almost a library, and, thanks to the zeal of these men, we can now read
the arrow-heads with great certainty. The profit drawn there from by
comparative religious history is very great, especially in the line of Old
Testament exegesis; and since the discoveries of ancient monuments still
continue through those drawn from the ruins of Mesopotamia, we hope
for a rich harvest for the future. During the last few years Assyriology
has made great advances in the works of various men in several lan-
guages which have hitherto lain in rather an isolated condition. These
have recently been collated and compared by Professor Mürdter, of
Stuttgart, and the cream of the information is given to the world in a
handsome work entitled, "A Concise History of Babylon and Assyria,
according to the Cuneiform Monuments," with special reference to the
Old Testament. To these Friedrich Delitzsch has prefixed a preface and
added a supplement. The very best sources have been consulted; illus-
trations explain the text, and the comments of Delitzsch increase the value
of the work. The religion and the people of both lands are popularly
treated, as well as their cosmogony and theogony, their arts and sciences,
and their political history. The book may, therefore, be safely recom-
mended as a résumé of Assyriology from the stand-point of Bible study.
Whitsuntide, or Pentecost, is made quite a religious study among the
Germans, and is regarded by the schools as well as the churches. It is
even a period for a short holiday and recreation for the children, and
pentecostal books are in favor and demand after those for the Easter and
Christmas holidays. It is not, therefore, surprising to see the announce-
ment of three new pentecostal books for the last season, One of these
is by a famous poet and littérateur, Karl Gerok, author of the "Palm
Leaves,"
"Pentecostal Roses," etc. The work bears the title "From
Jerusalem to Rome," and contains eighty-three so-called Bible studies.
In these Gerok succeeds in opening a rich stream of knowledge and
thought from the sacred Book, which leads over into the broad edifice
of the Christian Church, and thence into the narrower one of the family
life of the first Christians. He deals beautifully with the first Christian
Pentecost in Jerusalem, and calls the Acts of the Apostles the original
Pentecostal Book, from which he draws all his lessons. A second pen-
tecostal book, by Dr Andrea, is virtually a supplement to that of Gerok,
treating mainly of the Acts of Luke, which he calls the "Origin and
Early Development of the Church of Christ." While Gerok edifies, An-
drea teaches; one is devotion, the other is instruction. But the latter
is careful to avoid the pulpit tone and style, and to adapt it more to the
purpose of attracting and instructing the young, And this goal he
very successfully reaches, so that the scholar will gladly turn to it for a
species of pious recreation from heavier studies. Another work that is
born of the spirit of Pentecost has its origin in a humble parsonage of
Holstein, and is devoted mainly to the significance of Whitsunday. It
is termed the "Consecrated Pentecost," and tells the story of the sorrows
of a daughter of the house, and the consolation found in recourse to the
Author of all good. The three books indicate quite a peculiar devotion

among the German people to that most interesting event in early Bible history.

Dr. Zöckler, of the University of Greifswald, is just out with a new "Manual of Theological Sciences," that promises to be of much interest to the learned world of biblical literature. He is already famous as a commentator, and will thus receive a welcome among biblical critics. The first volume gives the fundamental view of theology as a science; the second treats of historical and dogmatical theology; the third of ethics and poetical theology, including the science of missions, both home and foreign. The first half of the first volume devotes nearly three hundred pages to the foundation of the science of exegetical theology, and treats also of the methods, the antiquities, and the history of Israel. The remaining theology of the Old Testament, with theory of the New, closes the volume. Professor Strack, of Berlin, and Professor Schulz, of Breslau, are co-workers with Zöckler on the Old Testament, one giving the Introduction and the geography of Palestine, and the other the history of Israel in outline.

Moritz Brosch has just issued his second and last volume of a very valuable work on the "History of the Papal State." His first volume was rather severely criticised because of the failure to deal in the personality of the Popes, their literary productions, and their ecclesiastical projects. But the author defends himself from these censures by saying that it is no part of his plans to treat of the Popes as individuals, but rather to treat of the "Papal State," the title of his work. Therefore he commences with Pope Julius II., the creator of this strange political formation, and ceases with Pius IX., under whom the effete Papal State went to pieces. He keeps closely to his subject, simply treating of contemporaries whose influence was allied to the development of the curious governmental complex. And, on the whole, he presents a very tragic story, and gives us a picture of incessant troubles and decay, through financial embarrassment, incapacity of the ecclesiastical rulers, and the machinations and counter-machinations of the Jesuits, of revolutionary and reactionary storms. He ends by saying: "The tribunal of the world, that has rendered its verdict in the form of historical facts, has overthrown all that the Popes of three centuries have raised with great sacrifices or crimes; all that to which they have often given their best powers, and not seldom their reputations, sacrificing the independence of Italy for the advancement of their plans of universal ecclesiastical rule."

The Protestant Church of Switzerland has a great deal of trouble about its hymnology, because of the cantonal jealousy, in the first place, and the different views of different sections, in the second. At last, from the hands of a commission, a hymn book for the Protestant Church of German Switzerland has just appeared, but only, it seems, to awaken new fears and censures. It contains four hundred and fifty hymns, and more than the half of these belong to the latest periods of hymnology, and it passes over many of the standard hymns of the German tongue.

The conservative pietists declare that all the thrilling hymns of their development have been cast aside, many of them absolutely indispensable in any collection of evangelical hymns. Severe censure is also accorded to the very frivolous way in which the text of some of the most beautiful hymns in the language has been handled, especially of the older ones so familiar to the fathers, and which it is so difficult to alter in the popular tongue. It is very clear, therefore, that the Swiss will need to try again in order to satisfy their people, and we very much doubt whether it will be possible to produce any collection which will at once satisfy both the conservative and the liberal wings of the Church.

A recent treatise on the Churches of the Orient shows them to be in a very unsatisfactory condition. Among them the Hellenic Church seems to be in the best condition. The growth of the district by the addition of Thessaly and Epirus has necessitated a new arrangement of administration in the conceded territory. The Patriarch of Constantinople relinquished his authority over this district in favor of the Metropolitan of Athens, with the reservation of certain honorary claims. At the same time a number of bishoprics long vacant have now been filled. The National Assembly has also passed a new law in ecclesiastical affairs, which calls for certain new provisions in the choice of bishops. Hitherto, for instance, the Bishops of Athens alone have been regarded in promotions; now the entire Hellenic episcopate is to be considered. Efforts have also been made to give a better support to the clergy in general, and especially to those in charge of a diocese. The State, some time ago, secularized large possessions of the Church, reducing its income; and the endeavor will be made to restore, not the property, but the proceeds of it. The crying sin of its clergy is ignorance, and consequent want of zeal and efficiency. In the last lenten season it is said that but one single sermon was preached in all the city of Athens. The State is, and may well be, ashamed of this, and would correct it.

The theologians of Germany are waging quite a battle for the retention of the study of religion in the schools. Bona-Meyer has just published a volume entitled "The Struggle for the School." This author is greatly in favor of what are called in this conflict, in Prussia, the "Simultaneous Schools;" that is, schools in which the two faiths are taught separately to pupils of the same school in regions where Protestants and Catholics both appear in considerable numbers. And where the schools are overwhelmingly of one or the other faith, there let that faith obtain, and be taught as one of the regular studies. But this plan often produces a territory which it is not easy to declare either neutral or confessional, and there the trouble becomes insuperable. Here Bona-Meyer recommends a sort of general religious instruction that would be equally applicable to all faiths, declaring that he himself finds stimulus to religious reflection in the Protestant church, the Catholic cathedral, or the Jewish synagogue. But many others may not experience the same feeling, and so the learned author leaves the subject just where he found it -in doubt.

The German clergy express a great deal of satisfaction at the appearance of a "Church Directory for North America," and thank the author, Rev. John N. Luker, of Sunbury, Pa., for this work, which gives them some guide to the German work in this country. They propose using this book for the advice of many emigrants going to America without the least knowledge of its Church organizations, and not aware of the places where German churches and pastors may be found. They complain, however, that it is open to one very grave fault, namely, that it gives only the address of the members of the Lutheran Synod of this country, (and we suspect of only one wing of that Church.) The Germans desire also the names of the ministers of the Reformed German Church, many of whose members are now coming to this country, and who would feel more at home among those of their own Church; and we would suggest to them that it would be no harm to include the address of the large number of German Methodist ministers of this country.

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE,

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

A System of Christian Doctrine. By Dr. I. A. DORNER, Professor of Theology, Berlin. Translated by Rev. ALFRED CAVE, B.A., Professor of Theology, Hackney College, London, and Rev. J. S. BANKS, Professor of Theology, Wesleyan College, Leeds. Vol. 4. Translated by Professor BANKS. 8vo, pp. 451. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Price $3. There is a massiness in the periods and paragraphs of Dorner that creates in the reader's mind the idea of a massiness in the His sentences are magisterial, as if deciding by original authority the absoluteness of the dogma. He gives sentence on every point in theology in the tone of a finality. And there is power, too, in the thought; great power when he is right; and when wrong, as we hold him often to be, he is powerfully wrong -a rail-car powerfully off the track.

man.

The present, the final volume, deals with the atonement, with theodicy, and with eschatology. On the atonement he is vigorous; on theodicy he is self-contradictory; on the doctrine of retribution wavering through prolix chapters, and landing in timid but probable post-mortem probation. Dorner is a justly eminent, yet, we venture to think, overrated, theologian. The ma- . ture theologian, by all means, should read his most suggestive volumes, but with a wary discrimination.

What can be more fantastic than the following pronunciamiento, denying the resurrection of Christ, and substituting a

transmigration? "Christ cannot have again assumed and transformed his body in the resurrection, but it must be held that he utterly laid aside and left in the grave his material body in prospect of his heavenly life." Christ, then, must have had, at the moment of his emergence from the tomb, two bodies. What a "find" it would have been for the Jews could they have laid hands on the abandoned body! What became of it? It had no resurrection, and must have putrefied, and is now dispersed to the elements! "The mortal," then, did not "put on immortality." It disintegrated. The dead did not rise, for the spiritual body never was dead. The vile body was not changed into a glorious body; but the vile body went into deeper vileness, and a glorious body was, as Dorner says, "generated by Christ's ethical process"-if any body knows what that means. And then what a sharp deception Jesus played upon his disciples when he showed spurious wounds in his spiritual body to make them believe the falsehood that his present body was identical with his crucified body! The cheated apostles were permanently deceived, for they always maintained that Christ's crucified body came to life, and the fraud was perpetuated in the Apostles' Creed in the words, "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh." All this offensive blasphemy Dorner authenticates in order to evade the simple fact that Christ's real body might as truly rise into a glorious resurrection as it once rose into a glorious transfiguration on the Mount. For this denial of Christ's resurrection he gives no reason, scientific, theological, biblical, or metaphysical, but enunciates it as pure dictum.

Of the Church doctrine of the resurrection he, nevertheless, gives a true and fair statement. "Many teachers of the ancient Church, like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, suppose a complete identity of the resurrection body with the earthly one, inclusive of all the faults of the latter, which Christ will rectify at his second advent. A more spiritual theory is maintained, especially by Origen and his school, who even regards the present body as an evil and a hinderance to perfection. But since Augustine's day an intermediate view between the materialistic and spiritualistic has prevailed, and was taken over into the Evangelical Church. According to it the resurrection body has indeed an identity of substance with the earthly body, but not with the form. The latter will rather be a glorified one."

But, distorting the doctrine of the Church, Dorner substitutes a germination in the place of a general resurrection. His excuse