broidered with gold that the poles which supported them were as thick as the masts of ships, and some of them were from thirty-five to forty feet in height."* On his birthday, Aurungzebe was weighed in golden scales (unfortunately for his retinue he was remarkably slender), against perfumes and artificial fruits of gold; these the emperor scattered with his own hands among his courtiers. Many hundred elephants marched before him in companies, most gorgoously caparisoned, and the leading elephant in each company had his head plated with gold, and his breast set with rubies and emeralds. This great Mogul was not content with less than seven thrones. The richest of them was the famous Peacock throne, called so because a part of it resembled the expanded tail of a peacock, the natural colors of which were imitated by skilfully blending together sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and diamonds. Tavernier, a French jeweller, who visited Delhi in 1665, and saw this throne, estimated that its cost exceeded $30,000,000! The Imperial army consisted of 60,000 horsemen, and 100,000 infantry. The number of suttlers and camp followers was nearly half a million. The camp itself was thirty miles in circuit. But all this power and splendor could not avert death. In 1707, after reigning half a century, Aurengzebe died. With his death began the rapid decline of the Mogul dynasty. His successors were weak-minded profligates, whom Lord Macaulay graphically describes as "sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntering away life in secluded palaces, listening to buffoons, chewing bang, and fondling concubines." Thirty years after Aurungzebe's death, Nadir Shar, a sanguinary Persian invader, sacked Delhi, massacred a countless host, bore away in triumph the peacock throne of the Moguls, and the Koh-i-noor mountain of light, which glittered in the London Crystal Palace of 1851, together with five hundred millions of gold and treasures. Soon the fiery beacons of the terrible Mahrattas gleamed in triumph from the minarets of the mosques of Delhi. And here, in 1764, four years after the famous battle of Plassy, the Moslem dominion in India may be properly said to end. In this very rapid sketch of Indian history, we have forborne to make any comments on the awful miseries which the irruptions of these successive conquerors inflicted on the teeming millions of the country. The political history of India, so far back as we can trace it, presents a most gloomy picture, with a deep, dark perspective of wretchedness and degradation, of * Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. ii., p. 479. civil wars and lawless violence, of an iron despotism everywhere triumphant. During this long and dismal period, dynasty succeeded dynasty; the aboriginal king gave way to the Hindu chieftain, the Hindu chieftain to the Moslem tyrant, the Moslem tyrant to the Tartar despot; but neither Hindu, Moslem, nor Tartar, .brought to the suffering people any mitigation of their woes, or gladdened their hearts with the hope of brighter days. The carnage which attended these conquests is heart-sickening. We give a single example. It was the boast of Nadir Shah, the Persian usurper, that in his march on Delhi he himself had massacred more than a hundred thousand human beings who had never done him wrong; and again, in one of his desolating raids, this second "scourge of God" built an immense pyramid out of the skulls of those who had fallen victims to his relentless scimitar. At sight of a picture like this, what man recoils not in affright? But suddenly the fierce battle-cry of "England and Saint George!" rings through the deep gorges and rustling jungles of India. Now follows a scene to which the war eclogue of Coleridge seems hardly more than a tender proem. Naught else do we see or hear but "The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, The diapason of the cannonade." In vain now speeds the Rohilla lance. In vain now flashes the Moslem sabre. In vain now dashes the Mahratta charger. Onward, and yet onward, through tangled ravines and over rugged ghauts, gleam the British bayonets. Victory hasters after victory. Rajahs, affrighted, flee or yield. The proud heirs of the mighty Aurungzebe humbly sue for a pension at the feet of a trading corporation. Territory after territory sweeps as if by magic within the ever-circling domain of British sovereignty. And now the standard of St. George waves over the corpse of the devotee as it floats down the sacred Ganges, opens its folds as the gallant prow of the British. sailor sweeps round Cape Comorin, casts its shadows over the classic river once cleaved by the gay galleys of Alexander, and flutters its pennons amid the snow-charged storms of the Himalaya. Nor is the career of its conquests yet ended; for the advancing war-drums of England are resounding to-night before the ramparts of Canton, and the echo of her cannonading, booming over the valley of the Scinde, has scarcely ceased reverberating on the ear. (To be Continued.) ARTICLE VII.-SHORTER BOOK NOTICES. I. BENGEL'S GNOMON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.*-This has been before the world now for something more than a century, and its main features of excellence are perfectly familiar to the scholars of every country in Christendom. It is, therefore, quite superfluous to utter any commendations on the original work, which is now for the first time, by the liberal enterprise of the Messrs. Clark of Edinburgh, made available to the mere English reader and the indifferent Latin scholar. For the liberal expenditure that gives us the five noble volumes before us, we have to thank the publishers and importers in behalf of hundreds of our ministers and intelligent laymen. The translation, so far as we have examined, has been executed admirably well, and it has been enriched by notes from the principal editor, of considerable value, and by an interesting sketch of the life of Bengel, by the same hand. It has been the fortune of this work to win increasingly upon the esteem and admiration of Christian scholars. The expositions of Bengel, beyond comparison, perhaps, condensed, sententious and suggestive, have been appropriated as the common property of New Testament commentators. They have constituted an exhaustless "gold field," whither generations of miners have gone "prospecting," and whence they have continued to fetch "dust" and "ingots," to be minted and stamped for common circulation. How many might make substantially the acknowledgment of indebtedness which Mr. Ellicott, one of the best living commentators on the New Testament, so gracefully makes in the preface to his work on Galatians, "Bengel's Gnomon has, of course, never been out of my hands." And notwithstanding the present accumulation of excellent helps to the interpretation of the New Testament, Bengel is not yet superseded. In fact, there has never been a time, probably, when the Gnomon stood so high in the general favor as it does at the present. Herein is fulfilling a remarkable utterance, that by a kind of prophetic instinct was given out by him, just as similar utterances have fallen from the lips of other remarkably gifted men. "I shall produce," said Milton, "something that the world will not suffer to die." So Bengel, just before his death, said to his friend Oetinger, "I shall for a while be forgotten, but afterwards come into remembrance. Bengel has indeed come into remembrance, especially during the present generation, and particularly in connection with the work before us. And it is no hazardous prediction to say that he will continue to live in the minds and hearts of the students of God's Word; that in this, his chief work, he has an assured immortality of influence and fame. As respects mere external helps for the critical interpretation of the New Testament, Bengel's advantages were, of course, inferior to those possessed by the scholars of our day. Yet to those who regard the most ancient * Gnomon of the New Testament. By J. A. Bengel. Translated by Rev. Andrew Robert Fausset, M. A., Trinity College, Dublin. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Sold by Smith, English & Co., Philadelphia. 5 vols. 1859. Pr. $10. MSS. as outweighing all others in determining the correct readings of the text, his disadvantages will not appear very formidable. But, however that may be, Bengel's sagacity, and tact, and nice judgment in the use of such sources as he possessed, almost made up for their deficiency. We will now indicate a few of Bengel's qualities as a commentator, as they have suggested themselves to us in the use of his Gnomon. And first, no commentator ever brought to the exposition of Scripture, a more simple-hearted and earnest love and reverence for the Bible, as the inspired and authoritative word of God. It was no affectation with him to speak, as he often did, of "the precious original text of the New Testament." Believing, as he did, in the plenary and literal inspiration of Scripture, this language was the expression of a genuine, child-like love for the pure, uncorrupted word of Christ. His regard for the text of Scripture was not a mere scholar's affection; his enthusiastic interest in its study was not the mere glow of intellectual exhilaration. All his studies, both in criticism and exegesis, were a means to an end-that end being the nourishing of piety in his own bosom, and the promoting of a living piety in the church of God. This will not be questioned by any one acquainted with Bengel's writings. He is therefore a perpetual example of the practicability of uniting a careful, cautious, profound study of the Biblical text, aided by all the helps that scholarship can furnish, with an earnest, prayerful, religious life. His example is a standing rebuke of that weak religious sentimentalism that shrinks from a severely critical investigation and handling of Scripture, through fear of personal injury. Bengel, one of the most laborious scholars of his age, one of the severest critics, was at the same time one of the most exemplarily pious of men. And his piety was nursed and strengthened by the close study of the ipsissima verba, the very words of the sacred text. The minute attention that Bengel gave to the signification of even the smallest words of Scripture, his extreme, or, at least, extraordinary, accuracy in exhibiting the nicest shades of thought, expressed in "the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth," was ridiculed by Ernesti, and has often been ridiculed by such as had more sympathy with Ernesti's spirit than with Bengel's. But such men as Tholuck, and even Winer, have appreciated, and noticed in terms of admiration, this conscientious carefulness in dealing with the language of the sacred record. Again, the Gnomon is pervaded throughout by a truth-loving spirit. The author does not appear in the light of a partizan, to force on Scripture favorite meanings. Doubtless he came to his task as commentator with certain doctrinal preferences, and these appear at times in his expositions where many may think they are not warranted in the Scriptures on which he bases them, or which he expounds in harmony with them. We have found occasion to differ decidedly from some of his doctrinal views expressed in his comments on certain passages. But no one, we think, will charge Bengel with consciously and purposely warping the Scriptures to the support of any favorite doctrinal formulas. He was manifestly a man to relinquish a point when convinced, by the application of the canons of criticism, of its unsoundness. And he was manifestly open to conviction of error. This sacrifice-the greatest a scholar can make-he was ever ready to make for the sake of the Master, and of the Master's word. Of this unselfish docility of disposition, this willingness to forego the mere reputation of self-consistency for the sake of a higher good, we might give more than one proof from his writings. Take, for example, the following remark on Rev. i. 10: "I once thought that the vision which Ezekiel relates, from ch. 40, was on the day of the Sabbath, and that that day of the Sabbath might be compared with the Lord's day mentioned in this passage; but I now, of my own accord, give up that idea." This hearty self-correction, and this humble acknowledgment of proper correction by others, present the example of Bengel in a very interesting and attractive light. Whilst everywhere exhibiting an outspoken independency of opinion, the independency of studious and prayerful self-reliance, he nowhere shows the bigotry and obstinacy that refuse to see and correct his own errors. Another feature of Bengel's Commentary, and one of its most striking features, is the evidence, furnished on every page, of his familiar acquaintance with the whole Bible, and of his faith in its spiritual unity. He looked at the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as one complete whole, of which no one part could be well interpreted without regard to the teachings of all the other parts. In this particular, wherein he appears in such favorable contrast to a later class of critics amongst his countrymen, who delight in rudely dissecting and disintegrating the word of God, we find much of his strength and value as a commentator. This feature of his Gnomon is foreshadowed in the very title-page, where with reference to the name of "Gnomon," he tells us that his design is to indicate or point out (Gnomon signifies Indicator) "the simplicity, depth, concinnity, and practical adaptation and wholesomeness of the word of God." It is the constant pains Bengel takes to indicate the felicitous "concinnity" of the Bible, this skilful joining of all its parts, this mutual relation and connection of its most widely sundered portions; in short, this "Analogy of Scripture ;" this it is that in our view constitutes one of the most valuable characteristics of his labors on the New Testament. And it is on this point that he says with just emphasis, "My design is also to refute those expositors who put upon isolated passages of Scripture their own forced construction, in order to grasp at impressiveness. Instead of this, I mean to insist upon the full and comprehensive force of Scripture in its whole connection." And again on this point he says, "Separate thoughts of each writer must be determined as to their sense according to grammatical and historical laws, but this in constant reference to the totality of the faith, and to revelation as a whole." And yet again, "Though each inspired writer has his own manner and style, one and the same spirit breathes through all, one grand idea pervades all." Admirable words are these, and nobly did Bengel fulfil the promise involved in them. It is evident that in writing almost every separate page of his Gnomon, he heard the voice of the Old prophecy sounding in the New he heard "deep calling unto deep,"-the depths of meaning in the Apocalypse answering to the depths of meaning in Genesis and Leviticus. A commentary written by a man of learning, critical judgment and piety, possessed with such an idea of the Bible, must have a grandeur of movement, and a significancy, that will make it worthy of every Christian scholar's close attention. Such a commentary is John Albert Bengel's Gnomon. As an interpreter of the Apocalypse, Bengel acquired an extraordinary reputation, and his investigations and views have influenced almost all the subsequent interpretations of the Book. His labors in this direction were indeed most valuable; not, however, for any detailed chronological results reached by himself, nor for his influence in producing a school of chronologists in Biblical interpretation; but because he brought into clear and distinct light the ancient, apostolic doctrine of the genuine millennial kingdom in contradistinction to the false view engendered by Roman Catholicism, of a millennial kingdom to result from the mere Christianizing of the powers and governments of the world. To use Oetinger's language on this point, Bengel's allotted task was, " to make Chiliasm orthodox." And on this point we wish here to quote an interesting passage from Delitzsch's Biblicalprophetic Theology, as given by Auberlen. If we see more clearly into 66 |