style is careful, perhaps too formal and technical. We are not prepared to say how far such a work, however successful in its way, is needed, or likely to be helpful in composition, but students of poetry will find much in it that is entertaining and suggestive. We have noted in one or two instances something like a provincialism in the confusion of the words will and shall.

NEW EDITION OF IRVING'S WORKS.-Messrs. Geo. P. Putnam's Sons have commenced the publication of a new edition of Washington Irving's complete works in twenty-six volumes, which are to be printed from entirely new electrotype plates and to be amply illustrated. Diedrich Knickerbocker's "History of New York" has already appeared, and is prefaced by a "biographical and critical study" of Washington Irving by Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. Mr. Warner's essay, and the oration on Irving by William Cullen Bryant, which he delivered in New York in 1860, and the "Personal Reminiscences of Irving" by the late Mr. Geo. P. Putnam which were printed in the Atlantic Monthly in 1860, have been published also in a separate volume.

BLANQUI'S HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN EUROPE.*-Mr. David A. Wells, who introduces this English translation of a work which has attained a world-wide reputation, says that "it is a mistake to refer the origin of political economy to a very recent period; so recent in fact, as many suppose, as the latter half of the eighteenth century. It is indeed true that at the period referred to, the record of the experience of mankind in the work of bettering their material condition was for the first time carefully and philosophically studied, and the principles deducible from such experience elaborately formulated by Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, and others. But the experience dates back to the very dawn of civilization, and in its lessons and applications has ever since constituted the foundation and framework of every structure of progressive human society, irrespective of locality upon the earth's surface, or race difference, in its individual constituency." It is the narration of these experiences from the time of the Greeks and Romans down to the year 1842, which M. Blanqui has attempted in the work before us. We have only space to announce the publication of the English translation of this important and interesting work by Mr. Geo. P. Putnam's Sous.

*History of Political Economy in Europe.-By Jérome-Adolphe Blanqui. Translated from the fourth French edition by EMILY J. LEONARD, with Preface by David A. Wells. New York: Geo. P. Putnam's Sons. 1880. 8vo. pp. 585.

GIESELER'S CHURCH HISTORY, VOL. V.*-Professor H. B. Smith had completed 120 pages of the translation of this volume, when his death deprived the country of one of its keenest and ripest scholars, and the Church of a theologian of the highest ability and accomplishments. Mrs. Robinson, the wife of the late Dr. Edward Robinson, who is herself a German by birth, has rendered into English the most of the remaining portion of the volume. It hardly needs to be said that she is quite competent for such a task. Of course, the volume loses the additional notes and illustrations which Professor Smith, had he lived, would have connected with the text. Of the great value of Gieseler's work it is superfluous to speak. In extent and accuracy of learning, and in impartiality of treatment, no modern historian excels him. His History is a thesaurus of documentary material, selected and arranged by the hand of a master. The portion of the present volume which pertains to the Reformation, is one of the very best sections of the work. The concluding part did not enjoy the ben efit of the author's revision; but it is a valuable summary of modern events in the field of church history. The translators have done well in omitting the chapter relating to America.

PROF. KNAPP'S SPANISH "CLASS READINGS." The accomplished Professor of modern languages in Yale College has published a small volume of selections from the writings of living Spanish authors, with a vocabulary and notes, for the use of students in Spanish.

*A Text-Book of Church History. By Dr. JOHN C. L. GIESELER. Translated and edited by HENRY B. SMITH. Vol. v., 1517-1854. Completed by MARY A. ROBINSON. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880.

Lecturas de Clase escojidas de autores Españoles que hoy viven. Coleccionadas y anotadas por D. GUILLERMO I. KNAPP.

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CLVII.

SEPTEMBER, 1880.

ARTICLE I-THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF MODERN

MISSIONS.

ALL great movements affecting the welfare of mankind, sudden as may be their apparent origin, have their periods of preparation. They are never isolated phenomena, but parts of the Providential development of the human race. A sense of the utter inadequacy of this or that religion to meet the spiritual cravings of those who know no other; the manifest failure of systems of Philosophy to solve the great problems of life; the moral decadence that sooner or later attends all forms of civilization not quickened and constantly reinvigorated by new life from above, prepare the way to a just understanding of the great plan of providence and of grace which we call history.

While it becomes us to beware of hasty generalizations in judging of the great events and still more of the great movements of history, we have the highest authority for the enquiry we now propose in our Lord's indignant reproof of the wise men of his day, "Ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times."

agen

By a careful observation we may find a convergence of cies and events, preparing the way for the early establishment of the kingdom of Christ, in many respects similar to those which heralded its first promulgation.

I. As entering into the preparation for the coming of Christ, "when the fulness of time was come," the church historian is wont to dwell on the fact that for the first time in history the civilized world, then embraced in the Roman Empire, had become one in its political and commercial interests; that through the interchange of thought in consequence of the unexampled facilities for inter-communication, and through the prevalence of a common language of law and of literature, a world-wide breadth of thought and sentiment had been induced, wholly foreign to the narrowness of former days, and, that for the first time, men were become capable of conceiving of a kingdom of God that should embrace all nations.

But this preparation is more than equalled at the present day as a consequence of the commercial enterprize that brings men of every race and language into such great centers of trade as New York, London, Cairo, Calcutta, and Shanghai, and scatters the products of a common industry to the remotest portions of the globe. The firing on Fort Sumpter sent a thrill through the civilized world, started new industries in Egypt and India, and doubled the price of the scanty clothing of the wanderers on the highlands of Central Asia. The best Roman highway, linking the capitol to the remotest colony on the frontiers of civilization, is not to be compared with the railway that spans the continents, the steamer that ploughs the seas, indifferent to wind or storm; while the months required for the transmission of intelligence to the most distant lands are reduced to hours, almost to seconds. More than two-thirds of the missionaries of the American Board can be reached by tel egram within twenty-four hours. The most distant nations are brought, as it were, to our very doors. Our neighbors are no longer the men of the next town or state, or, those who use a common speech, but the human race. The physical world bas thus become one to a degree far beyond the conception of the first Cæsar; one too in the play of the intellectual forces that are every where awakening men from the slumber of ages, and

the stupor of a mere animal existence, to eager expectation and a generous hope of bettering their condition. The salute from a fifteen-inch gun in the harbor of Nagasaki, stirring the hearts of thoughtful Japanese to self-sacrifice, if need be, to secure for their native land material advantages symbolized by "big ships and big guns;" and the eager inquiry of Mtesa on Lake Nyanza for white men to teach his people the arts of civilized life, are but illustrations of the intellectual agencies of our modern life in securing a new and higher unity to mankind. As a means of diffusing the knowledge and the thought of the world, contrast the slow labor of Cicero's copyists with the steam presses of one of our great publishing houses.

II. The decay of the old religious faiths and the general decline of morals at the opening of the Christian era, revealing the necessity for the new and more potent forces of the gospel, have been so ably and so fully discussed by Prof. Fisher in the first seven chapters of "The Beginnings of Christianity," and by Dr. Uhlhorn in the first two chapters of his "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism" as to leave nothing new to be said.

The old religious faiths had lost their power. The intelligence of the educated classes rejected the traditions of the past, and the entire fabric of polytheism seemed ready to crumble to the ground. The moral restraints hitherto imposed by some degree of respect for the old creeds were relaxed, and the moral sentiment left unsupported by any outward aid, gave way under the pressure of a materialistic civilization. The social and moral degradation of all classes justified the fearful picture of the Apostle Paul in the first chapter of his letter to the Christians at Rome. The forms of religion were observed rather from custom than from faith, or possibly as an attempt to satisfy the cravings of deeper spiritual necessities.

The want of faith in any one religion was relieved by the priests who were ready to accommodate worshipers by performing such rites as they should prefer. "Unbelief and superstition," observes Mommsen,* "different hues of the same phenomenon, went hand in hand in the Roman world of that day, and there was no lack of individuals, who, in themselves,

* Vol. iv. pp. 668, 669.