to the clerical members of the Order. St. Francis was a layman, and he received the authority to preach as a result of the grant of the tonsure, and all the laymen who from the first received permission to preach could do so only after strict tests were applied and after the grant of the tonsure, whereby they were incorporated into the hierarchy, and even then they were not permitted to preach doctrine but only morals. Later, when a sufficient number of properly educated clergy were found in the order they alone were permitted to preach and the laymen were confined to exhortation. The command of the year 1223, "non curent nescienter litteras litteras discere," simply meant that the laymen of the order should not seek to become clergymen. But from the first there were those who devoted themselves to intellectual as well as to manual tasks. The laymen were forbidden intellectual pursuits, but the clergy were encouraged to pursue theological studies and the convents might have their requisite libraries, only no individual member might break the principles of the order by having a library of his own. Until more is known of the early rules under which the order was organized it will be impossible to determine this question fully, but to those familiar with the inception of the movement it certainly looks as though the statement, that from the first the order was a mixture of lay and clerical members, is an error. And it is certain that in his will St. Francis demanded of all the brothers manual labor and reverence for the clergy. It looks as though every movement of a religious kind which has its first successes among the laity, enlisting them in religious work tends toward the development of ministerial talent in lay ranks, and that only the claim of peculiar rights on the part of the recognized clergy prevents the movement from breaking down the artificial barrier between themselves and the laymen.

Der Friedensplan des Leibnitz zur Wiedervereinigung der getrennten christlichen Kirchen aus seinen Verhandlungen mit dem Hofe Ludwigs XIV., Leopold I. und Peters des Grossen dargestellt (The Irenical Efforts of Leibnitz for the Reunion of the divided Church of Christ as seen in his Negotiations with the Courts of Louis XIV, Leopold I, and Peter the Great). By F. X. Kiefl. Paderborn, F. Schöningh, 1903. The sense of the impropriety of a divided Christendom, which is prompting such strenuous efforts to-day for reunion among Protestants, will make this book an interesting contribution to the union movement. It is valuable, if for nothing else, in that it clearly points out the real obstacle in the way of the reunion of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and that even the seeming fact that the breach cannot be healed should make for peace between the two communions under certain reasonable conditions. The idea of reunion was one that prevailed largely in both confessions subsequent to the Thirty Years' War. The two great leaders in the movement were Leibnitz and Bossuet. Both were desirous of union, and in this they were not antagonists. The point of conflict between them was the question of conditions. Kiefl points out that the efforts of these two great

men came to naught because in the two Churches two irreconcilable theories of the Christian faith came into collision: the theory on the one side that faith is a matter of authority, and the theory on the other side that reason has its rights in matters of faith. Kiefl regards this latter position as a radical apostasy from Christianity. In this he is undoubtedly wrong, although the fact that he so thinks shows how utterly irreconcilable the two theories must seem to Roman Catholics. In the introduction Kiefl gives us the results of his investigations into the development of the idea of reunion in the mind of Leibnitz. He shows that the idea was an early one with Leibnitz and gives us a history of the early negotiations toward the desired end. Among other things it is brought out that at one time Leibnitz seems to have hoped that Peter the Great of Russia could be prevailed upon to call a world council for the purpose of doing away with the divisions in Christendom. In his desire for union Leibnitz was willing to concede the infallibility of the Church, although by this he did not include as much as Roman Catholicism includes, but confined it to things necessary to salvation. But Kiefl sees, as the principal obstacle in the way, the fact that Leibnitz represented the religion of reason while an infallible Church has its place only in a system of revelation. In discussing the debate on the councils of Trent and Basel Kief is undoubtedly correct when he affirms, contrary to many others, that Bossuet was not willing to concede that a council did not have absolute authority. The suspicion that he was willing to do so arises from the fact that he yielded all he possibly could in the interest of union. But, as Kiefl says, all attempts at union must fail if the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church is granted even in matters of salvation alone. For the one thing Bossuet insisted upon was that, as the infallibility of the Church was granted by Leibnitz, and as he did not believe in the infallibility of Protestantism, the Protestants could and must yield. Here, as in so many instances, it is once more proved that nothing is really gained by concessions. Conflicting ideas should be allowed to stand until in the course of time one or the other is proved false or inadequate. All temporizing is liable to delay the desired results. But meantime, as Kiefl here suggests, all parties can agree to keep the peace.

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL

The Salvation Army in Zurich. According to a recent account the army is carrying on a good work in Zurich, particularly in its refuge for fallen women and its hotel for men. On account of the financial difficulties with which the army had to contend the officers requested from the city authorities a grant from the public funds of 1,000 francs, which was granted. That the army is gaining in the good will of the Zurichers is plain. It is said that of the 200 girls received in the refuge 56 are thoroughly reformed, and are in useful employments or living an orderly life at home. The hotel for men accommodated, during 1904, with lodging 10,723 persons, and distributed 17,663 meals.

GLIMPSES OF REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES

Probably Dr. Heber Newton is far from being the most capable and trustworthy man to estimate the outcome of the theological movement of our age, as he essayed to do in the Hibbert Journal for January. His point of view is for the most part too far out on the left wing to give him the true perspective. But this prediction can be approved: "The historic Personality who is at the heart of the Catholic creeds will be recognized as more truly a fact than our fathers ever dared to believe. He will be found to have withstood the critical processes which threatened to resolve His sacred form into legend and myth, and, instead of issuing as fable, to issue as fact, having the solidity of history-the rock which thenceforth never more can be shaken. The man Christ Jesus, in the moral miracle of His perfect character, in the sacramental mystery of His cosmic consciousness, will stand forth forever as the sacred shrine of man's hope and faith, the mercy seat of the loving God. In Him the human ideal will continue to be reverently seen embodied, that ideal after which our human lives are to pattern themselves in all loving loyalty. In His mirroring eyes coming generations will read the secret of the universe, and see in the Power in which 'we live and move and have our being'-'Our Father which art in Heaven.' The generation before us may have been a period of the decline of great convictions-the generation after us will prove a period of the renewal and the reaffirmation of great convictions. The central faiths of Christendom will be found to warrant themselves as the universal faiths of man, standing plumb upon the deep bed-rock of the human reason and conscience, buttressing on our new knowledge in science and philosophy and art and sociology. Man will know that he holds in these great Christian creeds 'the ardent and massive experiences of mankind,' in 'a form of sound words' forth from which will issue in new activities the spiritual and ethical energy for the regeneration of the world, the realization of the prayer of our Master-Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in the heavens.” ”- -In the same number Judge Ameer Ali of the Imperial High Court of Judicature at Bengal, tells how Islam regards the Christian Religion. One of his statements is as follows: "Moslems do not recognize that modern Christianity, overladen with Greek philosophy and Pauline mysticism, represents the religion Jesus in fact taught. They do not think that Jesus, who prayed in the wilderness and on the hillside, in the huts of the peasants, in the humble abodes of the fishermen, furnished any warrant for the gorgeousness of modern Christian worship, with all the accessories which beguile the mind, mystify the intellect, and thus divert the human heart from the worship of the great God towards a symbol and a type." -In an article on "The Working Faith of a Social Reformer," Dr. Henry Jones of Glasgow combats the notion that the children of dissolute par

ents carry in them a definite predisposition towards vice. The power of heredity has been exaggerated. Biological science reports that the transmission of acquired character from parents to offspring is not proven. That children of depraved parents are loaded with definite propensities toward a degraded life is denied by the investigators of the problem. "The Poor Law Inspector in Glasgow, Mr. J. R. Motion, sends every year to Kirkcudbrightshire in the south of Scotland, to Ross-shire and Inverness-shire in the north, and to the remote islands of Iona and Islay, numbers of little children found in the streets, 'picked up selling newspapers between the knees of drunkards in public-houses.' On being asked by the writer how far these children, born almost invariably of the worst parents, suffered from their inheritance, his startling reply was, 'Provided you get them young enough they cannot be said to suffer at all from that cause.' He supported his conclusion by statistics which showed that out of some 630 children sent out and kept under close observation for years, only some 23 turned out bad." Defining what he means by getting them "young enough" he says: "At any age from a fortnight to ten years. After ten, unless the child has had at least one decent parent, the results are long in coming and uncertain."-The article on "Faith, Reason, and Religion," by Professor Schiller of Oxford is a judicious and helpful discussion. He defines faith as "the mental attitude which, for purposes of action, is willing to take upon trust valuable and desirable beliefs, before they have been proved 'true,' but in the hope that this attitude may render possible their verification. About this definition it is to be noted (1) that it renders faith pre-eminently an attitude of will, an affair of the whole personality and not of the (abstract) intellect; (2) that it is expressly concerned with values, and that the worthless and unimportant is not fitted to evoke our faith; (3) that it involves risk, real stakes, and serious dangers, and is emphatically not a game that can be played in a casual and half-hearted way; (4) that a reference to verification is essential to it, and that therefore it is as little to be identified with, as to be divorced from, knowledge. Now, verification must come about by the results of its practical working, by presuming the 'truth' of our faith and by acting on its postulates; whence it would appear that those theologians were right who contended that real faith must justify itself by works. On the other hand, we might anticipate that spurious forms of faith would fall short in one or more of these respects, and so account for the confusion into which the subject has drifted." Professor Schiller notes that an unintelligent but widespread distrust of faith has been provoked by the extensive misuse of the principle in its religious signification, and explains as follows: "Faith has become the generic term for whatever religious phenomena co-existed with an absence of knowledge. Under this heading we may notice the following spurious forms of faith:-Thus (1) faith may become a euphemism for unwillingness to think, or, at any rate, for absence of thought. In this sense faith is the favorite offspring of intellectual indolence. It is chiefly cherished as the source of a comfortable feeling that everything is all right, and that we need not trouble

our heads about it further. If we have faith' of this kind, no further exertion is needed to sustain our spiritual life; it is the easiest and cheapest way of limiting and shutting off the spiritual perspective. (2) It is not uncommon to prefer faith to knowledge, because of its uncertainty. There is a cold cramping certainty about matters of knowledge: the possibilities of faith are gloriously elastic. (3) Our fears for the future, our cowardly shrinkings from the responsibilities and labors of too great a destiny, nay, our very despair of knowledge itself, may all assume the garb of faith, and masquerade as such. (4) 'Faith,' may mean merely a disingenuous disavowal of a failure to know, enabling us to retain dishonestly what we have not known (or sought) to gain by valid means. These are all spurious forms of faith." The aim of Professor Schiller's article is to make clear (1) the fundamental unity of all our human methods of grasping and remolding our experience; (2) the general validity of the religious attitude towards the facts, or seeming facts, of life; (3) the imperishable foundations of that attitude in the psychological nature of the human soul; and (4) the rigor with which the pragmatic method is able to discriminate between valid and invalid uses of faith, and the sufficiency of the guarantees which it offers, on the one hand, against the wanderings of individual caprice, and, on the other, against the narrownesses of a doctrinairism which would confine our postulates to a single type, those of the order falsely called "mechanical." It is not "faith" to despise the work of "reason," nor is it "reason" to decline the aid of "faith;" and the field of experience is so wide and rough that we need never be ashamed to import religion into its cultivation in order to perfect the fruits of human life. But the article which asks "Who Makes Our Theology?" by Professor Armitage of Yorkshire College, will, if we mistake not, interest our readers most. These are some of his opening words: "Life derives character and value from the relation which it bears to the great realities that hedge it about, so that the most vital question for every serious person is-What are those realities, and what is this great Power that is shaping all things and that some men call Fate and some call God? The man who has anything convincing to say in answer to this great question of religion gets the world's ear. And if, after all, the theologian has in truth no other aim than to answer this very question, then men are everywhere theologians, and the search after the answer is carried on by no narrow class of professional students but by the human race in all its differing ranks of faith and blood, of age and sex, simple and wise. . . . I see the world unceasingly engaged in the search of which I have spoken. All the religions of all the lands have arisen as a result. There is a sense in which the most backward savage is as truly engaged in this search as the wisest philosopher, for, until he knows what or who it is that is hedging him in before and behind, that has launched him into being, and that holds the future in his hand, all other knowledge is trivial. Earth is not his until you give him heaven as well: Home is not home unless behind it stands the larger house: Man is not man, but only the highest offspring of the brutes, and more