NVitneo HURD dr HOTTOEXTOWS BOOKS KumAN. The History ;of the Jews, from the Earliest Period down to Modern Times. By Henry Hart Milman. D. D., Dean of St. Paul's. Reprinted from the newly revised,and corrected London Edition. In three vols. 12m0., laid tinted 'paper, pp. 509, 497, 479; with Index. Boston, Wm. Veazie; New York, _Hurd & Houghton; Philadelphia, F. A. Leypoldt. This is a substantial and elegant edi tion of a standard work, recently re written by the accomplished author. The style is flowing, the narration gra phic, and the story moves on in the grandeur which rightfully belongs to the subject. The national history is traced from the time of Abraham, through all the Old Testament, the Maccabean, and the Roman Eras ; and the fate of the people in their modern dispersion is fol lowed up so particularly, that one of the three volumes is given entirely to this part of the subject. In a compact and readable form, we have here all the im portant facts in the History of the Jews, and the Indexwhich is very full, fits it to serve as a Tork for reference. We regret to notice further evidence of what we believe has already been noticed, in regard• to the position of Dean Milman upon the question of inspiration; he goes with the Broad Church party, as represented by •Dean Stanley, the Bishop of London, and the Edinburgh Review. The body of his work, indeed, contains little that would arouse suspi cion; but his newly-written preface con cedes all the points claimed by this wing (not the extreme one) of the free-thinkers, over which the recent decision of the Privy Council throws its comprehensive protection. After the fashion of that presumptuous class, Dean Milman asserts of the writers of the Old Testament: "They had no knowledge on any subject but moral and religious truths to distin guish them from other men; were as fal lible as others on all questions of science, and even of history, extraneous to their religious teaching." Of course Dean Milman knows—he and his fellow doubters are too modest and too candid to assert anything as positively as this, and on such an important subject, with out demonstrative evidence. A little more reserved and more insinuating is smother paragraph of the preface, which teas thus : " The moral and religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is the Word of God contained in the Sacred Writings." Of course the two Deans, and those who think with them, are con scious of an inward ability—which cer tainly plain people are not--of distin guishing what is moral and what is reli gious, from what is not, in the Scriptures. Dean Milman, however, himself, in an other passage, admits the uncertainty of the process of elimination He saps : " How far the historian may venture, how far he may succeed in discovering the latent truth under this dazzling veil, must depend on his own sagacity and the peculiar character of the different records." We must of course feel grate ful for the very guarded admission he makes in reference to—he will not say miracles—but to signs, wonders, and powers, inexplicable, as far as he can discern, by any ordinary causes, or any fortuitous concurrence of circumstances. The force of miracles, he says, must di minish. Truly it has diminished in his mind, and in s.ll minds so unfortunate as to have fallen into the twilight of Broad Church indifferentism. Other minds ad mire, adore, and cry out with Thomas: My Lord and my God I or with the hea then centurion : Truly this was the on of God I or with the rind of the Jews: No man can do these miracles except God be with him. While Milman de clares : "Men believe in miracles because they are religious. I doubt their be coming religious through the belief in miracles ;" others prefer, even yet, to follow the example of Peter, who preached to unbelievers, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him:" prefer, even yet, to cite with Paul the witness which God bore to the great salvation, spoken by the Lord, " both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will ," or that word of the same apostle to those in Corinth inclined to question hiS authority: "Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you, in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." It is also somewhat remarkable, that we find no clear indications that Dean - Millman regarded, with any special in terest, the golden thread of Providence hat runs through all the history - of this onderful people, more conspicuously han in the history of any other of 'our tace ; or that he marks with any special istinctness the fulfillment of prophecy in , the various epochs of their career, and in their present condition. The period of the history coinciding with the'rise of Christianity is treated almost as if there were no authentic Christian record of that era, or at any rate, almost as if Milman were as unconcerned in them as an unbelieving Jewish historian.. He says, vol. ii, p. 130, .of the crucifixion of Christ : We leave to the Christian his torian the description of this event and all its consequences,—inestimable in their importance to mankind, but which pro duced hardly any immediate effect on the affairs of the Jewish nation." Is Dean Milman, then, confessedly not a Christian historian With these serious drawbacks, the his ', tory remalns, inadequate, disappointing to bolievers in the intimate relations of Judaism and Christianity, far below THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1865 what should come from the pen of a high official in the Christian church, yet the most scholarly, elegant, valuable, and com plete History of the