really progressing or really degenerating. The author seems to think recent developments are more or less progress. If one holds that they are more or less degeneracy one will disagree with the author. It is another proof that we do not differ from each other today one whit more in theology than we do in ethics.

The author thinks the rural school needs to be socialized. We suspect the rural school teachers now are doing all the work they can be paid for, in the To in present state of rural finances. troduce more duties will mean inferior performance. On the subject of the rural Church, we agree with the author that there should be less attention given to preaching and more to worship. In this particular the Book of Common Prayer ought to help.

The author has a chapter on "Psychic Causes of Rural Migration," which is all very well. The principal cause is, however, not psychic, but economic. system of taxation taxes everything the farmer buys, but permits the land he needs to be accumulated in great estates. If the land values were taxed, the great estates would be broken up. The farmer could buy his farm and his stock and improvements could be exempted from taxation.

"TO ARMS!" Authorized translation from the French of Marcelle Tinayre, by Lucy H. Humphrey. New York, 1918. E. P. Dutton & Co. Price $1.50 net.

These chapters are scenes from France during mobilization. There is a little love story carrying, like a thread, the glimpses of family life, the cafés, boulevards, workingmen, soldiers, Socialists. We see Paris and, somewhat, France, in the hour of the great awakening: "La Veillée des Armes," as the French title of the book has it. It is a book to make us love France and to inspire us to imitate her.

"IMMORTALITY," by Burnett H. Streeter, A. Clutton-Brock, C. W. Emmet, J. A. Hadfield, and the author of "Pro Christo et Ecclesia." New York. 1917. The Macmillan Co. Price, $2,25.

We have here a series of papers by different authors on the subject of immortality. We do not see the advantage of joint authorship in such a case. The development of an argument can be better guided by a single mind.

In the introduction, the Rev. B. H. Streeter quotes Macauley disapprovingly: "There are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress. *** But with theology the case is very different. *** A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth with a Bible, candor and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal.' But things have changed since Macauley wrote," the author adds. If any proof were needed that things have not changed since Macauley wrote, the volume under review might afford it. The learned authors undoubtedly know much more about many things than a Christian of the fifth century or even than Macauley himself, but about theology in general or immortality in particular we cannot detect any increase in knowledge. "Psychical research, if it has added little to our knowledge of another life, has at least thrown startling light on the nature of that mind whose survival is in question," Mr. Streeter says. We interpret this to mean: psychical research has increased our knowledge of psychology, but has not increased our knowledge of theology in general or immortality in particular. "Philosophy has not been idle," Mr. Streeter adds. Neither, we suggest, is a dog idle who is churning butter, but he does not advance any further forward, no matter how much butter he churns. Mr. Streeter thinks that evolution, comparative religion, lately discovered documents, and new methods of study

have given a new meaning to revelation and a new interpretation to the New Testament. This may be so. In other words, whatever theology we hold, we hold it from the standpoint of the rest of our thought. That these studies have added anything to our knowledge of theology in general or immortality in particular, we do not see. On the whole, we believe that Macauley's view of the subject is still valid.

A. Clutton-Brock writes on Presuppositions and Prejudgments. This chapter should clear the ground. The main point is that the belief in a future life is growing, but the traditional expressions of it have become obsolete. Mr. CluttonBrock is particularly hard on the doctrine of hell. That the growing belief in future existence is no proof of immortality and the obsolescence of traditional expressions of immortality no disproof of the traditions, we would mildly urge. If the question is about fashion, public opinion can more or less settle it, but if the question is about truth we cannot see that public opinion has anything to do with it.

James Arthur Hadfield, under the title, "The Mind and the Brain," contributes a chapter from the standpoint of science. His main thesis is "that the tendency of the mind towards independence and autonomy suggests the possibility of its becoming entirely liberated from the body, and continuing to exist in a disembodied state." As Bradley says in his negative sort of way: it is possible. This is an interesting chapter, but it only proves that immortality is possible, an idea which the learned author has in common with the fifth century and Macauley.

The Rev. B. H. Streeter himself takes up "The Resurrection of the Dead." He gives us a judicious criticism of the conception of bodily resurrection, eliminating such rather crass notions as "material identity" and emphasizing the distinction between the natural body and

the spiritual body. As this chapter is chiefly based on a judicious and sensible interpretation of the New Testament, we still think that Mr. Streeter with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than Theodore of Mopsuestia with a Bible.

There are also chapters on "The Life of the world to Come," by B. H. Streeter; "The Bible and Hell," by Rev. C. W. Emmet, and "A Dream of Heaven," by A. Clutton-Brock, but however plausible these may be as interpretations of these subjects from the current point of view, we do not believe that the learned authors really know anything more about them than Macauley or St. Augustine or, for that matter, their own pious grandmothers.

"The Good and Evil of Spiritualism" is the title of an entertaining chapter by the author of "Pro Christo et Ecclesia." The writer thinks that the credulity of Spiritualists hinders psychical investigation and so it probably would if the investigators were not too smart for the Spiritualists. The Spiritualists. The same author contributes papers on Reincarnation, Karma and Theosophy and on The Undiscovered Country.

On the whole, this volume is interesting and up-to-date, but we are still of the opinion that its perusal could have added nothing to the unquestioned knowledge of immortality of either Macauley or his esteemed Fifth Century Christian.

"THE HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW." Cambridge, Mass., April, 1918 The Harvard University Press. $2.00 & year, 50 cents a copy.

In "The Monologue of Browning" Professor Palmer has given us a very valuable and interesting study in that great poet. To compare Browning with Tennyson: Tennyson was English and Anglican and an Oxford man, harked back to the Middle Ages and lived in the country in England. Browning was partly of foreign and otherwise mixed extraction, non-conformist, self-taught,

chose subects from the renaissance, lived abroad and chiefly in cities. Coming to a deeper analysis, Tennyson interpreted a phase of character viewed through months or years, perhaps; Browning showed us a whole man, brought out by the heat of one critical moment. To this end the dramatic monologue, not however peculiar to Browning, was his chosen and happy medium. This is not drama, but, being addressed to a particular hearer or hearers, is always dramatic. When Browning drops this, as too often after the writing of "The Ring and the Book," and seeks to teach and speak in his own proper person, he rambles and becomes rather foolish. Professor Palmer's article is delightful and ought to be read. We opine that it has nothing more to do with theology than would an equally good article on the construction of tubular bridges. However, we realize that the "liberal churches" are quite used to reading

much inferior matter on the same sub

ject from their pulpits, on Sunday. So we suppose a liberal theological magazine gives this place as a German manufacturer of automobile tires might advertise rubber substitutes.

Such

There is a rather inconclusive article by Dr. R. F. Alfred Hoernle on "NeoRealism and Religion." The author begins: "Neo-Realism, we shall all agree, has come to stay." We shall all agree to nothing of the sort. If anything came to stay, in philosophy, Neo-Realism would never have come at all. things occur in the history of philosophy, because, in the desire to advance, there generally appears nothing else to do but to turn in on the circle and pass through one or other of the old, long exploded errors. By going back some centuries or milleniums the philosopher is easily able to persuade his hearers that he has wrung new truth from the lips of the inscrutable. Neo-Realism will stay, perhaps, long enough for some brilliant thinker to "discover" a critical philos

ophy. Then those who know nothing of history will hail him as a new teacher. He will be new, just as Neo-Realists are new new, that is, in being a feeble reproduction of what had been said better, perhaps twenty-five hundred years ago.

Like all Realisms, Neo-Realism is strong in confident assertion. "As sound epistemological monists, they insist that it is reality itself which we apprehend, not some substitute for, or representative of, it in the shape of an 'idea.' The object, as Perry puts it, is 'immanent' in knowledge" (p. 151). They do indeed insist that this is so, but how they meet the keen arguments from Plato to Dean Mansel, or from Zeno to Bradley, showing that there is no way to know that this is so, is another question. It is easy to "insist" on anything. It is not so easy to answer a metaphysical criticism of knowledge.

Neo-Realism cannot pause at epistemology and naturally goes on to prob

lems which trench on the domains of

religion. Here Professor Hoernle seems

to find that the writers of this school are hitherto rather inadequate. R. B. Perry has written: "The good is to be won by the race and for the race. *** Science *** supplies the detailed knowledge.

*** Philosophy investigates whether as a whole nature is favorable to human desires. *** Religion turns philosophy's verdict into belief” (p. 163). Professor Hoernle justly says: "Perry's account of religion entirely ignores the mystical element in it." Quite so. Religion cannot be harnessed up to run a dynamo for the Reform Club. There is something unclassified about religion.

Mysticism comes in, in this number of the Review, for an article: "Angelus Silesius," by Professor Frederic Palmer. This man, Johann Scheffler by name, called Angelus Silesius, was a Silesian of Breslau, died 1677. He was a Franciscan friar, yet, in some sort, a follower of Jakob Boehme. The thirty years' war naturally impressed mysticism upon

Germany. Silesius' poetry is one of the classics of mysticism. The author makes many interesting quotations and observations. Silesius' hymns had appeal for the followers of the Pietistic movement in the next century.

"MY LIFE WITH YOUNG MEN," by Richard C. Morse. New York. 1918. The Association Press. Price, $3.50.

The book has a foreword by John R. Mott. "This work is the autobiography of the greatest leader in the life of the American Young Men's Christian Association." This is high praise from a competent authority. The author in his early chapters on "Heredity," "Childhood and School Life," "College at Yale, 1852-1862," "Vocational Preparation." and so forth, dwells lovingly on his ancestors, his family, his teachers, and his own early development. The later chapters are almost a history of the Y. M. C. A., of its conventions, its extension, and development.

"THE ENRICHMENT OF PRAYER," compiled by David R. Porter. New York, 1918. The Association Press. Price, 75 cents. The first part of the book contains chapters on prayer. There follow suggested prayers for morning and evening, meditations for a week, prayers for special occasions, and so forth. As we already have many better manuals of devotion, this can only be praised for the good there is in it. We do not find the preparations and devotions necessary for the Holy Communion, nor any careful method of self-examination, nor much Christian instruction in the spiritual life.

The books of devotion recommended or p. 187 are of most different values ranging from Taylor's "Holy Living and Law's "Serious Call," down to som very recent and jejune little publications.

"OUR CASE AGAINST ROME," by N. P. Williams. New York. 1918. Longmans, Green & Co. Price, 90 cents net. the claims of the Anglican communion This is an excellent presentation of against papal claims, from the point of view of conservative Churchmanship. The Petrine texts are ably discussed. After this the patriotic and historic arguments against Romish pretensions are judiciously brought out. The book can be used as a basis for lectures and might be useful to lend to individuals occasionally.

"TARAS BULBA AND OTHER STORIES," by Nicolai V. Gogol. Everyman's Library. New York. 1917. E. P. Dutton & Co. Price, 60 cents.

This is another great classic, translated from the Russian, published in an excellent cheap edition in the valuable "Everyman's Library.” Every one should read Gogol, the founder of Russian prose. These are thrilling stories of Cossack life in the Ukraine. Coming at this time, when most people are just hearing for the first time of the existence of the Ukraine, a great many will wish to get hold of the book to learn something about the land and the people to whom the Central Powers are now offering a pseudo-independence.