I shall be thought a very profane person, I dare say, by the friends and apologists of Mr. Jowett, if I avow that the passage with which he concludes his Essay, instead of sounding in my ears like the plaintive death-song of departing Genius, sounds to me like nothing so much as the piteous whine of a schoolboy who knows that he _deserves_ chastisement, and perceives that he is about to experience his deserts. System, or Theory, the Reverend Gentleman has none to propose. Views, except negative ones, Mr. Jowett is altogether guiltless of. Can anybody in his senses suppose that a man "has, by a Divine help (!), been enabled to plant his foot _somewhere beyond the waves of Time_," (p. 433,) who doubts everything, and believes nothing? Can any one of sane mind dream that posterity will come to the rescue of a man who, when he is asked for his story, rejoins, (with a well-known needy mechanic,) that he has "none to tell, Sir?" _What_ then is posterity to vindicate? _What_ has the Regius Professor of Greek written so many weak pages to prove? Just nothing! If Mr. Jowett's Essay could enforce the message it carries, the result would simply be that the world would become _dis_believers in the Inspiration of the Bible: they would _dis_believe that Scripture has any sense but that which lies on the surface: they would therefore _dis_believe the Prophets and Evangelists and Apostles of CHRIST: they would _dis_believe the words of our LORD JESUS CHRIST Himself!... Has Mr. Jowett, then, grown grey under the laborious process of arriving at this series of negations? When he anticipates "departing hence before the natural term," does he mean that he is "_worn out with the intellectual toil_" of propounding _nothing!_ and that he expects the sympathy and gratitude of posterity for what he has propounded? But this is not all. Instead of coming abroad, (if come abroad he must,) in that garb of humility which befits doubt,--that self-distrust which becomes one whose fault, or whose misfortune it is, that he simply cannot believe,--Mr. Jowett assumes throughout, the insolent air of intellectual superiority; the tone of one at whose bidding Theology must absolutely 'keep moving.' A truncheon and a number on his collar, alone seem wanting. The menacing voice, and authoritative air, are certainly not away,--as I proceed to shew. "It may be observed that a change in some of the prevailing modes of Interpretation, is not so much a matter of expediency as _of necessity_. The original meaning of Scripture _is beginning to be understood_." (p. 418.) "Criticism has _far more power_ than it formerly had. It has spread itself over ancient, and even modern history.... _Whether Scripture can be made an exception to other ancient writings_, now that the nature of both is more understood; whether ... _the views of the last century will hold out_,--these are questions respecting which" (p. 420.) it is hard to judge.