DI

LETTER FROM DR.

We

are permitted t

ND WILLIAMS.

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teresting extract from a private letter from Dr. Rowland Williams, author of the Essay on

Bunsen's Biblical Researches or scriptur

better, we become less fit to minister at the altars of a church which establishes her doctrines by Scripture. Nor is a studious life a good reason for a man to take his hand off the plough and leave the dunces to guide it. As to the Prayer-book, we are surely more consistent with its broad spirit, than if we used it as an instrument to express disguised sympathies with Rome, or selected exclusively those portions of it which may be thought to savor of the theology of Calvin.

It remains only, that we may be thought inconsistent with the accidental idiosyncrasies and errors of particular generations before us. But such inconsistency is rather our glory than our shame; for it involves the truest consistency with what is noblest and best in all our old martyrs and reformers. In short, it is my own deliberate belief, that neither in the partisans of Rome, nor in those of Geneva, but in the broad ranks of those who, with whatever individual varieties, uphold the freedom of Biblical criticism and charity as the end of the commandment, are to be found at this moment the truest representatives of the hereditary portion of the Church of England. That we are as yet the minority, is not fatal to my argument, and we need not remain so always.

I trust I have not wearied you by what was intended to be a token of my gratitude, in writing so long a dissertation. Leaving it to your discretion, and commending it to your charitable construction, as the cause of ChrisA tian freedom in general to the sympathies of U good men, I beg to sign myself, Dear Sirs,

your faithful and obliged,

ROWLAND WILLIAMS, D.D.

St. David's College, Lampeter, South Wales, A Dec. 24, 1860.

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"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."

“A work, that, in a less pusillanimous age, would awaken admiring sympathy, as well as provoke open and spirited opposition. . . . The social and official position of the authors, their learning, their abilities, and their sincerity, courage, and earnest, reverential spirit, as attested by their joint publication, entitle them to an unprejudiced and considerate hearing.”—Westminster Review.

"The themes are handled with great freshness and freedom, and sometimes with conspicuous ability. The writers are men, evidently, who have discovered that reason was given them to be used, and not to be trifled with; and that the highest problems in religion, philosophy, and cosmogony are not to be settled by the literal sense of the Apocalypse or the Book of Genesis.

..... We are brought

"This book is a new thing in Christendom. . . into communion with men who are so strong in faith, that they undertake to show the compatibility of the freest handling of the letter, and of everything external, with the heartiest conviction of the everlasting power, worth, and beauty of the Gospel.” — Monthly Religious Magazine.

"It is a most significant fruit of modern scholarship and of robust courage given to the treatment of the issue between the old traditionary faith and the new knowledge. Dr. Hedge has furnished an Introduction to this American edition, in which he shows how thoroughly he masters the whole scope of its contents, and how gratefully he recognizes the noble vigor and spirit of its writers. ..... In these seven Essays our readers will find bold and earnest writing, profound scholarship, and a large and generous culture, brought to bear, in a spirit of reverence, upon the discussion of nearly every point involved in the antagonism between the old faith and the new knowledge of Christendom."— Christian Examiner.

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vods

From the Library of

Rev. H, W. FOOTE,

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

WALKER, WISE, & CO.,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

TO THE READER.

Ir will be readily understood, that the authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison.

The volume, it is hoped, will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment.