the place which personality has in the Christian doctrine of immortality. He quotes Matthew Arnold, and Matthew Arnold was never quoted to more purpose. Personality demands immortality. Thus I know This earth is not my sphere; With all its fascination, no subject is more difficult to preach. This book is good for preaching. Its arrangement is attractive, its doctrine is neither stale nor startling. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISSIONS. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISSIONS. By Rev. Henry Otis Dwight, LL.D., Rev. H. Allen Tupper, Jr., D.D., and Rev. Edwin Munsell Bliss, D.D. (Funk & Wagnalls Company. 25s.) This is the second edition of Bliss. It is only fourteen years since the first edition was published. But fourteen years is a long period in the history of missions now. We are thankful to God for that; and we believe firmly that a third edition will be required before another fourteen years has gone. What is an Encyclopedia of Missions? It is an account of all the Christian missionaries that have ever made their mark, of all the Societies and Agencies that have ever sent them out, of all the tribes to whom they have been sent, and of every village in which a mission station has been established. Here is a typical entry 'Miyazaki: A town in Kiushiu, Japan, situated near the E. coast, about 100 miles E.S.E. of Nagasaki. Population, 5000. Station of the A.B.C.F.M. (1894), with (1902) I missionary, 1 woman missionary, 8 native workers, 25 outstations, 3 places of worship, 7 Sunday schools, I Young People's Society, and I orphanage.' There are also greater articles on great stretches of subject like Modern Protestant Missions, Mohammedanism, Relief Work, Qualifications of the Missionary, Organization of Missionary Work, Objections and Criticisms, Methods of Missionary Work, and the like. There are also appendixes: a Directory of Foreign Missionary Societies, a Chronological Table of the Extension of Protestant Missions from the time of Carey, a list of Bible Versions, a List of Missionaries who have made Translations or Revisions of the Bible, Statistical Tables of the Work and Workers of the Various Societies, and a Table of Roman Catholic Missions and Societies. We have not been able to test the accuracy of the work in regard to its figures, of which there are very many. The spelling is occasionally peculiar, and the system, if there is one, difficult to discover. Why, for example, should Darjiling be spelt with an i and Parsees with two es? Perhaps the system is simply to use the most popular spelling. That is in accordance with the modern practical purpose of the whole work. And it is just that modern practical purpose which gives the work its worth. It is not a book for the student of religion; it is a book for Missionary Societies and Missionaries. It is an indispensable book for every man or woman who has heard the appeal, 'Come over and help us.' ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE. ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE. By Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B., D.D., Ph.D., D.Litt., F.R. Hist.S. (Methuen & Co. 7s. 6d. net.) Messrs. Methuen have entered upon the publication of a new series to be called 'The Antiquary's Books.' The first volume is before us. It is just such a book as we delight in, no volume of Roman Catholic apologetics or denunciation, but sympathetic, searching, scientific. It is a contribution to the history of religion, and it is the property of all the churches and all the denominations. written by a Roman Catholic: it might have been written, we do not see why it should not have been written, by an Anglo-Catholic or a Congregationalist. Are we not all the heirs of Christ and of all that has been Christlike in English monastic life? It is The volume contains first of all a careful list of MSS and printed books bearing upon its subject. There are many illustrations in the text, and there are eighteen plates, besides maps and plans, and a fine reproduction as frontispiece of Sassoferrato's St. Benedict. The first chapter is a general sketch of monastic life, inevitably brief and inevitably disappointing. But that is not the subject of the book. The subject of the book begins with the material parts of a monastery, and from that to the end it is altogether admirable. After the parts come the rulers, then the officials or 'Obedientiaries.' Next follows, in two interesting chapters, 274 a description of the daily life in a monastery. After a chapter on the nuns, and one on the relation of the monastery to the bishop and other externals, comes a chapter on the paid servants, of whom there are thirteen, the first eight being cooks of high or low degree. The last chapter names the various Orders and illustrates them. In buying the book order the second edition, which was published immediately after the first, and contains a corrected list of the Religious Houses. Notes on the Religious, Ethical, and Theological Books of the Month. BISHOP WESTCOTT was a student, and he had himself to be studied. He has to be studied still. For he is still supreme to many of us in those things upon which he wrote, and his thought sometimes baffles and evades us still. So we welcome a volume of Notes on Bishop Westcott's Teaching, published by Mrs. Horace Porter and called The Secret of a Great Influence (Macmillan; 3s. net). It is not a volume of miscellaneous selections; it is rather an exposition illustrated by selections. It is not meant to take the place of Bishop Westcott's works; it is a key to open their meaning. There is an added chapter by the Rev. Arthur Westcott on the Commentaries. Mr. Westcott might have made a book of that chapter. He might do worse than make it yet. Messrs. Macmillan have purchased the copyright of Hamilton Wright Mabie's Parables of Life. The book was first issued in 1902 by the Outlook Company. The new edition has four new chapters, and it has illustrations. But who is Hamilton Wright Mabie? Only an Englishman would ask that; every American knows. And the Parables of Life? It is in the power of every one of us to make acquaintance with the Parables, and that very pleasantly. For the new edition is most handsomely printed, and it contains eight illustrations by W. Benda-eight full-page photogravure illustrations which have character in them, character enough to arrest the eye and feed the mind. As for the Parables of Life, they have a theme. You may find it, for instance, in the last sentence of the Parable of the Dead Soul. The last sentence is: 'He had gained knowledge, but without love there is neither wisdom nor life' (6s. 6d. net). After the Rev. Francis Bourdillon had published a list of Our Possessions in Christ, and had said some happy things about them, he found that the inventory was not complete. He found that among other things he had omitted Life, the very thing which Christ came to give us-I am come that they might have life.' So now he publishes a second series of Our Possessions (Nisbet; 2s. net). We know more about the fighting than about the preaching Boers. Mr. J. du Plessis, B.A., B.D., comes to tell us now what the preaching and missionary Boers are doing. He has travelled throughout the mission stations of the Dutch Reformed Church in Central Africa, and told their story under the title of A Thousand Miles in the Heart of Africa (Oliphant; 3s. 6d.). It is a book of traveller's tales, not as the author warns us, of— The anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders; -and we hear not a little of the wise dog and the wicked monkey. But it fulfils its great purpose also. We come to know that the Boers are doing a work for Christ in Africa, and we rejoice with Mr. du Plessis that it is neither educational nor industrial, but purely evangelical work.' Mr. A. Taylor Innes is ready in good time with his John Knox (Oliphant; Is. net). It is a book which might have been published at five times its present price. It is a book which comes to tell us why Scotland is keeping the 400th year of this man's birth. Some one has said that the great glory of Burns is found in this, that he made it possible for the songs of Scotland to be sung by women. It is the glory of Knox that he made it possible for the worship of God in Scotland to be attended by women. We look for wisdom from the hoary head, but we do not expect an original contribution to the study of The Great Religions of India from a man who is just touching the nineties. Yet the six lectures by the late Dr. Murray Mitchell, which have now been published by Messrs. Oliphant (5s. net) under that title, show absolutely no signs of senility. The grasp of the subject and the mastery of the English language prove it literally true that even at so great an age as that the eye is not always dim nor the natural force abated. It is a book of popular lectures, but the word popular carries no disparagement with it here, carries nothing indeed but intelligibility and interest. Most striking of all from a Christian missionary of so ardent an evangelicalism, there is never even the suspicion of unfair depreciation of any of the great religions of India. In order to exalt Christ it is quite unnecessary to disparage Buddha. And if it were necessary it would not be Christlike. The book is sure to have a large circulation; for religion is the coming study, and Dr. Murray Mitchell is a good primer of it. Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster have just published a separate volume of sermons by C. H. Spurgeon, under the title of Our Lord's Passion and Death (5s. net). It is Spurgeon in his greatness. There are men, especially ministers, who have not yet discovered Spurgeon. There is no man or minister who will not bow down before the work which this volume contains. The idea of writing The Life of Christ according to Isaiah the son of Amoz seems to be original. But it is not more original than the form in which the publishers, Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster, have issued it (1s.). With the issue of the fiftieth volume of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (75.), the publishers, Messrs. Passmore & Alabaster, send a letter full of pardonable pride to the reviewers. The record is quite unique, and the sermons are not exhausted yet. The sermons are not exhausted, nor is their readers' patience exhausted. There are volumes enough for years to come,' and for years to come the publishers mean to publish them. My Little Book of Prayer (Kegan Paul), by Muriel Strode, is a very strange little book of prayer. For this is Muriel Strode's Creed: 'Not one holy day but seven; worshipping not at the call of a bell, but at the call of my soul; singing, not at the baton's sway, but to the rhythm in my heart; loving because I must; giving because I cannot keep; doing for the joy of it.' And so Muriel Strode resolves that 'When I pray, it shall be to the God within, and the responsibility of the fulfilment shall rest on me.' When the Romans deified their emperors and prayed to them, did the emperors pray to themselves? Surely, Muriel Strode, if they did, the emperors were more to be pitied than the Romans. Dr. Samuel Green's Handbook to the Grammar of the Greek Testament (R.T.S.; 7s. 6d.), is no competitor with Winer or Blass, and need not delay the grammar which Dr. Moulton is preparing. It is a grammar of New Testament Greek, not to those who know classical Greek already, but to those who know it not. The scholar who is ignorant of the Greek alphabet may begin with this book, and if he studies the book throughout it is expected that he will be able to read, not Thucydides or Plato, but the Fourth Gospel and even the Apocalypse, and be entitled, when he preaches, to speak with confidence of the original.' Dr. Green's grammar has been revised by his son, Professor Walter Green, of Regent's Park College, and issued in a new edition. There are changes on almost every page. One momentous and allprevalent change is the substitution of Westcott and Hort for the Received Text. It may be worth noticing that besides the grammar there is a list of synonyms, and there is also a complete and careful vocabulary. Mr. Robinson of Manchester has now published a volume of sermons on Men of the New Testament (3s. 6d. net). It opens with four sermons on the four Evangelists by Dr. George Milligan, in which Dr. Milligan shows that even the Synoptic problem is good for edification. The exposition of the Apocalypse, says Alphonso Salmeron, is like the squaring of the circle, about which the saying is that it is knowable but not known yet (scibilis est sed nondum scita). And Richard of St. Victor says, 'The Apocalypse is a great sea, full of storms and tempests, in which all human wisdom is swallowed up.' The Rev. J. B. Johnson, M.A., knows what these men have said, and he knows that what they have said is true; yet he writes a Commentary on the Revelation of St. John (Skeffington; 7s. 6d.). For he believes that as a member of the Catholic Church he has more than human wisdom.' He believes that he partakes of the manifold wisdom of God. He believes, moreover, that membership in the Catholic Church gives him the key to the meaning of the book, and he at once announces what that key is: the Apocalypse is a 'revelation of manifold aspects of the Catholic Church in every age, and also of manifold aspects of the spiritual life.' But Mr. Johnson is a scholar as well as a churchman. He knows very well that to be a member of the Catholic Church is not sufficient to make him a commentator of the Apocalypse. However he may despise human wisdom, he has much faith in human learning. And so, as the commentary proceeds, by verse-to-verse interpretation, which is its manner, his scholarship gives him frequent opportunity of justifying or defending the claim which he makes as a churchman. On one verse we have a discussion of the difference between the two Greek verbs 'to love,' on another the meaning of virgin as applied to Jerusalem. It is true that some departments of scholarship seem closed to him. There is no discovery of Babylonian mythology. But, on the other hand, many most apt quotations are made from Christian writers both early and late, and these quotations give the book a distinct place and value. It is interesting to notice that the writer to whom Mr. Johnson owes most is Ludovicus Alcazar. Writers upon Apologetics often feel that their enemies are they of their own household. And so one attacks Armitage Robinson, another denounces Driver. The Rev. John Blacket of Adelaide has written a volume of Apologetics, in which he has avoided that scandal. Its title is Not Left Without Witness (Elliot Stock; 6s. net). He sees who are the enemies of the Gospel, and he spends all his strength upon them. His range of subject is as wide as the science of Apologetics itself. He sees as clearly what are the things to defend as he sees who are the men to oppose. These are the first two merits of the book. The third is its reasonableness. Mr. Blacket never attempts to prove what cannot be proved. On the whole it is a strong, sensible, steadying book. Typology has fallen into disrepute in our day. Yet here is a considerable volume through which type and antitype run in parallel column, Old Testament text matched by New Testament text, from Genesis to Revelation, and it is unblushingly offered for the use of Christian teachers. The author is the Rev. E. K. Ryde Watson; the title Shadow and Substance (Elliot Stock; 3s. 6d. net). To those who, in their Guild Lectures, have gone over all the world and begun again, let us recommend a new and fruitful field. Dr. C. J. Casher has discovered it and given us some taste of its wealth and attractiveness in Forgotten Heroes (Thynne; is. net). It is the forgotten heroes of the Christian Church. Dr. Casher has written five lectures on them, and he might have written fifty. The first is Celio Secundo Curioni, the second Aonio Paleario; the Spanish Martyrs come third, and the rest you must find in the book. Messrs. Williams & Norgate have published the first volume of the translation of Harnack's 'Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten.' The translation is done by Dr. James Moffatt, and that is enough to say that it is well done, however difficult it may be to understand how Dr. Moffatt does so much, and does it all so well. As translator of Harnack he could not easily be improved upon. When the second volume comes we shall find that we have something better than the original, for Dr. Moffatt has made the index of subjects fuller, and he has added a list of New Testament passages. The 'Ausbreitung' was reviewed by Dr. Cobb in THE EXPOSITORY TIMES for December 1902, and we need not review it at any length over again. But reading it over again in this easy excellent translation, what is it, we ask ourselves, that makes Harnack at once so satisfactory and so unsatisfying? It is what we call scholarship, it is Harnack's scholarship that makes him so satisfactory. For it is a sincere satisfaction to know that all the facts are gathered in, that every separate fact is independently investigated, and then put in its proper place. What makes Harnack unsatisfying is that when he has brought bone to bone and clothed his great army with flesh, he forgets to breathe into it the breath of life. Harnack's Christianity is a marvellous machine, but it would never have conquered the Roman world. The title given to the translation is The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (Williams & Norgate; vol. i., 10s. 6d.). As religious sects thrive under persecution, so do religious heresies thrive under refutation. Pro fessor Pestonji Ardeshir Wadia, M.A., of the Gujarat College, Bombay, has published An Inquiry into the Principles of Modern Theosophy (Bombay: B. T. Anklesaria). It makes the uninitiated wonder what theosophy can have left to say for itself. And the answer must be the more difficult that Professor Wadia is so charitable. But theosophy will thrive upon it. But To our great student of the prophets, the late Professor A. B. Davidson, the prophet who had the greatest personal attraction was Jeremiah. Clearly the Rev. Alexander Ramsay, B.D., is also greatly attracted by Jeremiah, for he has written. a volume of Studies in Jeremiah (Bagster; 5s. net), a volume of intimate acquaintance, and fit to attract even outsiders to the love of the 'weeping prophet.' The 'weeping prophet' we have said, using the thoughtless phrase unthinkingly. Professor Davidson would not have said so, and Mr. Ramsay does not say so. What Mr. Ramsay says is that 'this man's unswerving steadfastness and patient endurance reach the heights of heroism.' It is a striking book of close modern application. For, indeed, not one of the prophets is more modern than Jeremiah, and Mr. Ramsay sees it. If we dared to preach as Jeremiah did, we should preach to great advantage to-day. How he understands Jehoiakim! How courageously he tells him that the worm at the root of his character is his frivolity. But all this is brought out by Mr. Ramsay better than we can bring it out. We have already got the length of a devotional commentary on the Newly-Found Words of Jesus (Brown; 2s. net). The commentator is Mr. Garrett Horder. Clearly there is material for devotional exercise in the Sayings,-both in the new and in the newest, for Mr. Horder deals with both. There is also much ordinary human interest. And yet the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament are better, and they have not been exhausted yet. Raymond Jacberns has been holding some Sunday Talks with Girls (Brown; 2s. 6d. net). One of the talks is upon 'Women's Rights.' The author sums up the rights of woman in the words of St. Paul, 'to be in silence;' and then amplifies the text, saying that 'women are placed on this earth to be (1) the comfort of the world, (2) the witness for God in the world, (3) the teachers of the world, (4) the peacemakers of the world, and (5) the harmony of the world. One volume more on the Seven Words from the Cross. It is by Dr. A. G. Mortimer of Philadelphia. Its title is The Chief Virtues of Man (Brown; 2s. net). For Dr. Mortimer works out a new and daring idea that each of the seven words embodies one of the four cardinal virtues; Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence and Justice, or one of the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, Love. Which of the virtues, then, does the fourth word suggest My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? When the Rev. James Adderley was incumbent of St. Mark's, Marylebone Road, he was in the habit of inviting scholars to his pulpit that they might lecture to his people upon the living religious issues of our day. Having published one volume of these lectures and found it popular, he has now published another. Its title is Practical Questions (Brown; 6s.). The lecturers begin with Mr. Inge, and end with Mr. Percy Dearmer. Mr. Inge's lecture, like all his work, is a striking combination of practical simplicity and the far vision. What are the 'Disabilities of Religious Belief?' First selfishness, says Mr. Inge; next sensuality; then pride and behold, like Naaman, you expected some great thing. Mr. Dearmer's lecture is on Christian Science. It is the first time we have seen a clergyman open his church doors to it. 'The souls of believers,' says the Shorter Catechism, are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory.' There is perhaps no sentence which more sharply separates the Protestant from the Catholic theology. But it carries us back beyond every branch of the Church. What happened to the souls of believers at their death puzzled the Greeks before Christ came. It puzzled Plato. Mr. R. K. Gaye, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, has written a book on The Platonic Conception of Immortality and its Connexion with the Theory of Ideas (Cambridge Press; 5s. net). It is a pleasant book to read, the more pleasant for its exact scholarship, and very profitable both for priest and puritan. For this is the theme of it—what Plato understood to happen to the souls of believers at their death. Plato's |