slowly to become the medium of the revelation of the redeeming work of God. The elaboration of this view in the work before us may make it clear how the freedom of treatment of the Scripture narrative adopted by Robertson Smith or others may be consistent with their Orthodoxy.

In this notice, I have endeavored to present merely the attitude of Prof. Ladd toward the questions which he discusses and the nature of the results reached by him. The measurement of the character of the inspiration of the Bible by the nature of the revelation contained in it must be accepted as the only true one. In proportion as we regard the truth contained in the Bible to be of a general religious nature, and the true end of the writings contained in it to be the religious development of man, apart from any special scheme of salvation, will our view of the nature of its inspiration vary from that maintained by him.

It should be added that the history of the doctrine of inspiration forms an important element of the work. Perhaps no part of the undertaking demanded more painstaking research, and perhaps no part of it will contribute more than this toward making the results reached by Prof. Ladd acceptable to those for whom he specially writes.

C. C. E.

L'Evolution Religieuse contemporaine chez les Anglais, les Américains, et les Hindous. Par le Comte Goblet D'Alviella, membre de la Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Paris, New York, Lausanne, Bruxelles, Londres, La Haye. 1882. [The Religious Evolution contemporaneous among the English, the Americans, and the Hindus. By Count Goblet D'Alviella, member of the Belgic Chamber of Deputies.] pp. xix, 434.

In his Introduction, the author says, "Though not connected with any church, but in sympathy with every one, whether within or without ecclesiastical organizations, who seeks to unfold the religion of reason, or rational religion, I have devoted myself for many years to following the different endeavors made. among the English, the Americans, and the Hindus, to resolve what Mr. John Tyndall calls the most important problem of modern times.' The result of these researches I here offer to the public." He further says: "This work is not a book of propagandism. I have not the remotest thought of recruiting adherents either to the one or the other of the systems which I attempt to expound; nor do I pretend to offer, on my part,

a new solution of the problem. My only aim is to furnish some materials for the history of religious rationalism in the second part of the nineteenth century. Therefore, I give myself wholly to the collection of facts and a description of documents, maintaining my appreciation of them on the ground of general criticism."

The Count divides his work into three parts, as the title-page indicates. The first part treats of le libre-examen (free inquiry) in England, and is comprised in six chapters. Of this part, he says, "I have thought it necessary to begin the first part of this volume by a glance at the progress which free inquiry has made among the English since the reign of Henry VIII.: by seeing how the present has evolved from the past, we shall be better able to discover how the future will evolve from the present." He then discusses the movement of opinions in the different denominations, from the Established Church through all the dissentients within and without nominal Christianity,- orthodox, Unitarian, rationalists, and secularists. His exposition of the various opinions of these sects and fragments of sects is clear and candid.

The second part is devoted principally to the United States, and is divided into four chapters. He follows the course of free inquiry, from the ancient Puritan Orthodoxy, through all its phases of Arminianism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism, to secularism and agnosticism and blank atheism. This is the part which will interest our readers most deeply. Channing, Parker, Emerson, Frothingham, Abbot, Potter, Savage, Fiske, Schermerhorn, Gannett, are all criticised, and, for the most part, very fairly. The Unitarian National Conference and the American Unitarian Association, the Concord School of Philosophy, etc., are treated with a commendable degree of accuracy. The Count does not understand that some of the most extreme of the men calling themselves Unitarians came out of Orthodoxy with so violent a saltation that they passed clean over Unitarianism into the outer darkness of agnosticism or pantheism or atheism, and are now involving both into the light and the truth.

"The third part has for its object to show how the contact of European culture has produced in India, on the one hand, the dissolution of the old paganisms, and, on the other hand, the formation of an eclectic Theism, due to a union of the religious progress made among the two races." Of course, the Brahmo

Somaj is carefully discussed; and its principal founders and supporters, Rammohun Roy, Nath Tagore, Keshub Chunder Sen, and Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, are worthily and largely commended. The Count thinks the Christian missionaries hope against hope, when the poor success they have had is understood; and he quotes the opinion of the English bishops in India in their united letter of May, 1874, to the English clergy: "There is nothing," they say, "which confirms the opinion that the heart of the people has been largely touched or their conscience seriously affected. There has not been any progress made in the direction of the Christian faith. There has been rather a state of stagnation."

The Count thinks that, as the missionaries become more thoroughly acquainted with the religions which they are attempting to uproot, the more they will accept many of the principles which they contain, and modify their present methods of instruction; and he maintains that "the only point by which Christianity can impress itself upon the Hindus is its moral and humane side. Now, Christianity reduced to this element is represented fully only by the modern Unitarians; that is to say, by Brahminism under an English name."

The résumé and conclusion of the work is written with a fervid spirit. We wish we had room to give it a full translation. There is no space for even an outline. "If any one should inquire what modern criticism has not been able to shake in the domain of the super-sensible," says the Count, "he would find little besides these four axioms:

"1. The positive existence of a transcendent Reality, which reveals itself in the consciousness, but which surpasses all definition.

"2. Our constant state of dependence upon this Reality in which we live and move and are.

"3. The certainty that it manifests its action by fixed and general laws.

"4. A bond of some sort between this action and the tendency which bears us on to act well."

There are a few errors respecting the evolution and results of Unitarianism in the United States, but not of sufficient importance to detract from the general accuracy of the writer. The work is an important popular contribution to the history of religious evolution.

S.

Poems by Jones Very. With an Introductory Memoir by William P. Andrews. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883. A few exquisite bits of devout poetry in Unitarian hymnbooks are all that the world for the most part knows of the singular genius and lofty, spiritual insight of the author of this little volume, whose poems published almost a half century ago have long been out of print. The friends of Mr. Very have done well, now after his death, to give them to the world anew, together with some account of their production, and of this author's uneventful but profoundly interesting course. It showed the permanence of the mystic type, the appearance in the New England of this century, and amid the rationalist airs of Harvard, of this rapt, medieval pietist, this ideal Greek tutor who walked and talked with his pupils in high, spiritual converse, and was so earnest for their religious life that he returned their corrected college exercises with devout sonnets written on the backs. The failure of his health which followed, and perhaps in part occasioned his intense mental exaltation, narrowed and sequestered a career which, in other times and with a larger endowment of active will and practical force in these, would have been phenomenal, perhaps, as that of Madam Guion or of Chunder Sen. The tenderness and forbearance of his friends doubtless prevented his mind from falling into permanent insanity; but the too intense flame of his inspiration was early burned out, though the primal. ideal and conviction seem to have remained to the end, as did the tender devoutness of his spirit. And, even as to those few productive years, whatever may be said of the man, the poet cannot be denied; and the piety is calm and sane, though too solitary and intense for wide discipleship or perhaps appreciation. Of its genuineness and the rare beauty of some of its manifestations, and of the character and life it dominated, there can be no question. Solitary and absorbed, and thoroughly dissatisfied with the conventional standards and ends of society, Jones Very was as true to his peculiar religious insight as Thoreau to his gospel of nature. Each was a partial and erratic development; and it was the benignant mission of the sounder and more universal genius of Emerson to recognize and further each by his sympathy and assistance, while he was taken captive by the idiosyncrasies of neither. Some of the most interesting portions of this memoir are citations from the contemporary records in which Mr. Emerson relates his conversations with the poet, and his impressions

of him.

Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. By Dr. Gerard Uhlhorn, Abbot of Loccum. Translated from the German, with the author's sanction. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883.

$2.50.

In his earlier work on the Conflict of Christianity and Heathenism, Dr. Uhlhorn had already given the public in brief the results of his careful study of the new spirit of charity born into the world with the advent of Christianity; and our readers will remember the striking and luminous chapter in which those results are stated. That chapter is expanded into a volume in the work we have now before us, and its ampler statement and more copious illustrations and full citation of authorities are now for the first time made accessible in an English dress. The statement is clear and distinct, and, for the most part, wholly dispassionate and fair. That the author writes with a strong sense of the contrast between the heathen world and the Christian leaven that came in to modify, and in important respects transform it, does not prevent him from making careful discriminations, and giving his readers the shadows and exaggerations that mar the wonderful beauty of the picture of early Christian brotherhood and compassion.

The book opens with a graphic historical picture of the condition of the Roman world in regard to the spirit of charity at the advent of Christianity, the wretched condition of poverty and dependence in "a world without love," a picture that recalls vividly, and justifies in this respect, the remarkable stanzas of Mr. Matthew Arnold in "Obermann, Once More":

"Stout was its arm, each thew and bone

Seemed puissant and alive,

But ah! its heart, its heart was stone,
And so it could not thrive."

Then follows a briefer statement of the development of charity under the Jewish law, which the author rightly regards as holding the germs of that splendid outburst of humane sentiments and agencies that distinguished primitive Christianity, though lacking the later breadth and warmth. The quality of Christian love and its manifestations in Jesus and the apostolic Church are then sketched, and an outline given of what the student of the New Testament finds of fraternal co-operation, tender care of poverty and helplessness, and the growth and work of the missionary spirit and the life of the communities it organized.