adorn, as Professor of Theology in the University of Glasgow. Notes on the Parables, according to literal and futurist principles of interpretation, by Mrs Maclachlan of Maclachlan (Blackwood & Sons). The authoress, in pursuance of a narrow system of interpretation expounded in previous books which we have noticed, considers the parables solely in relation to the Jewish people, to whom they were addressed; and maintains that to the Gentile Church they have only a secondary adaptation. The authoress fears that a spirit of legality has been promoted by applying to the Gentiles words of Christ which were spoken to the privileged Jews. A Day with Christ, by the Rev. Samuel Cox (Cassell, Petter, & Galpin), is a series of chapters on the incidents of the day described in Matt. ix., and the parallel passages. Mr Cox is already a favourite author with intelligent Christian people; and they will find this book picturesque, suggestive, and practical. The Character of St Paul; Hulsean Lectures for 1862, by J. S. Howson, D.D. (Strahan & Co.), is the third edition of an able study of the mental disposition of the great Apostle by one whose life, we may almost say, has been devoted to research into the acts and writings of St Paul. The lectures were written for young men in Cambridge, and may well be put into the hands of young men elsewhere, who, while attracted by their freshness, may profit by their hints on character. In Hades; or, the Intermediate State of Man, by Henry Constable, M.A. (Elliot Stock), the author claims to have proved from Scripture that "death is for all men an unconscious sleep" till the coming of Christ to judgment. This opinion is not contended for in the interest of any unorthodox conclusions as to final retribution, but as one of the open questions among the orthodox to be settled by Scripture. The author has taken much pains, more, we think, than the question in this light deserves. The ideas of duration and sequence which govern our conceptions of time have no argumentative bearing on the position of things out of time in eternity.

Passing from these volumes on distinct portions of Scripture, we have before us two helps to Biblical research. One of these is the Compendium of Evangelical Theology, given in the words of Holy Scripture, by Rev. William Passmore (Longmans & Co.), which, following chiefly the order of Dr Hodge's Outlines of Theology, gives proof texts and illustrative texts in full, and has helpful indices. It is a system of theology in itself, and as a book of reference has proved trustworthy in several tests we have applied to it. The book will save much labour to students, because it is the product of much labour. Unlike the above, which is the work of one man, The Biblical Educator (Cassell, Petter, & Galpin), of which two or three numbers have appeared, is a series of papers designed to furnish popular yet accurate information for the better understanding of Holy Scripture, written by men of eminence in various departments, under the editorship of the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, M.A. It promises to be useful.

Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, by the late Rev. Ed. Walker, D.C.L., of Cheltenham (Nisbet), and Revelation considered as Light, by the Right Rev. Alexander Ewing, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, in the Scottish Episcopal Church (Strahan & Co.), are two good

volumes of sermons by teachers who have both passed away. The latter deals more with principles, and the former with practice. The former is more in the ordinary line of evangelical sermons, though superior to most. The latter is more original. It is a book full of the hopeful gladness which the love of God in Christ brings, nor have we found in the portions we have read any of that sacramentarianism which somehow we had expected from Bishop Ewing. Beside these practical works we may place the Greatness of the Soul, by John Bunyan (Blackie & Son), being one of a series of small, neat volumes, which are to contain Bunyan's practical works. The ever fresh allegory of the great dreamer has found a new, but not very original illustrator, in the Rev. James Black, D.D., of Glasgow, who has issued the first bulky volume of The Christian Life; an Exposition of the Pilgrim's Progress (Nisbet). The Book of Family Prayer, composed wholly of the Words of Scripture, by a Presbyter of the Church (Kent & Co.), is a book we can cordially recommend where such books are wanted.

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The ecclesiastical controversies of the day are fruitful of publications. The Modern Jove; a Review of the collected Speeches of Pio Nono, by William Arthur (Hamilton, Adams, & Co.), is a volume of lively and truthful comment on the Pope's marvellous utterances since his prisonment" in the Vatican. It is a portrait of the Pope painted by himself, which is enough to evoke the scorn of intelligent humanity. The Fathers versus Dr Pusey, by Dr John Harrison (Longmans & Co.), shews this at least, that the Fathers can be quoted in favour of Evangelical as well as of Sacramentarian Theology. The argument of this book is not needed by most of our readers; but Ritualists may be brought by it to see that the consensus of the Fathers is not so clear on their side as many of their writers have represented it. The fact is that the Fathers can, without much trouble, be quoted on each side; as we have heard in a great debate in a Presbyterian Church, within the last few days, the Puritans quoted both pro and con on the question of instrumental music. The value of such quotations entirely depends on whether the question was present to the mind of the writer; and the double possibility should lead all to abandon the Fathers as guides, and resort to the one and only standard of faith.

Baptism; an Erplanation of all the principal Passages on Baptism in the Word of God, by the Rev. W. Rogers, B.A. (London, Nisbet), is divided into two parts, viz., the History of Baptism, in which the accounts of its administration are considered, and the Doctrine of Baptism, where the passages which treat of its meaning are discussed. The great merit of this book is its clear distinction between the baptism with water and the baptism with the Holy Ghost. All main points in the discussion between us and the holders of Baptismal Regeneration on the one hand, and of Believer's Baptism on the other, are skilfully touched. In Lay Preaching, a divinely appointed part of the Christian ministry, by J. P. Fitzgerald, M.A. (W. Hunt & Co.), we find a defence of the position of lay preachers against both the narrowness of priestliness and extreme breadth of brethrenism. larger employment of lay evangelists.

The writer longs for the Christianity irrespective of

Churches (Hamilton, Adams, & Co.), is yet another protest against Romish and Anglican presumption and exclusiveness.

Concerning Christian missions, we have a very important, though small, work on their theory in The Subject of Missions considered under three new Aspects, translated from the German of Carl H. C. Plath (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark). Dr Duff has written a prefatory note. The Church is now at the stage when, having a multitude of facts accumulated during her years of labour among the heathen, she ought wisely to classify them, and from them deduce definite rules for further and more direct work. Dr Stowell's book, noticed in our last number, and Mr Geikie's volume received last year, may be read in connection with that before us. The London Missionary Society has added another to its interesting series of mission records in The Story of the Lifu Mission, by the Rev. S. M'Farlane (Nisbet); and in The Asiatic in England, by Joseph Salter (Seeley & Co.), we have an account of work done among heathen visitors to London, which for romantic interest and spiritual power may compare with any narrative of foreign evangelisation. Station Amusements in New Zealand, by Lady Barker (W. Hunt & Co.), is a pleasant sequel to the authoress' Station Life, which told of New Zealand work, as this of play. But indeed Lady Barker seems always to work when she plays, and to play when she works, so gracefully does she tell her tale. This will be a pleasant book for the young people at the seaside this summer. The late Dr Wm. Anderson, of Glasgow, whose "Life," by the Rev. Geo. Gilfillan, is before us (Hodder & Stoughton, 1873), so long filled a prominent and very individual place in the West of Scotland, that some memorial of him was due both to his numerous admirers and to the future historian of Scottish religion in this century. Mr Gilfillan's narrative, supplemented by several chapters of Anderson's own correspondence and by extracts from his speeches and published writings, will give a sharp-cut vivid impression of the man; and if the manner of the biographer is a little bizarre, it is in all the better keeping with the eccentric, though at the same time powerful, character of his subject. Strahan & Co. have issued, by an anonymous hand, a translation of Wellmer's brief account of Anna, Countess of Stolberg, best known as Superintendent of the "Bethany" Hospital, founded at Berlin, by King Frederick William IV., on the model of Pastor Fliedner's foundation at Kaiserswerth. It is such a tale of simple heroic devotion to Christ's blessed work, of abnegation for the sake of His suffering little ones, even unto death, as cannot be too often told. Henry M. Pearsall, whose brief life has found a record in Higher Ministries of Heaven (Hodder & Stoughton, 1873), was a student of the Nonconformist New College, in London, called away just as he was entering on the office of preaching the Gospel. The little volume is so much of a private memorial for the use of friends as to be almost sacred from criticism.

The Rev. William Arnot's vacation sketches, issued under the title of This Present World (Nisbet, 1873), scarcely comes within our province; only with Mr Arnot nature and the gospel lie very close together, and here he chats of rivers, canals, and so forth, like a man who has all his life been used to lay this world under contribution for the service of the

next. The alliterative name, Wayside Wisdom for Wayfarers (Hunt & Co., 1873), is unfortunate. It covers a collection of poetical extracts bearing on the religious lessons which are to be drawn from natural objects, gathered by the same hand as the earlier volume of more devotional pieces called "Hymns for the Household of Faith." Tamil Wisdom (Wesleyan Conference Office, 1873) is a small collection of Madras legends, with household extracts from the Cural and other moral poems, some of which have never before appeared in England. Mr Robinson modestly suggests that much work of the same sort remains to be done by missionaries. Every contribution to our knowledge of the Eastern faiths has a certain value for the science of religion as well as for ethnology.

Besides a further instalment of the Keil and Delitzsch O. T. Commentary (viz., the Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, translated by Miss Taylor), we have just received from the press of the Messrs T. & T. Clark a very important work for English students of comparative dogmatics in Winer's Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the various Communities of Christendom. Mr Pope's introduction (pp. lxxx) will be found very useful to those to whom Symbolism, as a theological discipline, may be new. Among treatises of this kind, Winer has the great merit of avoiding discussion and putting the reader, by sufficient extracts from the symbolic books themselves, in a position to judge for himself of the differences which obtain, under each great head of theology, among the Churches. These extracts are of course given in the original. We commend this aid to thorough dogmatic study to all ministers and students in divinity.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

EVANGELICAL REVIEW.

OCTOBER 1873.

THERI

ART. I.-Romanism in England.

THERE is nothing more remarkable in modern history than the ease with which the Church of Rome has turned England into the theatre of its most unfettered action and its most signal triumphs. At the very time when Catholic nations are receding further and further from its authority, and all the intellectual and moral interests of the world are uniting against the voice that claims to silence the human understanding, the Papacy finds a secure refuge in the immense and indefinite toleration of England. And, while Pius IX. tests to the last degree the disposition of the Catholic world to yield obedience to his dogmas, and provokes a formidable resistance to his power and discredit to his pretensions by straining so hard claims to which mankind were never less willing to yield a patient assent, English Catholicism feels no shock, but accepts the Vatican decrees with the utmost intellectual docility. It is not wonderful, therefore, that the Church of Rome should cherish the hope, now more than ever, that it is destined soon to win back to its bosom the greatest of those nations which, three centuries ago, took refuge in private judgment from the absurdities promulgated in the name of infallible wisdom. Many years ago, Dr Manning expatiated with delight upon the grand strategy by which England"the key to the whole position of modern error "—once conquered, the whole world, with all its roads meeting in our

VOL. XXII.—NO. LXXXVI.

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