been afforded to all, the greater number would have been what the few at present are, and the few would have been still more distinguished. That it might afford the benefit of its tuition to all classes of the people, and that it might avoid the evil, so much to be deprecated, of excluding from that advantage any portion of the community, the University of London was obliged to leave the teaching of religion to be provided for by each sect in conformity with its own views of that sacred subject. The obvious expedient, to which the plan of the University of London most happily adapts itself, is, that the leading denominations of Christians should establish theological schools, each for itself, consisting of as many chairs as it might deem expedient, with merely such a local connexion with the University, as might enable those who were studying at the one to resort conveniently to the other. Such young men as were destined for Dissenting ministers would begin with the literary and scientific studies of the University, and when the course of those disciplines was at its close, or drawing towards its close, they would resort to the appropriate schools of divinity, and would continue their attendance on such as they might choose of the lectures in the University, and their connexion with such of their former companions in those studies, as their mutual improvement might suggest. We have spoken so largely of the benefits resulting to the middle class from the University of London, not that we are not satisfied that advantages will redound to the higher classes, as well by their attendance on its instructions, as by the improvements it will force upon the institutions to which they have hitherto resorted, and the demand for a higher degree of intellect which it will render general in the nation; but because it is a new thing for the middle classes to have the means of intellectual education brought within their reach. To them it is therefore a peculiar opening. It is a source of good which they may be expected especially to prize, not only because it has hitherto been shut up from them, but because they may draw from it with advantages peculiarly their own. We see, and we see with satisfaction, that the council of the University have not affected a logical precision in distributing the field and classifying the subjects of tuition. While our knowledge is far from enabling us to arrange with accuracy the subjects of human inquiry, no distribution could be made which would not be liable to objections; and every man would hold that mode defective which did not present the subjects in the same point of view in which it was customary to him to look at them. For the purposes of teaching, common sense directs that the convenience of teaching should be the ruling principle in distributing the subjects to be taught. To this it is essential that the entire enumeration should embrace all that is required to constitute a full and perfect education. It appears to us, that the catalogue of subjects presented in the prospectus of the London University fulfils this condition. And with respect to the breaking down of this whole into its most convenient parts, it is evident that utility will be most consulted by leaving it unfixed and variable according to varying circumstances. The most important of those circumstances undoubtedly will be the qualifications of the teachers. It will often happen among the related branches of knowledge that one man may be well qualified to teach a certain portion, but not so large a portion as another man. It would be expedient to make a different distribution of subjects for each of these two men; including more in the course if the one, less in it if the other, were to be the teacher. If two men lectured on two sections of a great science, it might be expedient to include more in the one, less in the other, upon every change of the professors. Thus, if at one time the professor of natural philosophy had made a particular study of electricity and galvanism, at another time the professor of chemistry, it would in the one case be highly proper to include electricity and galvanism in the course of natural philosophy, in the other to include them in the course of chemistry. If such a man, for example, as Mr. Leslie, the Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, held the same chair in the University of London, it might be better to include in that course the doctrine of heat, of which Mr. Leslie has made so profound a study, than in the department of chemistry, to which that difficult subject seems more properly to belong. The project of the University of London, fortunate in so many respects, was not fortunate, as far as its funds were concerned, in the circumstances of the time when it was first presented to the notice of the public. It was a time of great commercial distress, when the anxieties and difficulties of the classes from which its support was chiefly to be derived, not only contracted their means of yielding it encouragement, but to a much greater degree contracted their own estimate of their means, and so fixed their attention upon the train of events in which their fortunes were involved, that their minds could not easily be diverted to any other object, and all sources of a more ge neral and distant good were for the time neglected. From this cause chiefly, as it appears to us, and not from any want of a due appreciation of the benefits offered to them, which would be so disgraceful to the numerous and important body who are to profit most by this grand undertaking, the subscrip tion to the London University has only reached the minimum of the capital which the council deem necessary to attempt the execution of the plan on the most contracted scale. We cannot, however, entertain any apprehension, when the fears attendant on a period of distress, and the reluctance to part with any portion of the funds which contract an imaginary value in times of distress, have passed away, that the value which ought to be set upon a good education will be seen to be fully understood by the present generation; and that funds will not be wanting to accomplish every thing which utility, apart from frippery of every kind, demands in a scheme of liberal education for the metropolis of England. L. SONNET. "For thon comest far short, that thou shouldest be able to love my creature moré than I." 2 Esdras viii. 47. IN the deep visions of the midnight hour My soul was wrapp'd;-methought my spirit stray'd O'er the wide earth,-its darkest scenes survey'd, And all the littleness of human pow'r Felt with a force it never felt before : Sad visions came of mortal misery, And thought of tears I would, but could not dry; Faith droop'd, and Hope her cheerful song gave o'er.— Yes, thou benignant Being!-To the dust E. OBSERVATIONS IN DISPROOF OF THE OPINION THAT ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL COMPOSITION OF THAT EVANGELIST, AND IN VINDICATION OF THE AUTHENTICITY AND CONSISTENCY OF THE PRELIMINARY CHAPTERS IN MATTHEW AND LUKE, AGAINST THE REMARKS OF DR. SCHLEIERMACHER IN HIS CRITICAL ESSAY ON ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL, AND OF MR. BELSHAM IN HIS CALM INQUIRY CONCERNING THE PERSON OF CHRIST. THE very able Review of Dr. Schleiermacher's work, distinguished as that Review is for great acuteness and nice discrimination, cannot fail to be highly gratifying to the readers of the Monthly Repository. But it is not more for the display of talent than for its beneficial usefulness that it so strongly recommends itself, inasmuch as its tendency is to vindicate the character of the Evangelist and the authority of that work which bears his name, against the depreciating influence of the German Doctor's notion, that, "with the exception of the four introductory verses, and an occasional connecting particle or phrase, the Gospel of St. Luke was not his own composition; but, on the contrary, that he is from beginning to end no more than the compiler of the written documents of others, which he found in existence, and which he allowed to pass unaltered through his hands." Were the truth of the learned Doctor's conjecture satisfactorily established, it would obviously operate to diminish the weight and reputation of the Gospel according to Luke, in so far as a work which is merely made up of a number of detached pieces by various authors-and those authors too unknown-must necessarily be less influential on the mind of the Christian reader, than the original composition of an independent historian, who had really derived the information which he professed to detail from the first and purest sources. Only let it be conceded that this part of the critical essay of Dr. S. is in any degree well founded, and in the same proportion will the credibility of the evangelical historian be lessened; since in his introductory observations he distinctly asserts, that "those things which he writes in order to Theophilus, he had from the first a perfect understanding of,' from those who were EYEWITNESSES AND MINISTERS of the word." " That St. Luke's Gospel in many places bears indications of having been written in detached portions may be admitted, without compromising the veracity of the Evangelist in the least and what could have been more natural in writing to a correspondent a long history of a person's life, than to do so at different times, and in different portions, rather than to have performed the whole in one communication? There is, however, one supposition advanced by Dr. S., which the Reviewer rather seems to acquiesce in. That "ch. iii. 1-20, was originally part of a memoir relating exclusively to John." But, had that been the case, is it to be believed that such memoir would have concluded as it now does with John's imprisonment? On the contrary, would it not have gone on to narrate another (and assuredly not an unimportant) incident in the Baptist's career-the loss of his head? Clearly it is the chronology of John's history abstractedly considered, and not that of Jesus, which is given in the first 20 verses of the 3rd chapter; but then it is given as the history of a subordinate character only, as one who prepare the way" for that chief and glorious personage "whose shoes' latchet John was not worthy to unloose." Although the part alluded to treats of the ministry of John, and although mention is made of the impri was to " sonment of John before the baptism of Jesus, yet do not those circumstances prove that it originally formed part of a memoir relating exclusively to John, or part of any separate memoir at all; for it is in entire accordance with the "order" which Luke observes from the beginning, bringing up the histories of John and Jesus alternately to a certain period. Thus in ch. i. 5—25, he treats of the promise to and conception by the mother of John. Then from 26-38 the promise to and conception by the mother of Jesus. In the next place, John's history is again taken up, his birth and circumcision mentioned, and that "he was in the deserts until the day of his shewing to Israel." Then the history of Jesus is again adverted to, and his birth and circumcision related, as well as a brief account of his early years, and that he increased in wisdom and stature. Having again for a time dropped the history of Jesus, he reverts once more to that of John, resuming it where it had been discontinued, viz. his manifestation to Israel, and carrying it on to the period of John's imprisonment; when the history of Jesus is again recurred to, and continued to the end. Now here are not less than five breaks in the histories of Jesus and John : and Luke's mentioning the imprisonment of John before the baptism ọf Jesus, is no more evidence of its having originally been a memoir relating to John exclusively, than doth the circumstance of John's history being brought up to the period of his manifestation before even the birth of Jesus is mentioned, constitute (as the Doctor contends it does) proof of an originally independent narrative; and in refutation of the latter notion, the reasoning of the Reviewer is unanswerable. It may, however, be inquired further-If the first chapter of Luke formed of itself originally an independent narrative, as Dr. S. asserts, pray whose history is it that it purports to relate? If the history of John, does the reader think that it would have said nothing of his receiving the command of God whilst in the wilderness; nothing of his subsequent preaching; of his baptism; of his imprisonment; of his decapitation? Would it have stopped short at his birth; adding only a general statement that the child grew, waxed strong, and was in the deserts ? If too, as alleged, the separate narrative ended there, and was unconnected with any other, whence the necessity or utility of mentioning at all Mary's salutation to Elizabeth, or the prophecies of Elizabeth, of Mary, or of Zacharias concerning Christ? If the supposition be, that it was originally an independent narrative relating to Jesus, surely his biographer would at the least have gone so far as to introduce him into the world. Why, credulity itself would not tolerate so absurd an idea as that any person writing another's history would relate events comparatively insignificant, many of them too having no connexion with it as an independent narrative, and yet altogether omit all those grand and momentous facts and incidents for which the life under consideration was so remarkably distinguished. But, on the other hand, assuming that the chapter in question was written, not with the view of forming a separate and independent narrative as Dr. S. fancies, but, on the contrary, that it was originally framed as an introduction to, and as only intended to form the leading portion of, the more important part of the all-important history which was to follow; why then, the whole contents of that chapter are (if the writer may be allowed to use the figure) in perfect keeping with the other parts of the Evangelist's performance, and favour the opinion that the design, composition, and execution of the whole is by one and the same master. But Dr. Schleiermacher doth not content himself with merely denying that St. Luke was the original author of the work which bears his name, but he endeavours to detract from the historical cre dibility of the two accounts of Matthew and Luke relating to the miraculou conception, arguing and insisting that "the taxing by Cyrenius (ch. ii.) i inconsistent with history as referred to the days of Herod, and that the two accounts of Matthew and Luke are utterly irreconcileable." The writer of this article must, however, be allowed to contend, that the inaccuracy and incongruity of those accounts is not so well established as the ingenious Doctor and many others would represent: on the contrary, he hopes to shew that they are perfectly consistent and correct; and in that expectation, it will be attempted to be maintained that the true signification of the first five verses of the second chapter of Luke, on which the question arises, is not that the decree of Cæsar, or the journey of Joseph and Mary to be taxed, was when Cyrenius was Governor: nor is it asserted that the taxing during Cyrenius' governorship was in the days of Herod: for the sup position that all the events mentioned in these five verses are by the Evangelist referred to one and the same period is erroneous. The truth is, that four out of the five verses relate to preparations for taxing only, and it is the second verse alone which speaks of an actual taxing having been "MADE." "This taxing was first made when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria," and history accords with and sanctions that distinction; for although the decree of Cæsar Augustus was issued in the days of Herod, and although in the same days the people repaired to their respective cities to be taxed, yet it amounted in its temporary result to a record or registering of the people only, inasmuch as it was not practically acted upon by an actual taxing, either immediately or for a considerable period after : in fact, the "taxing was not made," or in other words, the real levy of the tax did not take place, until Cyrenius was the Governor of Syria, and Herod was dead. Notwithstanding, therefore, it is stated in Matthew, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the King, Mary having, according to Luke, gone thither with Joseph to be taxed; and notwithstanding Luke states that the taxing was "first made" when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, at which time Herod was dead; still there is not any contradiction, because two different and distinct eras are spoken of. One, the decree for taxing and the journey of Mary and her delivery in the days of Herod, and the other, the taxing subsequently "made" or carried into actual practical execution in Cyrenius' governorship. Luke doth not say that the decree of Augustus, which caused the journey of Mary to Bethlehem, was when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, but, on the contrary, it is to be inferred from his statement that it was in the days of Herod, for he introduces that decree by the words, "It came to pass in those days." What days? Why surely those with which he had just before commenced his history, namely, "the days of Herod, the King of Judea." That the Evangelist, in his 1st and 2d verses, contemplates two distinct periods of time, may be argued from this, that if only one had been alluded to, he would have said, "There went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria; or, Cyrenius being Governor of Syria; in the same way as in the 1st verse of the ensuing chapter he mentions the governorship of Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. The words, This taxing was first made," are wholly superfluous and unmeaning, if a different time from the decree itself had not been referred to: and, indeed, the 2d verse is inclosed within parentheses, to mark that its contents are a digression from, and not essentially connected with, the regular chain of the narrative. The Evangelist might have omitted the 2d verse, in which Cyrenius is mentioned, without the least prejudice to his main object; and, pro |