the Evangelists of mankind. We may indeed, accept the statement without any limitation, that "no one has invented Monotheism." In the existence of this lofty idea of GOD, we may trace the evidence that God has revealed Himself.

How remarkable also is it that this lofty idea of God is not found where the genius of man was most sublime. We are expressly told that the Israelitish nation was not chosen for its own excellencies. The religious book of the Jews has become the religious book of the world, but there were many nations at every period of Jewish history far superior to them in intellectual vigour. Does not this then teach us something with reference to the religious position? We may, it would appear, learn two things. First, it was Gon Who spoke by them-the one true God revealing Himself by them to His creatures. Secondly,-GoD spoke by them to all mankind, and therefore all mankind are one. The writer just quoted speaks upon this latter point as follows:"Other Oriental literatures can be read and appreciated only by the learned. The Hebrew literature is the Bible, the Book par excellence, the universal object of study. Millions of men in all parts of the world know no other poetry... If the books of the Bible had not something in them profoundly universal they never could have attained to this position." They are of universal power, because they come from the one GOD, and the race of mankind to whom they are addressed is one.

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If we are perplexed at the tardy progress of the work of missions in our hands, we must look to the fault as being in ourselves, and not in any impossibilities occasioned by Christianity itself. The Christian Church has not exhibited in every century so active a missionary spirit as to be able to say she has fulfilled her Master's bidding in this particular. The inroad and nominal conversion of the barbarians gave the Church a work at home. She was unable to cope even with them in the fulness of undivided vigour, for controversy and heresy were distracting the energies which should have been spent upon missionary effort. Then again did the military spirit lay hold of Christian minds, and they were more intent on recovering the soil of Palestine than on conquering the hearts of its Mahommedan occupants. It is not for us to wonder that the Church of later times in setting about a work which she ought never to have neglected, should suffer somewhat for the shortcomings of past centuries. If Israel had gone straight on into the Land of Promise, they would have had immediate victory; but when they assayed to go, after a first refusal, GOD refused to go along with them, and they had to wander in the wilderness until the time had come. We may perhaps feel that something of the same kind is to be found in the Church's conquest of the world. Not to speak of the failures in method which have attended the various modern missions, we must be prepared also to meet with a lack of

impulse, because the Christian Church was for so long a time making an entire pause in her Divine work. The present time, however, seems to be one in which we are particularly called upon to make the truth of CHRIST heard amidst the crash of national excitements. The Gospel of peace can triumph amidst the din of war. Political discomfiture may be the appointed means for setting individual souls free from their conventional restraints and national prejudices, that they may yield themselves subject to a SAVIOUR'S bidding. He Whose voice hushed the waves may speak at any moment, and all shall obey Him, and we shall be quickly at the land whither we are going. Nor have we been left without much to encourage us, even in the past history of missions. If the gathering in of nations has not been so rapid as the Apostolic age beheld, yet when the circumstances alluded to are taken into account, it has certainly been such as to show the universal applicability and Divine origin of the Christian Faith, despite the cowardly indifference of its professors. As Mr. Hardwick says:

"Wherever the Christian faith has penetrated, the Good Shepherd's voice is heard, and wakes an echo in the consciences of men; and what in every case attracts them to His fold is also that which makes them truly conscious of the universal brotherhood subsisting in all nations." -P. 55.

The times and the seasons are in the hands of GOD, and we must remember that although He has given Christianity to be the religion of the world, yet He has subjected its promulgation to certain conditions, which appear indeed to us to be impediments, but which shall eventually effect the triumph of the Faith in that manner which is most beneficial.

Some thousands of years had rolled away before the world-wide extension of God's Truth was enjoined. What was the particular fitness belonging to the era chosen for the Incarnation it is impossible for us to decide. We only know that it was foreseen and foretold by GoD. If circumstances were allowed so long to delay the first institution of CHRIST's kingdom we are not to be surprised if other circumstances are allowed to delay its final completion.

But it will perhaps be said that up to the time of CHRIST'S Birth the religion which God gave to men was a merely national religion, and so was analogous to the other national religions of antiquity. This is not the case. The Jewish religion was national by accident, and not by essence. It was not based upon Jewish nationality, though it found a home in the Jewish nation. The hope of the Messiah cheered the Jew in every place, and he could every where tell the heathen amongst whom he was that the promised Messiah was to be the light to lighten the Gentiles as well as the glory of His special people Israel. The Messiah was not

promised to the Jewish nation by virtue of any caste prerogatives. The object of His coming was to triumph over the common enemy of all mankind. Their expectation that He should be born amongst themselves was only the more defined expression of the universal promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. True, indeed, the Jew had a special covenant, and a national temple; but the promises of his covenant with GOD were temporal promises, and afforded him no better hopes for eternity than pious worshippers of other nations might have had. The Jewish covenant did not give life. Spiritual life could be attained by none until CHRIST came, and after His coming, when He had preached to the spirits that were in prison, proclaiming to them the accomplishment of their long-cherished hopes, the Jew and the Gentile alike who had worshipped GOD, however imperfectly or however intelligently, would be judged according to men for their conduct in the flesh, and being made perfect in CHRIST would be enabled to live according to GOD in the Spirit. The oracles of GOD would indeed help the Jew in the life of obedience, but the ordinances of his religion did not separate his nation as if it possessed any real inherent sanctity. Theirs was a worldly sanctuary, and their ordinances were only for the purifying of the flesh.

The mode in which the Jewish covenant prepared the way for CHRIST, we cannot at all adequately determine. We are too apt to speak of the results of religion as if we saw them in their finality. But we do not see them so far. All that we see of religion is but preparatory. What we see of religion is chiefly in connection with the wants of the soul. We cannot understand the glorification of the body by religious habit. We cannot understand how the habits of the soul can invest the body with their lustre. But Religion is the preparation of man's whole nature, not merely a developement of his soul or spirit. We then being ignorant of that connexion between body and soul which constitutes our personal life cannot say how the training of the body under certain outward ordinances of purification tended to promote the fitness to receive spiritual gifts. We know however that if the Jews were prepared by their temple worship to become the channels of communicating the gift of GOD's presence to mankind, they were at any rate continually warned that that presence was not given to them because of any natural superiority, and that when given, it was not to be the peculiar endowment of their race.

It was the corruption of their own hearts which made the Jews change the world-wide glory of their position into the littleness of a caste religion. They wanted to secure certain privileges for themselves, and therefore when CHRIST came they rejected Him. Originally the promises of GOD made to them had been an uplifting of the whole of mankind by the special handle, so to speak, of Abraham's offspring. Their covenant was not the institution of a new caste

amongst men, but the means of training up a new power which should eventually be revealed as a glory common and communicable to mankind. The Jew, while he looked for the promised Shiloh, bore witness to the common origin of all mankind, the common curse of the fall, the common participation in the hope of a SAVIOUR.

As the Jew contracted his noble revelation, so also did many nations contract the traditional ideas of patriarchal religion. The heathen religions of the world however are, for the most part, in spite of their nationality and contractedness, not simply "the images of separate nationalities." Mr. Hardwick speaks truly in calling them by this name, but they were really something more. They were the reproduction of an universal idea limited by individual circumstance. The universal, formative, element was Divine, and therefore sublime and sustaining. The individual, material, embodiment was of man's conception, and so at once grotesque and impotent. The appeal of Christianity is universal, and it has its embodiment not from the conception of man but from the Incarnation of the Word of God. It appeals to the sympathies of all mankind, for it speaks to them all as the sons of Adam who was the son of GOD, and it speaks to them by the Son of GOD Who became the Son of Adam. The Catholicity which is claimed by the religion of CHRIST is based upon the unity of the race of man to whom it is addressed. The rationalists of Germany are now acknowledging the truth of what Scripture teaches on this subject. M. Renan, quoted above, says, "The doctrine of the unity of mankind which is of Semitic origin is now placed beyond a doubt." Inquiries entirely unconnected with religion have led philosophers to realize this truth, but it is a great fundamental truth in which religion must be built. It is of consequence not only accidentally, as being necessary to the authenticity of Scripture, but essentially as being necessary to the very idea of the Christian scheme of salvation. Mr. Hardwick has therefore done well in prefacing his review of the different religious systems by observations upon this subject. We could wish indeed that he had entered more into detail. This chapter might well have been expanded as it treats of a matter so vital, and which unhappily is still too flippantly denied amongst us, although Germans have ceased for the most part to make it a matter of contention. The requirements of the English student are scarcely met by so merely historical a sketch of opinion upon a subject so important. We doubt not however that the series of volumes which Mr. Hardwick has undertaken will be a valuable and opportune addition to our theological literature.

WE recognize in this cheap little manual the first-fruit ment of the Eucharistic controversy which has been so the Church. The great majority of those who professe doctrine of the Real Presence and the Sacrifice can only words. Devotionally it had not penetrated their minds not have been content to go on with the manuals in ge to the present time there has actually not been any Ca adapted to the English Liturgy. "The Guide" is at on Catholic. It brings out the full doctrinal meaning of and supplies just so much illustration of the service an needed, and no more. These notes appear to us everyth be desired. The devotions to be used, as the celebration are also just sufficient for the purpose. In addition to two offices to be used in preparation, and one after Commu are also devotions to be used (1.) when from any cause that he ought not to communicate, and (2.) when he has tunity of attending at a celebration. These are precis wanted, and the tone of them is such as must commend its earnest English Churchmen.

The Cure of Souls. By the Rev. G. ARDEN, M.A. London: J. H. Parker.

THIS manual is a decided improvement on the same author' Breviates"-a work which struck us as being of singularly We doubt, however, if it is in any way superior, (in the m decidedly not equal) to Messrs. Cope and Stretton's Vis morum. At all events it is a most inadequate exponent of and discipline of the Church of England. The Prayer Book, taining the Form in which the power of Absolution is conv Priest without any limitation whatsoever, directs that in ce at least, "the sick person shall be moved to make a specia of his sins." But in this manual, which professes to give f kinds of cases, preparatory both to Communion and death, the least help whatever provided for carrying this rule int No help is given to the Parish Priest for " moving" the si fession, nor is he reminded that it is his duty to do so. In there is a single petition that GOD will absolve the sick m another place the sick man is asked if there is any particular lies heavy upon his conscience. But this is all. We cannot think that Mr. Arden has conferred any benefit upon the this publication.