opinions on any point of doctrine; and until some cast-iron formula is produced by which corporate members, Prudential Committee, and candidates are alike bound, any one of them. may embrace a speculation or theory without committing the corporation to the approval of his views, or of the inferences. which may be supposed to be deducible from them.

Ever since the days of Edwards, New England divines have been making "improvements in theology," or in other words, caring more for truth than for creeds, they have studied to secure such accurate and orderly statements of doctrine as shall most fairly, and fully present truth. In each generation, proposed re-statements of doctrine have been met with the cry of heresy, and have encountered the closest scrutiny; but the times change, and with them change beliefs, and modes of thought, and expression. Dr. Bushnell's "Christian Nurture," suppressed by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society forty years ago, after an East Windsor divine had pointed out the "dangerous tendencies" which he had discovered beneath the surface, has been used for a year as a classbook in the Hartford Theological Seminary, and the world is none the worse for it. The supporters of the Society were content with the former decision; it is to be presumed that the Pastoral Union of Connecticut makes no objection to the present one.

And this is our conclusion; that the proper relation of our benevolent societies to the Congregational churches is that of agencies raised up by God for the accomplishment of important ends, which ought to be so administered as to meet the prevalent views and wishes of the churches on which they rely for prayers and gifts and candidates; sympathetic to the highest degree with the wishes of their constituents as expressed in various forms, and with such changes of method and of practice as shall conform to the demands of the current thought of each generation in its day.

Whenever the theory shall become ascendant that all our missionary and benevolent work is to be done church-wise, under ecclesiastical control and sanction, the way will be prepared for the whole body of Congregationalists to abandon their independent position, and blending with the Presbyterian Church,

diminish by one the number of separate denominations, which some esteem so great a reproach to Christianity. But for the present time, we rejoice to point to what has been accomplished in the paths marked out by our fathers; and so far as the organization of the American Board is concerned, we are content to close with the words employed by Secretary Treat in 1871:

"It was meet that Congregationalism, with its traditions, its catholicity, its power of self-adaptation, should create an organization, so flexible that it can meet in any State of the Union, and act with any denomination of kindred faith; so that when the Presbyterian Churches declined, in 1812, to establish missions of their own, but chose rather to place their men and their means under its directions, and our Dutch brethren, at a later epoch, followed their example, it could easily accede to the grateful and generous proposal; and when the old school Presbyterians left us in 1838, it could keep and sustain their missionaries, putting no constraint upon them; and when our Dutch brethren left us in 1857, it could bid them God-speed with the utmost friendliness; and when so many of the new school Presbyterians left us a year ago, it could part from them with like friendliness, retaining twentyfive of their missionaries, assuring them of the same liberty which they had always enjoyed; and should other societies say to us, in coming years, 'With a great sum obtained we this freedom,' it would be ours to reply, 'We were free-born.""

EDWARD W. GILMAN.

CURRENT

LITERATURE.

ARYAN SUN-MYTHS.*-"The Sabines were thought to dream whatever they pleased," writes Lobeck in the introduction to his work entitled "Aglaophamus," which laid the foundation for the scientific study of classical mythology, nearly seventy years ago. In this power, the modern Theosophists have succeeded to the rights of the ancient Sabines. They dream according to the desires of their hearts, and straightway publish their dreams as actual truth. The book in hand does not claim to contain original matter; it is a condensation of, and compilation from, Inman's "Ancient Faiths" and other works,-most of which are intended to prove that the Christian religion contains no new elements or literal truth.

An effort is required in order to take seriously such a book as the one before us. Philologists are accustomed to wild vagaries on the part of laymen who attempt to discuss questions which involve a knowledge of classical mythology, since no work in English on that subject has any considerable authority in the present state of the science. Those who strive to prove the closest connection between Greece and India are especially liable to absurd error. Not every man makes such wild interpretations as Pococke in his assertion that the word "Parthenon " meant "meditative Buddhist," while the name of Mt. Parnes in Attica was to him a mere corruption of "Benares." But such etymologies could be matched from this book on Aryan SunMyths.

The reviewer opened at random to the story of Bacchus on p. 71. "The sun-god Dionysius [sic, for Dionysus], son of Zeus and the Virgin Semele, . . . . was born on the twenty-fifth of December. As he was destined to bring ruin upon Cadmus, he was, by the order of that monarch, confined in a chest and thrown into the Nile. Like Moses, he was rescued and adopted. . . . He crossed the Red Sea dry-shod, at the head of his army. It is related that on one occasion Pantheus [sic, for Pentheus] * Aryan Sun-Myths: The Origin of Religions. With an Introduction by CHARLES MORRIS., Troy, N. Y. 1889.

sent his attendants to seize Bacchus-the Vagabond Leader of a Faction, as he called him. This they were unable to do, as his followers were too numerous. They succeeded, however, in capturing one of his disciples. . . . Bacchus was called the Slain One, the Sin-Bearer, the Only-Begotten Son, the Saviour, and the Redeemer.... The Greeks had their Holy Mysteries. Their Eleusinian Mysteries, or the Sacrament of their Lord's Supper, was the most august of all their ceremonies. It was celebrated every fifth year in honor of Ceres, the goddess of corn, who in allegorical language, had given them her flesh to eat; and Bacchus, the god of wine, who, in like sense, had given them his blood to drink. . . . The monogram of Bacchus, I. H. S., is now used as the monogram of Jesus Christ, and is wrongfully supposed to stand for Jesu [sic] Hominum Salvator."

Seldom is more arrant nonsense and fiction than the above

found on less than two small pages! Semele was no virgin; Dionysus was not born on the twenty-fifth of December; he never had anything to do with Cadmus, who (in Boeotian Thebes) could never have thrown him into the Nile; he never crossed the Red Sea at the head of his army; Pentheus did not seize a follower of Bacchus, but the god himself; that Dionysus should be called the Saviour of his friends, is natural-the other epithets quoted are not characteristic; the comparison of the Eleusinian mysteries (which were celebrated every year,-not "every fifth year") with the Lord's Supper, is far fetched; to speak of Demeter and Dionysus as giving their flesh and blood, is to introduce a notion which was entirely foreign to the Greeks; that the "monogram" I. H. S. does not stand primarily for Jesus Hominum Salvator is perfectly true; it is not, however, borrowed from Dionysus, but is the regular abbreviation for 'IHZorz.

After such a specimen page no one is surprised to find such statements as this: "The word devil, when traced to its primitive source, is found to be a name of the Supreme Being” (p. 43), or a reference to "the Hebrew Elisha" as being taken up alive into heaven (p. 49), or the assertions that Prometheus and Ixion were crucified, and that the suffering of the latter was voluntary (p. 131)! When the 112th page is reached, no reader can be surprised to find "that the crucifixion was not commonly believed in among early Christians. It is contradicted three times in the Acts of the Apostles. Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree,' says Peter of Jesus," etc. After this, no confusion of authorities can excite remark.

This book would not deserve serious attention if it were not attractively printed and bound, and if its statements were not so dogmatic, with an air of scholarly precision, and with long lists of high-sounding authorities. Besides his hopeless lack of power to distinguish between fact and fiction, and his ignorance of well-determined facts, the anonymous writer is about a quarter of a century behind the times in taking up the sunmyth. Many other natural phenomena, besides the rising and setting of the sun, have attracted the attention of primitive peoples and have been described in figurative expressions which have finally developed into myths. To attempt to reduce all mythology and religion to Sun-myths, is to neglect the results of recent scientific mythological research.

SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS.*-Although the expert practice and scientific investigation of hypnotism belong, to some extent, to every country in Europe, they may be said to be especially domesticated in France. Here is the school of Paris or of Salpêtrière, headed by M. Charcot, and claiming to obtain results which surpass, in their ability to baffle all explanation by application of known forces and laws whether physical or mental, the most marvellous results ordinarily attainable. The report of experience and the hypothesis of this school have been given in English to those interested in this subject by the work of Binet and Féré.

But it is France which has also given us the school of Nancy, with its leaders M. Liébault and M. Bernheim,-the latter being the author of this book. We do not hesitate to say that this school is far more sober and on the whole trustworthy, both in respect to its report of facts and also its theoretical explanation of them, than is the school of Paris. This we hold to be true whether there are facts to be obtained elsewhere of an order which M. Bernheim finds it impossible to obtain; and also whether his doctrine of "mental suggestion" is a sufficient explanation even for the facts he himself obtains.

The author of this book does not accept the alleged facts of telepathic communication with hypnotized subjects, where no possibility of suggestion exists. Neither does he believe in the

* Suggestive Therapeutics. A Treatise on the Nature and Uses of Hypnotism, by H. BERNHEIM, M.D. Translated by CHRISTIAN A. HERTER, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons 1889.