supplemental volume tracing the further developments in our national life from 1850 to the close of the century.

Jerusalem the Holy. A Brief History of Ancient Jerusalem; with an Account of the Modern City and its Conditions, Political, Religious, and Social. With fifteen illustrations from photographs, and four maps. By EDWIN SHERMAN WALLACE, Late United States Consul for Palestine. Crown 8vo, pp. 359. New York, etc.: Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, cloth, $1.50.

The author of this work rightly assumes that Jerusalem is a city of world-wide interest. "How many times," says he, "has it been described! How many volumes of travel by the amateur and professional tourists make a specialty of the Jerusalem chapter! How many letters to religious and other papers in every Christian land tell the story of the city as it now is! The number of such publications proves that the reading public has been interested in the subject." Nor does the present volume lessen the feeling as to the unique place of the city among the famous centers of human population. As there has been but one Palestine there can be but one Jerusalem in the history of mortal existence until the new Jerusalem descends out of heaven, "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Conceding in the spirit of his volume this exalted rank to Jerusalem, Mr. Wallace writes as an eyewitness of its present life. For five years, in the exercise of his official duties as United States Consul, he was favored with the privilege of permanent residence in the Holy City and the consequent opportunity for full scriptural and antiquarian research. That he put to such a diligent use this rare advantage will be to his many readers a cause for satisfaction. His volume, as a consequence of this long residence in Jerusalem, has the quality of vivid description which makes for interest and instruction. The traditions, topography, customs, and outlook of the Holy City are all included within the compass of his treatment. Its streets and gates, its walls and surrounding hills, its industries and its motley population are all so concreted before the reader that, had he no other book of reference, he would gain no inadequate idea of modern Jerusalem from this painstaking work. Nor does the author write in a spirit of undue subservience to the traditions of Palestine. He thinks for himself, and has a reason for his conclusions, if they are not in harmony with local beliefs. For illustration, his caution in the identification of the localities of famous scriptural events on the testimony of tradition is expressed in his chapter on "The New, or Gordon's, Calvary." A single quotation will suffice to show this disposition. He writes: "Concerning the holy sites of the Holy City anyone has the right to ask why this one is located here or that one there. If the answer given is not satisfactory he has the right to doubt or disbelieve. For instance, when one sees hundreds of Russian pilgrims kneeling devoutly and kissing reverently a spot on the rock on the eastern slope of Mount Moriah, just near where the Jericho road turns to cross the brook Kedron, and is informed that here is where St. Stephen was stoned, he has a right to question the reason for

this localization. The evidence of an old tradition proves nothing. The place of Jewish capital punishment being known and St. Stephen having suffered that punishment, there is no reason to seek another place for his death than the one used commonly in his day. How or when the tradition assigned the event to the spot outside of the present St. Stephen Gate is a matter of no moment. The tradition is groundless. A tradition just as groundless has for fifteen centuries affirmed that the two most momentous facts in Christian history took place on the site now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. To the one whom tradition satisfies this is enough. The one who accepts the dicta of the Church without dispute reasons that, as the Church has maintained these two sites during these centuries, he has no right to doubt their genuineness. Had the Church never been mistaken, had she never been compelled to change her position, such acquiescence might be given by even a greater number than now. But, so long as the Church is made up of human creatures dependent upon human judgment, there are those who will refuse absolutely to acknowledge her infallibility. This will be so especially in matters unessential to salvation, to which class certainly belongs the localization of any event connected with the life or death of our Lord." The glimpse of modern Jerusalem which Mr. Wallace gives in his chapter, "The City as it Is To-day," is full of quaint instruction. The reader is impressed, among all else, with the lack of nineteenth century appliances among those Eastern Jews and the general spirit of mediæval conservatism that obtains as to the introduction of the newer inventions. "Street illumination," for instance, "is still in its infancy. In the entire city there are twenty-eight small oil lamps stuck up here and there on the sides of the houses. They are uncared for, and on a dark night do nothing more than indicate that they are lighted. To believe that they do anything in the way of lessening the gloom is a freak of imagination. American companies wish to put in electric lights if the way is clear. But it is not; several insurmountable barriers intervene." And among these hindrances are Turkish opposition and the fact that the investment would not pay. Nor has the Turk, in his fear of electricity in all forms, any need for the telephone. An American missionary having had a telephone sent to him was forbidden by the authorities to put it in service. "Such an innovation could not be allowed unless he had an order from the sultan. He had no such order, and was in no mood to pay the sum necessary to obtain it. The telephone has been lying unused for several years." The concluding chapters of Mr. Wallace's book are important to those who are concerned as to the outlook for Jerusalem and Palestine. They are entitled: "The Jews in Jerusalem," "The Christians in Jerusalem," "The Moslems," and finally, "The Future of Jerusalem." In the last chapter the author commits himself to the belief in the return of the Jews to Palestine. "The land is waiting," he writes, "the people are ready to come, and will come as soon as protection to life and property is assured. I am

ready to go further and say that the coming inhabitants will be Jews. This must be accepted, or the numerous prophecies that assert it so positively must be thrown out as worthless. . . The present movements

among Jews in many parts of the world indicate their belief in the prophetic assertions. Their eyes are turning toward the land that once was theirs, and their hearts are longing for the day when they, as a people, can dwell securely in it. . . . Anyone desiring to know the millennial future of Jerusalem can find it described on many pages of the inspired word. The only legitimate method for the interpretation of the various allusions to that future city is the natural one, that is, to take just what is there said as it is said, and attempt neither to add to nor detract from the statements." This outline will suffice to give a general impression as to the scope and purpose of Mr. Wallace's volume. It is not a comIpilation of hasty and inadequate generalizations by some tourist sojourning in Jerusalem for a day and thence departing to talk with oracular utterance of the Holy City. Nor is it too voluminous for easy use. But the author has rather aimed "to combine completeness with brevity, and thus to place in the hands of those who are interested in this city of sacred memories and holy sites a book of such facts as are ascertainable.”

MISCELLANEOUS.

Eminent Missionary Women. By MRS. J. T. GRACEY. Introductory notes by Mrs. Joseph Cook and Mrs. S. L. Keen. 12mo, pp. 215. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings. Price, cloth, 85 cents.

No history of Christian missions is fully written that does not include the story of the sacrifices made by consecrated womanhood for the sake of the Gospel. Mrs. Gracey's volume of biographical sketches is a just tribute of praise to the workers she enumerates. In number they are twenty-eight. In location some of them labored for the great cause on this side of the ocean, but were no less truly missionary in spirit than others who went as torchbearers into the darkness of India, Africa, and China. In denomination they belonged to different faiths, Ann Wilkins, Mary Reed, Beulah Woolston, and Clara A. Swain, M.D., being the representatives of the Methodist Episcopal Church whose life-stories are outlined. The book "represents the several classes of work which women have been able to conduct on the field-educational, evangelistic, literary, medical, or eleemosynary"-and is calculated to meet a felt need in missionary information. The stories of "toil, danger, loneliness, endurance, patience" which it contains, place a new crown upon the brow of Christian woman. As in the past she is to continue an integral and successful factor in Gospel work-until the kingdom comes. A Memorial of a True Life. A Biography of Hugh McAllister Beaver. By ROBERT E. SPEER. 12mo, pp. 308. New York, etc.: Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, cloth, $1.

The subject of this memoir was descended from an honored family in Pennsylvania, was the son of a recent governor of the State, and was

surrounded by those rare home and school influences which are enriching the age with noble illustrations of American manhood. Responsive to his opportunities he grew into an unusual symmetry and perfection. As a college student he was of pronounced Christian usefulness, and in his short years as a graduate was the means of help and blessing to many. His yearning for the deep things of God, his deadness to the world, his sweetness of life, and his expressions of rare intimacy with his Lord gave him rank with those seraphic spirits that now and then live on the earth to show stumbling and sordid men the possibilities of grace. A memorial service was held for him in Northfield, where he had been a worker, at which meeting Mr. Moody said that no other visitors among them had left such impressions as Hugh Beaver and Professor Drummond. His early departure is another of those mysteries over which many Christian workers grieve and which they may not understand.

Illustrative Notes. A Guide to the Study of the International Sunday School Lessons for 1899. By JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT and ROBERT REMINGTON DOHERTY. 8vo, pp. 392. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings. Price, cloth, $1.25.

We believe it to be the plain unexaggerated truth that this book is the best of all helps to the study of the lessons for the year. With the rich abundance of its original and selected comments, methods of teaching, illustrative stories, practical applications, notes on Eastern life, library references, maps, tables, pictures, and diagrams, nothing seems lacking that anyone could need or desire.

One Thousand Questions and Answers Concerning the Methodist Episcopal Church, its History, Government, Doctrines, and Usages, including the Origin, Polity, and Progress of All Other Methodist Bodies. By HENRY WHEELER, D.D., author of Methodism and the Temperance Reformation, etc. 12mo, pp. 239. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings. Price, cloth, 90 cents.

It is often easier to ask than to answer questions. Dr. Wheeler is not one, however, who has perpetrated a series of conundrums for the delectation of the reader in an idle hour. In serious purpose, if in an unusual manner, he has here prepared a worthy outline of our denominational history, doctrines, and polity. No volume of its kind can be edited without a most patient and long-continued gathering of information from many sources; and because of its encyclopedic character it is the more deserving of notice. As a handbook of information for such organizations as our Sunday schools and Epworth Leagues it should go forth upon a large mission of usefulness.

The Wondrous Cross and Other Sermons. By DAVID JAMES BURRELL, D.D., Pastor of the Collegiate Church at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, New York. 12mo, pp. 351. New York: Wilbur B. Ketcham. Price, cloth, $1.50.

Dr. Burrell ranks among the most influential preachers of his city. These discourses are scholarly and strong, and ring with evangelistic appeals to men. The world needs more of such earnest preaching as the new century opens.

METHODIST REVIEW.

MAY, 1899.

ART. I.-THE CONSTRUCTIVE VALUE OF HISTORY AND SCIENCE.

THE most evident characteristic of the present age, considered as an era in the history of thought, is its transitional character. Following the stormy close of the eighteenth century, and sharing as well in the questions fundamental to all modern thought, the period in which the men of to-day are living has inherited from the past a burden of unsolved problems heavy enough to form the entire load of any single age. But the decades that have intervened since the end of the revolutionary epoch have bred new questions of their own; so that, in an especial sense, our time has become one of those periods of ferment in which old forms of thought, no longer able to satisfy the spirit of the age, give place to new ones, or pass gradually over into these.

Nevertheless, it would be serious error to conclude that the forces now at work in the thought of the world are exclusively destructive. Probably there has never been an era of transition of which such a statement would hold good. For not only are elements of positive thinking present in every age when negation appears to be in control, but skeptical movements are comparatively powerless unless the tendencies which make for the rejection of accepted opinions have in them the vigor proceeding from new constructive principles. This is especially true of the revolutions which have taken place in human thinking since the wane of the medieval systems.*

* See "Typical Eras of Skepticism," by the writer, Methodist Review, SeptemberOctober, 1897, pp. 770, 771, 774, 775.

23-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.