would lead her along bypaths to the asylum, in tears and anguish; and when the frenzy had subsided and the cloud of madness lifted from Mary's mind her brother Charles would lead her back to the pleasant haunts of men. And so their years went on in terror and in gloom, lighted only by pure love and the humor with which, in spite of herself, he cheered the darkened days of this gifted and beautiful sister. Lamb's love for London is another of his conspicuous traits. To him no sound was dissonant that told of life, and a mob of men was better than a flock of sheep. Apart from human faces the finest scenery failed to satisfy his sense of beauty. His letters are full of his love for the great city. "I have cried with fullness of joy," he writes, "at the multitudinous scenes of life in the crowded streets of ever-dear London. The wonder of these sights impels me into night walks and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life. London, whose dirtiest drab-frequented alley I would not exchange for Skiddaw and Helvellyn! Oh, her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, book-stalls, toy-shops, mercers, hardware men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul's Churchyard, the Strand, Exeter Change, Charing Cross, with the man upon a black horse! Had you not better come up here? All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. At least, I know an alchemy that turns her mind into that precious metal-a mind that loves to be at home in crowds." Mr. Rees says: "Petrarch delighted in the country within reach of the town; but even at Enfield, that 'little teazing image of a town,' Lamb felt it sorely hard that his solitude was not relieved by the sights and sounds of his own dear London. 'O never let the lying poets be believed,' he writes to Wordsworth, 'who 'tice men from the cheerful haunts of streets. . . A garden was the primitive prison till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Then followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns-these all came in on the town part and the thither side of innocence.' He 'frets like a lion in a net' for the 'dear London weariness,' and he might take his rest 'but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner.' In the same letter to Wordsworth he declares, 'I would live in London shirtless, bookless.' A fortnight after he writes thus to Barton, 'Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise.' And about a year before his death he refers once again to London in a letter to Wordsworth: 'London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known of the latter were remaining.' It is undoubtedly true that Charles Lamb was a Londoner: the Londoner of all Londoners that ever lived."

In The Atlantic Monthly for August appeared an article on Father Taylor by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was found among Emerson's papers, with indications that he may have used it for a parlor-lecture with the title "Improvisation-Rev. Edward Taylor." He called Father Taylor "this grand improvisator" because of his unpremeditated, spontaneous, uncontrolled eloquence. He said that if this sailor-preacher had only known how to control his abounding and untamed imagination he would have been the greatest of orators. "Ah, could he only guide those grand

sea-horses of his with which he rides and caracoles on the waves of the sunny ocean of his thought!" Some of Father Taylor's inimitable expressions are quoted. He had gone fishing at Groton, and said, "The fishes were as snappish as the people, so that he looked to see if their very scales were not turned wrong side out." To one grim Calvinist who conceived of a harsh Deity, he said, "Your God is my devil; tell him so, with my compliments." To another, "You tell me a great deal of what the devil does and what power he has. When did you hear from Jesus Christ last?" In his volley of epithets he called God "a charming Spirit." He spoke of men who "sin with ingenuity, sin with genius, sin with all the power they can draw." One Sunday afternoon, wishing his sailor boys a happy New Year, he prayed God to "Care for his servants of the brine, to favor commerce, to bless the bleached sail and the white foam, and through commerce to Christianize the universe. May every deck be stamped by the hallowed feet of godly captains, and the first watch and the second watch be watchful for the Divine Light." When about embarking for Europe, he said, “I am sorry to leave my own babes, but he who takes care for every whale and can give him a ton of herring for breakfast, will find food for my children. The following are some of the things Emerson says of Father Taylor: "He is mighty Nature's child, trusting entirely to her power, as he has never been deceived by it, and arriving unexpectedly every moment at new and happiest deliverances. How joyfully and manly he spreads himself abroad! He is a work of the same hand that made Demosthenes, Shakespeare, and Burns, and is guided by instincts diviner than rules. His whole discourse is a string of audacious felicities harmonized by a spirit of joyful love. Everybody is cheered and exalted by him. He is a living man, and explains at once what Whitefield and Fox were to their audiences, by the total infusion of his own soul into his assembly, and consequent absolute dominion over them. How puny, how cowardly, other preachers look by the side of this preaching! He shows us what a man can do. He is incapable of accurate thought: he cannot analyze or discriminate; he is a singing, dancing drunkard of his wit. Only he is sure of his sentiment. That is his mother's milk; and that he feels in his bones; that heaves in his lungs, throbs in his heart, walks in his feet, and gladly he yields to the sweet magnetism, and sheds it abroad on the people, in his power. Hence, he is an example-I thought, at that moment, the single example of an inspiration: for a wisdom not his own, not to be appropriated by him, which he could not recall or even apply, sailed to him on the gale of this sympathetic communication with his auditory. There is his closet, his college, his confessional. He disclosed his secrets there, and received informations there, which his conversation with thousands of men, and his voyage to Egypt, and his journeys in Germany and in Syria, never taught him. His whole work is a sort of day's sailing out upon the sea, not to any voyage, but to take an observation of the sun, and come back again. This is the picture, the music, that he makes. His whole genuis is in minstrelsy. He calls it religion, Methodism, Christianity. It is minstrelsy; he is a minstrel!"

BOOK NOTICES

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE

The Fundamentals and their Contrasts. By JAMES M. BUCKLEY, D.D., LL.D., 12mo, pp. 210. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham. Price, cloth, net $1.00. These are the Quillian Lectures for 1905 delivered by Dr. Buckley at Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, his predecessors in that lectureship having been Bishops Galloway and Hendrix. The lectures into which the unity of Dr. Buckley's discussion is divided are entitled "Religions and Religion," "No God," "Many Gods or One," "Inspiration and Revelation," "False and Distorted Forms of Christianity," "The Indestructibility of Christianity." Out of Dr. Buckley's numerous books this, if we mistake not, is the one by which he will be most widely known and longest remembered-a clear, strong, careful, and mature production of possibly permanent value; although permanence can be predicated of but few books. One manifestly proper place for Dr. Buckley's book is in the Conference Course of Study. The lectures exhibit knowledge commensurate with the subject and a mind equal to the large and difficult task. The lecturer is confident that "if the fundamentals can be stated with absolute clearness, and the alternatives sharply defined, the foundations of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular, will be recognized and accepted by all except a few minds of a peculiar structure." Beyond question the fundamentals are stated with absolute clearness and established firmly in reason in this book while the alternatives are sharply defined and then put out of court by unanswerable argument. Calm, solid, skillful work is done in establishing the fundamentals of the Christian Faith, but, for many, the excitement and exhilaration of the book begin when the lecturer proceeds to dispose of the alternatives, and increase as he exposes certain false and distorted forms of Christianity, typical of all. Several peculiarities of this book accrue to the advantage of the reader, and to the value of the discussion. One advantage lies in the arguments being the work of a past master in debate. No small part of the author's skill in dealing with his subject on all sides is due to the instinct and method of a practised debater, in conceiving correctly, and analyzing clearly the matters in issue, and in presenting forcibly the positive argument, as also in meeting each objection with precision and impact so that the objector goes down before a straight aim and a hard blow. The intellectual skill of an experienced polemic is here put at the service of the Christian Religion. Another advantage, considering the nature and purpose of the book, is its being the work of a naturally exacting, rationalizing and questioning mind, the farthest possible remove from easy-belief, as well as habituated to test severely the validity of reasoning so as to be saved from accepting for itself or commending to others unconvincing and insufficient arguments. The reasons which compel a mind of so critical and questioning a disposition, to firm faith in the Christian facts and verities, will presumptively prove convincing to any sane mind which gives itself a chance to understand them. Whatever else may be found in this

book there are no weak or poorly stated arguments. One more advantage is that its conclusions have been verified through a lifetime of sharp and insistent testing. It is not the brash brochure of a brilliant youth, whose zeal exceeds his knowledge and who sees things out of focus, but the proportioned views, the sifted residue of faith, held by a fully informed and satisfied mind long familiar with all the problems and weighing all the arguments pro and con. Still another advantage in his dealings with false religions and distorted forms of Christianity is that the work is here done by an acknowledged expert in the detection and exposure of all sorts of heresies, infatuations, fanaticisms, impostures and superstitions. As a diligent and fearless exposer of frauds and humbugs of all sorts, Dr. Buckley is entitled to the thanks of his fellowmen, for no man of his generation has rendered more extended, more varied, or more efficient service in any respect. He is a life-long specialist in the scientific and clinical study of all manner of abnormalities, divergencies, degenerations, insanities, inanities, and criminalities. He readily detects the specious, the spurious, and the erratic. For purposes of investigation he has cultivated an intimate acquaintance with all manner of lop-sided, squint-eyed, mentally or morally diseased, deformed or deficient specimens of mankind. On such subjects he is so much of an authority that he would be listened to with respect and with advantage by any society of medical or scientific men in the country. He is at his best and happiest when hunting with keen scent and healthy appetite on the track of fakirs, shysters, fanatics, cranks, and rascals, running them down and tearing them to pieces. Their quivering fragments are strewn over some of the pages of the book before us. This wholesome and discriminating huntsmanship has helped to rid the land of vermin, and make highways and byways safer for the innocent and unsuspecting. Readers of this book will perceive that Mormonism, Dowieism, and "Christian Science" have had no more unescapable and deadly assailant than this Quillian lecturer. No imposture and delusion is more completely and conclusively exposed and riddled here than Eddyism, showing the manifest infantility of the minds that succumb to "the Lydia Pinkham of the Soul," and become the cheerful idiots, the imbecile children, of Mother Eddy, who keeps her feeble-minded nurselings in a mental suffocator called Christian Science. If this book contained nothing but its clear, accurate, compact definitions and descriptions of the numerous religions which have opposed Christianity, and its equally precise and concise presentation of the many corruptions, perversions and distortions of Christian truth which have misled and afflicted mankind and still continue to do so, together with its accompanying exposures of their weakness, falsity, and perniciousness, the volume would have the value of a standard authority on those matters. We suspect that some readers will turn with special interest to the lecture on Inspiration and Revelation to see what this author may have to say on that subject. The scope and aim of the lecture are thus stated: "To prove that the Bible is a revelation or contains a revelation of special information from God is not here my primary object. I aim to show that (on the assumption that there is but one God, all powerful, all wise, everywhere

present, the Creator of the universe and of man, and that He is as holy and loving as He is powerful) a revelation is necessary and that it is rational to believe that there is one in the world. And, assuming this, I shall endeavor to make clear that the Bible furnishes the clearest evidences of divine origin and of fitness for the purpose of such a revelation. My personal belief is that the Bible contains a revelation upon the fundamentals of religion; and if this be not so, none exists. Further, I believe that no special information upon religious truth has been communicated by God to the world since the sacred books of Christianity were written, and that no religious teaching which contradicts the New Testament in its distinctive principles or foundation facts is of divine origin or authority. The exposition of the grounds of this belief is my present object." Some of the passages of particular significance are the following: "Some have held that inspiration extended to the dictation of every word in the original manuscripts of the Bible. Unless the present manuscripts are very unlike the originals, this would be inconsistent with the human element shown by each of the sacred writers. Some have maintained that even the translators of the Bible were infallibly guided. Others have not assumed such a literal inspiration, but have held that no error on any subject referred to, either great or small, was in the original manuscript. This no one could positively know. Others maintain that the moral and spiritual teachings of the sacred books are infallible, but that in other respects the inspired writers used their real or supposed knowledge for illustration or persuasion. It is unnecessary to diverge from our main theme-The Fundamentals-to discuss these systems, since the moral and spiritual benefits of the Christian revelation are accessible to all who believe that these sacred writings 'truly express the mind and produce the word of God in the manner, and to the degree, which Divine Wisdom knew to be the need of the human race.' The lecturer finds evidence "that various portions of the Bible were written by men acted upon by that form of inspiration which is bestowed upon the devout of all nations, stimulating the moral faculties and the emotions; that other parts were written in obedience to inspired direction, by men who wrote under the influence solely of their natural faculties; but that vital revelations concerning the mind of God were so controlled that no error affecting their substance could creep into the communication as made to mankind. The whole presents to the world God's eternal truth with 'substantial unity' and 'circumstantial variety."" His account of progressive revelations is as follows: "The history of the progressive revelations made by God to man and of his providential dealings with men and nations fills what would otherwise be a dark void in the religious condition and growth of the world. It conducts the reader to the period when the race of man was in its infancy. He looks with pity upon the patriarchs groping in the starlight; he follows them until the moonlight of the Mosaic dispensation enlarges their views, relieves many of their difficulties, and furnishes them with minute rules of living, all designed to preserve their segregation till their work was done, to impress them with the holiness of God and a devout hatred of idolatry, and to prepare them to discern 'the True Light which