dom of will and of power. Over against the modern rationalistic scepticism and doubt he emphasizes the certainty of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus and over against a hopeless pessimism and general unrest and discontent he shows us the absolute peace which comes from Him who has redeemed us from sin and death, the cause of our discontent. Not only a Christianity of the will, or of reason or of feeling, but a Christ who belongs to the whole soul, can be the soul's salvation.

The third part of the book deals with the person of Christ. It is the most beautiful in diction and the keenest in argument. The author compares and contrasts Jesus with the greatest and best men the human race has produced, he sifts all the innumerable isms which have claimed him as their ideal and analyzes the interpretations of modern theology, showing their fallacies both on the ultraconservative and on the ultraliberal side and finally closes with a discussion of the positive values of the Nazarene which make him the Son of the living God, the saviour of men and the reconciler between God and man, Jesus the Christ, God's only begotten son our Lord.

The book is a veritable gold mine in its wealth of thought, refreshing in its mode of treatment and inspiring to the highest degree in its delineation of spiritual power and truth as it is in Jesus. We recommend it heartily to conservative and liberal alike, for it is eminently fair to both sides and intelligible to the wise and unwise.

R. C. SCHIEDT.

THE NEW DIGEST OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA.

Rev. Dr. E. T. Corwin and the entire Reformed (Dutch) Church are to be congratulated on the completion of the new Digest on which he has bestowed years of patient and painstaking toil. It is a great storehouse of historical and ecclesiastical information, covering 938 pages of closely printed matter. Their General Synod has met annually for over one hundred years and hence Dr. Corwin had eight or ten times as much matter to work up as the Committee of our General Synod had on hand in the preparation of our Digest. For upwards of twenty years the task has occupied his attention, but during that time he has performed other literary labors of vast extent and great importance. For instance the fourth edition of the Manual of The Reformed Dutch Church, containing 1,100 pages of most interesting historical matter, was published in 1902. Then he spent nearly two years in Holland gathering material for six large volumes of Amsterdam correspondence which he afterwards edited and published, containing in all 4,500 pages. And now this colossal Digest crowns these and other literary labors in behalf of our

sister Reformed Church. The articles of Dort, 1619, the explanations of the same in 1792, the constitution adopted by the Reformed Church in America in 1833 and the constitution. adopted in 1874 occupy four parallel columns. It is interesting to note important modifications from time to time such as the change from the exclusive use of David's Psalms in 1619 and a few New Testament songs of praise, like the Magnificat, to the approval of a modern hymnal. With great pertinacity all these constitutional enactments insist on the duty of the minister to explain a portion of the Heidelberg Catechism on every Lord's Day.

But I am sorry to say that from what I have learned this requirement is more observed in the breach than in the performance. There would be some excuse for such neglect of official obligations on the Lord's Day if systematic catechetical instruction of the baptized children of the Church were attended to at other times. The writer served as supply to a Dutch Reformed congregation one winter and spring in Iowa, in connection with missionary services in our own Church, and had no difficulty in securing a very large attendance of children in the catechetical class. This convinced him that the previous neglect of this grand old Reformation and Apostolic custom was the fault of pastors rather than of the people in that community at least.

A very interesting chapter of 30 pages (518-612) sets forth the relations of the Dutch and German Reformed Churches from the days of Rev. John Phillip Boehm, in 1728, down to the present time. As the writer has stated elsewhere this part of the Digest alone is worth the cost of the book ($2.50) to any person desiring to become fully acquainted with the views, the acts and hopes of our Reformed ancestors.

Already in 1743 or 164 years ago the Synods of North and South Holland sought to unite the Presbyterian, the German and Dutch Reformed Churches in America into one body but without success. Dr. Briggs has stated that the project fell through owing to the stubbornness of a dozen Presbyterian preachers. But it is probable that the fact that every one of these bodies spoke a different language at that time was the main obstacle in the way of union. The effort to unite the two Reformed Churches in support of one Theological Seminary as early as 1754 likewise failed.

A history of correspondence between the two Reformed Churches, first by letter and exchange of minutes and then by delegates, is given with a list of delegates from both bodies for ninety-three years.

The cause of the break of ten years between 1853-1863 is set forth and the ill considered efforts of some Dutch brethren to

promote a secession movement in the North Carolina Classis and other parts of the German Reformed Church before the war which was nullified by the presence of slavery amongst our brethren there.

An interesting chapter explains the process by which the Church of Christ in Japan came to adopt the Apostle's Creed instead of the Denominational Confessions of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches as at first contemplated.

In this monumental work Dr. Corwin has reared for himself a memorial more noble than marble or bronze and placed our sister Reformed Church under an everlasting debt of gratitude. May he long enjoy the ripe fruit of his abundant labors.

CYRUS CORT.

THE

REFORMED CHURCH REVIEW

No. 3.-JULY-1907.

I.

A WAVERING WITNESS.*

BY THE REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN,

COLUMBUS, OHIO.

Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Acts 16: 30, 31.

One sometimes wonders whether the answer of the prisoners really met the question in the mind of the jailer; whether the kind of salvation of which he was thinking was not a little different from that to which they pointed him? It is evident, however, that they succeeded in getting him to think of what was in their minds, and to see and feel his need of deliverance, not merely from the severities of the Roman law, which might hold him responsible for the loosening of the shackles of his prisoners, but from a worse condemnation for neglect and disobedience to a higher law.

Without, however, trying to investigate the psychological processes in the mind of this Philippian jailer, I wish to take his question, and the answer of Paul and Silas, as a convenient statement of what is generally considered to be an evangelical experience. This question and this answer have, I dare say,

The anniversary sermon in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in the United States at Lancaster, Pa., May 7, 1907.

been used more frequently than any other sentences in the New Testament as expressing what is central and essential in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"What must I do to be saved?" The question is supposed to be one which all human beings, aware of their true moral condition, have need to ask.

It implies that there are certain serious and perhaps fatal consequences of our own misdoing or neglect from which we cannot escape without help from some higher Power. It implies the need of the intervention of an agency above ourselves to rescue us from the evil which we are bringing upon ourselves.

The question is not, "What shall I do to save myself?" it is "What shall I do to be saved?" There is something that I cannot do, that must be done for me. Nevertheless there is something that will not be done for me, and that I must do for myself. The question is not: "What is going to be done to save me?" It is "What must I do to be saved?"

The divine intervention is necessary, but the human initiative in laying hold of the divine help and appropriating it is also necessary.

The first thing to do, therefore, in the work of evangelism, is to awaken the sense of moral need which shall result in arousing men to ask this question, "What shall I do to be saved?" Conviction of sin is an old-fashioned phrase which represents a fact of experience by no means out of date.

We are sometimes told, however, that this fact of experience is becoming infrequent, almost obsolete. "There is not nearly so much conviction of sin in these days as there used to be," the old preachers tell us. "And there seems to be much less emphasis placed on this feature of the evangelical experience than once there was. The ministers do not put much stress upon it, and if they do it is resented by their hearers. People do not want to hear talk of this kind, and the pulpit is forced to take a compromising attitude.”