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    it may be sublime and elegant , if a moral treatise , it may be correct , perspicuous and impressive—although it cannot with truth be ascribed to the writer whose name it bears , or even although it should be anonymous .

    In judging , however , from whose p > en it proceeded , internal testimony deserves our attention . There are cases in which this kind of testimony will soon determine the question affirmatively : there are many in which it will for ever set it at rest negatively . Authors who do not mean to deceive

    us , and who , with this view , do not adopt the style and manner and sentiments of a remote age and country , will usually exhibit marks of the time , the spot and the circumstances i n which they arise . In proportion , too , as sound criticism is cultivated , an at *

    tempt to impose on the world , by personating , as it were , some illustrious poet , historian or moralist , will become more impracticable . It is evident , therefore , that a serious composition may contain signs of truth and nature which will direct us—if not

    to the framer of it , yet—to the period and the scene of its origin . Let us apply these general observations to the book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon . That it makes no part of the Jewish canon , is an uncontradicted and

    indisputable fact . Now if it were the production of Solomon , can we believe that his countrymen would not have classed it together with the Proverbs and the Ecclesia $ tes > that they would not have placed considerable value on ; i work of their wise and favourite

    monarch ? Will it be pretended that they were not better judges of the question than modern critics ? This were too much to concede . Yet , even could the concession be fairly demanded

    and made , criticism , whether ancient or modern , must pronounce , on internal evidence , that the book of wisdom was written in an age long subsequent to Solomon ' *

    If we may argue ( as we , assuredly , may ) from the composition itself , we must conclude that its author lived after the captivity in Babylon , During * their exile there , the Jews seem

    * Gray s Key to the Old Testament and Apocrypha , ( Ed . vi ) 576 . EichhoriTs Eintait : in die apokryph : Scliriftcn des A * T ,. 163 . 164 .

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    to have borrowed some parts of ^ lla * I am entitled to call the mytho logy of their conquerors : manifest traces of it present themselves in the book of wisdom t and hence there can be no difficulty iu overthrowing- the hypo , thesis of its early date .

    By some commentators it has been assigned to Philo of Alexandria . If this opinion be correct , the book was written subsequently to the birth of Christ ; an inference which certain

    modern adventurers in literature and theology are eager to admit . W here nevertheless , shall we find any proof either direct or presumptive , of the celebrated Philo being- the author of

    the Wisdom ? Eichhorn , in his valuable remarks on it , has brought together not a few instances of dissimilarity between passages in that writer ' s acknowledged works , and others in the composition which is the subject of the present inquiry %

    The conjecture ( for it is nothing more ) that this composition was framed by some Christian , with whose name we are unacquainted , takes its origin from an erroneous reference of two or

    three parts of the Wisdom to the founder and the doctrines of the Gospel . It is assumed that the author has purposely drawn a portrait of Jesus Christ in his representation of a righteous character ; that he adverts to the Christian

    doctrine-of a life to come ; and thattljje moral spirit of his book proclaims his knowledge of Christianity . ^ Now his picture of a good man is , in truth , much too general to have been copied from any individual , or to be thus confined in its application : nor does it exhibit

    features specifically resembling those of our Saviour . Although a future existence , moreover , be brought to light by the Christian dispensation , yet the Jews of a former period were not ignorant of the tenet : obvious traces of it may be seen in their cadis

    nonical writings ; and the grand - tinction of the religion of Jesus is the establishment of the assurance of the resurrection of the dead upon the fact of his own . In this treatise nothing occurs which is inconsistent with tne creed of a Jew > nothing which necessarily implies that it is the production

    f Ch . ii . 24 . xix . 18 . . % Einleitiing in die apok . Schnft , < w A . T . 172—177 . § Chap . ii . iii . iv . * .

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    474 ' Essay on the Apocryphal Bock of Wisdom .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1815, page 474, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1763/page/10/