credulity of the multitude * _ It has first to be ascertained who gathered a mass of Hebrew and Greek documents into one , and named them the Bible or Book ¦ secondly , who conferred on such persons the right and authority to do so . If those who fixed the canon , as it is designated , had no right or authority , except what they in their arrogance , or ambition , or enthusiasm , assumed , then each book of the Bible must be tried by its own merits . The foremost German theologians of recent times saw that this was an indispensable process . And how much has religion in Germany gained by the valiant , comprehensive , unbiassed criticism , to which theologians have subjected each portion of the Bible ! A good deal has been said about Bibliolatry by Dr . Arnold and others , but they have shrunk from the only remedy for the evil .

    Criticism of the profoundesti of the most honest , but of the most pious kind , must do its work here as in Germany . It is known that after Rationalism had its reign in Germany—then Straussism , far sublimer views of the Bible and of religion began to prevail , and now prevail in that land of mighty thought arid marvellous erudition . We ave far from thinking thaiT religion is dependant on external evidence , for religion is the eternal revelation in the human breast , to which every external revelation must be simply a correspondence . This is the leading principle of mysticism ; and it lias our cordial concurrence . It was the proclamation of Christ , it is the proclamation of the deepest religious . experience 1 bhat the kingdom of God is within a man . But the timid disciples of Christ , — distrusting : Christ himself , foolishly dream that if criticism , even

    the most legitimate , touches the Bible , religion dies j as if religion were not of all human sentiments , of all human influences the most commtanding and imperishablev It is overlooked by those who are the champions of the Bible ' s unity and homogenoousness , and of its plenary , litei'al inspiration , that , not only have thus countless contradictions to be reconciled , that what may appear the least noble portions of fine Bible drag down to their own level the noblest , and that a painful , unnatural monotony is the result . Sucn , works as Paine ' s " Affe of Reason" owe the baleful empire which they have obtained , among the mass of the people entirely to the do 6 trine of the Bible ' s unity and homogeneousness . The ribaldry of those worlis may remain , but their wib and logic go for nothing the moment the common theory of the Bible is abandoned , For instance ; the epicurean p hilosophy taught in the Book of Ecolesiastes does not harmonise—is in fierce contrast with the godlike

    self-sacrifice both taught and practised by Christ . Is not the precept of that self-sacrifice invincible P is not the example thereof immortal , whatever may be the weight' or . the worth of tl ) o Book of Bcelesiastes P Again , most fervent worshippers of the Almighty feel that the Book of Jonah , as an exact and faithful historical record , adds not much to the dignity of the Bible . Accept it , however , as a parable , and it may have its own significance and suggestiveness . If it is to be read as an exact and faithful historical record " , why should Christians niarvel that the Hindoos devour such mad and monstrous incredibilities P Again , the ablest and most enlightened theologians confess that at least a third of whafc passes as the Book of Isaiah , cannot have been uttered by that most stupendous of . ell the prophets ; that the whole of the latter part is a sort of prophetical anthology , From this confession Isaiah ' s glory is neither diminished nor eclipsed , while propheoy remains the same

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    13 g The Leader and Saturday Analyst . | Feb . 11 , 1860 .

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    * JPaloattnt ) t—JPofoription GWograpMztto , Mistoriq . no ot Arohiologiq ^ Far , S . Munk . Paris . JDidot .

    Palestine. *

    PALESTINE . *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1860, page 138, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2333/page/14/