ber. Some of the world's great authors-DeQuincy, South, Spurgeon, and Judge Story-are passed in review by him; and nearly a score of topics, among which are Moral Grahamism, The Illusions of History, The Morality of Good Living, Homilies on Early Rising, Literary Triflers, Writing for the Press, A Forgotten Wit, Book Buying, Working by Rule, and Too Much Speaking, are discussed with wit and spirit and good sense. The book is highly entertaining, and abounds with valuable criticisms. We have nowhere seen so full and satisfactory a paper on Spurgeon-the elements and secret of his wonderful power and success.

Chedayne of Kotono, a story of the early days of the Republic. By AUSBURN TOWNE. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 12m0, pp. 606. This is evidently the author's maiden effort, and hence the critic must not be severe. It is to its credit to be able to say that it does not belong to the sensational school. There is not much plot in it, and no sharp and discriminating character-drawing, and very little philosophy. Still it is a book which many will read with interest and pronounce good. The most that we can say of it is, that it gives promise of better performance in the future.

Fridthjof's Saga; a Norse Romance, by ESAIAS TEGNER, Bishop of Wexio, translated from the Swedish by THOMAS N. E. HOLCOMB and MARTHA A. LYON HOLCOMB. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 12 mo., pp. 213. 1877. This celebrated poem-"one of the most remarkable productions of the age," according to a high critical authority-has run through numerous large editions in Sweden, and also in Norway. It has been reproduced in all European languages, even in Russian, Polish, and Modern Greek. The present translation is the nineteenth English, but the first American translation. One special feature of it, which gives it interest, is that every canto is rendered in the same metre as the Swedish original, and the feminine rhymes are everywhere preserved. Such a poem needs no praise of ours, when no less a poet than Longfellow says of it: "The legend of Fridthjof, the valiant, is the noblest poetic contribution which Sweden has yet made to the literary history of the world."

Miss Corson's Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical, Every-day Cookery. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1877. Miss Corson is the Superintendent of the New York Cooking School, and this little volume is the fruit of her practical knowledge of the subject. It is simple, concise, sensible, and embodies in a brief compass just the information which every good and economical housekeeper needs. She admirably answers the question, How well can we live if we are moderately poor?

Scribner, Armstrong & Co. publish Alcohol as a Food and Medicine. A Paper from the Transactions of the International Medical Congress at Philadelphia, September, 1876, by EZRAS M. HUNT, A.M., M.D., who has achieved distinction, not only by his contributions to medical and sanitary

literature, but also in religious and biblical publications. This volume was the answer of the International Medical Congress to the Memorial of the National Temperance Society asking for a deliverance on the subject of which it treats. It very ably contests the claims so often made in behalf of the nutritious and medicinal virtues of alcohol. Without denying some extreme cases, in which the stimulus of alcohol may spur the vital functions to a needed exceptional and abnormal activity, it conclusively proves that the free and ordinary use of it as a support or stimulus to flagging vitality is a remedy worse than the disease.

The Russo-Turkish War. This little work, costing but fifteen cents, and published by the Christian Union Print, gives the information which everybody needs just now in reference to this absorbing subject. "Who Are the Turks? What is Russia? The Christian Provinces, The Two Religions, How the War Began, The Seat of War, Prospects and Probabilities, are the several points discussed. A map also accompanies the work. We do not see how it were possible to compress more important information bearing on the subject in the same space than we have here. No intelligent man can afford to forego a thorough knowledge of this great movement, the full significance and probable results of which cannot well be overestimated, and may essentially affect the political condition of the old world, and inaugurate a new state of things throughout the Eastern Church.

Art. I.-DOGMA AND DOGMATIC CHRISTIANITY.

By Prof. THOMAS CROSKERY, Magee College, Derry, Ireland.

THERE is a class of thinkers both in Britain and America who assert that the time has come for recasting all the issues of our theological thought, and for seeking a more thorough reconciliation of our religious aspirations with the higher criticism and advanced culture of the age. They admit that the old creeds were good things in the past, and especially at the Reformation, when the ferment of new spiritual life needed guidance, consolidation and restraint; but they have now outlived their original use, and earnest minds can be no longer content to dress themselves out in the faded garments of forgotten speculation, but must seek, by a fresh and catholic study of truth, to work out the renaissance of modern theology, and secure the energy and triumph of a lofty spirituality. The creeds are worse than useless. They have become prolific sources of evil to the church. They have arbitrarily arrested the development of Christian thought, and restrained the free play of the higher reflective energies on which the continued existence of Christianity, as a living and progressive power, depends. We have now, therefore, to restore living thought to its due place, and allow it to operate freely as a modifying dynamic force amidst the statical energies of modern ecclesiastical life. Besides, the concessions must be made to satisfy the demands of science and philos

ophy, so as to give to Christianity such an aspect of rationality as will win back to the faith those anti-Christian specu lators who are now doing their best to uproot it from the earth. Christianity must be freed from all the lumber with which it has been encumbered, though it may still be unchanged in essence, and really purer in form than it was in days which are vaunted as the ages of faith. It is thus confidently expected that the common sense and the inborn reverence of mankind will strike a healthy balance between the aggressive dogmatism of superstition on the one side, and the aggressive dogmatism of science on the other. It will be a happy day, it is said, for Christianity when its moral and spiritual elements shall be seen apart from the symbolic refinements of ritual, and from metaphysical elaborations of doctrine.

If not the most distinguished, at least the most persistent advocate of this project for remoulding the theology of the churches is the very Rev. Principal Tulloch of St. Andrew's, in Scotland, a professor of theology in one of its ancient universities, and one of the chaplains of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Though a fascinating writer, with a certain skill and force of literary expression, he has no great power as a thinker, mainly because he has nothing of that systematizing intellect which traces leading ideas into their connections and consequences, and gathers them all up into unity of plan and principle. His writings show no promptings of a dialectic impulse, no powerful interest in the logical aspects of the questions he discusses; while he is singularly deficient in that quickening and impulsive energy of thought such as makes some negative thinkers very effective educators of their age. It is, perhaps, this deficiency in logical faculty that has led Principal Tulloch to oppose with such vehemence the very idea of a systematized theology. We can appreciate the charm of his highly pol ished diction. Every work of his pen shows the measured tread and artistic finish of the most accomplished scholarship; but the sounding sentences that fill our ear are fundamentally meagre and unsatisfying both to heart and intellect. His work. on The Leaders of the Reformation, published in 1859, was his first open attack upon the theology of the Reformation; but as Principal Cunningham complained in his trenchant review

of the book, the author made no attempt to grapple with a single doctrine, but coolly proposed to get rid of the whole mass of sixteenth-century theology without any argument at all, on the simple ground that it had become obsolete and inapplicable to our more cultivated age. "The old Institutio Christianæ Religionis no longer satisfies, and a new Institutio can never replace it. A second Calvin in theology is impossible." In 1873 Principal Tulloch published his work on Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, the object being to glorify the memory of Hales, Chillingworth, Lord Falkland, Stillingfleet and the Cambridge Platonists; but he utterly failed to prove that they formed a school of theology at all, much less one of Broad Church or rationalistic tendencies. In 1874 he published two papers in the Contemporary Review on "Dogmatic Extremes,” and “ Dogma and Dogmatic Christianity," exactly in the track of his earlier work, and in the present year he has brought out an interesting and able volume of sermons entitled, Some Facts of Relig ion and Life, in which he remains true to his earlier convictions of the hurtfulness of dogma in religion.

We need hardly say that Dr. Tulloch has been ably supported and encouraged in his continued attack on creeds by allies greatly more distinguished than himself. Dean Stanley has come to his help once and again with addresses and sermons delivered at St. Andrew's and Edinburgh. The great object of the Dean of Westminster is to bring about the unity of Christendom; but as he speaks to us out of the high and misty atmosphere of a theology which is not strong in dogmatic propositions, the unity in question, if ever realized, would be only the unity of a landscape wrapped in mist. In March last he delivered an eloquent and characteristic address at St. Andrew's on "Progress in Theology," which contained much that was sound, but much, also, that was false in speculation. Mr. Froude, the historian, has epitomized the whole question in a sentence: "God gave the Gospel; it was the father of lies that invented theology." Matthew Arnold, taking up the challenge of M. Renan, that "Paul is coming to an end of his reign," says that "the reign of the real St. Paul is only beginning," and he repudiates the idea of our understanding the divine enthusiasm of the apostles by merely drawing