true. The second essay is a striking estimate of "modern civilization" as it has come to its perfect fruition in Prussian materialism. Dr. Cram holds that "Kultur" was an "idea magnificent in its working out; the important point, however, is that it is undeniably the awful thing predicted from of old, and that is, Antichrist."

Jesus and the Eucharist. By the Rev. J. P. Wilson, M.A., C.F., Rector of Hedenham, Norfolk. New York, The Macmillan Co., $1.35 net.

This is an earnest plea that the Eucharist may occupy its proper place as the very centre of our religion.

In Part 1, entitled God and the Soul, the author insists on experience or actual first-hand knowledge of God as the great religious need, "the aim must be to bring the soul into contact and communication with the Living Presence... all the energies and actions of our being engaged in converse with God."

The Second Part speaks of the lure of the Holy Name Jesus, and more directly of the Eucharist as the expression of His universal Presence "brought to a focus and flashing into fire in this act of special ordering, along with faith in the recipient. It is the Gospel in action. We repent; we draw nigh; we unite ourselves with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven; we show the Lord's death; we offer ourselves, soul and body to God's service. In the Gloria in Excelsis we sing the song of the Ascension before the throne of God and the Lamb. Full of peace and blessing we go back to our daily work." The religion of the Incarnation is very beautifully explained to be essentially sacramental in its method, and the author finds also in the Eucharist our best hope of reunion, the Eucharist is the service of Evangelical love, and love will find a way.

The concluding pages contain a Retrospect from the year 1950 of Church and State regenerated under the chastening influences of the great war.

This book will be helpful and encouraging to the large number of clergy who desire to recover the Eucharist as the chief act of worship of their people. W. H. B.

Letters to the Mother of a Soldier. By Richardson Wright. New York, F. A. Stokes Company, $1.00 net.

Now that we are beginning to realize more clearly every day what the war means and why we are in it, this Mother's Manual of Arms will bring comfort and assurance to many whose sons are in training or at

the front with its suggestions of practical helpfulness. To take a few samples from these kindly letters-"The invulnerable armor which you must wear in these days is unfailing belief in the righteousness of our cause. . . . Keep yourself in the best possible health. . . . Do not overdo war activities. Have other interests. . . . Carry your head high, be a Spartan mother, Spartan mothers may never have shed tears, but I am sure they must have prayed." We think it precarious, however, to assert that a recklessly wicked life is atoned for by a heroic death on the battlefield, pp. 60-64.

...

On pages 90-94 are to be found the address given his men of the Expeditionary Force by Lord Kitchener, and strangest of all the order issued to the Russian Army called "The Soldier's Memento," a mixture of piety and practical advice which sheds a light on the Russian Army that used to be and the deep fire of religion that drove its men to Titanic sacrifices.

These letters are a suitable handbook of courage for those who are tempted to despondency and doubt. W. H. B.

The Minister's Son, A Record of His Achievements. By the Rev. C. E. N. Macartney. Philadelphia, Eakins, Palmer & Harrar.

This is not a novel, but a little book of 28 pages by a Presbyterian Minister of Philadelphia wherein he has no difficulty in gravely establishing his thesis that the son of a minister is not ipso facto predestined to perdition. Why should that be thought a thing incredible? Eli and his sons are not, we trust, typical of the Manse.

An interesting catalogue of names is given-and many more could be added, from President Wilson onwards, of ministers' sons who have achieved greatness and exerted influence in the life of their country. Thomas Fuller wisely wrote that "Clergymen's children have not been more unfortunate, but more observed than the children of parents of other professions." Our own experience of life (not "Life") inclines us to believe that the minister's son is after all a chip of the old block. We catch a glimpse of unconscious Scotch humor as we read "The minister's home is an answer to the wise man's prayer 'Give me neither riches nor poverty.' He never gets riches, sometimes he gets poverty, . . . Clergymen do not usually possess enough wealth to allow their children to live. in idleness." But here is the gist of the whole matter, "the chief thing is the Christian training of the home." We should like to see some mention of the mysterious force of mother love as a factor in the development of character. Who will write about the "Minister's Wife's Son"?

W. H. B.

American Pictures and Their Painters. By Lorinda Munson Bryant. With 230 illustrations. John Lane and Company, Publishers.

In "American Paintings and Their Painters," by Miss Lorinda Munson Bryant we have a book more useful than ambitious. Presenting as it does some two hundred illustrations it is categorical rather than critical. The text is an interesting commentary on the painters, anecdotal and readable. Much praise may be given to the selection and reproduction of the examples of American art and the book ought to find wide use among those to whom extensive collections are inaccessible, for the turning of its pages will give a certain acquaintance with painting from Benjamin West to Arthur B. Davis (not to speak of Morgan Russell) that pages of description could not impart. Its range covers nearly two hundred years and to turn from West's "Death on a White Horse" on the first page to Mr. Zorach's "Spring" (also on a white horse) on the last gives one something of a jolt, which the antithesis of subject and the similarity of symbolism only increase. Indeed the contrasting of these two pictures will throw much light on the latest movement in art. Although the figures in Mr. Zorach's "Spring" are worse than death, and his white horse has a black tail one cannot fail to find a clearer expression of Spring amid its absurdities than one does of Death in the chaotic classicism of West. Nevertheless Miss Bryant treats the moderns without partisanship and with sympathy, leaving their pictures and the quotations from their writings to speak for them and leaving the reader to decide whether their art spells lunacy or renascence. The book would not be misplaced in an artist's library and would be most interesting to an H. V. M.

amateur.

A History of the Christian Church. By Williston Walker, D.D., pp. 634. New York, 1918, Charles Scribner's Sons, Price $3.00 net.

This is a very useful summary of the history of the Church. On the whole, with some exceptions, we can accept and endorse the positions taken by the author, who is the leading Protestant Church historian in this country. Most of the great epochs have been treated adequately and fairly. We consider Dr. Walker's treatment of the great schism between the Eastern and the Western Church as absolutely inadequate, in view of the great importance of the event itself, and especially in view of its bearing on the efforts to effect a reunion of, at any rate, the AngliIcan and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The history of the great

doctrines of the Church is well told, and the rise of the Papacy is traced with accuracy and fairness, and without the antagonism unfortunately too often manifested by Protestant writers. Naturally, the author is deeply interested in the Protestant Reformation, the history of which is described most adequately and with deep sympathy. We note, also, that the Anglican Reformation has been given fair treatment, and that in the discussion of the so-called Puritan Reformation, the author shows little, if any, bias against the mother Church.

We dissent from much in the opening sections of the book. We still accept the views of the great conservative scholars who established the dates of the Synoptic Gospels as all earlier than 70 A.D., despite the fact that present day New Testament Critics would put them all later than that date. Nor can we accept the author's view that the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul are, in their entirety, anything but the genuine letters of that Apostle. The section on the organization of the early Church is unsatisfactory to a Catholic, and naturally so, as it is written from the Protestant viewpoint. Yet the author is compelled to admit that "the monarchical episcopate," as he calls it, existed in the days of St. Ignatius, early in the second century, or within about a decade of the death of St. John, the Divine.

Apart from these major faults and some minor inaccuracies that we have not the space to note, this volume may be accepted as generally correct in its statements. The perspective, on the whole, is good. A useful, though not absolutely adequate, bibliography and a copious index add to the value of the volume. F. C. H. W.

The Church in the Furnace. Essays by Seventeen Temporary Church of England Chaplains on Active Service in France and Flanders. Edited by F. B. MacNutt, Senior Chaplain to the Forces, Canon of Southwark. Macmillan & Co., 1918, $1.75.

This book sets before the world a very severe arraignment of the Church of England; and yet strangely enough it is written by priests who are devoted servants of the Church and wish to be perfectly loyal to their spiritual mother. Just because they love her, they yearn to see her blemishes removed and her deficiencies made up.

The contributions of these chaplains supply the most carefully considered and the most stimulating comment on spiritual matters that the war has brought forth. They say all that was said by Donald Hankey and a great deal more; and what they say comes with more compelling

emphasis, because it is the combined judgment of educated and experienced priests. Naturally these essays are of unequal value, though all of them are clearly and forcibly written and contain passages that are both inspiring and illuminating. Especially helpful and suggestive are the papers on "Membership and Loyalty," by the Rev. Geoffrey Gordon; on "Worship and Services," by the Rev. E. Milner-White; and on "Instruction in Prayer," by the Rev. Marcell W. T. Conran, S.S.J.E.

In the section dealing with Faith, we learn that the war has not resulted in a revival of religion, as we are so often told by popular preachers. It has administered a tremendous shaking to conventional religion, and only the things that cannot be shaken will remain. The traditional idea of God has been found to be lamentably inadequate; what one writer calls "this nebulous Theism" has failed utterly to give men what they need. The only kind of God that will appeal to the soldiers in France is the God that is presented in terms of Jesus Christ, the God who suffered upon the Cross. That God is marching on to victory, to the complete establishing of His Kingdom in this world; and though there are many enemies to be overcome, yet the young men of to-day are glad to enlist in that campaign. Aside from this belief in the suffering Messiah who is trying to establish His Kingdom, there are other beliefs that have been quickened and reinforced by the experiences of the war such as the beliefs in prayer, in sin, in the sacramental view of life, and in the reality of the life hereafter.

In the section on Fellowship, we discover, as we might have expected, that the war has broken down many of the barriers that have heretofore kept men apart, such as partisanship, social distinctions, and suspicion between the clergy and the laity. Ecclesiastical partisanship, we are glad to learn, has been conspicuous by its absence. Circumstances have altered many prejudices. The following passage (p. 114) is a good illustration of the way in which prejudices have melted away:

It is not merely discipline which has checked aberrations, and brought men almost to a common use; it is the force of circumstances which has guided many chaplains to administer the Eucharist at any hour of the day or night, in order that men under great pressure of work, or in daily peril of their lives, might not be deprived of the opportunity of making their Communion. It was a man who normally would advocate fasting Communion who, before his battalions went into action on the Somme, went round evening by evening to each company in turn, holding service, and celebrating for each, with the result that from those two battalions over one thousand men made their Communion. It is force of circumstances which has brought men, normally accustomed to a Puritan sim