which is bound up in the greatest excellence of the work. It is too clear and transparent, and makes the work of the student of philosophy too easy; for we only learn to philosophize when the problems become problems to ourselves, over whose solution we toil along with the philosopher in the sweat of our brows. Such a work as Fischer's in English would be a treasure for our philosophical students.

Other works which have recently appeared in Germany are the following:

Prof. Dr. Hausrath: History of the New Testament Era. Continuation treating of the Times of the Martyrs and the Post-apostolic Period. — Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. III Theil. Die Zeit der Märtyrer und das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 1 Abtheilung. Inhalt; I Nero., II Paulus in Rom., III Der jüdische Krieg. Gr. 8. Heidelberg: Bassermann. 1873. 13 Thaler.

H. Gebhardt: On the Doctrine of the Apocalypse and its relation to the doctrine of John's Gospel and Letters. — Der Lehrbegriff der Apokalypse und sein Verhältniss zum Lehrbegriff des Evangeliums und der Episteln des Johannes. Gotha: Besser. 1873. 2 Thaler.

K. F. Keil: Historico-critical Introduction to the Old Testament, canonical and apocryphal. — Lehrbuch der histor. krit. Einleitung in die kanonischen und apokryphischen Schriften des Alt Test. 3t Aufl. 1 Lieferung. Frankfurt a. M: Heyder u. Z. 1873. 2 Thaler.

Lange: Commentary, or Bible Hand-book. Ezekiel, prepared by F. W. J. Schröder. Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk, herausgegeben von J. P. Lange. Des Alt Testamentes 16 Theil. Der Prophet Hesekiel. Theologisch-homiletisch bearbeitet von F. W. J. Schröder, Bielefeld: Velhagen u. Klasing. 1873. 2 Thaler.

Wangemann: History of the Caffre Mission of the Berlin Society. Geschichte der Berliner Mission im Kafferlande. Berlin: Beck-Wohlgemuths Verlag. 1873. 14 Thaler.

C. F. Hertmann: Buddeus redivivus; or Sacred Antiquities of the first three Christian Centuries. Buddeus redivivus od. Darstellung der kirchlichen Alterthümer der drei ersten christl. Jahrhunderte. Stolberg: Heigelmann. 1873. 1 Thaler.

L. Martin: Documents of the Vatican Council. Omnia concilii vaticani, quae ad doctrinam et disciplinam pertinent, documentarum collectio. Paderborn: Schöning.

We may add that Dr. J. P. Thompson's timely book on “Church and State in America," published simultaneously in Berlin in the German language, and in Boston in English, seems likely to have a very kind reception in Germany, because of its clear and interesting description of affairs in America.

B. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN WORKS.

12mo. pp. 322.

Boston:

ENIGMAS OF LIFE. By W. R. Greg. James R. Osgood and Co. 1873. This book attained notoriety on its first appearance in England, and has already passed through several editions. To the author, "the existence of a wise and beneficent Creator is almost a certainty," 66 a renewed life hereafter" is "a solemn hope." His main reason for cherishing these beliefs is, that it is hard to get out of the" grooves of thought" in which his Puritan forefathers started him. He confesses that he has no arguments by which to "compel conviction from sincere minds constituted in another mould." He insists that we must not try "to define or particularize the nature, mode, or condititions" of the future life, "or form a distinct or plausible theory regarding it, especially a local, physical, or biological one. Let it rest in the vague, if you would have it rest unshaken."

With this feeble faith in the existence of God, and with the explicit rejection of the revelation of the Bible, our author attempts to solve the deepest enigmas of life, and to look hopefully forward to the future of society both in this world and in the next. In his chapter on "Realizable Ideals" he pictures at length, in prose that millenium which the prophets unveiled before us in two or three matchless strokes of the poetic imagination. In short, our author believes that disease, destitution, and crime are to be abolished, and the world to teem with well-fed, healthy, virtuous, and contented people. But he is not a man to shut his eyes to difficulties. He is not a prophet, but a political economist. And Malthus is in his way. When there are no more wars and pestilences and famines, and cases of cholera-infantum and consumption to check the growth of population, the multiplication of the human species will be extremely rapid, doubling every twenty-five years, and will soon far outstrip the means of sustenance. The outer waves of the population that are driven to the mountain-tops, and to the icy regions of the poles, or into the inhospitable deserts of the tropics, will certainly then have to possess very docile natures not to envy, as now, the more favored portions of the race. Or, if you propose to restrain the increase by arbitrarily repressing the instincts that lead to marriage, you reduce the value of life to a minimum, and assume changes in human nature that are almost incredible.

But the theory of Malthus is not his only obstacle. His third chapter is well styled the "Non-survival of the Fittest." Science, Philanthropy, and Christianity combine to keep alive and to encourage the multiplication of the feeble, the diseased, and the poverty-stricken, who in a state of nature would die without progeny, while the aspirations of the middle classes, and the self-sacrificing spirit of the world's best men, tend to keep stationary, or diminish, the number of the desirable specimens of the human race.

This outlook makes political economists as a class gloomy. And well they may be gloomy; for there is no light in their science to relieve them. The Christian has all the collateral evidence on which his faith in the Bible rests, to support his bright hope of the earth's future. But what has our author, with his feeble faith in a beneficent God any way, for tinting the future with rosy hues? He hopes, principally on a priori grounds, that as men develop mentally, and so become more worthy of life and posterity, their nervous system will be so affected that the birth of children will be a less frequent occurrence in the world than now. Furthermore, he hopes for a sudden concurrence of causes which shall rapidly push us along all the lines of advancement, as Greece, in her palmy days, was urged along a single line. In other words, he looks for a revival without believing in any Holy Ghost. He hopes that the unrest of the human soul can be satisfied with the fulness and comfort of the body. He takes no account of the fact that the passions which have made most disturbance in the world have been those of the mind, and not of the body. He holds on to a hope by naked faith, which the Christian can barely cherish with all the collateral evidence of the Bible to sustain him.

If we did not know otherwise, we should say that he wrote his second and third chapters, as a reductio ad absurdum of his thesis. Certainly his darkness is deep and thick, and his light feeble and flickering.

Passing over intermediate chapters to the last we would call attention to his subjective representations of hell and heaven in the future life. He expresses great contempt for the Apocalypse, and yet the seer of Patmos treats the future life just, as our author says in his Introduction, it ought to be treated, while he himself does just the opposite. John talks like a poet, is figurative and in this sense" vague," while Mr. Greg dwells on the horrors of conscience and the separation of friends, till it is a relief to return to the scripture metaphors of fire and brimstone. Mr. Greg asks, why "divines persist... in using the same earthly images [those of the Bible] when addressing auditors whom at the same time they teach to regard futurity as an unearthly state?" The answer is, that the people understand poetry now as well as they ever did, and divines have as a class given more attention to the study of the human mind, and of language, the incarnation of its thought, than purely scientific men have done, so that as a matter of fact where the voice of the scientist moves one heart, the voice of the preacher moves a thousand. The vagueness of poetry is just the clothing which is suited to the themes of the future world; and that is what the Bible has given us.

The volume under consideration expresses views of the enigmas of life that are now current among the educated classes who are unfamiliar with the theological treatment of them. Almost any of our New England systems of theology will give a reader both a profounder, though not more taking, statement of them, and far more satisfactory solutions. One thing VOL. XXXI. No. 121.

24

is plain, the preachers of the present day do not need less study of systematic theology, but more. This book is a call from the pews for a profounder treatment of theological themes than is at present in vogue in the pulpit.

One other thing also is evident: study does not always result in wisdom. The child who is certain of his own existence is wiser than the philosopher who doubts it. Nor is the proof of God's existence so far off that any one must be in doubt of it, any more than he need doubt his own being. The idea of God is not indeed innate; but it is logically so connected with the phenomena of our own being, that you cannot be conscious of one without coming in possession of proof of the other.

LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS. By W. R. Greg. 12mo. p. 352. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company. 1873.

The Eleven Essays composing this volume are on the following themes: Madame de Staël; British and Foreign Characteristics; False Morality of Lady Novelists; Kingsley and Carlyle; French Fiction - the Lowest Deep; Chateaubriand; M. de Tocqueville; Why are Women Redundant? Truth versus Edification; Time; Good People. These sprightly papers may be read with much profit by the pastors of our churches. They illustrate the necessity of a high education for the pulpit; the importance of making the sermon equal at least to the demands of the hearer. They indicate the degree in which laymen are speculating on the doctrines preached by clergymen, and the difference between the present and the past relation of ministers to their parishioners. "It is indeed," says Mr. Greg, "only through the laity that we can instruct the clergy. It is only by appealing to the populus that the clerus can be made to open their eyes or to guard their lips. In this country there is a great analogy between the only effectual course of proceeding available to reformers in theological and in political matters. Every one who has tried has been compelled to admit with bitterness and indignation, that if he desires to bring the government to abandon a mistaken system or to adopt sounder views, it is not to members of the government that he must address himself. Time so employed is usually thrown away. He must convince the public, not the ministers; and when the public is enlightened and persuaded and grows noisy, then the officials follow tardily, reluctantly, and grumblingly in its wake. Ecclesiastical tenacity in adhering to old ideas, established formulas, obsolete errors, and exploded routine, is at least a match for bureaucratic immovability and (to coin a word) unconvinceability. As long as listeners are uninstructed, preachers will continue to enunciate, with the same security as heretofore, the drawling platitudes, the innutritious ethics, the unbelievable legends, the startling narratives, the unedifying commentaries, the repellent dogmas, with which it is their inveterate custom to regale their audience,—and will call these things the saving truth of God."―pp. 316, 317.

Mr. Greg is a lively writer, and has evidently perused, with some care, the Bible and treatises founded upon it. He does not understand all the teachings of orthodox theologians, however, so well as he appears to think that he does. He does not seem to comprehend the meaning attached by our more profound divines to the technical terms of theology. If he knew the precise definition which is given by our best theologians to the phrase "vicarious punishment," or "salvation by belief," or even "eternal damnation," he would not have written such sentences as the following: "There are two or three Articles of Faith which have more than any other stood in the way of the cordial and grateful reception of Ecclesiastical Christianity by the most pure and honest minds, those whose instincts of justice were truest and strongest, those whose conceptions of the Deity were the most lofty and consistent. These are the doctrines of Vicarious Punishment, of Salvation by Belief, and of Eternal Damnation. Of these doctrines - as now promulgated and maintained — three things may in our judgment be confidently asserted: that they were undreamed of by Christ; that they can never be otherwise than revolting and inadmissible to all whose intuitive moral sense has not been warped by a regular course of ecclesiastical sophistry; and that no Christian or sensible divine would think of preaching them were they not inculcated, or supposed to be inculcated, by isolated texts of scripture; and were it not held that every text of scripture is authentic, authoritative, indisputably true, and, in some sense or other, inspired and divine." (p. 320.) It is doubtless a fact that, if the distinctive teachings of the Bible were left out of it, it would at once excite little or no opposition in the world; and it is also a fact, that if it excited at once little or no opposition in the world, the Bible would not be true. It expressly and repeatedly announces that the world will reject it, as the world rejected its prophets and apostles. Still, it is to be confessed and lamented that the doctrines of the Bible are often mis-stated by its friends even, and that their want of accurate definitions has sometimes made its enemies appear triumphant. The perusal of this volume suggests the necessity of defining precisely what we mean in what we say. Mr. Greg is capable of a keen analysis of character. His Essay on "Good People" contains a singular admixture of acute and vague remark. He wishes to prove that "more people are entitled to be called 'good' than those to whom it is the custom to apply and to confine the epithet." He says: "The consciously pious and the ostensibly philanthropic have been accustomed to think of themselves as, if not exclusively, at least peculiarly, the good, -the

'Salt of the earth, the virtuous few
Who season humankind;'

and usually the world has taken them at their own valuation, and has tacitly conceded to them a sort of patent for the use of the adjective in question."..... "But several considerations must be weighed before we