what he calls Pantheism, and he therefore sets to work to write about it. But Pantheism to him is a great deal more vague than the general acceptation of the term. He means evidently by Pantheism, not merely the philosophical doctrine or theory which identifies God and nature, and which is found most clearly set forth in the pages of Spinoza, but also the school, which is known among us as Agnosticism, which says God is unknowable. He often extends the term very much further, so as apparently to include all in whom there has been a spirit of religiosity without any definite dogmatic theory. Thus widened out, Pantheism becomes simply the natural religious instinct divorced forcibly from those forms of faith which have ministered to its highest development. Whether anything is gained by calling this way of viewing Pantheism 'a new aspect,' we leave others to decide. All that is definite in religion is declared, not only to be liable to, but to be the cause of, corruption. Hence, the writer says, the history of intellectual development is the history of the founders of pure and lofty religions becoming paganized and debased. Then the teacher and the ceremonial die away. Yet Pantheism, like Monotheism, never dies.' Very plainly we must not look for logic in this book. We should have concluded Pantheism and Monotheism to have been mutually exclusive; but it seems they are complementary, and continue developing side by side throughout the centuries. Theological Lectures on Subjects connected with Natural Theo

logy, Evidences of Christianity, the Canon and Inspiration of Scripture. By the late WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM, D.D. James Nisbet and Co.

The persistence of fundamental theological ideas gives value to every strong exposition of them. And students of theology will on this ground value this substantial volume of Dr. Cunningham's class prelections to his first year divinity students. They are an able restatement of the evidences for Natural Religion, Christianity, and the Bible. But we feel that already their form is somewhat of an anachronism. While they meet fundamental objections to revelation they do not meet forms of them that are now very common. Perhaps even when Dr. Cunningham delivered his lectures a greater change had come over the spirit of Calvinistic theology outside of Scotland than he imagined; and certainly the modifications since have been very great. Dr. Cunningham is a faithful exponent of the standards of the Scotch Presbyterian Churches; but we think that the Confessions symbolize very little of the distinctive form of Christian belief in the world at large. The great truths which they clothe are held, but the fashion of their vesture has changed. Save, therefore, for monumental purposes, and for root ideas, we do not think this volume will find much acceptance. The doctrine of verbal inspiration which Dr. Cuningham advocates never has been a dogma of either the Latin or the Protestant Churches generally, and it is now, we should imagine, almost everywhere abandoned. Dr. Cunningham was however a strong man, and his lectures contain a large amount of robust and acute good sense.

Theology, Philosophy, and Philology.

579

Saintly Workers. Five Lenten Lectures delivered in St. Andrew's, Holborn. By F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., Canon of Westminster, &c. Macmillan and Co.

Canon Farrar is not only an elegant writer, but he has a singular facility in adapting the truths of Christianity to the phases of the time. These lectures are just the kind of mental and spiritual food which are needed at the present juncture, when there is so much of shallow and unsatisfying scepticism abroad. The audiences before whom the discourses were delivered were composed chiefly of young men from city firms in the neighbourhood of Holborn, and we can conceive of no forms of exhortation more practical and useful than those here employed. It is often a ground of complaint that there is no room in these days to be heroic, and that it is even a matter of difficulty for men faithfully to discharge the common duties which devolve upon them; but Canon Farrar shows how it is possible to live in the nineteenth century as truly noble and valuable lives as those which have handed down to succeeding generations the names of the earlier Christians. Conditions change, but Christian duty remains the same. One necessary preliminary warning the author gives to the reader, viz., that while he calls attention to the lives of men preeminent for goodness, he expressly wishes to guard against their intellectual errors, while to reproduce the mere external aspect of their lives would be at once impossible and pernicious. Dealing first with the martyrs of the Church, he shows how, amongst other things, they taught 'that there is in life something more than ease or comfort, more delightful than pleasure, "more golden than gold;" that "the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment," and that "man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth." Martyrs, as Mr. Froude has expressed it,' create an epidemic of nobleness.' They furnish immortal examples of virtue and endurance, and these examples are capable of a thousand applications. One of the most interesting of the lectures is that upon 'The Hermits,' men who fulfilled their ideal of the holy life, and passed away leaving names fragrant with sanctity. Such lives as theirs are of course impossible in these later times, nor are they desirable; but, as Canon Farrar admirably observes, ‘in an age of much unbelief and irreligion, of much gossip and detraction, of much anxiety and corruption, of much luxury and greed, we can learn their strong horror of sin, their noble struggle for righteousness, their entire simplicity of character, their utter aloofness from the mean and greedy scramble of the world, the sincerity with which they cultivated the duty of mutual forbearance, and the duty of absolute forgiveness of injuries which they strenuously practised.' The ideal of the Master can be followed in every age, in every clime, and under all circumstances. Other saintly workers descanted upon in this volume are 'The Monks,' who kept alive the torch of learning as well as the flame of a high and godly life-though in later years they suffered a deep moral decadence; The Early Franciscans,' men of sleepless, earnest, and dauntless piety; and 'The Missionaries,' who furnish so

grand a record of heroism, extending even down to our own day, with the names of Heber, Mackenzie, Coleridge Patteson, and David Livingstone. This little work breathes a fine, manly, catholic spirit throughout. It is without any pretensions to profundity, but it may be read with pleasure and profit by all classes.

The Progress of Divine Revelation; or, The Unfolding Purpose of Scripture. By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. Religious Tract Society.

None of the external evidences of the Divine origin of the Bible are more striking, or perhaps stronger, than its remarkable unity of idea and orderliness of development. The idea to be developed is one of surpassing grandeur and profundity, and the method of its development is such as could not possibly have been devised or controlled by men; while the number of writers, the long generations that separated them, the incidental origin of their writings, and their great varieties of literary form, constitute a series of conditions that make unity of idea and orderliness of development simply impossible, save under supernatural conception and guidance. Dr. Stoughton has, in a simple and popular way, endeavoured to trace this unfolding. Taking the clue into his hand, he has traced the thread of revelation—through history, prediction, institution, and exposition-from Genesis to the Apocalypse.

In such a work, everything of course depends upon the perception and practised power of just statement of the writer. It is possible to present a very plausible case with partially-selected materials. All may not agree with the old-fashioned orthodoxy of some of Dr. Stoughton's interpretations; some, who are heartily at one with him in the fundamental truths of revelation, may somewhat demur to the literalism of some of his interpretations of the incidents of the Fall; but he writes with conspicuous fairness, and therefore with great demonstrative force. He has no difficulty in establishing the thorough unity of spiritual idea in the Bible, and the full and unmistakable legitimacy of its marvellous development. a handbook to the Bible records, the book is valuable.

As

The Creation; or, Moses and Science in Harmony. By the Rev. A. STEWART, Ph.D., LL.D., Aberdeen. Elliot Stock. This is an admirable little book of its kind, though suited for those who are in need of 'milk' rather than for those who are able to assimilate 'strong meat.' Dr. Stewart is of opinion that the various theories by which science and Genesis have been reconciled have given undue advantages to infidelity. He does not think it necessary to resort either to the interpretation of 'days' as indefinite periods, or to the separation between the first verse of the first chapter and what follows. The varieties of view to which these modes of interpretation have led are all alike rejected by the author of this little volume, who insists upon the literal and natural interpretation of every Bible statement. He is able to do this by starting

Theology, Philosophy, and Philology.

581

with the assumption that the narrative in Genesis was not meant to tell us about the origin of the world, but only about the creation of man and his introduction into it, to rule over it. There is nothing new in this idea. Our readers will perhaps remember a recent review in these pages of a work which wrought out this notion in yet more elaborate detail and on a larger scale than is done here. Apart from anything that might be said in criticism of the standpoint thus adopted, it is a pity that Dr. Stewart has intermingled in his work so closely the exegetical and the didactic. This feature gives it the appearance of a series of little sermons rather than a treatise on an important question of interpretation.

The Final Philosophy; or, System of Perfectible Knowledge Issuing from the Harmony of Science and Religion. By CHARLES WOODRUFF SHIELDS, D.D., Professor in Princeton College, &c. Trübner and Co.

The handsome volume in which Dr. Shields sets forth his ideas of the 'final philosophy,' which he believes may be attained through the reconciliation of religion and science, is a monument to the learning of its author, and a convincing testimony of the comprehensiveness and catholicity of his thought. He has been fortunate enough to secure material support in the carrying out of a great design. Seventeen years ago Dr. Shields gave to the world an essay on what he regards as the Final Philosophy, accompanying it with a corresponding scheme of academic study; and a few years thereafter a chair of instruction was secured in the college of New Jersey, through the generous efforts of various friends, for the purpose of carrying the scheme into practical effect. We have the firstfruits of the educational experiment thus initiated in the work now before us, which, however, is of wider scope than any merely academical scheme, as dealing with important and fundamental principles, and endeavouring in a sober and reasonable spirit to adjust the relations of philosophy and faith, or science and religion, so that they may be mutually helpful, instead of reciprocally hostile and antagonistic to each other. The root-idea of Dr. Shields is to bring out the harmonies between two lines of thought which are equally indestructible in the experience of human nature, and to ground on their demonstrated agreements the principles of a 'final philosophy.' In discharge of this great task, the author proceeds historically as well as deductively. He traces out through the varying phases of human thought, from the earliest times, the conflict into which science and religion have been drifted, or driven, from one side and the other, not attributing the blame with onesided and partial hand to either more than the other, for both have been to blame. But while we have all sympathy with the spirit in which this work has been prepared, and do full homage to the learning and research it contains, we are unable, after reading it, either to give our full adhesion to the views of the author, or to accept the philosophy which he believes he has set forth as ultimate in any sense. In fact we have not succeeded in con

vincing ourselves that there is here a philosophy at all, or that there is room for one. How can there be a body of dogmatic principles which, as ultimate, must exhibit to us the final foundations on which thought and being equally must rest, obtained from the relations of the truths of religion and science? The utmost that can be hoped for from an exhaustive inquiry into these relations is help in enabling us to discover the truth. But we must submit the objective matter, furnished both in revelation and in science, to analysis; and the synthesis that should follow must be performed under the guidance of philosophy. We confess we do not very well see how Dr. Shields is to manage to bring about this reconciliation by merely accepting the body of truths attained through revelation as authoritative on the one side, while those attained through science are equally authoritative on the other side. We need a philosophical principle that will harmonize the two, after their contents have been analytically established. But there is no place assigned to analysis by Dr. Shields, and no definitive limits are drawn around either the one province or the other. We cannot, then, see what place there is for philosophy's work of conciliation. Dr. Shields has written ably, and in a comprehensive spirit, upon various topics in which religion and science are deeply interested and vitally concerned; but we are unable to see that he has laid the foundations of any 'final philosophy.'

The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611);

with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. New Testament, Vol. I., St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke. John Murray.

This is the first volume of the Speaker's Commentary on the New Testament. It contains the three Synoptical Gospels, the introduction to which has been written by the Archbishop of York. The commentary on the first two Gospels had been undertaken by Dean Mansel, whose notes on twenty-six chapters of St. Matthew are here printed without alteration. Canon Cook has completed the notes on St. Matthew and contributed those on St. Mark, and has revised notes on St. Luke prepared by the Bishop of St. Davids, and we must pronounce his the best work in the volume. The introduction of the Archbishop assumes that discussions on the agreements and differences of the Synoptists are virtually complete, and may now be summed up. He rejects Eichorn's theory of a protoEvangelism and the theory of a Hebrew original for our present Gospel of Matthew, and hesitates to accept the conclusions of Dr. Roberts, that Greek was the popular language of Palestine, although, like Wales, Palestine was bilingual. His general conclusions are that many documents concerning the sayings and doings of Jesus were extant, from which the Evangelists compiled; that oral traditions were largely existent, which they also used; and that from these chiefly the Synoptical Gospels were