It is impossible to deny that their efforts have been successful. There is at present a lucid order and economy about the revenue System which no other branch of the administration can pretend to with any sort of justice. Our Police, our Civil Courts might well be improved; our revenue management in the North-West seems alone to progress steadily towards excellence. A reform so great and so rapid must in its course meet with opposition, and give cause for hostility. Amongst the servants of government, some of the most estimable, whose station and habits removed them from much contact with the mind of the people, took their estimate of the settlement from their Native acquaintance amongst the higher ranks. There may have been other reasons too for the prejudice with which some of what may be called the old school regarded this great measure. With them we seek no controversy. Nor will we stay to dispute the point with those, who call the necessary lowering of the government demand, owing to the effects of the lamentable drought and dearth of the years 1837 and 1838, a breaking down of the settlement. We care not to argue with opponents who attribute the visitations of God, to the devices of man. Let such take their stand with the gentleman at Bombay, who has traced the ravages of the cholera to the salt monopoly of the E. I. Company. But, in truth, now that the improved revenue system has had time to work, and to prove its worth, it needs no apology nor defence. The greatest happiness of the greatest number has as far as possible been secured. The exact state of things in every township has been carefully investigated and recorded. Dis. putes have been composed; jealousies have been allayed. The rights of the village sharers have been carefully preserved and recorded, whilst the interests of the merest cultivator have not been overlooked. The orderly payment of a moderate revenue has been provided for, and where default occurs, the means have been devised for coming down directly upon the defaulter, and saving the man who has discharged his engagements punctually. In every district, officers selected from the people decide every dispute that may arise, under the direct control of the Collector of the district. Check upon check has been devised to prevent delay in the decision of all cases affecting the interests of the landed community. And, as in an operation so vast as the settlement of these provinces, many errors and inaccuracies must have crept in, the revenue authorities have been invest ed with authority to rectify any error and to supply any deficiency in the Record. Of late years, the best energies of the government have been directed to the improvement and consolidation of the revenue system. Compendious treatises, embracing not only the rules of revenue process, but also the principles of revenue science, have been drawn up. Translations of these have been distributed right and left. The more intelligent of the people are being thus fast led to co-operate with their rulers, whose principles are better understood and appreciated. All candidates for government employ find the necessity of mastering the existing Revenue Code. The consequence is, that numbers of books in the language of the country, some of considerable merit, are issuing from the presses at Agra, Delhi, and elsewhere, explanatory of the laws affecting landed tenures, and of the principles of agriculture and rural economy. The Collectors of Revenue have been encouraged to disseminate manuals of useful knowledge suited to the capacities of the rising generation among the students at the villageschools. Such books, for which also the people have to thank the Government of the N. W. Provinces, will, we trust, supersede the trash which has hitherto been taught at these schools. en. One great work remains to be noticed, the importauce of which to the physical welfare of the millions of the Doab can hardly be over-rated. In these fertile, but thirsty plains the demand for water is almost incessant and unlimited; in seasons of drought the whole country becomes panic-strickThousands snatch their means of subsistence direct from the soil, who when their crops fail for want of rain have nothing to subsist upon. Grain may be stored in abundance, but the smaller land holders have nothing to give in exchange for it. Famine, and pestilence, are the necessary consequences; nor can all the liberality of Government do much to avert the evil. It has been reserved for an administration identified in a peculiar manner with the revenue reforms in the Upper Provinces to commence upon this great work, and to urge its progress, in spite of many obstacles. The Ganges Canal will when completed save the Doab from future dread of famine as a magnificent proof of British enterprize it will, * See Government resolution, 12th September, 1848. we trust, ere long take its place with the survey and settlement operations. Pointing to these monuments of the energy, the skill and the liberality of the British Government in India, we shall be able confidently to boast that the mantle. of Akber has fallen on no unworthy successors. In Akber's imperial city shall the fame of Akber be eclipsed. It may haply belong to Agra to roll away the reproach which has been too long attached to the British name, the reproach of narrow commercial views and selfish policy. As the friends of India, above all, of the patient cultivators of the soil, the best wish we can offer them is that Englishmen may fulfil their high destinies. Conquerors of all around, a noble strife is yet before us. A glorious battle is to be fought, not in tented field, not in the arena of ambition or self-aggrandisement. England's remaining combat must be, not only with the cunning, the ignorance, the superstition of her eastern children, but with the pride, the sloth, the selfishness of her own sons. In such a warfare, conquering ourselves, we shall conquer all. Justice, mercy and Christian charity, these must be the weapons which, steeling our own hearts, and softening the hearts of our opponents, shall surely bring us to victory. II. ON THE QUOTATION OF SCRIPTURE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. Novum Testamentum in vetere latet; Vetus in Novo patet. AUGUSTINE. The subject which we here propose to discuss has long demanded a thorough examination in all its bearings. Although we do not now undertake a work of such wide extent, yet the remarks which we propose to offer upon the applica. tion of Scripture in the Epistle to the Hebrews, may throw some light upon the general subject, inasmuch as the difficulties which enter into this inquiry seem to culminate in the Epistle before us. Before we state our own views, it may be as well to premise a historical glance at the mode in which this question has hitherto been treated. That citations are to be found in the New Testament, which appear unsuitable to the historical sense which they bear in the Old Testament, is a fact which meets us at the very commencement of the gospel history: see Matth. ii. 15, 18. But in the Epistle to the Hebrews, especially, quotations are to be found which have the semblance of being used on the principle of arbitrary accommodation.* Notwithstanding attempts lately made by some expositors to strike out a middle path between the historical sense in which passages occur in the Old Testament, and that in which they are quoted by the Apostles (an attempt signalized by failure) we may say, that from the earliest times down to the present period writers on this topic have been divided into these two classes only those who have made the New Testament interpretation the rule for expounding the Old Testament passages, and, those who have recognized a difference of meaning between the original texts and their citations, and in various ways have attempted to reconcile the discrepancy. : The first of these two classes may again be divided according to their two-fold mode of procedure. The one party have venture to disregard altogether the historical bearings of the * Subjoined is a list of passages quoted in this Epistle with a reference to Messiah. In the first chapter, Ps. ii. 7. 2. Sam. vii. 14. Ps. xcvii. 7. (Deut. xxxii. 43.) [Sept.] Ps. xlv. 6-7 cii. 26-27 cx. 1. In the second chapter, Ps. viii. 5. xxii. 22. Is. viii. 17, 18. In the seventh chapter, Ps. x1.7-9. In the twelfth chapter, Hag. ii. 6. texts cited from the Old Testament, and (especially in the case of the Psalms) to regard those passages which are quoted in the Gospel and Epistles with a reference to Christ, as primarily and exclusively designed to express the utterances of Messiah. On the other hand, many of this first class have not ventured so far as to deny the historical sense in all places quoted from the Psalms: hence took its rise that warmly contested mode of expounding which gave to some detached fragments a Messianic application, while the context was referred to the personal circumstances of the writer. This system is described by Chrysostom (in Psalm cix.) και γὰρ τουλο προφητείας ἔῖδος μεταξὺ δια κ ό πλειν και ἱστορίαν τινά ἐμβάλλειν, και μετὰ τὸ ταυλα δια εξελθειν πάλιν ἐπὶ τὰ πρότερα ἐπάνιεναι. The second class derive their origin from that very remarkable commentator Theodoret of Mopsuestia, named by his followers, and not undeservedly, "the Bible Explainer." This Theologian recognized more distinctly than any other commentator of his age the necessity for all expositors of Holy Scripture to keep before them the historical bearings of each passage. This principle induced him to maintain that, to a great extent, the Psalms could be satisfactorily interpreted by a recognition of the historical circumstances of the composers, and he considered that only four of the Psalms must necessarily be regarded as direct prophecies of Christ. How he regarded all the others which are quoted in the New Testament may be fairly gathered from that passage in the introduction to the book of Jonah, where he says "God as the author both of the Old and New Testaments designed the former with a direct reference to the latter, and made its historical facts serve as types of the later dispensation," such namely as the deliverance from Egypt, the brazen serpent, the sacrificial offerings, and the history of Jonah. Whether he regarded this agreement of the New Testament as immediately designed by the Divine Spirit in each particular case, or merely as a result from the general constitution of the Old Testament economy, is a somewhat doubtful point. The latter view seems to be rather the more probable one, if we may judge from a remark made by a disciple of Theodoret, who after saying that David had penned four Psalms exclusively concerning Christ, adds, ἐν γὰρ εκοινοποίει τὰ του δεσπό ου Χρετα του μετὰ τῶν δουλων, ἀλλ ̓ ἴδια του δεσπόρου ὡς δεσπότου ἐξειπειν, και τα τῶν δουλων ὡς δουλων. On such quotations as are found in John xix. 24. and Rom. x. 6. he remarks, peragçalee throw ὡς ὁρμοδίαν ἐἰς τὴν ἴδιαν ὑπόθεσιν. Thus in the case of this ancient author we have this principle laid down, that Old Testament passages quoted in the New Testament serve in VOL. III. D |