Similar attempts followed the discovery of Galvanic and Faradic electricity, and with similar results. It was found that these agents were powerful in their influence on the human system, but that their employment was quite as likely to injure as to benefit the patient. The scientific principles on which their successful use necessarily depends had not yet been studied out. Unscrupulous charlatans, however, found in electricity exactly what suited their methods of practice. By its use they made a profound impression, and now and then a marvelous cure. If they failed to benefit the great majority of their patients, and injured many more than they cured, they ignored their failures and boasted of their successes in such manner as to build up their own fortunes at the expense of their unfortunate patrons. This employment of electricity by charlatans served to bring its use in medicine still more into discredit than the failures of honest practitioners had before done. Within the past few years, however, many well-educated physicians have been engaged in an honest, laborious, and thoroughly scientific investigation of the subject; and they have succeeded in studying out the principles in accordance with which electricity must be applied in order to make it uniformly of service as a remedial agent. Brilliant successes in practice have been the results of these studies. Duchenne and Remak in Europe, and Beard and Rockwell in this country, have been foremost in discovering and elucidating the principles in accordance with which electricity may be made a powerful remedial agent -Duchenne by his investigations regarding the localized use of Faradic electricity, Remak regarding the localized use of Galvanic electricity, and Beard and Rockwell by their studies and discoveries on the employment of general faradization, through which remarkable tonic effects are obtained, and of central galvanization, through which the brain and spinal cord are directly and beneficially influenced. There can be no doubt, then, that electricity, as a remedial agent, is now as thoroughly understood as is any other remedy. Indeed, there would seem to be greater difference of opinion regarding the efficacy and proper use of drugs than in regard to the use of electricity as taught by the masters above mentioned. But it should be mentioned that even physicians make signal failures in the use of electricity as a remedy, until to a knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the general science of medicine, they add a special knowledge of the science of electricity, and much study and experience in its medical use. Hence it is that although the Lectures of Dr. Rockwell are of great interest to the general reader, their perusal will in no wise justify him in undertaking or advising the employment of this powerful remedy without the direction and advice of a competent physician. History of the Christian Church from its Origin to the Present Time. By WILLIAM BLACKBURN, D.D, Professor of Church History, Chicago. 8vo., pp. 719. New York: Phillips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1879. This magnificent volume is a not unsuccessful attempt to present Church history, with a living spirit, in a continuous readable style, so as to be easily contemplated as a comprehensive whole. It is written from the evangelical stand-point; and as regards the line that divides the evangelical Church into two doctrinal sections, by the predestinarian dogma, it is written, so far as we can judge, in a spirit of entire fairness. It begins from the apostolic founding of the Church, and ends with the present hour. It gives a completer sketch of the American Churches than any we have seen, and thereby suggests a repetition of what we have formerly said, that it is quite time that some scholarly men or set of men should give, in one or more volumes, a complete view of American theology as a whole. Dr. Blackburn has constructed several charts, or rather what might be called maps in theological geography, which present a great deal of history in a single page in an impressive and suggestive manner. When the Wesleyan Arminian writes a Church history from his own specific stand-point, he will refuse to brand the essential Arminians of the Western Church in the Middle Ages with the epithet "Semi-Pelagian." They were neither Semi-Pelagian nor Semi-Augustinian; but were the true continuation of the primitive orthodoxy of the first three centuries, from which Augustinianism and Pelagianism were opposite aberrations. It was the earliest theology, and is bound to be the latest, Pressensé truly says that predestination was to the early Church a heresy, and Richard Watson well defines his Arminianism as being neither Augustinian, on one hand, nor Pelagian on the other. There never was an Augustinian Church until after the Reformation; and then came Calvinism, more Augustinian than Augustine, black fatalism itself. The style of Dr. Blackburn is animated and often graphic, but wanting in graceful flow, abrupt, with occasional solecisms. Thus he says of Vincent of Lerins (misprinted Lerius) "his little 'History of Heresies' does not contain his own name as that of a heretic, for he thought himself sound"! Of Faustus he says, "Pope Gelasius put him and Cassian down in the first Index of Prohibited Books." Page 697 says that Asbury "preached in private circles for a year, while Garrettson was flogged,” etc. Our Bishops "itinerate, and are elected by the General Conference." We thought their election came before the itinerating. The following characterization of Dr. Olin is, we think, extravagant. "His successor, Dr. Stephen Olin, so attached to the Greek Testament, at home or in his tent by the Jordan, gave to Methodism a vigor which is manifest in ethical, scientific, theological, historical, biblical, and cyclopedic literature, thus holding fair rivalry with denominations which are credited with an earlier inheritance of scholarship." This is far from true of any one man among us, but nearer truth of Dr. Fisk than of Dr. Olin. Yet the sentence is good proof of the intentional fairness and liberality of the writer. The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. By LORD MACAULAY. 8vo., pp. 609. Vol. I. Set of five volumes. New York: Harper & Bros. 1879. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., 8vo., pp. 579. Vol. I. Set of three vol The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. These two stately sets upon our table from the Harper press are, of course, a necessary requisite for the completion of every historic library. Full tributes to each of these historians have lately been paid in our pages in articles from able pens. The histories are both written in the same modern spirit, detailing narratives of events impregnate with the modern spirit of enlightenment and advance. The Dutch history presents the development of a Republic in striking analogy with our own, but really advancing to a stage equivalent to our Confederacy before the formation of our national Constitution. This was owing to the death of that great hero, whose living character so remarkably resembled our Washington, and whose martyrdom by the hand of an assassin suggests our Lincoln. But while the Dutch history presents an analogy to our own, the English is truly and literally our own. For we are English, and not Dutch, and English history is the earlier part of our own history; and while in Motley we are among crude but genuine Republicans, yet they are comparatively strangers, with foreign faces and odd, pedantic Dutch-Latin names; whereas, in Macaulay, we are among old acquaintances, historically pioneering our own historic course, with our own faces in more beefy condition, talking our own language, and bearing our own or cognate names. We take our place on that wide area which an Englishman has called "the greater Britain," on whose wide and widening territory the language of Chatham and Daniel Webster is spoken. What a grandeur it is that a Macaulay and a Motley are able to address with proud acceptance so world-wide an audience! Life of Rev. Thomas Brainerd, D.D., for Thirty Years Pastor of Old Pine-street Church, Philadelphia. By M. BRAINERD. 12mo., pp. 455. New York: A. D. F. Randolph. Price, $2. It was about the year 1825 that Thomas Brainerd presented himself to be a scholar at Mr. Grosvenor's Academy at Rome, New York. With some rural traits in his appearance and style, he soon exhibited a manliness of port, a vigor of intellect, and a freedom of utterance easily rising into a flow of oratory, that commanded all respect. He was going to be a lawyer, a politician, a statesman, with an unlimited ambition. But in the good providence of God his path was intersected by Charles G. Finney. In a revival of most marvelous sweep, under the early ministrations of that wonderful evangelist, Brainerd was arrested, and a most unexpected turn was given to his life. It was not a change of ambition. It was an agonized surrender of his ambition to his sense of duty. He studied theology at Andover, and his clear ability soon brought him into association with such men as Lyman Beecher, Albert Barnes, and Charles G. Finney. The earlier part of his ministry was spent in Cincinnati, but during the many years of his maturer life he was one of the ecclesiastical "powers that be" of Philadelphia. His memoir, from the hand of his surviving widow, Mrs. Mary Brainerd, evinces how well he had chosen his partner in life. Eminent as was his career, it was not more eminent than was expected by his academic comrade. Protestantism in Michigan: Being a Special History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Incidentally of Other Denominations. By ELIJAH H. PILCHER, D.D. Illustrated. 8vo., pp. 464. Detroit: R. D. S. Tyler & Co. Upon a history of Methodism and Protestantism generally in . Michigan, Dr. Pilcher has been engaged, as time allowed, for twenty years, and has been enabled to bring his work to great fullness and apparent accuracy. It will be very acceptable to thousands, of the Peninsular State especially; and will form a very interesting and valuable part of the permanent religious history of both our Church and country. The narrative of the early start of Methodism in old French Catholic Detroit is very interesting. A hard soil it was; very hard, indeed, as is attested by the utter failure, in the first attempts, by such men as Nathan Bangs and William Case. The numerous personal sketches give piquancy and point to the narrative. At every advance we are cheered with advancing victory. The engravings recall to our memory the face of many a departed, or still living, friend. Eminent in the history, justly and truly, as early pioneer and faithful, loyal, and stalwart pillar, is the author, Dr. Pilcher himself. The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. By Dr. GERARD UHLHORN, Abbot of Loccum, and Member of the Supreme Consistory in Hanover. Edited and Translated with the author's sanction from the Third German Edition by Egbert C. SMITH and C. J. H. ROPES. 12mo., pp. 508. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1879. A more precise title for this volume would be: A History of the Overthrow of Paganism in the Roman Empire by Christianity. It begins with the reign of Augustus, and extends to the total defeat of the last effort of paganism with the death of Julian. It consequently unfolds the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. And ecclesiastical history, if such purely it can be called, has seldom been clothed in so living a style. We have not the statistical dryness of Mosheim, nor the perpetual sarcasm of Gibbon, nor the dreamy diffuseness of Neander; but great events, characters, and principles portrayed with a fresh and vigorous power. It is written with a thoroughness of scholarship to satisfy the scholar, yet with a zest of spirit and a freedom of style that suit it for the popular reader. Vol. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. A New Edition, with the Author's Last Corrections and Improvements, to which is prefixed a Short Account of His Life, Written by Himself. In six volumes. (In a box.) 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 644. Vol. II, pp. 652. Vol. III, pp. 613. Vol. IV, pp. 587. Vol. V, pp. 569. VI, with Index, pp. 527. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. Hume's history is old, but not quite obsolete. Criticism bas invalidated many of its statements, and present public thought largely rejects his general views of England's history, in which he strangely contrived to unite the bigotry of a high Tory with the looseness of a freethinker. Charles Fox said that "Hume so loved a king and Gibbon so hated a priest, that neither could be trusted where a king or a priest was concerned." That Hume is, in spite of all drawbacks, demanded for re-publication, is proof of the great intellect of the man. |