who know them must smile as we think of them in that role. It is of record, however, that they belonged to the Seminary class of 1870 and most of them were graduates of St. Stephen's College.

There is one more daisy to pluck from this old-fashioned garden. Dr. Seymour in this same pamphlet defends himself vehemently against the horrid accusation of having on one occasion worn a red stole, his plea being that it was handed to him by the rector of a church he was visiting! His answer also includes a Tu quoque to the effect that the Dean had himself ordered from England through this same priest a Doctor's gown of red for use at high academic functions.

Has not the world moved? Consider: Dr. Seymour in a few years himself Dean and then bishop; annual Retreats for the students of the Seminary for twenty years past under three administrations conducted at times by Holy Cross or Cowley Fathers; everywhere Retreats for clergy and laymen and laywomen, for dioceses and parishes and societies, and no suspicion of partisanship attached to them; colored stoles worn by "Broad" and "Low" as well as "High"; Christ in His Blessed Sacrament adored in hundreds of churches and chapels-these are a few indications of progress. Of course there is a long way yet to go before our people are really Catholicized, there are many laggards and a few laudatores temporis acti who are obstinately resisting all forward movement; there are changes which do not register advance but retrogression; we may doubt whether the gain in spirituality, devotion and true consecration has been as great as that in outward things. But we veterans of an older day and of many a hard-fought conflict are conscious of much ground won and of former battle-fields held in peaceful possession, and we look with confidence for further victories by the younger soldiers of the ancient faith. There are signs that their courage and loyalty may soon be put to the test.

BOOK REVIEWS

Good and Evil: A Study in Biblical Theology. By Loring W. Batten, Ph.D., S.T.D. (The Paddock Lectures of 1917 and 1918.) Fleming H. Revell Co.

The Good Man and the Good: An Introduction to Ethics. By Mary Whiton Calkins. The Macmillan Co. $1.30.

There is a sentence in the preface of Professor Calkins' book which gives a note characteristic of much recent writing in ethics—a welcoming note, because it brings the study of ethics down to earth in a way that was greatly to be desired. "The underlying purpose of this book is to treat ethics as the study of live men-of willing, struggling human beings, loyal or disloyal, brave or cowardly, just or unjust: the book does not conceive ethics as a science of abstraction-of duty, goodness, virtue or values-but as the science of the dutiful, the good, the virtuous man and his object." It is safe to say that we shall not for some time return, if we ever return, to a treatment of ethics as a science of abstractions. The emphasis upon personality as the central fact of all ethical study has been the outstanding mark of all twentieth century discussion of this subject, just as the effort to see in the Bible the story of real men. like ourselves feeling their way toward truth, meeting and struggling against temptation, moving slowly step by step out of lower up to higher conceptions of God and man and duty, has taken the place of that Biblical study which consisted in extracting doctrines from the Bible narrative and supporting them by proof texts drawn indiscriminately from Old Testament and New, from Psalms, Prophets, Gospels or Epistles.

Professor Batten's Paddock Lectures on "Good and Evil" admirably illustrate this modern method of Bible study. His treatment of the subject is scholarly, because one is always aware of a back-ground of knowledge, solid and profound,-yet the scholar knows men as well as books and his lectures are filled with the movement of present day life and experience. Delivered during the progress. of the great war, they reflect those agonizing questions which the war forced upon the minds, not only of scholars, but of common folk such as most of us are, and he who reads these thoughtful and timely words will find them full of fascinating interest and helpful, sane counsel.

Prefacing his study with the remark of William James, "There is a problem of evil. There is no problem of good," Dr. Batten goes back

to the beginnings of religious thought among that people to whom religious thought owes more than to any other, the Hebrews, and traces stage by stage their effort in the light of experience and broadening revelation to understand why evil was in the world. He fixes on this as the governing principle upon which they built their theory of good and evil: "Evil in all of its forms is the direct consequence of sin, and good in every varied manifestation is the reward of righteousness." He shows then how the first naive assumption that, in every case, the observer may decide for himself what was the particular sin that caused the evil, or what is the direct connection between righteousness and its rewards, was shattered against the hard and baffling facts of actual experience. He follows through the keen but disillusioned conclusions of Koheleth, the wistful, yet steadfast faith of Job, the bold ventures of thinkers like Ezekiel and the profound spiritual insight of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. He comes at last to the movement of Hebrew thought upward toward that faith in immortality, than which, as he says, “human wisdom has gone no further," and sums up his results in an eloquent and beautiful declaration of his own conclusion of the whole matter. He rejects the popular notion that God sends pain for disciplinary purposes. "I do not like to think," he says, "He expressly sends it at all." But he points out the certainty "that pain may be man's great opportunity" and perhaps, most aptly puts the central thought of his message in these simple words, "There are certain things that God wants in this world and wants us to want them, and they are worth whatever they may cost." "We may not see, nay, we may refuse to believe that God especially sent the evil, and yet we may realize that the evil is our opportunity. We may struggle to keep evil away, but when it comes,-for come it must-we are not driven to look upon God as our enemy; for it may always be that He is never so much our Friend as when we suffer."

Although Dr. Batten agrees with Professor James that there is no problem of good, it is possible that Professor Calkins would not agree, for her short book of one hundred seventy-four pages is wholly taken up with precisely the problem of good. "Who is the good man,” she asks, and having defined the good man as the man who wills the good, she goes on to discuss what the good is. She accepts Aristotle's definition, "The good is that which is willed for its own sake," and triumphantly establishes its truth. Criticizing the old theories, the egoistic and altruistic, as both inadequate, because both are too narrow, she identifies "the adequate object of the good man's will" as the "truly universal com

munity of selves," and much the larger part of the book is taken up in acute and thoroughly interesting exposition of what is meant by that. "It is the universal community,-the great society from which no sentient being could be excluded," and the socially virtuous man is shown to be the only truly virtuous man. An admirable illustration of the concrete and thoroughly practical method of treatment is found in the discussion in Chapter X (by way of illustration of the highest social virtue) of the morality of war.

The most disappointing part of this vigorous and interesting study is the treatment of religion in its relation to morality. A few brief pages at the end contain it all, and one cannot consider wholly satisfactory the statement that "The most intimate of the fusions of morality with religion is that made by Jesus and the later Hebrew prophets in their teaching that God is the father of men." It is true that, if this thought were developed, it might lead to a right understanding, but as it is here put, it misses the meaning of the Incarnation as on the one hand the revelation of God as perfect goodness, and on the other the example of the "Good Man" among men. Occasional needless errors, especially in the spelling of proper names, suggest rather careless proof reading, such as one does not usually find in books bearing the Macmillan imprint. G. L. R.

The Conversion of Europe. By Charles Henry Robinson, D.D. Longmans, Green & Co. 1917. $6.00.

The title of this volume does not indicate clearly the character of its contents. It is really a history of Christian Missions in the different nations of Europe. The method is not an ordinary one. The entrance of Christianity and its progress is taken up with each nation or people, large or small. For instance, the different sections of Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, Hungary, and others are dealt with individually. The several parts of Germany are treated in the same way. This tends to correct the erroneous but common impression that Christianity swept over Europe all at once. Also this scheme allows the student to turn to any one nation and learn how and when Christianity came to that nation. It is a kind of miniature cyclopædia of European Missions. Probably the book will be more useful for reference in this way, than to be read consecutively.

Dr. Robinson gives us valuable suggestions as to the interpretation of missionary origins in connection with political history. For instance, in his introduction, he gives this suggestive passage: "The knowledge

that Christianity only displaced paganism in some parts of modern Prussia during the fourteenth century and that the people who were then converted, after being treated with every refinement of cruelty, were finally given the choice of death or conversion, may help us to understand, and should mitigate our denunciation of, the barbarities that have been committed by descendants of these converts in the course of the recent war. If the British, French and Italians have departed less widely than have the Prussians from the dictates of Christianity in their conduct of the war, they have had resting on them obligations created by the fact that Christian influences have been working among them for more than twice as long as their northern foes."

Valuable sections are those on the attempts at the conversion of the Jews, and a very full bibliography. We have noticed one or two questionable historical statements. The book supplies a very real need.

Dominant Ideas and Corrective Principles. By Charles Gore, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. Milwaukee, U. S. A.: The Morehouse Publishing Co. $1.40.

This little book contains three addresses delivered during the visitation of the Diocese of Oxford in the early summer of 1918. They set forth the dominant ideas of present-day democracy which the Bishop thinks are fundamentally Christian ideas, but he insists that Christianity is needed to supply the correctives of these ideas and prevent them from ending in failure.

These ideas which are daily taking stronger hold of the imaginations of men are mainly three: the idea of the equal right of every person to the opportunities which he ought to enjoy; the idea of the welfare of the community as supreme over the selfish ambitions of the individual; and the idea of the fellowship of nations as supreme over the ambitions of each nation by itself.

The Bishop believes that the fundamental difficulty in modern democratic movements is that the average man is much more alive to his rights than to his responsibilities. Christianity alone can change this. by developing the necessary personal virtues, such as self-control, selfsacrifice, humility, unselfishness and truthfulness.

The second part of the book, which deals with religious education in the Public Schools of England is not so interesting for the American reader, although it contains many interesting and stimulating suggestions which we might well adopt.

There is an interesting chapter on "The Ten Commandments and the