activities of the church as they are to-day. The pastors of our Metropolitan churches testify that a large proportion, in many cases a great majority, of their regular hearers is composed of mechanics and laborers. The criticism frequently appears that conversions are so few as to indicate an impending danger of the utmost magnitude, and that unless the annual increase receive speedy and marked enlargement, a rapid decadence in numbers and influence is inevitable. Yet a wider view shows that in spite of occasional and temporary losses, mainly of local significance, the advance is general and steady. Since the beginning of the present century the population of the country has increased nine-fold. In the meantime a civil war of unparalleled magnitude has decimated our ranks, impoverished our resources and demoralized society. That our churches have not been dormant, and that the pulpit has not been paralyzed, is evident from the fact that our membership has grown three times faster than our population, and that it has increased twenty-seven fold since the present century opened; while a comparison of the moneys contributed for educational and evangelizing purposes reveals a much greater advance. Such figures tell their own story. Christianity is not in a state of decadence, and it follows that the pulpit is not false to its high trust, nor spending its strength for naught.

The great historic forces reveal their enormous strength only at certain grave and critical periods. It is the hour of supreme danger that brings the hero to the front. When Antioch was smitten with terror, Chrysostom became the oracle of the hour, and the physician of diseased minds. The theatres were empty, the church was crowded. When imperial Rome lay trampled beneath the heel of the invading barbarian, Augustine's City of God rallied men from their despair and breathed new hope into their souls. When corruption and levity reigned in the Papal Court, Luther's words fell as hot thunderbolts upon the hearts of men, stirring a revolt that would not be repressed, and that created a new epoch in universal civilization. It was the pulpit that gave birth to Protestantism, and by whose fiery zeal it triumphed in Wittenberg, Geneva and Edinboro. But it may be said. that more recent times furnish no parallels to these ancient victories. Here, too, the denial or the doubt must be squarely challenged. England was roused from its spiritual lethargy by the preaching of Whitefield, Wesley, and their associates. The French Revolution gave Continental atheism its death blow, and men turned again to the forgotten and despised ministers of the Church. And when our own armies faced each other, through four long weary years, in a death-grapple for national existence and the maintenance of universal liberty, the Christian pulpit was foremost in its appeals and encouragements. The darkest days heard the most fervent prayers, and provoked the most ringing calls to patience, courage and hope. We felt that our cause could not

fail, because it was the cause of God and humanity, of order and liberty; and that moral conviction held the nation to its costly task. No man was more deeply and gratefully conscious of the potency of the religious life of the people, as organized in the churches and guided by its pulpits, than was Abraham Lincoln, and his frank, hearty acknowledgment of his indebtedness to its unfailing and outspoken support has long been familiar to our ears. Among the forces that preserved the nation from anarchy and barbarism, none was more potent and unwearied than the pulpit. Nor can there be any doubt, that upon the recurrence of any similar crisis in the future, or in the event of any social disturbance of serious proportions, the Christian pulpit would at once spring to the front as the prophet of order and justice.

There is one more form of comparison which adds its impressive testimony to this discussion. That there has been substantial improvement, since the beginning of the present century, in the moral tone of our Christian communities, must appear upon the most cursory examination. The Church has made its testimony on temperance, humanity, and personal purity, felt in all circles of social life. Slavery has been trampled out. A hundred years ago the brandy flask was no stranger to the clergy of New England. The names that we mention most frequently as the names of our departed pulpit princes, who carried their mantles with them when they died, belong to a time when society was burdened and cursed with customs, which would not be tolerated among us for a day, and whose very names have become obsolete. The more closely one scans the life of the last century, and compares it with that of the present day, the more evident does it become that the average moral tone has steadily risen. The moral indignation with which the recent infamous disclosures of the London press were received, the hot and righteous anger with which the corrupters of youth were visited, without regard to their rank and station, are encouraging signs and unmistakable evidences of a vigorous and sound moral life. And no less significant is the compulsory retirement of a member of Parliament, under trial for adultery. Never more can the days of unblushing debauchery return. Royalty and nobility are no more to be screened in their sins. And this trinity of vices, inhumanity, drunkenness and licentiousness, is the Satanic conspiracy against which, from the very beginning, the Christian pulpit has been compelled to measure its strength. The advance in moral tone is an indirect, but none the less significant a tribute, to the power of the Christian teacher.

There still remains the plea, however, that the pulpit of the present day is lacking in originality, wanting in the creative quality of thought. It may be said that preaching has long since passed its classical period, and that for its best models we must take counsel of the past. It would be invidious to compare the best American and

European preachers of the present with those of any former generation, but it may fairly be questioned whether in all the essential elements of pulpit power, in grasp of mind, certainty of personal conviction, clearness of statement, fulness and depth of sympathy, directness of address, and evangelical substance, the pulpit of our time need deprecate the comparison. At the utmost an unfavorable decision on this matter would only make clear, what no one has been disposed to deny or doubt, that the pulpit is no exception to the laws of mental progress. Every department of intellectual activity has its creative epochs; poetry, art, architecture, science, music, philosophy The golden age of Greece lasted only eighty years. English literature has had but a single Elizabethan period. The intellectual decadence of a generation cannot be inferred from the fact that it cannot boast of a Homer, or a Socrates, or a Michael Angelo, or a Raphael, or a Handel, or an Aristotle, or a Shakespeare. Assimulation is at least quite as important as creation. Progress must not be too rapid; the new paths, roughly notched through the tangled thickets and close-set forests of thought, need to be widened and cleared for the feet of the great multitude. It will be time enough for a second and greater Shakespeare when we have mastered the Avon bard. The period of patient, uneventful appropriation is very far from being wasted time; nay, it is the indispensable condition of new and higher creation. He who would see farther than his predecessors must first climb his way to their shoulders, and that is every day becoming a more difficult task. To expect each generation to produce a brighter galaxy than its predecessor is to demand the unreasonable and impossible. Granted that there are no such preachers now as they of the olden time; that Paul, and Luther, and Savonarola, and Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, have left no successors, the decline of pulpit power is not thereby proven. This only shows that the pulpit is no exception to that universal law of thought, according to which creative epochs are exceptional, few and far between. The pulpit, like science, literature and art, has its brilliant periods, its signal and impressive triumphs, its crowned princes and laureled captains. But for every commanding general there must be hundreds of colonels, thousands of captains, tens of thousands of sergeants, and millions of privates. And that army is the best, whose average military training and efficiency, in its line officers, and rank and file, are highest. And therefore, if the facts warrant the statement that the average Christian pulpit does its work in our day with an ability and success equal to that of any preceding age, there cannot be said to be any decline in the power of the pulpit. The question is not easy of settlement; but I do not hesitate. to avow my faith in the justice of such a conclusion; and for this conclusion I have tried to give my reasons.

III. RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN GERMANY. CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE WALDENSIAN BIBLE AND THE REVISION OF

LUTHER'S VERSION, RITSCHL'S THEOLOGY IN POETRY.

BY PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D., NEW YORK.

THE autumn is fruitful in important theological works of Germany. The land of the Reformation is now and will continue for some time to be the chief workshop of Protestant theology and philosophy; although one of the most learned German professors told me, a few weeks ago, that theological science is fast emigrating to America, and will soon die out in Germany. Having spent the last two months in personal intercourse with German divines, I am able to give notice of a number of books which will appear shortly.

Professor Schürer, of Giessen, has finished and nearly ready for publication, a second edition of his Zeitgeschichte Jesu-i. e., the history of the age of Christ and the Apostles. This is a new branch of Church history, founded by Schneckenburger. It presents in a connected view the political, literary, social, moral and religious condition of the first century, as far as it bears on the origin of Christianity, and illustrates the New Testament. Schürer confines himself to the Jewish world, and omits the heathen. The second edition is thoroughly revised and enlarged, and will be published in two volumes instead of one. An English translation from advanced proof-sheets is in course of preparation under the direction of Dr. Crombie, and will be published in a few months by T. & T. Clark, of Edinburgh. In this improved form the work will for some time remain a standard. Dr. Schürer is a thorough and conscientious critical scholar, and has mastered the extensive Jewish apocryphal, pseud-epigraphical, and rabbinical literature. He belongs to the moderate liberal school, and is in the prime of life (born 1844).

Professor Harnack, of the same university, one of the ablest patristic scholars of the age, though quite young yet, has elaborated the first volume of a Dogmengeschichte, or History of Christian Doctrine. It is in the printer's hands, and will appear in October. It embraces the first three centuries to the Council of Nicea (325), and works up the results of the discoveries and researches which have been made during the last twenty years, and which supersede all previous histories of that important period. Harnack prepared the way for this new book by his investigations of the manuscripts of the Apologists of the second century, his essays on Gnosticism and Ignatius, and especially his elaborate treatise on the Didache of the Twelve Apostles, discovered by Bryennios, which has raised such a sensation and called forth so large a number of books and tracts within the short space of twenty months in Germany, France, England and the United States. Harnack's Dogmengeschichte is one of a series of text books

(Sammlung Theologischer Lehrbücher), which are to be published by the firm of Mohr, in Freiburg, i. B., and will be a liberal counterpart of Zöckler's encylopædic series of text books, which are strictly orthodox.

Professor Holtzmann, of Strassburg, one of the ablest and sharpest of the higher critics, has prepared for this Freiburg series of theological text books a Critical Introduction to the New Testament (504 pages), which left the press this month (September). It is a worthy successor of the Introductions of Bleek, Reuss, and Hilgenfeld, and represents the present stage of critical research. Although Holtzmann belongs to the liberal school of critics, he does justice to the more conservative and orthodox views, and is, in this respect, far superior to Hilgenfeld. A serious defect is the want of an alphabetical index, which is indispensable for convenient use of such a book. He has also in hand a second and revised edition of his work on the Synoptical Gospels, which is the most learned and acute discussion of the complicated synoptical problem, or the origin and relationship of the first three Gospels.

In the same series are to appear a Critical Introduction to the Old Test., by Prof. Budde, of Bonn; an Old Test. Theology, by Prof. Smend, of Basel; a New Test. Theology, by Schürer, of Giessen; Symbolics, by Kattenbusch, of Giessen; Dogmatics, by Nitzsch, of Kiel; Ethics, by Weiss, of Tübingen; and a hand-book of Homiletics, by Prof. Bassermann, of Heidelberg. The whole series deserves to be reproduced in English. The veteran Prof. Hase, of Jena, has just issued the first volume of his Lectures on Church History, which is to be followed by two other volumes. It embraces the ancient Church. For half a century Hase has been teaching Church History. His brief Manual is a masterpiece of historical miniature painting. The tenth and last edition appeared in 1877. The Lectures bear to it the same relation as his Lectures on the Life of Christ to his compendious Life of Christ. He expands the views which are but briefly stated in the text book. Hase is a man of cultivated taste, and pays great attention to the history of Christian art, which was neglected by Neander, Gieseler, and Baur. His text book will probably not be published again. The Manual of Dr. Kurtz has now the monopoly of German text books of Church History. The venerable author, who was twenty-five years Professor of Church History in Dorpat, spends the rest of his days at Marburg, and devotes all his time to the improvement of his successful Manual. He has rewritten it three or four times and quadrupled its size. Early in this year he published the ninth edition in 2 vols., or 4 parts, with the latest improvements. It supersedes all earlier editions. It is a shame that the poor English translation of an old edition is still kept in the market both in Scotland and America, and even used as a text book in some of our theological seminaries. A good book becomes a bad book if it is the enemy of a better one. Dr. Kurtz told me that the