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voted himself to the arduous duties of the episcopate of a great city; and then he passed into the life beyond, at the age of seventy-five.

The story of Dr. Greer's life is well and sympathetically told. While the life work of this man was in no wise sensational, and while his methods were conservative, so that they attracted little attention from the world, yet his results were always remarkable. Thus it is to him that Providence is indebted for St. Elizabeth's Home, and New York City for St. Bartholomew's Parish House and the Bronx Church House; it is to him that the Diocese owes the Synod House and the Hope Farm Protectory,-to mention only the chief benefactions that have come as results of his ministry as rector and bishop.

He was deeply interested in the larger work of the church, having served as a delegate to the General Convention from both Rhode Island and New York. He was actively interested in the Seaman's Church Institute; and the splendid new home of this Institute is due-in large measure -to his initiative. From its beginning to the day of his death, the Bishop was the President of the American Church Institute for Negroes; and no one took a deeper or more practical interest in its work than he.

Dr. Greer was twice elected bishop, first as coadjutor of Rhode Island, and then as Bishop of Western Massachusetts; but he declined both elections. He was asked to allow his name to be presented as a candidate for the bishopric of Massachusetts and again for the coadjutorship of Pennsylvania; but he declined both offers. Nor did the offer of the rectorate of Trinity Church, Boston, tempt him. His reason in every case was that his work at St. Bartholomew's was not completed.

As Bishop of New York, he did his work quietly and unostentatiously. The cathedral, the choir and crossing of which he consecrated, was his delight and his opportunity. It is interesting to study his ideal of the cathedral and its work. He was always approachable, and delightfully congenial in his intercourse with all, never being either overbearing or condescending. In all his dealings with his fellow men, he was ever the true Christian gentleman. He possessed a saving sense of humor that must often have stood him in good stead.

In his closing years, he suffered much from ill health and was troubled with failing eyesight. Yet he bravely continued his arduous work, omitting no detail of the vast mass of routine duties that rest upon a bishop's shoulders. For the last eight years he had the able assistance of his Suffragan Bishop, Dr. Burch, who was a personal friend of long standing, and with whom he worked in perfect harmony.

This volume can be most cordially recommended to all who desire a faithful portrait of one who, while perhaps not a great bishop, was yet a most useful, helpful, and successful leader of his diocese. And, above all, the reader will get the impression which Dr. Greer himself would have been most pleased to see conveyed--that David Hummell Greer was a good man and a devout Christian. F. C. H. W.

Lambeth and Reunion. By the Bishops of Peterborough, Zanzibar and Hereford. London, S. P. C. K., New York. The Macmillan Co.. 1920, pp. 115 (paper).

The three Bishops have given the church a most valuable interpretation of the pronouncements of the last Lambeth Conference on Christian Unity. Reprints of the "Appeal to All Christian People" and the resolutions on the subject adopted by the Conference, are prefaced to the body of the work, and are convenient for reference. The opening chapter sketches, briefly but adequately, the history of the Conferences. The second chapter gives a summary of the movements in the direction of Christian Unity from 1908 to 1920. Next the writers turn to a study of the movements in the Conferences, showing how it absorbed more and more interest in successive conferences, and how the culmination came in 1920. The steps of the work, in Committee and in the Conference are well told.

In studying this interpretation, we are startled by the suggestion that these three Bishops, aye, even the Bishop of Zanzibar, would be willing to receive "whatever ministerial commission the Wesleyans, or the Presbyterians, or the Romans might desire to give." Of course we understand that this is offered in exchange, so to say, for the acceptance of some sort of modified Anglican Ordination on the part of Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Romans, et at.

Passing to what the authors call "the Realization of the Ideal," we come to another extraordinarily striking idea: the existence, within the reunited church, of different groups "Each continuing within reasonable limits its own method of worship and devotion, and even in some degree its own ways of government." All this is to be, locally, under "a College of Bishops" for each group is to have its own "Bishop," and all are to be united in provincial and, possibly, national synod, and in the general or oecumenical council, under the presidency of the Pope. This would certainly put our Catholic bishops into an anomalous position. Moreover it would imperil Catholic faith and practice in the local college

of bishops and perhaps still more in synods, provincial and national, or even in an oecumenical council, where the former Protestant "Bishops" had the majority. The authors agree that "at first sight it seems both impossible and unworkable." We are inclined to accept this opinion not only at first sight but finally. The question of ordination is a serious obstacle; and on this important point we are offered no more than "a common ordinal" or at least "an ordinal that conforms to a type generally adopted throughout the fellowship." This failure adequately to guard the sacrament of holy order is characteristic of the manner in which the sacraments generally are treated in this whole scheme.. Such an attitude toward the sacramental system of the church is natural in any attempt to bring into the Catholic unity Protestant denominations, whose ministers and people have not first of all been converted to the Catholic faith.

That these dangers are vital, ay, imminent, no one can doubt who reads the chapter on The Appeal in Action and Our Present Duty. After carefully reading this volume we are not at all surprised that the Bishop of Vermont and these other bishops dissented from the majority. Our surprise is that the minority was so meagre as this; and especially surprised are we that the Bishop of Zanzibar should find himself in a position not only to support this movement in the Conference, but also to defend it with his pen. To all who desire an appreciative and thoroughly readable account and explanation of the last Lambeth Conference on an important subject, we cordially commend this volume. F. C. H. W.

Father Maturin. A memoir, with selected letters. By Maisie Ward. Longmans, Green & Co., 1920, pp. 208.

Nearly half of this book is taken up with the admirable memoir by the daughter of the late Wilfred Ward. Born in Ireland in 1847, Basil Maturin was trained by his father according to Tractarian ideals of religion. In 1870 he was ordained and in 1873 he entered the noviciate of the Society of St. John the Evangelist at Cowley. From 1876 to 1886 he was connected with St. Clement's Church-the Cowley Mission in Philadelphia-first as one of the assistant clergy under Father Prescott, and then as Rector. These were among the most happy and fruitful years. of his life, and he exercised an enormous influence in making Philadelphia more hospitable to Catholic ideas. Nevertheless doubts as to his ecclesiastical position had long haunted him, and after ten years of deep heartsearching and perplexity, he made his submission to the Roman Catholic

Church in 1897. In 1915 he went down on the Lusitania, on his return from a Lenten course of preaching in America.

The letters deal with all sorts of subjects, mostly spiritual and religious. The earlier ones are addressed to people who are troubled by doubt or struggling with spiritual difficulties. The later ones take up various phases of the Roman question. They should disabuse anyone of the impression, current for a time in Anglican circles, that Fr. Maturin regretted having made his submission to Rome. Of course he keenly suffered from the break with all his past associations, but he was never for a moment dissatisfied with Rome.

He distinguishes very clearly between two states of mind-namely, loss of faith in the Catholicity of the English Church, and the conviction. that the claims of Rome are right, and Rome alone is the true Church. He insists over and over that dissatisfaction with Anglicanism is not enough to justify submission to Rome. One should never become a Roman Catholic until one believes in the Divine Authority of the Papacy, and that our Lord built His Church upon the Episcopate with the See of Peter at its head. The real question at issue was, Is Rome or is England the representative of the Church of the Apostles? "All the abuses in the world and all the bad priests and lax morals in the world do not affect that question. My advice to a person who said she was held back by such rumors and scandals was this-Go and live where the Church is at the lowest and scandals are real; if you cannot keep your faith in Rome in the face of all such things you do not really believe in her." (p. 146).

He repeatedly advised people who had any belief in the Anglican claims to be part of the Body of Christ to stay where they were. His advice to an Anglican priest was, "As long as you feel you can conscientiously minister where you are-while you are thinking the question out, go on. I celebrated up to the very end. One is not called upon to take so grave a step in a hurry." (p. 169). He became a Roman Catholic because he came to believe "the Roman Church was the sole heir of the promises of Christ." As he states the matter succinctly in another place, "That claim is simple:-the necessity of being in union with the See of Peter, the impossibility of a breach in the outward unity, and the claim that it is as necessary to have a voice that speaks with authority as to have hands to minister the Sacraments." (p. 141).

Although he had no objection to being re-ordained to the priesthood, he personally believed in the validity of Anglican Orders, and states that it was commonly held that Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of Anglican Orders was not Ex Cathedra. Nevertheless because of the uncertainty

about their validity, he held that Rome was justified in deciding as she did. 'If Rome is the Catholic Church, she is certainly competent to decide on such a question." (p. 172).

Fr. Maturin had no patience with schemes for corporate re-union, such as were advocated by Spencer Jones and others. He asks (p. 164): "What right has a man to hold a representative position in a body with a view to induce its members to leave it, wearing its livery, owing his position of influence to it, receiving its pay, with the hope of, so far as he is concerned, destroying it?"

One cannot but commend such clear thinking, and the charitable spirit in which all these letters are written. His attitude toward the Church he had left was without a trace of bitterness: "I can see, I think, and am glad to see the best side of the English Church; it was my lot to live amongst men whose lives were as true and as holy as I believe are to be found anywhere, and certainly the present movement in the English Church has producd multitudes, amongst the laity, of most devout and pious souls. I never feel tempted to say hard things of the English Church.”

BOOKS RECEIVED

The Intention of His Soul. Essays for the untheologically minded, by Hubert L. Simpson, M.A. (Edin.) Hodder & Stoughton, London, Pp. xv and 260.

The Truths We Live By, by Jay William Hudson. D. Appleton & Co., New York and London, 1921, pp. x and 308 with index.

The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 10, by Karl Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., 1920, pp. 130.

The Anglican Deaconess. In the Light of the Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference of 1920, by the Rev. Oscar Hardman, B.D. With a foreword by the Rt. Rev. The Lord Bishop of Ely, S. P. C. K. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921, 32 pp.

Synodical Government. Illustrated from the Province of Victoria, Australia. By Henry Lowther Clarke, D.D., D.C.L., Bishop 1902-1905; Archbishop 1905-1920. S. P. C. K. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921, 32 pp.

Ad Universam Christi Plebem. S. P. C. K. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921, 7 pp.

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