and the light of revelation, with the accompanying influences of the Holy Spirit. Africa has been cut off from all these advantages-thrown upon the bare resources of undisciplined human nature. Surely then, if her untutored tribes were ten times worse than they are, it would not be reasonable to infer, from their present degradation, that they are naturally and hopelessly incapable of any thing great and noble. More than once I have written and published my candid, if not matured conviction, that the colored races generally are constitutionally inferior to the white ones. Still I have never placed the highest limit of possible negro improvement any lower than our own present attainments, and indeed not nearly so low. I have no doubt that a white nation, improved to the maximum of our capabilities, would look down upon America as a nation of rude, sensual, untutored barbarians; and a negro race, improved to their maximum, would be far our superiors, especially in all the most god-like traits of sanctified human character.

In regard to civil government, the Africans are far less our inferiors than travelers, thirsty for thrilling incidents, have often recorded. Their criminal laws, in particular, are generally righteous, and faithfully executed. The barbarian, with all his defects, has little of that morbid pity, which borders on sympathy with crime, and thus disgraces civilization, and taints the character of civilized men. The bloodiest deeds of African despotism have never been more atrocious than those occasionally committed by mobs in America, and by usurpers and persecutors in Europe. Besides all this, I have no doubt, from my own knowledge of such cases, that most of the terrible scenes which travelers have witnessed in Africa were misunderstood, and therefore misrepresented. In 1854 a man was brought before the chief and elders of Ijaye. After a brief consultation, about half an hour, they all rose up, and went out into the public square, where the man was immediately beheaded. Now suppose this scene had been witnessed by some passing traveler, who was ignorant of the language, and somewhat agog for wonders. He jots it down in his note book, and by and by when he gets home, he writes it out in full, with sufficient embellishment

to make it spicy. But the truth is this man had been condemned, some weeks ago, for murder, by the court of a provincial town five days' journey from Ijaye. But because this court had no power to inflict capital punishment, the convict was brought up to the capital, the evidence reviewed, and the penalty inflicted in due form of law. This places the whole affair in a very different light.

"A bribe blinds the eyes of the judge; a bribe cannot give a true judgment." This proves that the Africans are not ignorant of that art by which money has delivered so many guilty men from the hands of justice.

"If a powerful man injures you, smile on him, because resistance would only bring a worse misfortune,”—a slavish maxim, which, if universally reduced to practice, would leave the world at the mercy of the wicked.

"You may see, but dare not speak, is the death of a strong man." Although an African king or prince can punish no one except according to law, nor even then without the consent of his Council, still it is but too easy for a bad man with a strong will to pervert the law, and to reduce his Council to mere instruments of his pleasure. This is one of the dangers which must always attend the monarchial form of government. A proverb like the one just quoted could never arise in America, or any other country where the people have had no experience in tyranny.

"A job for one's self is not a day's work; the master's work demands the day;" said in reference to slaves, who frequently have little farms of their own near that of their

master.

"A slave is not a block of wood (literally a child of wood); if a slave dies, his mother does not hear of it; if a child dies, lamentation is made: the slave was once a child in his mother's house;" said of such slaves as were born free, but have been reduced to slavery by being taken captive in war. That all captives shall be slaves is the universal national law in Africa. These are the persons usually sold to slave-ships, as home-born slaves are seldom sold except for crime. Both captives and home-born slaves are usually well treated, and their lives are protected by

law. The chief of Ijaye has a slave named Ba, who ran away and escaped to his friends in Barba (or Borghoo). When his master demanded him, his countrymen refused to give him up, unless he would promise not to punish him. The promise was made, and Ba was led back to slavery, although he was a free-born man, who had been captured only two years before. Such are the customs of Africa.

"The bill-hook clears the farm, but receives no profit from the farm; the bill-hook opens the road, but receives no profit from the road; the bill-hook is badly broken, the bill-hook is badly bent; the bill-hook breaks, it pays five cowries to gird its handle with a ring, and away it goes to the owner's farm. The bill-hook has a ring on its neck, (handle,) it is girded tightly (for new labors)." This proverb or poem was probably composed by slaves in reference to their own condition. The bill-hook is a heavy pruningknife with a curved beak, used for cutting bushes.

Having thus given a few specimens of the most important classes of proverbs, I will conclude with a rhyming play upon words, which belongs to the unnoticed class of historical proverbs, that is, proverbial sayings which contain some name connected with the past history of the country, or some allusion to past events, the history of which is kept in mind by the aid of the proverb.

Ajagbo was an ancient king of Yoruba, who lived to a great age, and waged many successful wars. The repetition of the lines, which contain his name, naturally suggests the question, Who was he? and some traditionist, as the

chroniclers are called, will then repeat his history. Another proverb says: "There is a house in Awyaw (the capital) called silence; a white man died there." The story goes that a great while ago, two white men came to Awyaw, (formerly called Hio and Katanga,) where one of them sickened and died. This was probably two or three hundred years ago, and the white men may have been Portuguese in search of gold mines, or possibly on the more pious errand of discovering Prestyr John.

ARTICLE III.-HACKETT'S ACTS.

A Commentary on the Original Text of the Acts of the Apostles. By HORATIO B. HACKETT, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature in Newton Theological Institution. A new edition, revised and greatly enlarged. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 59 Washington Street. 1858. 8vo, pp. 480.

WHEN this work, to which Dr. Hackett has devoted so many of the best years of his laborious life, first appeared, an article on the importance of its historical bearings was published in the Christian Review. These applications of historic truth are most readily seen, and could at once be appreciated. The merits of the work in a philological, analytical and doctrinal point of view, lay more concealed in the very thread and tissue of the entire fabric; and it required time, and extended examination and comparison to bring out and to test its value. At the appearance of the second edition, it seems appropriate that a more comprehensive, though concise view should be taken of a work which must for years give character to the views which biblical scholars will take of that central book of the New Testament whose interpretation will determine, in a great measure, that of all the apostolic writings.

The book of the Acts embraces every department in which modern biblical science finds its varied field of investigation; and the commentator who shall do justice to the book as a whole, must possess a union of endowments, natural and acquired, such as is rarely combined in the same man.

The Acts is the historical book of the New Testament, whose thorough elucidation will throw most light on all that department which is becoming in our day more and more important as a branch of Christian study. The place, and time, and spirit of the age in which the incidents of the Acts of the Apostles occurred, constitute in themselves an almost inexhaustible study; and yet the real teaching of the inspired narrative cannot be most effectively seen unless the commentator have skill, and will give the toil, to bring out clearly the geography, the chronology and the philosophy of history, which is the warp of the web into which all the instruction of the book is woven. In addition to the history directly embraced in the Acts of the Apostles, all the antecedent history of the before-chosen people is indirectly brought necessarily into the field of investigation. In the speeches of Peter, of Stephen, and of Paul, for instance, the inspired penman carries us back to the earliest patriarchal times, and compels us to study their homes, their lives, and the views, emotions and purposes which actuated them. Yet more nearly is the history of the Acts linked to that of the Epistles of Paul and the other apostles; and never perhaps has the skill of historical critics been so thoroughly taxed, as in the harmonizing of incidents in the life of the great apostle scattered through his epistles, with the narrative recorded by Luke.

The Acts, again, call into exercise the most extended research in philological studies; and the book cannot be thoroughly read except by one who has acquired the widest range of acquisition in the languages of the Old and New Testament. Luke, unlike Paul even, was a native-born Greek, yet reared among the people of Northern Syria; and, afterwards, becoming a convert to the Jewish faith, he mingled with the Hebrews, and became a student of their sacred books. Any one, now, that has studied the history of the