preting the Bible as Mr. Barrows cogently urges, but the call there is to bring rational principles and humane sentiments to the instant modification of the old confessions, and the distinct disavowal of the incredible and horrible implications of certain features in them. Happily, such protest and revision are going on; and this book will be of great service in helping to intensify the protest and hasten the revision. Ole Bull. A Memoir. By Sara C. Bull. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. One of the most delightful musical recollections of large numbers of people is of the noble form and snowy head of Ole Bull, and the delightful strains of his cherished violin. This biography renews for its readers the charm of his personality, and the remembrance of happy hours passed under the spell of his wonderful bow. The book is written, naturally, from the point of view of one permanently within the sphere of this enchantment; but this does not prevent us from seeing the actual personality, magnanimous, fiery, singularly gifted in his art, and hardly less passionately devoted to the interests of his compatriots. While Ole Bull had the temperament of genius and some of its less harmful eccentricities, he had something more generous in view than its usual ends, and had more than its ordinary successes and immunity from disaster. George Eliot. By Mathilde Blind. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1883. pp. 290. Price $1.00. This is the first volume of the Famous Women Series, to be simultaneously published in this country and in England. The initial volume is well written, and adds somewhat to our knowledge of the great novelist. The new information is, however, very limited, and is extended by several letters which are of almost no value. The correct date of the birth of Marian Evans is given as Nov. 22, 1819, and various other important particulars are given from authentic sources. Compared with the very little that was known of her previous to her death, this volume gives a very good idea of her life, and is a valuable help to an understanding of her genius. It also contains a criticism of George Eliot's works, written in a pleasant and sympathetic style. Very little new matter is given concerning her peculiar religious and philosophical opinions, and the criticism adds nothing toward understanding her in these directions. The book is one that it will be difficult for the succeeding writers of the series, who are all to be women, to surpass. BOOKS RECEIVED. From G. P. Putnam's Sons. Recollections of my Youth. Pitman. Price $1.00. English as She is Spoke: or, A duction by James Wellington. Translated by B. C. Jest in Sober Earnest. With an Intro- The Yellowstone National Park. A Manual for Tourists. By Henry J. The Doom of Price 50 cts. From the American Unitarian Association. From Johann Ambrosius Barth. Theologischer Jahresbericht. Von B. Pürjer. By Samuel J. Barrows. Leipzig. Very different are the religious traits characteristic of the next race that demand our attention, the Semitic branch. of the great white race. The grand rôle that they have played in religion is familiar to all. It is almost superfluous to remind the reader that it is to this race that the Hebrew people belonged, that it was among them that religion first rose to monotheism, and that it was out of the religion of Israel that branched the two other representatives of that highest form of religion,- the two great international religions of Mohammedanism and Christianity. On account of this, Renan and other writers have asserted that the Semitic family in general are monotheistic by instinct, and that Monotheism sums up and explains all the characteristics of the Semitic race. This is, however, a rash generalization. For, on turning to survey the other Semitic nations outside of the descendants of Abraham, we find everywhere, alike in the Northern and Southern branches, a great number of gods. A tablet from the library of Nineveh, e.g., gives the names of seven supreme and magnificent gods, fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred spirits of heaven, and six hundred spirits of earth. If we turn to the Phoenicians, we find worshipped among them not only Moloch, but Baal, Rimmon, Dagon, Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom, and many more deities, constituting a Pantheon as crowded as Greek or Roman. Or, if we look at the ancient religion of the Arabs, where the Semitic stock existed in its greatest purity, we find their worship to have been a polytheistic Sabeanism, containing a numerous host of solar, lunar, and stellar deities. To find instances of this monotheistic tendency in the Semitic race, we must confine our survey to one family,-the family of Abraham and his descendants, the Hebrews and Ishmaelites (and, in the latter, only after the Mohammedan reform). And even with the Hebrews there is trace, in the plural form of Elohim, of an older polytheism, out of which their worship of one God grew, by a fusion of the many Strong ones in one abstract Strength; just as in India we find the many devas to have been welded in the more philosophic thought into the visve-devas,-i.e., the whole of the gods, which term became used as a singular noun, and the name for a single supernatural power. Even in David's time, the household gods, or teraphim, still received worship; and Solomon thought it not out of the way to build sanctuaries for other gods in Jerusalem, as well as the temple of Jehovah. Though the later historians, of course, regarded this as a sin, there is no evidence that his contemporaries did. We are not justified then in pointing to monotheism as a specific trait of Semitic religion. Nevertheless, there is a trait almost equally noble, quite different from the religious tendencies of other races, and that gives the Semitic race a unique place in the history of religion. This is the tendency, so characteristic of them, to magnify the Divine. The Semites have always been notable for the grand exaltation which they have ascribed to their deities, and the profound reverence in which they have held them. Among the varied branches of the Semitic race, diverse as their spiritual conceptions and divine terms are, this rule will be found to hold good; namely, that the names of the gods are names indicative of majesty, terrible power, or sovereignty not to be questioned. El, the strong; El-Shaddai, the all mighty; Bel, or Baal, and Adonai, Lord; Moloch, the king; Eliun, the highest; Ram, or Rimmon, the exalted; Jehovah, the I am; the unfathomable mystery of being and creative force,-all these names represent exalted power and unquestionable authority. Everywhere among the Semites the Deity was placed at an unapproachable distance, and invested with autocratic dominion. His will was to be absolute law; all the forces. and substances of nature as well as the destinies of men are, in his hand, as clay under the fingers of the potter, to do with them as he chooses. Man is simply the creature of God, at an immeasurable distance below him, and must look up to him always in solemn fear and absolute dependence. Nature is nothing but that which has been made and shaped by the divine hand, and is ruled absolutely by his will. In some quarters, the majesty of the highest god was held so great that he could not be credited with any contact with such impure stuff as matter, and the making of the worlds was ascribed to subordinate spirits. And, since the creation, the Semites inclined to believe that he had remained in dignified seclusion in the far heavens. He might have his angelic messengers who would communicate his will to man, but the Supreme himself no man might see. These messengers might be superhuman, but they were not gods nor demigods. The Shekinah, the divine spirit, might rest on kings and prophets; but they remained still merely men, favored or inspired men, but no more. Not even with regard to the greatest, Abraham, Moses, or Elijah, can be found any trace, as it has been truly said, in all the three thousand years that Judaism has lasted, of |