fully calling his elect out of the world's ignorance and wickedness to live in friendship and intercourse with him,-on the other side a superstition which personifies the heavens, the earth, the elements and forces of nature, and pays to them its homage; on one side a religion holding the mysterious promise of a deliverer in whom "all families of the earth shall be blessed," on the other side a religion without hope. Whence the difference? Did Abraham inherit a simpler and purer tradition? Or was Abraham an inspired reformer of religion, a prophet, to whom as a forerunner and progenitor of the world's Redeemer and for the sake of the world to be redeemed, God had revealed himself?

-on

When Mr. Layard's Arab workmen, digging in one of the Assyrian mounds, had suddenly uncovered, to their surprise and awe, the majestic human head of a figure whose body was still buried beneath them, the messengers who met him with the tidings shouted, "Hasten, O Bey, hasten to the diggings, for they have found Nimrod himself! Wallah! it is wonderful, but it is true! We have seen him with our own eyes!" The most interesting, historically, of Mr. Smith's "discoveries" is his discovery and identification of that "mighty hunter before the Lord," the Cushite who "began to be a mighty one in the earth," of whom it is written that "the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar;" and that "out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah." All these particulars Mr. Smith has identified and explained; and what is more, he "has found Nimrod himself!" Our own eyes have seen the sculptured form of the mighty hunter, whose Cushite head and face are so utterly unlike those of all other Assyrian kings and heroes. Transported by Botta from Khorsabad to Paris, he stands now in the Louvre, holding a huge serpent by the neck in his right hand and crushing a young lion under his left arm. The reader can see for himself the portrait of that Nimrod, facing p. 174 of the volume here noticed.

"FAITH AND MODERN THOUGHT"* is clearly written, closely argued, and puts such sharp points to adverse opinions that a constant interest is excited, and the discussion is made so profound

*Faith and Modern Thought. By RANSOM B. WELCH, D.D., LL.D., Union College, with Introduction by TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 4th Avenue and 23d Street. 1876.

and logical, that the honest mind is forced to feel itself urged onward to safe and sound conclusions. Dr. Welch finds the way to the bottom falsehoods in modern scepticism.

Modern thought is kept confessedly, and somewhat boastingly, within the limit of human experience. The myriad appearances, of which we are conscious through our senses, together make up the elements of our knowledge, and such as are together in place become the things, and, those that pass in sequence become the events, of our experience. Invariable likeness of appearances in place, and of their order in sequence, make the law for substance and attributes, and that for cause and effect, and the law found as fact in a large experience is taken as law universal throughout nature. Particulars analyzed and compared, and the numbers that are like abstracted, give the species, and higher abstractions the genus; and so in rising genera till we reach a conception that is universal, and known as the absolute. The general conceptions occasion syllogistic propositions, and therein we deduce conclusions, and the judgments formed are strictly determined by the facts of experi We begin and keep our knowing within human observation, and outside of all experience there is naught but the inconceivable and unknowable, and no ground is left for faith. So modern thinking limits itself. But, when this mode of sense-knowing is scanned clearly, the whole rests on the appearance as shine only, with nothing in it standing sure; and however common and familiar may be the notions of substances and causes, they are still just like the laws we assume to think, mere facts as appearance, and neither substance nor cause nor law can determine anything, or connect any appearances. The thinking is empty of all inner connectives.

ence.

On the other hand, with Dr. Welch, faith is belief founded on evidence. Beyond animal sense, man has reason, whose insight is sure to get valid substance, and cause determining, and giving controlling law to, the appearances; he trusts the insight, and his faith is vision for him, and he knows the real connectives underlying the appearances, and can clearly think out the natural as it existeth in time, and the comprehending supernatural that inhabiteth eternity.

By such spiritual philosophy it is, that Dr. Welch overlooks empirical logic and detects its emptiness, and exposes its partialities and contradictions, disclosing thereby how utterly untrustworthy as a basis it is for any philosophic system of physics, morals, or religion. The exposure and refutation is carried through six chapters,

into which he has divided his work, viz: I, Modern Theory of Forces; as incompetent to evolve the facts of mind and life from an absolute force, and that any conception of such evolution is an absurdity. II, Faith and Positivism; proving the futility of all attempts to exclude the former by the latter from the facts of intelligence, conscience, and volition also. III, From the field of Religion and the Infinite; and then IV, from the written and living Word, as a divine revelation. Following this is V, Admissions of Philosophical Scepticism, that abundantly evince its helplessness. Closing with VI, Modern Thought as incompetent to satisfy itself by the attainment in any way of an ultimate, either a beginner or finisher.

The book has high value in the attainment of its direct design. While fair to science, it refutes the mode of speculative thought, leading to materialism or scepticism, as some eminent modern physicists are teaching. It is more valuable still, in its teaching a better philosophy, and accustoming its readers to a higher spiritual sphere of thinking.

THE ADVENTURES OF A PROTESTANT IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION.* -This is a fictitious story of the conversion of an English Baptist to Romanism, and is designed to present in this form a defense of the Roman Catholic faith. The representation of the religious life of the English dissenters is the broadest caricature, of the type familiar in some novels; and even the facts, which may be at the basis of the caricature, are exceptional. The following are examples: "It is not to be denied. . . . that the children of parents who are followers of Calvinism pure and unadulterated, generally turn out either infidels or persons of notoriously bad character." (p. 32.) "No self-examination, no watchfulness over the hidden springs of the heart, no contesting the every step of the way against the world, the flesh and the devil; 'only believe' and the thing was settled." (p. 35.) "Provided the children (at Sunday School) are kept quietly sitting on their forms spelling out 'Zorobabel begat Abiud, and Abiud begat Eliakim,' from half past nine to eleven

The Adventures of a Protestant in search of a Religion. By IOTA. "Silvis, ubi passim

Palantes error certo de tramite pellit,

Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique

Error, sed variis illudit partibus."-Horace Sat. II, 3.

New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 31 Barclay Street. Montreal: 275 Notre Dame Street. 1874. 16mo, pp. 352.

on Sunday morning

every purpose, it is considered, is

served." (p. 46.) "Conviction (of sin,) he was told, ought properly

and if he felt

the next step

to come from hearing a startling sermon very wretched and miserable after it, would be to see the minister and tell him the text and the particu lar part of the sermon that had affected him. He was given to understand that people generally cried a great deal at this stage, especially in their first interview with the minister, and this was considered a very hopeful sign. If the conviction were deep enough, conversion would follow, sooner or later, but it was expected to be later at Ebenezer. Perhaps after twelve months waiting, if conviction remained, and a great desire to be baptized by total immersion, and go to heaven soon after supervened, the 'inquirer' might consider himself safe." (pp. 47, 48.)

The hero, while pursuing professional studies in a medical school, is moved by his deep religious feelings to engage in missionary la bors among the lowest population in London. Afterwards he is constrained to become a minister and enters a Baptist theological college. The representation is, that the students, before completing their course, usually became Rationalists and rejected with contempt the doctrines taught in the college; yet they disguised their disbelief, and became pastors for the sake of the salary; and the implication is that in this way the educated dissenting ministers of England are generally deliberate hypocrites.

At the college our hero also loses his Christian faith and is distracted with rationalistic speculation. Afterwards he resigns his pulpit and seeks relief from "the bane of thought, the demon of the mind," in ritualistic Anglicanism. The demon is finally exorcised by absolute submission to authority in the Romish church. It is a process quite incomprehensible to us. by which an educated thinker, who can find no rest in submission either to reason, to revelation, or to Christ, can expel the demon of thinking which torments him, by ceasing to inquire and to reason, in submission to the authority of the Romish church.

The religious experience and life of the hero at and after his conversion, and to which he returned after his rationalistic aberration, are, as delineated by the author, essentially the same with the religious experience and life recognized and inculcated in our evangelical churches, and remain his inward experience and life after his reception into the Roman Catholic church.

GOD AND THE BIBLE. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD.* This work is a review of the objections which have been urged against the author's "Literature and Dogma." The author's design in this work, as in that, is "to show the truth and necessity of Christianity, and its power for the heart, mind, and imagination of man, even though the præternatural, which is now its popular sanction, should be given up." "At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes. in his head. One is that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is." The topics discussed are : "The God of Miracles; the God of Metaphysics; the God of Experience; the Bible canon; the fourth Gospel from Without; the fourth Gospel from Within."

The work is a further unfolding and defense of the author's well-known views, with the usual charm of his felicitous style. His attempt to reconstruct a Christian faith is vitiated by the fundamental error of recognizing religious belief as grounded only in the feelings, and receiving its form from the imagination; religion is an alliance between imagination and conduct. Religious belief can be firmly established only as we find a synthesis of it with reason.

We quote a single paragraph: "Sometimes a youthful philosopher, provoked at our disrespect towards metaphysics, tells us that he has been reading Hegel, and would greatly like to have a word with us about being. Our impulse is to reply that he had much better have been reading Homer, and that about Homer we, at any rate, would much rather he should talk to us. That divine poet is always in season, always brings us something suited to our wants. And now, when we have finally, after making good our general description of the Gospel records, to make good our special estimate of the fourth Gospel, and when . . we are confronted by the theorizings of ingenious professors about it and might well be overawed by their exceeding vigor and rigor, a saying of Homer comes to our mind and raises our courage, and emboldens us to scrutinize the vigorous and rigorous theorizings with coolness. Yet the saying is not at all a grand one. We are almost ashamed to quote it to readers who may have come fresh

* God and the Bible. A Review of Objections to "Literature and Dogma." By MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L, formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford and Fellow of Oriel College. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1876. 16mo, pp. 329.