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most part readily explicable on suppositions implying the unity of the book, which will seem improbable only to those who are wedded to unsound principles of historical evidence.

The volumes, therefore, while of inestimable value to the independent student, or to him who has at hand, and is willing to consult, Professor Green's antidote, "The Unity of the Book of Genesis," should always be consulted with due caution, for the reader will not go far without finding that Dr. Dillmann is by no means infallible, and that many of his most confident assertions are based not upon facts, but upon fancies. As a collection of facts, however, bearing upon the questions of the creation, of the flood, and of the early history of the times of the patriarchs, the Commentary is unsurpassed in interest and value.

HERE AND THERE IN THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT. By Professor L. S. POTWIN, Adelbert College, Western Reserve University. Pp. 220. 12mo. Chicago, New York, Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Co. 1898. $1.00.

The introductory chapter to this volume is so well considered and so full of wisdom, that it deserves to be in the hands of all theological students. Indeed it is the condensed result of the life thought and study of one of the most painstaking and judicious students of the literary and theological problems of the New Testament which the last half-century has produced. Professor Potwin's writings have been familiar to the readers of the BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, and they will recognize in this little volume much that has appeared in our pages. But there is besides much else which appeared in other learned magazines. With the carefully prepared General Index, Index of Greek Words, and Index of New Testament Texts, the student possesses in this volume the key to the proper interpretation of a large number of the most difficult passages in the New Testament upon which modern scholarship is specially successful in shedding light.

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THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. By Rev. JOHN MILTON WILLIAMS, D.D., author of " The Empire of the Pulpit,' Rational Theology," etc. Pp. 95. 12mo. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1898. In this inexpensive but well-printed little volume, Dr. Williams presents a very helpful and able defense of the Old Testament against the most prevalent forms of recent criticism. In his opening chapter he easily shows that most of the objections of the Old Testament are created by the misinterpretations of the critics themselves. They impute to the Old Testament passages a meaning which they do not necessarily have, and then parade them as insuperable objections. In the second chapter he briefly shows that the Old Testament is corroborated by the varied indorsement which it receives in the New. On the subject of inspiration, the author presents very briefly the substance of one of the chapters in

the second volume of his "Rational Theology," which we have heretofore had occasion highly to commend. All the author insists upon is, that the language of the Bible “is so far inspired as to make it a fair exponent of the divine thought" (p. 43). The author's theological position, maintained so ably in his larger work, that "benevolence is the sum of virtue," enables him to present a convincing defense of the sterner elements of the Old Testament. In presence of the existing indignation of Christian nations against the Turks who have so recently massacred the Armenians, and indeed of the Christian people of the United States who are endeavoring to drive the Spaniards from Cuba, we may well ask, with Dr. Williams, "Are we quite sure that the doom of the Canaanites was not the outcome of love, and the demand of the highest good?"

ANTICHRIST: Including the Period from the Arrival of Paul in Rome to the End of the Jewish Revolution. By ERNEST RENAN. Translated and Edited by JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, late Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University. Pp. 442. I 2010. Boston: Roberts Brothers. $2.50.

Perhaps no book of Renan's was ever better worth reading than his "L'Antichrist," and it is the greater pity that this should have been so nearly inaccessible to English readers. In no period to which he gave his attention did Renan's great gifts play to better advantage, or his lim itations less hamper his work. The book contains much from which we heartily dissent, but we count it, notwithstanding, one of the most stimulating and suggestive interpretations of Christian life in the reign of Nero. That this period is just now of especial interest is manifest by the great popularity of the novel "Quo Vadis," and the revival of the distinctively religious play upon the stage with no less an actor than Wilson Barrett, setting forth the times of Nero in "The Sign of the Cross." One reads Renan with a sense of satisfaction that he and the Baur school so frequently neutralize each other; this clashing appears in the very preface of the "Antichrist" in Renan's resentment of the theory that makes the apostles argue like Protestant professors in a German university"; and while in places we like his own theories no better, we are quite ready to agree with his refutations.

Renan fully held to the Johannine authorship of Revelation, but rejected John's authorship of the Fourth Gospel. In this he reversed the positions of the early rationalists, and apparently never saw how the argument failed when reversed,-that while the prior Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel would indeed make the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse all but impossible, the same author might have written both, if the Apocalypse is the earlier work, as Renan believed. Other logical lapses he exhibited, as when he rejected the Pauline authorship of Second Timothy, yet constantly referred to it for autobiographic

notes on Paul's last days. We' differ from his position again in supposing the Nicolaitans to be Paul and his company. It is quite enough to suppose that that sect consisted of people who had carried Paul's liberty to license. And while it seems practically certain that John's reference to the beast that was, and was dead, and was to come, contained a reference to the current superstition of "Nero Redivivus," it is by no means certain that John meant by his reference to indorse the superstition, or do more than use it for identification of the beast.

But, all this apart, it still seems to us that Renan's "Antichrist" is a very useful study of the conditions of the reign of Nero. His pictorial powers, his warm imagination, his ready sympathy, gave him some special aptitude for the writing of such a book, which, whatever its faults, has marked merit.

The translation of Professor Allen is smooth, accurate, and idiomatic, faithful to the original, and easy reading in English. The volume is well printed and bound, and a credit to the publishers.

THE HOLY LAND IN GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. BY TOWNSEND MAC COUN, A.M. In Two Volumes. Pp. 196, 136. New York: Published by the Author. 1897. $2.00.

These are exceedingly valuable little volumes. They consist primarily of a series of maps, one hundred and fifty-four in number, and most of them very good, illustrating the Holy Land at different periods of its history. These are accompanied by a running narrative, based on a patchwork series of clippings, more or less modified, from the standard authorities. Some of the maps are subject to criticism, and the text shows a dogmatic tendency with a theological bias; but, all in all, it is an excellent little work, convenient for Bible class instruction, and arranged for carrying in the pocket.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL REFORM. Edited by WILLIAM D. P. BLISS. 8vo. Pp. 1339. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company. $7.50.

The student of social reforms will hail with delight the completion of a task so monumental as Mr. Bliss has essayed. A vast amount of valuable information from the spheres of economics, ethics, and sociology is here in compact form between the covers of one book, and arranged topically, so as to be within easy reach. Well-known authorities have contributed leading articles.

It gives us no pleasure to call attention to historical inaccuracies; but such articles as "The Homestead Strike," the "Chicago Anarchists," the "Pullman Strike" should have been more carefully edited, for they are full of inaccuracies.

The article on Homestead, for example, must have been written by one

who is in sympathy with the forces of disorder. To correct it would be to re-write the entire article. The worn-out falsehoods about the barbedwire fence, the Carnegie company's wish for the termination of the contract, January 1 instead of July 1, the importation of Pinkerton men, and the righteous indignation of the old employees, etc., is all rehashed, as if it had not been answered a hundred times. The Senate Committee reported that the testimony showed that when the old employees fired on the barges, they did not know they were Pinkerton detectives, but supposed they were non-union workmen, for they called them " - scabs." All the hue and cry about importing detectives into the state was an after-thought, and even Senator Pfeffer's speech, at the Sunset Club in Chicago, deploring such conduct on the part of the Carnegie Company, was wide of the mark. If ever there was an aggregation of criminals, posing as poor workingmen, and demanding sympathy for their misdeeds, it was the leaders in that infamous strike. They had not a grievance in the world. Of these leaders, Hugh F. Dempsey, for poisoning non-union workmen, was found guilty by a jury, and given a sentence of seven years; Robert J. Beatty, seven years; Patrick Gallagher, five years; and George Davidson, three years. The article is mostly bosh, and no reliance can be placed upon it.

The same is true, though its mistakes are not so glaring, of the article on the Pullman strike.

The biographical aspects of the book might suggest, that, if only true social reformers and reforms were intended to be its range, it was hardly necessary to include all the social deforms and the social cranks that afflict this long-suffering earth. Many of the remedies for poverty that are now proposed will, within ten years, be found in the amusement column of every newspaper, as they are now the laughing-stock of the serious-minded and the educated. Fanaticism is easily mistaken for earnestness of faith, but it is in reality a form of doubt. This encyclopedia has drawn no intelligent line between the two, but it proposes to hand down to the next century as social reformers the names of many who would lead faith and ethics and economics out into the wilderness, and who are applauded simply because they attract so much attention by their hostility to established principles, and their constantly calling in question of fundamental truths. Such writers have not added one line to the truth of the world, nor one ounce of momentum to its upward and onward movement. The army of noble men and women who are working for the world's betterment, and the scholars who are laying scientific foundations for the art of social control, are quiet compared with these calamity howlers, crazy iconoclasts, and hysterical reformers, who succeed in becoming notorious even if they have no reputation for scholarship or common-sense. Of course all wild-eyed schemes attempt to secure the sanction of Jesus, and he is not present to disown them. The result is, we have a different ideal in every city, and new Saviours of

man's manufacture by the score on every street-corner. The cure for all this, is scholarly exegesis and an educated perception of the truth. But with minor criticisms of this sort forgotten, and it is easy to forget them in the presence of so much merit, this book is a splendid work, and a tribute to the industry and breadth of its editor, and the distinguished associates whose names grace the title-page.

Z. S. H.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION. BY BENJAMIN KIDD. New edition, revised, with Additions. Pp. 404. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.50. The profound impression which this book made upon its first appearance was such that it now justifies a new edition in more convenient form. The author has added, as an appendix, the reply to his critics that appeared in the Nineteenth Century, though it has been re-written. The author defends his position that all religion is essentially ultra-rational. It is very certain that many of the severest criticisms upon the book at the time of its appearance were based upon misconceptions of the author's position stated in the following words: "A rational religion is a scientific impossibility, representing from the nature of the case an inherent contradiction of terms" (p. 109). Surely no book at the close of this century has created a wider interest than this one, which we forbear reviewing here at length, as we gave it full notice when it first appeared.

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A TREATISE ON THE PREPARATION AND DELIVERY OF SERMONS. JOHN A. BROADUS, D.D., LL.D., author of "A Harmony of the Gospels,' "History of Preaching,' Commentary on Matthew," etc. New (Twenty-third) Edition. Edited by EDWIN CHARLES DARGAN, D.D., Professor of Homiletics in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. Crown 8vo. Pp. xxi, 562. New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son. 1898. $1.75.

The continued demand for Dr. Broadus's treatise, which has now been before the public for nearly thirty years, speaks well for the good judgment of the ministerial public; for, taking it all in all, it is unequaled in its line, and is of such a character that it can never become antiquated.

THE STORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D., LL.D., late Professor of Church History in Drew Theological Seminary. Pp. xiii, 604. 8vo. New York: Eaton & Mains; Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings. $3.50.

This volume, published since the learned author's death, gives in literary form the substance of his class lectures, and covers the whole field of church history from apostolic times to the Synod of Dort. It is not characterized by such full literary references as is the work of his Methodist associate, Bishop Hurst, but it possesses many points of excellence which will insure its popularity, and which give it preeminent value both

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