there are splendid artistic illustrations. The drawings are admirable; they impress the mind through the eye with the deep sense of reality. It is in every way a beautiful work. A CYCLOPÆDIA OF ILLUSTRATIONS OF MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRUTHS. By JOHN BATE. Fifth Edition. London: Jarrold and Sons, 12, Paternoster Row. "WHY," says Coleridge, "are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it." The work before us does, in a measure, what Coleridge desiderated. Mr. Bate has gathered together into a large volume selections from a variety of authors, including some very superficial ones, with a large number of the best writers in our language. If he has treated the works of other authors as he has our productions we cannot say that he has always made the best use of them. The work will be found very valuable, both to religious writers and preachers of the Gospel, and we heartily recommend it. THE PSALMS CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. By Four Friends. London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co. We believe with the editors of this volume that the moral and religious lessons of the Psalter will gain greatly in force from a consideration of the time and circumstances of the several Psalms, that much light may be gained by an endeavour to grasp the point of view of the writers, and that each Psalm so looked at will in most cases tell its own tale. One object of this work is to restore the Psalter to the order in which they were originally written, to give the Psalms into strophes, and to give each strophe into the line which composed it. To amend the errors of translation is the great object of this production. We greatly value the work of these "four friends." They have put into the hands of the Biblical student a light by which he may see many beautiful and Divine things in these Psalms which before lay in obscurity. MEMORIALS OF THE ENGLISH MARTYRS. By the Rev. C. B. TAYLER, M.A. London: Religious Tract Society, 56, Paternoster Row. THIS book takes us on a pilgrimage to various scenes in the British Isles, where great men suffered martyrdom on account of their faith in Christ and his Gospel. Spots, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, are pointed out to us in Lutterworth, Hadleigh, Norwich, Manchester, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Canterbury, Gloucester, Oxford, Chester, Lambeth, Smithfield, &c., &c. The work is well written. Its spirit is Christian, and its purpose is good. It is elegantly "got up." Paper, type, illustrations, binding, are excellent. It is a handsome volume for a Christmas present. "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord."-Phil. iii. 8. HRISTENDOM abounds with sciences. Their mere catalogue is a long roll of highsounding names. Although all true science is built upon immutable principles, this scientific scroll is undergoing constant alteration. Time expunges some, inscribes others, and modifies not a few. Human sciences, like all the productions of man, are fallible and fleeting. They are more like transient meteors in the hemisphere of thought than fixed stars burning on through the ages. Notwithstanding this, they exert no small measure of influence both upon the conduct and the destiny of men. Their respective votaries often regard them as the standard of all truth, the very oracles of Heaven. They would that Christianity itself should be judged by their tribunal. As the old Jews rejected Christ because He did not answer to their theology, these men repudiate His system because it squares not with their scientific speculations. How are these savans to be treated by VOL. XXII. F Christian Theists ? Not with silent contempt, still less with dogmatic arrogance. The respectful and argumentative way in which Paul, both in his speeches and letters, dealt with the narrow-minded votaries of a perverted Judaic theology, furnishes an example demanding our imitation. He unfolded to them the Gospel in relation to their system, and made it appear to chime harmoniously with, and smile benignantly upon, all that was really true in the doctrines they maintained. Truth is one. No two truths either cross each other or even run in parallel lines: keeping ever apart. They are organically related-they have one heart, throwing a common blood into all. The tree of knowledge which grows in the garden of universal intelligence may have branches of science without number; but all these branches, however widespreading or tall, meet in one trunk, and draw their life from a common root: that root is the knowledge of the Christ-revealed God. Paul felt this when he said: "Yea doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." I shall endeavour to illustrate the excellency of this knowledge by three remarks—namely, that Christianity accords with all true science, encourages all true science, and transcends all true science. of immature growth. I. CHRISTIANITY ACCORDS WITH ALL TRUE SCIENCE. What are now called sciences are of modern creation and The oldest of them had no existence until centuries after Christianity appeared. There is one fact which is common to most, if not to all of them. It is this, that in their first stages they set themselves against the scriptures of God. Youthful science, like youthful life, is ever more or less conceited and reckless. Hence geology, chronology, and ethnography rose up in their youth to invalidate the statements of Holy Writ in relation to the origin of the earth, the age of man, and the unity of the race. Those sciences, as they have grown older, have increased in modesty. With deepening conscious ness of their own fallibility, they now hold those conclusions which seem to be at variance with the facts of revelation. We are far from averring that some of the facts of science do not clash with things in the Bible as interpreted by some theologians: but the interpretations of the Bible are no more the Bible than the theories of science are the facts of nature. What is there in Christianity that contradicts true science? Take its cosmological teaching. Here it is:“... Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands; they shall perish, but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." Has science, in her furthest investigations into nature, discovered a single fact that contradicts this? Take its anthropological teaching. It teaches that man has soul and body. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." The science that teaches that man is all body, nothing but body, is a science which no truly scientific man will endorse. "What man holds of matter," says Sir William Hamilton, "does not make up his personality. Man is not an organism: he is an intelligence served by organs; they are his-not he." It teaches that all men are from one stock. 66 God hath made of one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth." . . The whole earth was of one language and one speech." What says science to this? "The languages," remarks Humboldt, 66 compared together and considered as objects of the natural history of the mind, and when separated into families according to the analogies existing in their internal structure, have become a rich source of historical knowledge; and this is probably one of the most brilliant results of modern study in the last sixty or seventy years. From the very fact of their being products of the intellectual force of mankind, they lead us, by means of the elements of their organism, into an obscure distance unsearched by traditionary records. The comparative study of languages shows us that races now separated by vast tracts of land are allied together, and have migrated from one common primitive seat; it indicates the course and direction of all migrations, and in tracing the leading epochs of development, recognises, by means of the more or less changed structure of the language, in the permanence of certain forms, or in the more or less-advanced destruction of the formative system, which race has retained most nearly the language common to all who had emigrated from the general seat of origin." Is Take its ethical teaching :-". . . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength :" this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely, this: "... thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” there any system of morals extant having any pretension to a scientific basis that essentially disagrees with this? Does not the common sense of humanity say that the greatest being should be reverenced the most, and the best being be the most loved? Christianity is one with all true science. It is the key-note that sets all their notes to music. Our sphere is so narrow and our ears are so deaf that some of the notes may seem discordant. Oh, for an angel's altitude and an angel's ear to catch all the vibrations of the great harp of truth! Christians need not be afraid of the discoveries of intellect. Each true science that comes circling through our heavens is lit up by the great central sun. It is not sent to disturb the order of our system, but to add new glories to our sky, and lend a stronger and a clearer light to the path of our life. A thought occurs to us on this subject whose fresh force requires us to note it down now and here before we pass on to another point; it is this: the interest of Christian truth does not require that the Bible should be proved to accord with all true science. Were a contradiction |