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If even in England and on the Continent of Europe the friends of the old "humanities" have been put on the defensive, much more must friends of the Classics here expect to encounter all manner, both of legitimate and illegitimate attack. Few men in the land are better prepared by experience and wide observation as educators, to estimate the relative value of different studies than the honored Principal at Audover. In this volume he sets before us a very valuable array of testimonies in behalf of classical culture. His own personal contribution to the volume, while occupying but little space, will be estimated by no means through a mere mechanical counting of pages. The judicious selection and effective grouping of the selections which make up the mass of the volume, is an important part of the obligation under which he lays us. These extracts from Principal Jones, Thiersch, Whewell, Mill, Joseph Payne; Professors Conington, Pillans, Sellar, Masson, Thompson, Goldwin Smith, Campbell, Edwards, Porter, and Sanborn; Presidents McCosh, Felton, and Brown; Hons. H. S. Legaré, G. B. Loring, and P. H. Sears, and W. N. Gardiner, present, with great fulness and variety and richness of illustration, the argument which justify to the friends of the old paths the "practical" wisdom of their choice. And we are glad to see signs about us that we shall still have a goodly following among the most thoughtful and discriminating of our young men. We heartily thank the editor for bringing within our reach and that of the public, so timely and valuable a discussion.

Families of Speech. By Rev. F. W. Farrar, M. A., F. R. S. London: Longman, Green & Co. 1870.

This little volume, consisting of four lectures delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, gives a very compact and useful exhibition, first, of the Growth of Comparative Philology, and then of the speech of the Aryan, Semitic, and Allophyllian races. It is an attractive and useful little volume.

History of American Socialisms. By John Humphrey Noyes. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1870.

We have looked over this History of American Socialisms with unusual but melancholy interest, partly arising from the nature of the subject, partly personal, because we knew the author when the first germs of the principles, whose ultimate development we find here, were forming in his mind. As fellow-students in the same theological seminary, we were in frequent contact, and had much animated discussion over the first beginning and original genesis of the ultraisms which at last flowered out into that system of sanctimonious licentious. ness unblushingly avowed and defended in this volume, in the following terms: "We affirm that there is no intrinsic difference between property in persons and property in things; and that the same spirit which abolished exclusiveness in regard to money, would abolish, if circumstances allowed full scope to it, exclusiveness with regard to women and children. Paul expressly places property in women and property in goods in the same category, and speaks of them together as ready to be abolished by the advent of the kingdom of Heaven."-P. 625. “The abolishment of social restrictions is involved in the anti-legality of the gospel. It is incompatible with the state of perfected freedom toward which Paul's gospel of 'grace without law' leads, that man should be allowed and required to love in all directions, and yet to express that love in but one direc

tion. In fact Paul says, with direct reference to sexual intercourse-'All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." This is using gospel liberty as a cloak of licentiousness, and turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.

We recollect when what the author calls "the Revival affilatus soon landed him in a new experience and new views of the way of salvation, which took the name of Perfectionism. This was in February, 1834." He was equally addicted to most of the isms of that period so fermenting, and so prolific of this sort of progeny. He had more than average intellectual activity and acuteness, but wanted breadth and solidity. He had a great proclivity for working and heating his mind on single points, until it was inflamed into those fanatic ultraisms which find their legitimate issue in unsettling all moral standards, and inaugurating the sway of Antinomian licentiousness. He sets up to be a teacher and guide of men. He can be such only as he is a beacon to warn them.

Nevertheless, his book has value. It is a complete account of all the social abnormities of this country which have tried to substitute some form of communism for family life, and for the constitution established by God in nature and revelation. All the "socialisms" set on foot in the land by the disciples of Owen, Fourier, the Spiritualists, Shakers, and others, are faithfully portrayed. To the student of sociology who would learn the morbid anatomy and pathology of the subject, we commend this large and beautifully printed volume.

The Pope and the Council. By Janus. Authorized translation from the German. Second edition. London: Rivingtons. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. 1869.

A very cursory survey of this volume confirms the high estimate which has been put upon it throughout Protestant, and the more liberal part of the Romish church. It is a protest from within the bosom of this church against the animus which has convoked, and the purposes of the Pope, cardinals, and prelates who essay to control, the great ecumenical council, which seems rapidly to fade into insignificance before the march of the civilization it has assembled to arrest, and with about as much effect as a dam of pasteboard to keep back a tide, or a bull infuriated to attack a locomotive.

This book is learned, logical, and powerful in its exposure of the ultramontanism which is reasserting its pretensions with such pomp and audacity. It exposes the programme of the Jesuits and the syllabus of dogmas for which they invoke the authoritative support of the present council. It especially exposes to shame the dogma of Papal infallibility, blazoning the undeniable errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions in Papal decrees, bulls, and anathemas. The dogma of Papal infallibility is sharply contrasted with the very different doctrine of such infallibility in the church, as a whole, as ever does and ever must preserve it from fatal error. It exposes the advancing mariolatry of the ultramontanes, and is altogether one of the high books of our day.

Principles of a System of Philosophy, in accordance with which it is sought to reconcile the most difficult questions of Metaphysics and Religion with themselves, and with the Sciences, and Common Sense. By Austin Bierbower, A. M. New York: Carlton & Lanahan. San Francisco: E. Thomas. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1870.

The way in which the promise of this imposing title-page is fulfilled may be judged from the following and other like passages. "It is not certain at all that God foreknows every thing, at least with any thing more than a probable knowledge. There is no reason for believing that he should foreknow any thing except the necessary laws." We think, if the difficulties in philosophy can only be solved by denying the foreknowledge and omniscience of God, they must go unsolved. Poor as it is, however, this solution is nothing new, but threadbare and hackneyed. The author's analysis of the correlate doctrines of Providence and Predestination, moral agency and accountability, are about what this would lead us to expect.

Studies in Church History. The Rise of the Temporal Power-Benefit of Clergy-Excommunication. By Henry C. Lea. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea. New York: Charles Scribner. London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston.

When the Church of Rome is so strenuously laboring to recover lost ground, it is well-timed to thoroughly sift the nature of her claim to it. Agitation of the Pope's infallibility naturally leads to scrutiny of the whole system at the head of which he stands. The object of this volume is to unfold the rise, growth, and abuse of three elements of mediæval church government and discipline. In recounting that series of events, whereby the Papal system climbed to its pretensions to supreme temporal authority over all the powers of earth, to immunity of its clergy from civil jurisdiction, and to the construction and wielding of a penalty, which laid nations and sovereigns prostrate at its feet, the author expounds the vital principles of that mystery of iniquity. This material, drawn from original sources, he sets in striking contrast with the fabrications by which Rome, for centuries, bolstered up her claims.

Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, down to A. D. 325. Edited by the Rev. Alexander Roberts, D. D., and James Donaldson, LL. D. Vol. XIII., The writings of Cyprian, vol. II.; Vol. XIV., The writings of Methodius, &c. Edinburgh T. & T. Clark. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co.

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In church history much importance attaches to the Christian writers of the period preceding the Council of Nice. It was a happy thought which led to the enterprise of transferring them bodily to the English language, that every man of our independently thinking people may have access to them, and be able to estimate for himself what their testimony amounts to.

The series has now reached the fourteenth volume, and contains much valuable matter which has never been published in English before, except in as far as embodied in history or twisted to one side or another in controversy. The thirteenth volume contains the remainder of the works of Cyprian, together with those of Novatian, the Octavius of Minutius Felix, the anonymous account of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, and other remains of about the same date. In the fourteenth we have all that time has spared of the writings of Methodius, the celebrated opponent of Origen. But among them are not his controversial treatises. They have gone where most controversies ought to go. His dialogue on the subject of celibacy, in the manner of Plato, 22

VOL. XLII.-NO. II.

called the "Banquet of the Ten Virgins," and other smaller pieces, filling only two hundred and thirty pages, make up the sum of his remains. The rest of the volume is occupied with the fragments of various other writers who flourished in the middle and latter part of the third century.

These volumes maintain the high reputation earned by their predecessors for careful rendering, clear expression, and the pleasing style in which they are got up. Without cumbering the work with critical discussions the editors contrive to give in brief historical notices, all the information really needed for intelligent perusal of the several treatises.

The Student's Manual of Oriental History: a Manual of the Ancient History of the East to the Commencement of the Median Wars. By François Lenormant, sub-librarian of the Imperial Institute of France, and E. Chevallier, member of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. I. Comprising the History of the Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. London: Asher & Co. New York: Scribner & Co.

Recent antiquarian research, in the hands of a greatly expanded scholarship, has completely revolutionized ancient Oriental history. The last fifty years have been prolific of discoveries going to enlarge our knowledge of the pre-Hellenic world. First came the original memoirs of the discoverers and decipherers; then great works combining their fruits into connected history and rehandling the old narratives in their light; and now we are having all that condensed and separated from critical apparatus, and presented in forms for popular reading and instruction. Among works of the latter class this of Lenormant is positively the best we have yet seen. Its clear and brief narrative contains the latest results of the most advanced Orientalists, in their respective fields, and the whole is woven together by a scholar whose own life has been devoted successfully to the same round of subjects.

The work was produced in French and published in Paris. Its great success gave occasion to its being translated into English, and at the same time greatly enlarged and improved by the author. Accordingly, this English version is more valuable than the first edition of the original.

Standing as he does, in the van of discovery, the author frankly professes his Christian faith. "I am," says he, "a Christian; but my faith fears none of the discoveries of criticism when they are true. A son of the church, submissive in all things necessary, I, for that very reason, claim from her, with even greater ardor, the rights of scientific liberty. And it is just because I am a Christian that I regard myself as being more in accord with the true meaning and spirit of science than are those who have the misfortune to be without faith."—"For me, as for every Christian, all ancient history is the preparation for,-modern history the consequence of,-the Divine sacrifice of Calvary."

Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith; a Series of ity of Atheism, Pantheism, and Rationalism. Cincinnati Western Tract and Book Society.

Carter & Brothers.

Tracts on the Absurd-
By Robert Patterson.
New York: Robert

Without vouching for all of Dr. Patterson's criticisms of the positions of modern scientists, and all his modes of terminating the portentous antagonisms

which they claim to raise against the Bible, we nevertheless think he has done great service in exposing the contradictions, incongruities, and absurdities which disfigure the writings of those boastful sciolists who array their crude and erratic hypotheses as of infallible truth and paramount authority against God's infallible word. If he at times goes too far, and brings down his sledge hammer upon what is, or is not unlikely to be proved to be, some solid scientific or philosophical truth, he has demolished many of the pretentious and blatant "oppositions" of science falsely so called, and pierced many glittering bubbles blown up by philosophy and vain deceit against Divine revelation and redemption.

This volume is copious and vigorous in its exposure of the fallacies of different forms of scepticism, and of those specious reasonings of Atheism, Pantheism, and Rationalism which would deceive, if possible, the very elect. His style is bold and blunt, and if he does not always stand for all the refinements of diction, he doubtless thus opens his way more fully to the popular mind and heart. The Inspiration of the Scriptures. By the Rev. Francis L. Patton. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication.

This little volume gives an able and discriminating discussion of the subject of inspiration, by one of the most promising young writers of our church. The different views of Lee and Bannerman exhibited and discussed by Mr. Patton, as to the breadth of the word "revelation," do not affect the grand conclusion, that however the sacred writers used each his own style and idioms, yet they all spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and indubitably uttered the mind of God.

Immortality. Four Sermons, preached before the University of Cambridge, being the Hulsean Lectures for 1868. By J. J. Stewart Perowne, B. D., Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew in St. David's College, etc., etc. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph &

Co. 1870.

These sermons contain an able and learned discussion of Immortality as related to the later forms of Materialism, Pantheism, and Spiritualism. In the preface the author pays his respects to Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and other materializing philosophers-particularly that paper of Huxley in the Fortnightly Review, on Protoplasm, which has been twice republished in New Haven, and in thousands of copies spread broadcast through our country. He also notices the assaults of Renan and others. The great superiority of the Christian's hope is portrayed with beauty and power. The volume is a valuable though fragmentary contribution to apologetic literature.

Pater Mundi; or, Modern Science testifying to the Heavenly Father, being in substance Lectures delivered to Senior Classes in Amherst College. By Rev. E. F. Burr, D. D., author of "Ecce Coelum." In two volumes. Vol. I. Boston: Nichols & Noyes. 1870.

Dr. Burr, known to us in his youth as a modest but studious lad, and since as the faithful and unpretending pastor of a rural Connecticut congregation, has suddenly burst upon our vision as an author of the first mark in the highest realms of thought, and as a leading defender of precious truth against assaults of scientific pretenders and pretentious sciolists. He calls to mind the days when the great New England divines, the Edwardses, Bellamy, Backus, West

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