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THE

CHRISTIAN TEACHER;

A

THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY JOURNAL.

VOLUME THIRD.

NEW SERIES.

LONDON:

JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET ;

LIVERPOOL WILLMER AND SMITH-MANCHESTER: T. FORREST.

CP.26.55

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

RICHARD KINDER, PRINTER, GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.

89-147

THE

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.

ART. I.-THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE ABOLITION OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. By the Rev. H. H. MILMAN. 3 vols. 8vo. London: John Murray.

THIS is a work that claims our highest praise, both for the learning and ability with which it is executed, and for the elevated spirit in which the Author has raised himself above the strifes and party purposes of the times. Mr. Milman writes not for his own day; nor to please any party in his own Church. He ignores the controversies, the contentions, the religious passions that are raging around him. He writes as if such things were not; as if his book was to encounter no narrow and hostile criticism: as if there was no bigotry in the world, no dogmatic theology, whose pretensions he is destroying and exposing at every page. He has evidently lifted himself into higher, purer, calmer regions; and makes his appeal not to the passing fermentations, but to the abiding reason, the enlightened philosophy of instructed man.

The work is of great compass, and we can only glance at its contents. For the first time in this country Ecclesiastical History has been made acceptable to general readers, and we confess that no work has appeared in England for many years from which we expect so much benefit indirectly to accrue to Christian Truth.

The History opens with a rapid but very able review of the state and various forms of Religion and Philosophy, both Pagan and Jewish, in the times of our Saviour. This statement of what Judaism and Heathenism had effected for mankind is the best introduction to the History of Christianity; the best proof that a new instrument was needed to place the souls of men in right relations to God; the best demonstration that the "fulness of time" was come. Judaism had lost its soul, and only VOL. III. No. 11.-New Series.

B

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