of rare gifts and great capacity, whose service to the religious life of Scotland was apt to be forgotten.

We have pleasure also in noticing a sketch of the career of Dr J. L. Phillips, which has been prepared with modesty and good taste by his widow. It is the story of a laborious and self-denying life spent in missionary work in India. His letters, of which we get a good many in this volume, as well as the tale of his toils, show us how noble a man he was, and how well fitted to face the work and endure the trials to which he was called to put his hand. A remarkable tribute is paid to him by Senator Reed, late Speaker of the House of Representatives at Boston, and it is evidently nothing more than he deserved. "I always held him in my heart," says Senator Reed, "as the one man I knew who, faithful to his belief, and without a desire for reward in this world, gave up country and friends, health and comfort, for a life unknown alike to fame and pleasure. My tribute to his memory is my sincere admiration for his unselfish life of self-sacrifice and devotion—a life of self-sacrifice and devotion so deep and full and rich that to his dying day he never had thought that he was doing anything nobler than the simple duty which created beings owe to their Creator."

3

We have to notice an interesting pamphlet on Cyprian, His Life and Teaching,2 by Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I., which recognises the particular merits of Archbishop Benson's worth, but shows in a very telling way, by sufficient extracts from the writings of the great North African Father, how the Archbishop failed to exhibit the "strange and intolerant teaching of Cyprian in respect of the Church"; a lecture on Unity in Religion, by Claud George, of which it is sufficient to say that it attempts to give a rapid survey of the great religions, decides to the writer's great satisfaction the most difficult questions like that of the meaning of Nirvana in a sentence, and in an offhand way declares it to be now a "settled matter that the doctrine of the Trinity is an exploded theory; and the exclusion, from the sacred text of the Revised Version, of the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of the first epistle of St John, utterly takes away the ground from under the feet of the manufacturers of that doctrine"; Some Notes on the Vindication of the Bull" Apostolicae Curae," 4 by the Rev. N. Dimock, M.A., which will repay perusal; Sermons 1 Dr J. L. Phillips, Missionary to the Children of India. A Biographical Sketch by his Widow, completed and edited by W. J. Wintle. London: The Sabbath School Union. Cr. 8vo, pp. 264. Price, 3s. 6d.

2 Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1898. 8vo, pp. 40. Price, 1s.

3 London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898. Cr. 8vo, pp. 64. Price, 1s. 4 London: Elliot Stock, 1898. 8vo, pp. 16. Price, 6d.

and Addresses delivered at the Close of the Jubilee Synod of the United Presbyterian Church,1 admirable in contents, spirit, and style, by Dr John Hutchison, the Moderator; yet another edition, the eighth, of Carl Weizsäcker's much appreciated translation of the New Testament 2; the first number of a new monthly journal, Das Reich Gottes,3 under the editorship of Dr Johannes Lepsius, containing some good articles on Evangelisation and the Church, the question of What the Koran teaches regarding Jesus, and other subjects; four brief, unpretentious sermons, under the general title of The Abiding Strength of the Church, by the Rev. R. S. Mylne, M.A., B.C.L., dealing with the desirability of unity with a view to the more effectual working of Christian institutions; the eighth volume, viz., The Acts to Revelation,5 completes the beautiful Eversley edition of the Holy Bible—an edition which does the greatest credit alike to the good taste of the editor, Mr M'Kail, the enterprise of the publishers, the Messrs Macmillan, and the careful work of the Glasgow University Press; a short pamphlet by the Rev. Cuthbert Routh, reprinted from The Churchman of April 1898, in which an attempt is made to rehabilitate the old hypothesis that Ahasuerus and Darius are to be identified with Astyages and his son Cyaxares II.; the Sunday School Red Book, a manual of instruction and advice for superintendents, by Mr F. F. Belsey, Chairman of the Council of the Sunday School Union, giving much shrewd, sensible counsel in terse, pointed terms; a new and revised edition of A. Huck's very careful and useful Synopsis of the first three Evangelists,8 which is provided with three appendices, giving the Old Testament Quotations in the Synopsis, the Johannine parallels, and a valuable table of Parallels and Doublets in the Synoptists; a story by Kate W. Hamilton, entitled The Parson's Proxy, simple in conception, healthsome in tone, and pleasantly told; a small volume on The Great Secret,10 by Dr Francis Edward Clark, Pre

1 Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot, 1898. 8vo, pp. 46.

2 Das Neue Testament übersetzt. Achte, Verbesserte Auflage. Freiburg i. B.: Mohr. Small cr. 8vo, pp. 471.

3 Berlin: Wiegandt and Grieben. Price, M.4 per annum.

4 London: Elliot Stock, 1898. Cr. 8vo, pp. viii. 65. Price, 3s. 6d.

5 London: Macmillan & Co., 1898. Cr. 8vo, pp. 408. Price, 5s.

6"Darius, Son of Ahasuerus of the Seed of the Medes." London: Elliot Stock, 1898. 8vo, pp. 8.

7 London: The Sunday School Union. Pp. 116. Price, 1s. net.

8 Synopse der drei Ersten Evangelien, Bearbeitet von A. Huck, Zweite, durch Einen Anhang vermehrte Auflage. Freiburg i. B.: Mohr; Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1898. 8vo, pp. xvi. 191.

9 London: Andrew Melrose. Cr. 8vo, pp. 232. Price, 3s. 6d.

10 London: The Sunday School Union. Small cr. 8vo, pp. 95. Price, 1s.

sident of the United Society of Christian Endeavour and of the World's Christian Endeavour Union, in which some plain, pointed, and discreet counsels are given on health, beauty, happiness, friendmaking, common sense, success, and what it is to practise the presence of God—a good and useful book for the young; a pamphlet by the Rev. Dr Jamieson on Nature and God; God and the Divine Personalities,1 in which an attempt is made not only to exhibit the God who is behind Nature, but to make "the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity less mysterious," there being appendices also on Spencerism, Natural Selection, and Faustus Socinus on the Person of Christ, which are of some interest; a pamphlet also by the Rev. Robert Tuck, B. A., reprinted from the magazine The New Orthodoxy, dealing in a reverent and suggestive way with The Supreme Scenes of our Lord's Life,2 viz., Gethsemane as Soul-Triumph Won, Calvary as Soul-Triumph Tested, and Olivet as Soul-Triumph acknowledged ; a timely, sympathetic, and unambitious sketch of the noble life of Frances E. Willard,3 by Florence Witts.

In the April number of the Bibliotheca Sacra, Professor Jacob Cooper, of New Brunswick, writes on Creation; or, the Transmutation of Energy. The position which he states is this:-" The act of Creation is the change of spiritual energy into its equivalent mechanical force, and this is transmuted farther until it becomes embodied in matter for its phenomenal action. God was from all eternity all in all; the only substance, essence, power, intelligence, goodness, combined; The Many united in the absolute One. He contains within Himself potentially whatever was at any time, past, present, or future, in spiritual or material form. For whatever He could do by his almighty power was actually summed up in His being. Therefore, any change of form that this might be made to assume-and it could be made to assume any by His determination- -was simply a transmutation, a change of form, a materialising and localising that which already existed in Him.” By this theory, Professor Cooper thinks the doctrines of revealed religion come into complete harmony with the fundamental principles of science." The same number contains an article on The New Chronology of Paul's Life by Professor George H. Gilbert of Chicago. It criticises Professor Ramsay's idea that a fixed point for the chronology of Paul's life may be found in Acts xx. 6-11, and examines at some length the views of Harnack, Holtzmann, and M'Giffert. It pronounces the narrative of Tacitus unworthy to be preferred to the testimony of Josephus. It aims 1 Tracts for the Times. No. II. Edinburgh: J. Gardner Hitt. 8vo, pp. 39.

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3 London: The Sunday School Union, 1898. Cr. 8vo, pp. 143.

at showing the internal and the external evidence to be in favour of the "latter third of the sixth decade as the period in which Felix was succeeded by Festus," and the year 58 as more probable than the year 60. So it puts Paul's conversion at 32, his work in Ephesus at 52-55, his arrest in Jerusalem in the winter of 55-56, his arrival at Rome in the early part of 59. With regard to the death of Paul Professor Gilbert thinks that the evidence is against connecting it with the persecution of Nero in the summer of 64. The exact date cannot, he thinks, be determined. But he concludes that we may "with a high degree of probability" assign the Apostle's martyrdom to "the last three or four years of Nero's reign, that is, to the period between 65 or 66 and 68.” interesting feature of the Bibliotheca Sacra is the place given to critical and sociological notes. These are well done.

An

Under the able direction of Mr G. F. Stout, of the University of Aberdeen, Mind well maintains the high position which it won for itself years ago among Philosophical Quarterlies. The April number 1 is an excellent one. The Critical Notices are always done with incisive ability, and those in this number are no exception to the rule. There is a particularly good review of C. Lloyd Morgan's important book on Habit and Instinct. Professor James Seth reviews Ladd's Philosophy of Knowledge; George A. Coe takes Browne's Theory of Thought and Knowledge in hand. There are also reviews of Nettleship's Philosophical Lectures and Remains, and Émile Durkheim's Le Suicide. The digests of Philosophical Periodicals are very useful. In addition to articles of a severer order on the Regulae of Descartes, the Paradox of Logical Inference, &c., and an important paper on Freedom, by G. F. Moore, we get another, of a less technical kind and of considerable interest, on Mandeville's Place in English Thought, by Norman Wilde.

The last number of The New World which has come to hand is that for March.2 There are some excellent articles, and a large number of book notices. These last are done with much care, and help one to just judgments. Among the more notable books reviewed are Seth's Man's Place in the Cosmos, Crozier's History of Intellectual Development, M'Giffert's History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, Moulton and Geden's Concordance to the Greek New Testament, De la Saussaye's Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, and Moore's Judges. Mr Charles F. Dole writes on Truth and how we come to know it, in which he criticises specially the views of Dr John Fiske as given in his address upon "The Everlasting Reality of Religion." There is an incisive paper by Henry Copley Greene 1 London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate. 8vo, pp. 288. Price, 3s. 2 Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Company. 8vo, pp. 200. Price, 3s.

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on Walt Whitman under the title of "A Satyr Aspires." M. Bonet-Maury gives a very interesting account of "The Protestant Faculty of Theology of the Paris University," with sketches of Pressensé, Bersier, Lichtenberger, Sabatier, Massebieau, Ménegoz, Stapfer, Vernes, and other teachers who have acquired some distinction. There is a frank and discriminating paper by J. T. Sutherland on Christian Missions in India, which takes on the whole a hopeful view. It concludes that the work of Christian missions will increase, but that the extent of the increase will depend largely on "the question whether or not the missions broaden their theological basis." The two articles, however, that will probably attract most notice among biblical students are those by Mr F. C. Conybeare on "The Place of Prophecy in Christianity" and Professor C. H. Toy on "Esther as a Babylonian Goddess." The former deals, among other things, with the Manichean movement in Carthage in the last years of the fourth century, the controversy between Faustus and Augustine, and the extent to which early Christianity, as Mr Conybeare phrases it, "hinged upon prophecy.' Mr Conybeare overstates his case, as he is accustomed to do. his paper is worth reading. Professor Toy's article, which is full of learning, and shows the true critical faculty, reviews the evidence for and against the idea that the Feast of Purim is the modification of a Babylonian festival, and that the story of Esther represents a Babylonian myth." He thinks there is much to fayour the theory, and that there is no equally satisfactory explanation of the names of the chief personages. But he admits that there are serious gaps in the evidence. His general conclusion is sufficiently guarded. "The explanation of the Esther story above described," he says, "is hardly more than an hypothesis. It rests mainly on certain similarities in proper names, and on the accordance of the story of triumph over enemies in the Book of Esther, with a well-established mythical theme, and with the procedures in some ancient festivals. Certain features of the biblical narrative remain unaccounted for. It is possible that future investigations and discoveries may throw light on points now obscure, and, till additional information is forthcoming, we may reserve opinion on the origin of the story. The narrative, notwithstanding its improbabilities, may prove to be based on real history; but, in that case, its obvious embellishments will probably have to be traced to some such sources as are mentioned above."

The June number of the Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift contains a remarkably interesting paper by Hofprediger F. W. Schubart on Johann Arndt, giving important particulars, some of them little understood, of his life and work in Anhalt. Ober-Konsistonalrat Wiesinger contributes a very readable article on the Preparation