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After all, why should not the laity be better versed in Catholic theology, so that they cannot be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine"? Every man knows that he must be thoroughly grounded in the knowledge of his business or art or profession, unless he wishes to be tricked and deceived and vanquished by the world. Why not be equally well grounded in the knowledge of the Christian religion?

Hereford and Disestablishment

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T is difficult for us on this side of the water to extend much sympathy to our brethren in the Church of England who have been so deeply distressed over the appointment of Dean Hensley Henson to the see of Hereford. This is not because we think it was a good appointment. We are not strongly enough moved to look into the matter to see whether it was a good appointment or not. We simply cannot understand why English Churchmen should expect anything different, as long as they contentedly submit to so archaic an arrangement as the Establishment.

Just why Mr. Lloyd George could not equally well have appointed a Welsh non-conformist divine, or even a Unitarian, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, we do not see. For here apparently is a system of establishment which allows a Prime Minister, who might conceivably be an atheist, to select Bishops for the Church of God! Let us hope that he will appoint to the English sees as they fall vacant the most preposterously unfit men he can find, until the faithful are utterly disgusted with the whole scheme, and rise as one man and demand disestablishment.

For ourselves we prefer the ancient and more democratic method of allowing the clergy and people of the diocese to elect their own Bishop. To be sure we do not always in this way secure the man who is best qualified for the office of a Bishop, but at any rate we get the kind of a Bishop we want. If the kind we want is not the best, then that is the kind we deserve. The diocese of Hereford apparently gets neither the kind of Bishop it wants nor the kind it deserves.

Establishment may have been a thoroughly workable arrangement in the middle ages, when Church and Nation were co-terminous because every citizen belonged to the Church, and when the term "churchman" meant simply one who belonged to the clerical order. To-day, in a nation so divided in its ecclesiastical allegiance as England is, Establishment is simply an impracticable anachronism.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Pastoral Epistles, with Introduction and Notes: By Ernest Faulkner Brown, M.A. Methuen & Co., London, 1918.

Among the many series of commentaries on Holy Scripture the Westminster series deserves a high place for usefulness. As in every other case with which we are familiar, the separate volumes vary considerably in method, depth of scholarship and general value, but among them are numbered such books as Driver's Genesis, Rackham's Acts and Goudge's First Corinthians. They are distinguished from most other works of their kind by being based on the English, instead of the Greek or Hebrew text; by the practical character of the comments and notes; and by being written from the standpoint of Catholic Churchmen who are neither unfamiliar with nor alarmed by the results of modern criticism. The present volume will hardly rank with the notable commentaries named above. That it is less critical and less concerned with questions of date and authorship may perhaps make it more useful to the average parish priest or educated layman. The fact that the author has long been engaged in missionary work in India and has drawn upon his experience there for illustrations gives a special interest. C. C. E.

The Rise of the Christian Religion: A Study in Origins; by Charles Frederick Nolloth, M.A., Litt.D., Oriel College, Oxford, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London, 1917.

It is difficult to characterize this book, because the point of view from which it is written and the purpose it seeks to fulfil are altogether excellent, while the method and the manner are tedious and prolix to the extreme. It covers the entire field of

Christian origins. It begins with a comparatively brief and adequate account of the sources, proceeds to a much longer or general discussion of the preparation for the Gospel in Jewish, Greek and Roman civilization; has a chapter on the philosophical apology for miracles; contains a long account of the principal features of the life and teaching of our Lord and of the early days of the Church; and concludes with a discussion of Apostolic doctrine. It contains an abundance of excellent matter discussed from a well-defended conservative point of view. The style, however, is so prolix, except for occasional flashes of fine writing, that one wonders if it will succeed in getting itself read. The author began with a very just criticism of the value of German scholarship, but proceeds on almost every page to refer to German authorities, bringing them forward as witnesses to his own positions when it pleases him, but unconscious often that the thesis of the German he may frequently quote was the direct contrary of his own. He would have been more satisfactory if he had applied his canon of criticism throughout. The same evidence of a bewildered judgment appears now and then in other respects: e.g., after laying great emphasis on the preparation for the Gospel in Judaism, he concludes by saying, "It is one of the paradoxes of history that a people so fitted by their history and institutions for God's greatest gift and whose whole past was a preparation for it, should have turned against Him when He came." Apparently he quite forgets that the Apostles were all Jews, and that Jews constituted the vital nucleus of the Church.

But the chief defect of the book is its tediousness. The author has done too much of his thinking in public. A book of half the length presenting his reasoned conclusions with pointed arguments would have been twice as valuable. It is, however, one of the few volumes of the sort that covers the whole field from a conservative point of view. Its best chance of success is as a text-book.

L. G.

The Man Outside the Church and other Sermons; and The Supreme Sacrifice: The Seven Words from the Cross: By H. P. Almon Abbott, M.A., D.D., Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland. The Young Churchman Company, 1917 and 1918.

These two volumes contain a number of sermons and a series of addresses on the Passion, delivered for the most part by Dean

Abbott in Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland. They are simple, practical, to the point in every instance, and readable as most sermons are not. They are the sort of thing that needs to be preached, and that when it is preached is likely to have effect, not only on the man outside the Church but the easy-going casual worshipper in the pew.

The Church and the Man. By Donald Hankey. Macmillan, 1917. $1.00.

The object of this little book is to show how we may help the Church to make a greater appeal to the average man. The writer takes up such topics as: The Average Man's Beliefs, The Troubles of an Average Layman, The Gospel and the Church, Methods and Weapons, Revelation and Common Sense, The Church and Human Relations, and Missions. This book was brought out after the death of the writer by the Rev. C. H. S. Mathews, and contains a foreword by him embodying a sketch of Donald Hankey. Hankey's former work, "A Student in Arms" was very widely read and most of us are, of course, familiar with the general attitude of the writer on religious questions. It would seem, however, that laudable as his aim has been, much of his message applies chiefly to conditions in the English Church. Conditions are totally different in the United States. For example, one of the chief difficulties of the Church in reaching the average man in England arises from the traditional status of the clergy. The clergy there belong to the aristocratic class and are part of a privileged order of things established by law. In this country our clergy are mixed up in the general hurly-burly of life, and have to make their way amidst all kinds of competition.

In attempting to make the Church appeal to the average man, Donald Hankey was confronted by three alternatives. The first was to organize all the modernists and initiate a campaign for the reformation of the Church. The second was to cut themselves off from the Church, with its strife and corruption; and start a new Church of their own, which would be purified and holy indeed. The third, which seemed to Hankey the right one, was to take advantage of the liberty that was allowed within the Church, and establish settlements here and there for the common people, such as Oxford House in Bethnal Green. The choice of this last alternative proves that Hankey was perfectly loyal to the Church, in spite of some assertions to the contrary.

The Nemesis of Mediocrity. By Ralph Adams Cram, Litt.D., LL.D. Boston: Marshall, Jones Co., 1917. $1.00.

There are many prophets in these days who prophesy smooth things, and would have us believe that there is a good time coming when all will be well in the best possible of worlds. They assure us that the triumph of the Allies will usher in an era of world-wide democracy, and that then everybody will be contented and happy. There are a few prophets, with quite a different tone, whose message is not acceptable to people in general; for, like many of the Hebrew prophets of old, they insist on warning us of dire calamities that are to come. Dr. Cram is this sort of a prophet. He believes that if Germany triumphs, there will be ushered in a period of world-wide slavery; while if the Allies triumph there will ultimately prevail a world-wide anarchy. He cannot see anything good in a democracy as it is practised at present in the world. He attempts to prove in this book that democracy everywhere has the effect of bringing all men down to a dead level of mediocrity. He shows that the great men of to-day in all countries as compared with the great men of the last generation are pigmies as compared with giants. He distinguishes two kinds of democracy: the democracy of method, which is the kind which prevails in the world to-day, and has reached its consummation in the Bolsheviki regime in Russia; and the democracy of ideal, which he calls the real democracy and considers to be the noblest ideal ever discovered by man or revealed to him. "True democracy," he says, "means three things: Abolition of Privilege; Equal Opportunity for All; and Utilization of Ability. Unless democracy achieves these things. it is not democracy, and no matter how progressive its methods, how apparently democratic its machinery, it may perfectly well be an oligarchy, a kakistocracy or a tyranny." This book is not cheerful reading; but it is stimulating, in that it makes one face realities and think things out. It is a little book of only fifty-two pages and should be widely read.

The Mount of Vision. Being a Study of Life in Terms of the Whole. By the Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop-elect of Western N. Y., with an introduction by the Bishop of London. Longmans, Green & Co. $1.00 net.

There are so many striking and inspiring pages in this book that one can only hope that the vagueness of the earlier chapters will

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