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"It is based on the notion of pride. Not only is it anti-Christian; the superman, as Nietzsche preaches him, is inexpressibly vulgar. The notion of force without any direction for he says repeatedly that life has no meaning nor goal would ultimately be no less destructive of the culture which Nietzsche desired." Therefore Dr. Figgis will not “be so cruel as to tear from his melancholy brow that laurel-wreath which he himself had placed thereon the title of Antichrist." S. P. D.

The School of Divine Love, the Science of the Saints in Daily Life. By the Rev. Jesse Brett, L.Th., Chaplain of All Saints' Hospital, Eastbourne. pp. 179. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.20 net.

The author of this book is well and favorably known in the realm of devotional literature, and we are prepared to find an able treatment of his great subject. Great times have called forth the best and strongest in human nature. The World War has been a time of testing and proving religious values, and may have been awakened to needs long unacknowledged, to want more and deeper satisfaction of soul than they have found in their former indefinite religious practices. The National Mission in England brought into clear light the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints.

The underlying thought of these pages is that the love of God is the interpretation of the inner glory of the Faith. The love of God Himself is the only satisfaction of the human soul, and the cultivation of its knowledge by study, prayer, and action, the work of the true disciple. In his twelve chapters the author essays to describe the universality and attractiveness of the Divine Love, and its inspiring power leading to its own perfection in the attainment of the Ideal. Indeed, we are led in mystic contemplation to the highest mountain tops, and although the atmosphere seems at times too rarefied for mortal men, we feel that it is good to have been uplifted for a while above the level of the plains of mediocrity in which we are so prone to pitch our tents, in an attempt to arrive at the enthusiastic affection of the Saints and to enter into the meaning of expressions quite unlike our own. We especially commend the chapter which treats of The Prayer of Love, and it is with some relief that we read, on page 113, that "simplicity is a note of true sanctity. Great Saints are generally remarkable for their simple un-self-consciousness, and yet they may be the most favored of God".

The thought of the Divine Love appears to us so great as to baffle human comprehension and definition. Few men would venture to handle it, few are able to penetrate at all deeply into the Science of the Saints,

but our author is a skilful pedagogue, and his book can be recommended to all who would be disciples in this School, and to quote from his conclusion, page 179, "God who teaches us of His Own Divine Love, sets no limit either to His teaching, or to our attainment, save that which we make for ourselves by our own unwillingness, faithlessness, or sin. If we have learned from Him the way of love, if we have proved by experience what He is to those who love Him, we have the beginning in ourselves of that which may develop into perfection, and to our eternal joy in love, in God, Whom to possess forever is the joy of His Saints ".

W. H. B.

Before the Morning Watch. By the Rev. F. A. Iremonger, Rector of Quarley. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 90 cents net.

This volume of 172 pages has an Introduction by the Bishop of London, and is one of a List of Special Books for Lenten Reading recommended by him. It contains a series of Meditations on the several verses of the 130th Psalm, which with its plaintive cry of Repentance and confident appeal to Hope had so real a meaning for the English Church and Nation in a very trying Lent that tested courage and faithfulness to the utmost. It is, as the Introduction tells us, written in blood and watered with tears, and if it is read in the spirit in which it was written, it cannot fail to give its message of comfort and warning and inspiration to a world which needs them. And Lent is past, but the War cloud which colored these Meditations hovers close upon us and threatens to burst upon our own country. History repeats itself, and we are ready to take up Israel's De Profundis, the humble trustful cry of penitence and patient confidence in God.

The title is of course taken from verse 6 of the Prayer Book Version of the Psalm, which differs from the more accurate Revised translation, though this is not material to the author's purpose, which has already been sufficiently indicated. Each chapter contains many helpful things, but chapters 4 and 6 on Humility and Penitence in Prayer, and the Spirit of Holy Fear are especially notable, as also the concluding chapter which aptly describes the nature of Sin as consisting in a condition rather than an act or acts,- a Condition of independence of God, and of selfsatisfaction, pride, and self-will.

This is a book which might fill the whole of one Lent, and may thoroughly be recommended to those who can sympathize with deep religious experience. In an early chapter the author speaks of the duty of loving God with all our mind, apart from the daily study of the Bible, in

the use of really valuable religious literature. We may fairly apply his words to the volume before us, "How much more profitable would be our Lent if we could determine to read one it need be only onestandard book of Christian faith or practice, between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day . . . . There are few things which deepen our own personal religion more than to follow carefully the unfolding, by the hand of a master, of any subject which bears upon the joys and difficulties of the Christian life, or the teaching of the Church ".

W. H. B.

The Call of Lent to Penitence, Discipline, and Christ. By H. C. G. Moule, D. D., Bishop of Durham, New York: Edwin S. Gorham. 80 cents net.

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A work from the hands of Bishop Moule, with the sponsorship of the S. P. C. K. enters the world of devotional literature under happy auspices and bespeaks its own value. The present work consists of short readings or meditations for each week day in Lent, suitable for use in Church or at home. The subjects selected are- Sin, Discipline, and The Cross, with a final chapter on The Power of His Resurrection "; in the treatment of each subject the author displays a wonderful power of analysis, and that deep personal experience of godly fear, lowly penitence, and watchful discipline which has characterized the best school of Evangelical Churchmanship. The author's mind is plainly conscious of the World War and the recent National Mission of the Church of England which have given a new significance and value to the religious observance of Lent with its tender and glorious climax in the Passion and Easter. The book is full of choice sayings, but some passages are of singular beauty, as, when in the first chapter (p. 13), the author, as it were, summarizes the theme of his book by telling us that Lent in harmony with its sterner suggestions is intended also to be a name of beauty and light. "Lent means Spring. And Spring is, to be sure, the time of winds keen and strong, of showering clouds, and ever and again of snow and the sting of frost. But also it is the time of the bird's blessed voices in the budding trees, and of the shining out of the black earth of the beloved flowers under the reviving sun. Not otherwise Lent is indeed the season of renewed severities .. but it has also to do with the vernal growths of the peace and joy of faith, and with the fair beauties of the life of love, and with the song of victory over all temptation in the vital brightness of the slain and living Christ of God."

Lent is past, but not so our need of recalling its purposes. Devout spiritual meditations such as these will always be seasonable both for the

clergy and for laymen, and surely never more appropriate than in the present times of distress of nations and perplexity.

W. H. B.

Further Pages of My Life. By the Right Reverend W. Boyd Carpenter, K.C.V.O., D.D., D.C.L., formerly Bishop of Ripon. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

By way of supplement to his former book, "Some Pages of My Life,' the distinguished author has given us this volume of somewhat fragmentary and entirely unconventional reflections mingled with intimate reminiscences of the joys and sorrows of his private life, written without any other thought than of recording frankly and honestly things as they were, or as they appeared to the writer. The early chapters are mostly personal, but the chapter headed" Clerical Peccadilloes" relates some experiences of the author as a bishop (here we find the trite remark that, like the body, the diocese is unaware of its organs except when there is local disturbance, and then the head knows that there is trouble) and very human in its mingled pathos and humor is the study given us from real life of several strange cases of clerical delinquency. Some chapters will be appreciated better by those who are conversant with English ways, and the notices of F. W. Robertson and John Henry Shorthouse by those with whom they were, if not contemporary, at least recent memories.

Few are so well qualified as Bishop Boyd Carpenter to give personal recollections of the late King Edward, or to describe the really great qualities manifested by this monarch in his short but glorious reign, but chief of all in interest is the chapter which gives us some insight into the better side of the character of the man who figures so largely at the present time of war and calamity, the Emperor William, all of which is well worth reading and considering, "And this is the pity of it all " the author concludes, "he might have been so great. He might have left to history the record of a reign which had done good to the world, and at the same time conferred glory and prosperity on his own country; but now for all time he will be known as the man who was chiefly responsible for the wickedest war ever waged, for the awful carnage, for the world-wide sorrow, and for the sad alienation of hearts which it has brought in its train. For one fact stands out clear and certain to all who read the official correspondence: a word from the Emperor in those critical July and August days of 1914 would have made war impossible, and that word was not spoken."

W. H. B.

The False Decretals. By E. H. Davenport, B.A., Lothian Prizeman, 1914. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. New York Agents: Longmans, Green & Co. MCMXVI. $1.50 net.

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This is a careful re-examination of the famous " forged "or" pseudoIsidorean" Decretals which came to have a connection, albeit an undesigned connection probably, with the building up of the claim of the Bishop of Rome to supremacy. Now that the authenticity of the documents has been discredited beyond hope of reversal the task of treating the Decretals in an unbiased and non-controversial way is not a difficult one. They present interesting problems for the historian to solve, if he Mr. Davenport attempts to present solutions of several related questions. He gathers together the evidence to elucidate "the environment, the substance and the influence of the Pseudo-Isidore's work " and he ventures a "judgment on the place in history of the PseudoIsidorean Decretals." The contention of the majority of historians of every school is upheld, that the Pseudo-Isidorean forgeries were all published with the same intent "the protection and advancement of the Frankish priesthood." What is not emphasized is that by playing off the patriarchal authority of the Roman Bishop against the authority of other Metropolitans the position of the former became necessarily unique in the West, thus giving an impulse to the idea of uniqueness in other ways. An impression " was allowed to be fostered. The writer estimates the work of the compiler not so much "a forgery written with deceit " as a legend written with a moral." He thinks that in that age" history, written ostensibly to edify, was little short of legend." Very likely, but that is just the kind of writing that today often passes muster as "history "' and with just the same bad results. The student of documents will find Mr. Davenport's study one of the best on this subject. A. W. J.

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Does Christ Still Heal. By Henry B. Wilson, B.D., Director of the Society of the Nazarene. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., $1.00 net.

The Society of the Nazarene is an organization which aims to bring about a restoration of the ministry of healing as practised in the Apostolic church, and the book before us contains a fuller explication by its Director of his previous book entitled "The Revival of the Gift of Healing" which has received sympathetic and favorable notice and reached a second edition. The attention of thoughtful Christian people is called to a subject of far more importance than many realise, which has been forced to the foreground in these days by the enormous growth

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