Ecclesiastical.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3927, 30 July 1881, Page 2

Ecclesiastical.

We are in receipt of a copy of Professor Itobertson Smith's book, lately published by Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, being the tweWe lectures delivered by him on " Biblical Criticism " to crowded audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The lectures were delivered during the first three months of the present year, and the average attendance in each of the two cities not less than eighteen huudred. The Professor says : —" The twelve lectures now before the public had their origin in a temporary victory of the opponents or progressive Biblical science in Scotland, and in the invitation of some six hundred Free Churchmen in Edinburgh and Glasgow, who deemed it better that the Scottish public should have an opportunity of; understanding the newer criticism, than that they should condemn it unheard." We shall take an early opportunity of giving some portions of the most interesting of the lectures. A writer in the World says of Professor Robertson Smith —" He is a slimly built young raau of small stature. A mere boy he looks, and yet there is something unusually striking about the round, cheerful, beardless face and dark brilliant eyes —shaded by a soft wide awake hat—something which tells of hard study and deep thought. He is an accomplished scholar, learned writer and keen debater, a man who has shaken ecclesiastical Scotland to its very centre.'' The World also considers that the effect of these lectures on the religious thought of Scotland cannot fail to be of a momentous character. He has travelled much in Egypt and Arabia for linguistic purposes, and his researches will be of great value to the learned world. He brought Home copies of ancient inscriptions, which have hitherto baffled the learned, and he has been able to decipher them. The youth and talent of Scotland Z9 on his side, and in losing Professor Smith, the Free Church loses its most distinguished scholar and ablest debater, and one of the most sincere biblical critics which tbe century has produced. The Professor was born in 1847, in Aberdeenshire, aad is a son of the Kev. W. P. Smith, D.D- The lad could read Hebrew at six years of age. He had a most distinguished career at the Universities of Aberdeen, Berlin, Bonn, and Gotingen. At the early age of 24 he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages and Old Testament Exigesis in the F/ee Church College, Aberdeen. His distinguished talents and scholarly research soon brought him into notice, and he was chosen a member of the Bible Revision Committee. It was for an article he contributed to the Encyclopedia Brittannica about four years ago that the proceedings against him for heresy were first taken. The views he there set forth—notably those on the writings of Moses were considerably in advance of those generally entertained by the Church to which he belonged. His different .struggles against bigotry and intolerance are already matters of history.