for the saving of others, there is desperate need now for a firm stand, a defiant display of colors, and a swift return to the charge against the powers of darkness, the avowed enemies of the Cross of Christ, the sin and won't-believe of the world, the rebellion of the evil heart of unbelief. He sounds a call to arms and wants to know of the New School whether it will heed the call.

A similar tone of strenuous conservative protest runs through Dr. A. A. Berle's exposure of "The Illusions of a Personal Theology,” in which he sets forth the excessive liberties taken by individual scholars and preachers with long-established views which rest in the consensus of evangelical Christendom. He points out that in the denominations where individualism has held the largest sway, “peculiarly the Congregational bodies, especially the Unitarians, the corporate sense is the weakest, and the power of reproduction and inspiration to the foundation motives of religious activity are reduced almost to the vanishing point. Unitarianism has in its history so driven down the stake of the supremacy of the individual in theological thought, and utterly ignored anything like authority in the collective denominational consciousness, that the stake has pierced its vitals, and its disappearance is almost inevitable. The Trinitarian Congregationalists share, to the degree that this spirit prevails among them, the same listlessness on the side of denominational unity and aggressiveness." Dr. Berle's protest does not advocate a backward step from the great essential principles of Protestant freedom, but urges that we do not sufficiently guard and cherish the unity of the faith. He rightly says that eternal protest and progressive subdividings do not provide a Church going onward in spiritual conquest and growth.

The Holy Catholic Church never has been divided, and never can be divided. And a genuine catholicity has nothing in it that can interfere with the largest enjoyments of personal enrichment, inquiry, or growth. But if the historic advance of Christianity is not to end, like the Rhine River, in extinction, then the stream must be kept wide and deep, and the little streams of individual selfinterest and self-development, even in devotion and spirituality, must flow into the great channel of the whole. Where the individual Christians all feel it needful to have the ritual modified to suit themselves, and the individual theologians all feel it necessary to add their "personal" touch, and the masses of the Church at large are kept guessing whether these varieties of thought belong to the same class or not and whether the words used mean what they seem to mean, and have to carry on a perpetual game of hide-and-seek with symbolical meaning and critical guesses and economic theologies, the Church may live; but it will be a weak, ill-fed, anæmic thing. In no respect is the need of the Church so great at this moment as in this matter. If the mass of thinking men and women will come from the lanes and bypaths of personal self-assertion and selfgratification in which they have been wandering into the great common road of historic Christianity, and if the religious thinkers and preachers will all join in a grand and united affirmation of the simple essentials of the Christian Gospel, and use the vernacular of common life, and deal with the processes and the practices with which common men are familiar, the tramp of the swelling forces will itself make a resounding that will awake echoes of the triumphant revivals of other days. Liberty has been achieved. Whether we can achieve the unity which is its custodian and protection, is the pressing question of the hour.

IN the Hibbert Journal (London) for July T. B. Saunders says of Herder that his life was often very miserable; most of his friendships issued in estrangements; his criticism of Kant degenerated into a violent tirade; he seemed incapable of living on amiable terms with his fellowmen, or of adopting for any length of time any other attitude than that of a schoolmaster; his literary style is turgid, disconnected, diffuse, pretentious; he had the Teutonic tendency to substitute guess for observation, hypothesis for fact. Louis Stevenson objected to conceiving of heaven as "an eternal tea-party, where our friends will meet us-all ironed out and emasculate." Writing of "The Problem of Evil," Lieutenant George Stock says truly that the only philosophy open to the Christian theist is that of an unflinching optimism. He says also that religion is not a theory of the universe, but a passion of the heart; it is more akin to love than to philosophy or metaphysics; its spirit is in the words of Augustine, "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart can find no rest until it rests in thee." Religion is the soul craving to give itself to something it can trust. God is not an inference from outward facts so much as a revelation to the heart within. Let us look for him there. L. R. Farnell, of Exeter College, Oxford, writing of the decadence of the Greek religion, says that "by the fifth century the Olympian puppet show was played out;" and that, anyway, "the only real gods in Greece were Bacchus and Eros"-the only ones regarded with any enthusiasm. Percy Gardner, of Oxford, rightly declares that what is most needed in our day is not more criticism, but more faith, greater religious activity, stronger spiritual life. Brierley's spirit in his attempted restatements of Christianity reminds Wilfred Harris of "a young eagle delightedly realizing that it is now strong enough to kick its old eggshell out of the nest, and greeting the abyss beneath and the heavens above with the keen joy of one who is looking out now for wing-roads and swoop-paths." H. S. Perris, of London, criticising Dr. Fairbairn's claims for John Calvin, says: "The 'rule of the saints' in Geneva, in Calvin's lifetime, was a sorry substitute for the 'Kingdom of God.' In the New England which we see pictured in the pages of Hawthorne, in the Scotland of Knox and the Covenanters, in the activities of the Westminster Assembly, in the mental torments of Bunyan's Grace Abounding, and the awful gloom which descended upon the gentle spirit of Cowperin these we recognize, it is true, a pitiful sincerity, and often an intensity of moral power. There is religion here; but it is the religion of the Law and not of the Gospel. It is a message of fear, and not of gladness. It is Augustinianism triumphing over the gentle spirit of the Man of Nazareth. It was an evil day for Protestantism when, at the crisis of its youthful life, its destinies came to be shaped by the cold, juristic methods of Calvin's mind a mind vigorous and pure, it may be, but alien from 'the mind of Christ.' To-day the whole gigantic edifice of Protestant Scholasticism is either being 'restated' or falling into ruins. Scotland is seething with new and more liberal ideas. Barrie and Ian Maclaren write of the 'Auld Lichts' as of beacons that are going out. In America the genius of a young nation has shown itself in the Churches which have escaped from the Calvinistic desert. In France the most potent voices are those of

Sabatier and Réville. In Geneva itself an expiatory monument was recently erected on the spot where Servetus was sacrificed to the bigotry of the Protestant Inquisitor. Before the light of modern science the gloomy theology of the Fall has vanished, and a cloud has been lifted from men's minds. If we are to write a history of Calvin from the point of view of modern ideas, it is impossible that these judgments of human development should be ignored. The tragic mistake of the Protestant leaders was that they stamped religion for centuries as 'correct opinion;' they closed the door to progress; they translated their Justification by Faith (a principle of Freedom) into Justification by Creed (a principle of external Authority). In our day the lineaments of the Christ have had to be recovered. Harnack has to vindicate the essential principle of Luther, as against the degenerate doctrines of Lutheranism. The 'Five Points' of Calvinism have to be confronted with the fair humanities of the Parable of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount." In the October number of this same Journal Sir Oliver Lodge, writing upon "Sin," expresses the opinion that, if one would overcome sin and sinful tendencies, there is more practical efficacy in filling the days full with right work, thus excluding weeds from the garden by energetic cultivation of healthy plants, than in concentrating one's attention directly on sins and faults with brooding and lamentation. And then, enforcing the need to watch outwardly against temptation and danger, as well as to pray, he quotes one of Rachel Annand Taylor's poems, entitled "The Vanity of Vows:"

A soul of many longings entered late

A chapel like a jewel blazing bright,

And fell upon the altar steps. All night

She held with hopes and agonies debate;

With tears the litanies love-passionate

Drenched her; triumphant colors burned her white;
And, as the incense flamed in silver light,

God sealed her to His own novitiate.

And then, because her eyes were charmed with peace,

And blinded by the stars new-born within

The lit sweet lids God's dreams had loverèd,—

Nine paces from that House of Ecstasies

Her feet were taken in the snares of sin;

And, ere the morning quickened, she was dead.

Referring to the fact that Christ is something more than a hero, Sir Oliver writes: "Paul was able to bear sufferings with heroism, but Paul was not crucified for us, nor are we baptized in the name of Paul. No, there is evidently something unique about the majesty of Jesus of Nazareth which raises him above the rank of man; and the willingness of such a Being to share our nature, to live the life of a peasant, and to face the horrible certainty of execution by torture, in order personally to help those whom he was pleased to call his brethren, is a race-asset which, however masked and overlaid with foreign growths, yet gleams through every covering and suffuses the details of common life with fragrance. This conspicuously has been a redeeming agency."

BOOK NOTICES.

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

Union Seminary Addresses. By THOMAS S. HASTINGS. Crown 8vo, pp. 266. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, cloth, $1.50.

From his inaugural address on taking the chair of homiletics and pastoral theology in 1881, as the successor of Dr. William Adams, to his farewell address as president to the graduates of 1897, these utterances of godly wisdom run, on such topics as "How Does God Call his Ministers?" "What is the Preaching of the Gospel?" "The Childlike Spirit," "Man in the Image of God," and "I Am that I Am;" with eight Commencement Addresses to graduating classes; and a large number of "Short Talks at Morning Prayers," filling more than a hundred pages. The book is worth having. Speaking of the various ways in which God calls His ministers, Dr. Hastings says: "Years ago, up in Vermont, a good woman established in a remote place public Sabbath services, and selected a young man to read printed sermons to the little congregation. After a time that Christian woman said to that young man, 'You must become a Methodist minister.' 'But,' he replied, 'I am not even a Christian.' 'No matter,' answered she, 'you are called to be a Christian and a preacher, both in one call, as Saul of Tarsus was.' The call was effectual, and the young man became Bishop Hedding." With the statement that in some sense the Death of Christ paid the debt of mankind, these poetic words are quoted: "The debts which loaded earth were paid by Love's kiss on the lips of Law, tenderly silenced." "Love's kiss on the lips of Law"that is the gospel of the Atonement. Bidding young ministers seek not ease but a place for toiling hard, the words of Mrs. Browning are repeated:

Get leave to work

In this world-'tis the best you get at all;
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction, God says "sweat"

For foreheads; men say "crowns ;" and so we're crowned,

Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel

Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work; get work;
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get.

Advising the class of 1893 against self-seeking, Dr. Hastings says: "Do not try to climb; accept the level that claims and there work with all your might not for promotion, but for Christ and humanity. When Gladstone, early in his great career, was urged by the Bishop of Oxford to seek a higher position, he made this noble reply: 'It is my fixed determination never to take any step whatever to raise myself to a higher level in official life; and this, not on grounds of Christian self-denial, which would hardly apply, but on the double ground, first, of my total ignorance of my own capacity, bodily or mental, to hold such a higher level; and secondly,

because I am certain that the fact of my seeking it would seal my doom in taking it. And this is a reason of a very practical kind. Every day brings me fresh evidence of its force and soundness.'" Napoleon said: "When I see one chair that is higher and better than the others, my impulse is to take it for myself." He was the embodiment of human ambition. In Smith's life of Drummond is this sentence, "Holiness is an infinite compassion for others; greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them; happiness is in great love and much serving." In Westminster Abbey on the tomb of the good Lord Shaftesbury is an epitaph of only two words, Love, Serve. They sum up his great life. Only the unselfish and humble can win that great eulogy, “They forgot themselves into immortality." On realizing God, Dr. Hastings says: "From Switzerland John Tyndall wrote, 'I live here in the immediate presence of a mountain, noble alike in form and mass. But a bucket or two of water whipped into a cloud can obscure that lordly peak, so that you would almost say no peak could be there. But the cloud passes away, and the mountain in its solid grandeur remains.' So is it with us; it takes but little to hide God from us." Charles Kingsley, when his last breath was passing, faintly whispered, as if experiencing the Beatific Vision, "How beautiful God is!" When a student said to Dr. Jowett, "I want to know what you think of God," Jowett replied, "I am more concerned to know what God thinks of me." By all means to save men is our business. Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, gave much time to the public interests of his city, joining therein with all denominations. One day the Roman Catholic Canon of that diocese said to him, "Dale, when do you mean to give up politics and look after your own soul?" Dr. Dale answered, "I have given my soul to Christ to look after. He can do it better than I can. My business is to do my duty to my fellow-men and leave the rest with Him." On prayer, we find the words of Coleridge on his deathbed: "I do not reckon the most solemn faith in God as a real object to be the most arduous effort of the reason and the will. O, no; it is rather to pray, to pray as God would have us. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will-to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice, and thereupon to do the thing that pleaseth Him-this is the greatest achievement of the Christian upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord!" Then he burst into tears and begged Hartley to pray for him. Like this is President Eliot's saying, "Prayer is the transcendent effort of intelligence;" and Lady Tennyson's saying, "When I pray I see the face of God smiling upon me;" and recalls Phillips Brooks' saying, "God's gracious mercy binds His omnipotence a willing servant to every humble prayer." On the duty and difficulty of mastering self, Bushnell wrote to a friend: "To tear yourself from yourself; to double yourself up and thrust yourself under your heels, and make a general smash of yourself, and be all the more yourself for this mauling and selfannihilation-this is the work before you, and it is a mighty work." That is true; and we must get out of and above ourselves, especially in our prayers, or our prayers will not reach up and prevail. One of the Short Talks at Morning Prayers is on the words, "What think ye of Christ?" and