ARTICLE IX.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

WHENCE, WHAT, WHERE? *—This book was privately printed for circulation among friends. A demand for it arose which led to the publication of a second edition. It has now been revised and a third edition printed in new and larger type. The author believes that man is at once physical and spiritual; as Paul says, "a natural (or material) body, and a spiritual body." The spiritual man is the counterpart of the material man in form and physical characteristics; and at death, discernible only by spiritual vision, it passes into another state of existence. The subjects of the chapters are: The Genesis of Man; The Material Man; The Spiritual Man; What is Spirit? The Religious Man; What of Death? After Death What? Where? He discusses these subjects from a scientific point of view, vindicating his positions from the analogy of scientific facts as well as by facts in support of them. He adduces facts which have come under his own observation in private families showing mind-power transcending the senses; facts in surgery indicating that the mind has a certain independence of the brain; facts cited by Dr. LaRoche, showing the frequent resumption of the mental faculties at the approach of death, after delirium, or stupor, and even when there is a change in the substance of the brain itself; facts from Dr. Clarke's book entitled "Visions," and from Dr. O. W. Holmes. IIe says: "There is good reason for believing that in every case of death, where the mental faculties are impaired, lucidity occurs antecedent to the final separation, although the fact may not always become known to those in attendance on the patient. It is also probably true that the mind of every one becomes more or less exalted as the border line of death is reached and before a

complete change occurs. In the case of many this exaltation reaches to a high degree and the mind becomes as it were clairvoyant." He avows his belief in Christianity as taught by Jesus the revealer of God our Father and the God of peace and love; but thinks the apostles and especially Paul laid the foundation * Whence, What, Where? A view of the Origin, Nature, and Destiny of Man. By JAMES R. NICHOLS, M.D., A.M., author of "Fireside Science," "Chemistry of the Farm;" editor of "Boston Journal of Chemistry." Third edition revised. Boston: A. Williams & Co., Old Corner Bookstore. 1883. x. and 198 pages.

for transforming his simple teachings into dogmatic forms. He shows himself not as well informed in religious matters as in physical science; as appears in his saying that in the religion of the early Hebrews Satan is represented as having almost equal power with the great Jehovah, and that a man came to Jesus with the question, "Sir, what must I do to be saved?" and in quoting Augustine as an ante-Nicene father living in the third century. His confident assertion, that tribes of savages are known to have been without religion and without moral feelings or ideas, is contradicted by the latest researches and conclusions of Tiele, Quatrefages, Tyler, and other eminent anthropologists. The book is interesting and sets the reader to thinking.

BIBLE THEOLOGY AND MODERN THOUGHT.*-The author recognizes four sources of the knowledge of God: matter, mind, history, and the Bible. He aims to show that the teachings respecting God derived from each of these confirm and support each other. He treats seven topics under the titles: Introductory; Something; Some One; Tri-unity; Goodness and Severity; Atonement; Miracles; and there are 92 pages of "Supplemental Notes." The book is an earnest defence of Theism and Christianity, and is well fitted to meet the difficulties of intelligent people who are perplexed by the skepticism of the times. We think, however, that he does not go to the bottom of the subject when he answers Col. Ingersoll's tirades against the severities of the God of the Bible by showing that God is just the same in nature and in history; and when, after quoting three pages of Edwards' famous sermon on "Sinners in the hand of an angry God," he says: "Does the reader say that such language and representations are outrageous? But we repeat and insist that readings, not only from the Bible and from New England theology, but also from the nature of things and from the history of things, are equally outrageous, infamous, and blasphemous. If Edwards is condemned, the Bible must be. If the Bible is condemned, then all nature and all history must be." For the objector may take him at his word and reply that this concurrence is precisely what sustains his objection, that neither in the Bible, nor in human history, nor in nature, is there evidence of the existence of a righteous and benevolent God.

* Bible Theology and Modern Thought. By L. T. TOWNSEND, D.D., author of "Credo," etc. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1883. 332 pages.

JANET ON FINAL CAUSES.*-This work is a philosophical examination of the argument for the existence of God from Final Causes. The work is comprehensive, thorough, and candid. Difficulties are not evaded and objections are allowed their full force and fairly met. Professor Janet is one of the ablest defenders of spiritualism against materialism in France. On some points we do not concur with his argument and conclusions, but these do not affect his main positions as to the significance and value of the argument. The first edition was favorably noticed in the New Englander. The principal changes in this edition are the transfer of some historical matter which seemed to interrupt the continuity of the argument from the text to the appendix; and the transfer from the appendix of several articles belonging to the general argument to their appropriate places in the text.

THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.-Prof. Charteris has published a large volume entitled "Canonicity, based on Kirchhofer's Quellens-Sammlung," in which he gives a learned and elaborate investigation of the original sources of evidence respecting the origin, genuineness, and authorship of the several books of the New Testament, and of the history of the formation of the canon. In the six lectures contained in the volume now before us he gives a resumé of the processes and conclusions of the larger volume in a form adapted to general reading. Of course it omits much which is essential to a scholarly investigation of the subject. It seems to us he fails to give the reader the impression of the real strength of the argument in favor of the Christian belief respecting the books. It is, however, well adapted to give a general outline of the history to those who have not the opportunity for a more thorough study of the subject.

* Final Causes. By PAUL JANET, Professor at the Faculté des Lettres of Paris. Translated from the second edition of the French, by William Affleck, B.D. With preface by Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. Second edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. xxiii. and 520 pages.

The New Testament Scriptures: their claims, history, and authority. The Croall Lectures for 1882. By A. H. CHARTERIS, D.D., Professor of Biblical Criticism and Antiquities in the University of Edinburgh. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 530 Broadway. 1882, xii, and 227 pages.

LATIN SELECTIONS.*—This handy volume contains over five hundred extracts from more than a hundred authors, and quite fairly exhibits nearly every variety of Latin style and phase of Roman thought, from the strange chant of the Arval Brethren to the charming fable of Cupid and Psyche. The passages are furnished with the names and dates of their authors and with brief explanatory headings, and followed by an alphabetic topical index. The arrangement, according to the supposed order of composition, is the editor's; the material is so largely compiled from two or three books of extracts-notably from Cruttwell's-that the whole is rather a selection from selections than the outcome of independent study of the language and literature. All in all, the book is a good digest of the progress of ideas and expression among the Romans, and may be commended to discriminating teachers for the two objects stated in the preface, as a basis or supplement for courses of study on the history of Roman literature, and as a manual of exercises for sight-translation.

But while the work is so good, it ought in some important particulars to be far better. The introduction of so many out-of-theway authors and of so many pieces of trifling value suggests that the editor's ambition was to cull something from every available source. In that case there are serious lacunæ. Cornelia's extant words deserve quoting, not merely because of her sex and her children. Several among Cicero's best and most interesting correspondents are ignored, as Lucceius, Marcellus, Sulpicius. Young Cicero's very chatty effusion to Tiro from amid his studies at Athens is highly entertaining reading for the collegian of to-day, and on other grounds also well merited insertion. A specimen of the foppish style of Mæcenas would have furnished the teacher with a pregnant text, as would the unique and famous address of Hadrian to his soul. Because of the habit of ancient historians to revise or invent the speeches of their characters we may not know the authorship of the Apology of Cremutius Cordus; but its glowing eloquence and its genuine pathos are too rare to be spared. If so much inferior matter was to be admitted, room might have been made for a chapter or two from Ampelius.

But would not the practical ends of the book have been better served if it included a smaller rather than a larger number of writers? Who, but here and there a specialist, will care to read the

* Latin Selections, from the earliest times to the end of the Classical period. Edited by Edmund H. Smith, Professor in Hobart College. Boston: John Allyn, Publisher. 1883.

bits from Trabea, Asellio, and a score or two besides? If such material were displaced by more copious extracts from really valuable but not easily accessible authors-as Ennius and Lucilius— and by a larger use of inscriptions, it would be a substantial gain. And why should so much, or rather any, space be assigned to writers-like Cicero and Vergil-who are in the hands of those who read Latin at all?

Opinions will naturally differ widely as to how far these selections faithfully illustrate the Roman character and the Latin literature. We are confident, however, that the insertion of so few passages of a thoroughly personal and autobiographical nature will be considered a grave defect. We have noticed this omission particularly in the cases of Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Quintilian, Persius, and the younger Pliny. Herein, at least, the editor would have done better had he taken Thackeray's Anthology as his guide for the poets. The extracts from Ennius are of course excellent; but there ought to be given some of his peculiar experiments in style and rhythm, and above all, his grandly patriotic and oracular line,

Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque.

Though four of Terence's comedies are drawn upon, there is nothing from his master-piece-the Adelphi. Cato's blunt remarks about the supplicatio are quoted: but they are needlessly tantalizing without Cicero's previous or subsequent letter. From the vast treasure-house of Cicero's own letters nothing is furnished but a rather hysterical note on the Ides of March. If the selections are intended to illustrate the character as well as the words of Rome's greatest minds, it is a positive wrong to Cicero to insert nothing e. g. of his missives to Terentia, or Quintus, or Tiro, or of the correspondence called out by Tullia's death. More valuable and interesting phrases from Augustus might easily have been found, and something from his stately utterances upon the Monumentum Ancyranum would have a many-sided value. In general, the imperatoria brevitas, as e. g. of Trajan, deserves fuller recognition. The poetry as well as the prose of Petronius has a value of its own.

The orthography of the selections does not take sufficient account of what has been established in that department of Latin scholarship, and as there is a growing disposition to adopt the phonetic, or Roman, pronunciation, this point is one of no little practical importance. In the extracts from Ovid are these ex