the loss entailed upon children is such that no teacher can

counteract.

Those who share these convictions with the eloquent preacher who expressed them, will not withhold sympathy from him in his lamenting the loss which the gracious term "home" in our times has suffered in regard to the wealth of spiritual content that rightly belongs to it. "To provide children with food, and raiment, and shelter; to give them somewhat of schooling; to endow their hands with the power of earning a living; to impart an occasional moral maxim or needful admonition;this to countless multitudes constitutes the entire round of recognized obligation. All distinctly religious offices are delegated: they are transmitted to schools of state or church, or they are forgotten and ignored." Had he been speaking to an assembly of men in our own country, would his words have lacked force, appropriateness, or seasonableness? Are the conditions obtaining amongst us different from what he sees them among his own country-men? And what is true as to their timeliness and applicability, is true likewise of the reasons assigned for insisting that religious instruction ought to be regarded by parents, not as on a equality merely with the duty of providing for them in things outward and temporal, but as being transcendently above that in its claims. "Parents are the natural and ordained channels through which acquaintance with God is to flow into the hearts of their children. Theirs are the lips, powerful and persuasive, for declaring the awful and hallowing sanctities of religion to children. Theirs are the voices, appealing and winsome, to which the young will hearken rather than to those of any teacher in the world. To them has been committed the psychological opportunity which best serves for high moral and religious guidance. The powers of spiritual receptivity open early in the child; wonder is born in the child-soul long before teachers come to instruct; imagination takes wings, love springs up, and desires wait for guidance, years and years before the child is allowed to leave the parents' presence. In those early hours

of delicate susceptibility when life is porous to the highest' the opportunity comes to fathers and mothers—and with the opportunity, the duty and responsibility also-of leading the impressionable life of the child into adoring intimacy with the Lord. This preëminately proud prerogative of the parent to introduce his child to the Master and tenderly to guide the foot-steps of the early pilgrimage toward Zion, cannot be too often or too deeply impressed on parental hearts."

The audience to whom these words were spoken was largely made up of ministers of the gospel, just as those likely to read them here in print will be mostly men belonging to the same high calling. Dr. Jowett appealed to them as office-bearers in the Church of Christ, to use their places of high and wide influence in carrying home to the hearts of those presiding over families, the need and solemn responsibility of the individual parent for the religious training of his child. One can readily imagine the readiness of his hearers to respond to this appeal, and of acting faithfully upon its suggestions upon returning to their several pulpits. But the more significant part of the appeal was yet to follow: "If parents are to meet these religious obligations in the home, is it not," he continued, "a necessary and vital duty of our ministry to give them the requisite guidance for so doing?" What, if failure on the part of pastors at this point should be the cause of the deteriorated religious conditions in the homes of their people? What, if their's has been dereliction in this direction in the past, can be done for the future? Three suggestive things were indicated as practicable: (1) The week-day services in houses of worship and in private homes can be devoted to the definite instruction of parents in regard to religious duties and the best methods of performing them in their homes. (2) Pastors, in their pulpit ministrations and in their pastoral visitations, can with intenser zeal urge parents to exercise their priestly functions at the family altar, and be taught to count all things but loss as compared to the helpfulness of daily family prayer to bring their children into the kingdom of blessedness and peace. (3)

The literature on the subject of child-nurture, more abundant and informing now than ever before, can be studied by pastors and circulated among their parishioners.

Confronted by the tremendous difficulties and vast proportions of the problem, "these practical suggestions are of course but a small beginning of what is required for its solution. But they are a beginning, and a beginning at the right end. Let us not be turned away from personal duty, therefore, by the smallness of such service, nor by the immensity of the needful work. Larger moral and spiritual problems have crumbled into nothingness before the insurgent persistence of individual fidelity. No amount of feverish activity at the ends of the earth can compensate for the demoralizing influence of neglected homes. A ministry makes its finest contribution to any city or country, when it lifts and sanctifies the common conceptions of fatherhood and motherhood, and when it seeks the creation of homes in which the light of parental obligation shines both night and day. To kindle one such lamp is to redeem any ministry from commonplace, and to open out perspectives of possibility which stretch beyond our dreams. such consecrated purpose let us devote our strength; on such consecrated labor let us build our hopes; and let us heartily pray that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ may equip our souls for the service."

THE GREAT MANUAL OF RELIGIOUS DEVOTION.

66

To

The Hebrew Psalms contain the monumental utterances of the religious soul of many unnamed writers. They serve to introduce us to the deep and beautiful heart of the early centuries that produced them, as does no other literature that has come down to us from pre-christian times. They have," Dr. George A. Gordon incidentally observes in his latest book, a general, racial, universal significance. The beholding eye, the rapt soul, the suffering and singing heart, of a whole people live in those incomparable lyrics; the countless individuals as

Through Man To God." Houghton Mifflin & Co., New York, 1906

at least capable of rising to this height, live in them." Voicing as they do, the profoundest feelings and the loftiest aspirations ever experienced by the human soul, they continue among Christians no less than among Jews, to render an inestimably precious service to religious devotion.

There is no part of the Old Testament, therefore, that receives such marked attention from scholars, none that ministers so largely to the practical religious needs of men in general. For these reasons the appearance of a new work giving the latest results of modern research in this particular section of the Bible, and designed to correct and supplement the valuable aid furnished by earlier studies of it for the illumination and understanding of the Psalms, may be regarded as a matter of more than ordinary moment for religious thought.

This work, of which the first volume has recently left the press, representing, we are told, "the fruit of forty years of labor," and the striking evidence of which marks every page, -is for more reasons than one, a notable achievement in current religious movements of thought in our land. To the service of producing this commentary, Dr. Briggs has brought not only the ripest attainments in the field of critical knowledge of Hebrew letters and history, but also the spiritual sympathy with the subject that is requisite to the proper appreciation and interpretation of the spirit and message which the subject involves. This latter qualification for the successful handling of the materials, comes to view in the words by which the author gives expression to his appraisement of their value and import. The psalms are among the most wonderful products of human genius. No other writings but the Gospels can compare with them in grandeur and importance. The Gospels are greater because they set forth the life and character of our Lord and Savior. The Psalter expresses the religious experience of a devout people through centuries of communion with God. I cannot explain either Gospels or Psalms

"The International Critical Commentary,-A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms," by Prof. Chas. A. Briggs, D.D. Scribners, New York, 1906.

except as books of God, as products of human religious experience, inspired and guided by the Divine Spirit."

The appreciative, sympathetic tone of these words from the introduction, breathes in all the pages of the volume, and helps one to read the new versions of the Psalms given, in the light of the accompanying critical exegesis of them, with added insight, admiration, and reward. The author's well-known reputation as a higher critic and progressive theologian, and as a through-going historical and scientific scholar so far as the methods he pursues in his studies are concerned, help one to anticipate somewhat the results reached by him. Those who expect these results to be ultra-radical and destructive, will have to make a disappointing discovery however. The introduction contains an elaborate review of the higher critical and historical questions pertaining to the Psalter; its conclusions need alarm no one. 66 They are advanced" of course, but far less so than those, for instance, of Professor Cheyne and his disciples. Instead of regarding the contents of the book as being almost entirely post-exilic, as did the English scholar in his university lectures several years ago in this country, our American Hebraist finds at least thirty-one of them to be preexilic, five of which he is willing to ascribe to the probable or possible authorship of David. Many of the Psalms, according to Dr. Briggs' study, are certainly composite in character, "just like some modern hymns," but that does not impair their value nor remove them from a legitimate place in the canon. "The canonicity of the Psalter," he strikingly says, "is attested by its contents. Its religious and ethical materials give evidence to its holy character as coming from God and leading to God."

When he comes to deal with the problem of "the imprecatory Psalms" it is questionable whether his position is not far more conservative than that of plain and uncritical readers in the ordinary ranks of religious people. To multitudes of present-day Christians it is wholly impossible, one is convinced to think, of any situation in life that would justify them