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BOOK NOTICES.

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

The Gospel According to Christ. By CHARLES C. ALBERTSON, D.D. Crown 8vo, pp. 288. Buffalo: The Christian Literature Company. Price, cloth, $1.25. With numerous other volumes of sermons, this book has been waiting long for our notice. Bishop Fowler likes it because it "does not keep the apostles forever on trial for perjury," and because it "beckons us onward and upward to higher levels of life and wider horizons of privilege," and because "it stands on its own feet, extends its own hands, and has the solid rock of Divine Revelation beneath its feet." Bright, fresh, intense, helpful, not mere literature but bursting with life to the outermost twig as a sugar maple with sweet sap in early spring; real preaching, practical and gently powerful-that is the sort of book this is. Tap it anywhere and you get juice. Sermon number one, on "The Gospel according to Christ," opens thus: "There has been but one Christ. He has had followers and imitators, but never a peer, never a parallel. He has had His interpreters. Paul was an interpreter of Christ, but not a perfect one; James was an interpreter of Christ, but not a perfect one. It would take a Christ to interpret Christ perfectly. It is entirely proper to speak of the Christianity of Paul, by which we mean the Gospel of Christ according to Paul; or of the Christianity of Augustine, of Luther, of Wesley, by which we mean the Gospel of Christ as interpreted by these. . . . But above all there is a Christianity of Christ-the Gospel as interpreted by the Master himself. . . . Let us read and study Him, and learn how human is the heart of God, how divine may be the life of man." Of his text, Matt. ix, 35, 36, Dr. Albertson says, "What a perfect picture we have here of the Son of man-He is busy, benevolent, pitiful, cosmopolitan;" and then he shows the Christianity of Christ to be social, compassionate, inclusive. "The compassion of Christ is at the heart of the modern missionary movement. Unspeakable pity for the woes of heathen souls, without the comfort of the Gospel and its attendant blessings, is what moves men and women to go to far-off lands. When Livingstone died upon his knees in Africa, think you he was praying for himself? No, but for the people of Africa, whom he called his poor black sheep. So also Chinese Gordon, the Bayard of modern England, willing, like Paul, to be lost if thereby his heathen brothers might be saved, prayed in the Soudan, 'Curse me, O God, curse me, but spare these poor blacks.' Victor Hugo's words are called a great sermon: "To live is to have justice, truth, reason, devotion, probity, sincerity, right, and duty welded into the heart. To live is to know what one is worth, what one can do and should do.

Life is conscience." These sermons are illustrated close to life. "A story-telling cobbler used to draw audiences to an English chapel by the power of a pure Gospel and simple, pointed, graphic speech. In the same town a boisterous and dissolute youth was accustomed to dispense liquor in an alehouse. One night he said, 'Let's go down and hear old Cole tell his stories.' The crowd went. The leader was converted, and the world has felt the power of that leader, George Whitefield." "Fifty years ago a friendless lad entered Detroit twelve dollars in debt, and secured a position at twelve dollars a month. Some one made him welcome in a Methodist church. He became a member, an official member, a banker, a millionaire, a princely giver, and when he died the strongest man in Michigan Methodism passed away. About the same time there was a young physician in Attica, Indiana, with few patients and little money. The pastor of a certain church met him one evening and said, 'Dr. Evans, come with me to prayer meeting to-night.' He went, and continued to go, and joined the church; he moved to Illinois, became one of the founders of a great university, had a town named after him; moved to Colorado, became the first governor of that State, and helped to found another university at Denver." "How much depends on the way we look at things! Here are two men. One of them when he drives a nail and hits his thumb will swear like a pirate. He will curse the nail, and curse the hammer, and curse his thumb, and curse all creation. The other, in the same event, will smile and say, 'I am just showing you how a woman drives nails.'" "A boy said to his father, 'I don't want to, and that's why I won't.' His father replied, 'You don't want to, and that is why you shall.'" A feature of Dr. Albertson's book is the page of choice extracts facing each sermon. J. G. Holland says, "All the patent methods that have been adopted in opposition to, or outside of, Christianity, for the reformation of society, have, one after another, gone to the dogs or gone to the wall. A dream and a few disastrous or futile experiments are all that ever comes of them." Tennyson in "In Memoriam" wrote:

He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the specters of the mind

And laid them; thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;

And Power was with him in the night
Which makes the darkness and the light-

And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud;

As over Sinai's peaks of old,

While Israel made their gods of gold
Although the trumpet blew so loud.

Schelling says, "Man is the hero of the eternal epic composed by the Divine Intelligence." Hawthorne says, "Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors." Bishop Warren once wrote: I dropped a note in the sea,

Lost, utterly lost it seemed to be
As the swift ship sped along.

But the winsome winds and the currents strong
Drifted the note from the end

Of the world to the hand of my best earthly friend.

I was dropped off the world into space.

Lost, utterly lost I seemed in the race

As the swift world sped along.

But the tides of love, than of seas more strong,

That back to their Maker tend,

Swept me on to the heart of my uttermost Friend.

"Jesus could not be our

Another quotation from Dr. Albertson: Captain, our Leader, and not suffer. . . . Who suffered most in the War for the Union? The man whose brother's blood bespattered his canteen as he fell with a death-groan at his side? The maiden who wiped the death-damp from her lover's brow? The wife who bound up the gashed bosom of her husband? The mother whose firstborn was rocked to sleep beneath the waves when the Cumberland went down in Hampton Roads? Nay, there was one man among us whose heart was as a sensitive tablet upon which not one but all of these sorrows wrote their lines. It was the man who said late one night in the White House to Speed of Kentucky, 'Stay with me, Joshua; I never sleep Thursday nights. Friday is execution day in the army.' And one more: "A young man who united with the Church was asked what particular person led him to take the step. He replied, "The fellow whose desk is next to mine at the bank. We are both bookkeepers with plenty of work and moderate salaries. He lives such a simple, contented, trustful life that I want to know how to make my life as fine as his.'" The preacher of these sermons knows how to illustrate saving, edifying, and helpful truth close up to life.

The Bible and Modern Criticism. By Sir ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D. Crown 8vo, pp. 282. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, cloth, $1.50.

The criticisms made by eminent lawyers upon the methods, evidence, and verdict in the case against Jesus which resulted in His condemnation and execution have been read with exceptional interest as having peculiar weight and value. Here is an eminent lawyer's examination of the methods, reasonings, fallacies, and verdicts of those who are prosecuting the case against the Bible. The Lord Bishop of Durham, who writes the Preface, speaks of this book

as containing an independent study of modern biblical criticism as found in its representative works-an examination carefully made by an accomplished judge, trained in a severe school of legal and judicial investigation to sift witnesses, weigh evidences, analyze arguments, and judge conclusions. The Bishop, while disagreeing with some things in the book, "regards with profound respect the ability and suggestiveness of the discussion," as he "views with profound anxiety" the tendency of the school of critics whose destructive excesses this volume exposes, condemns, and antidotes. In ability, in spirit, and in force Sir Robert Anderson's discussion recalls Lord Hatherley's volume, the Continuity of Scripture, published years ago and written by a Lord Chancellor of England who was an acknowledged master of evidence and a lifelong student of Holy Scripture, part of whose verdict upon the Bible was: "Frequent perusals of the Old and New Testaments have satisfied me that each is an inspired work, such as no wisdom of man could have framed; and, further, that the earlier Revelation is inseparably connected with the later, as the acorn is connected with the oak which springs from it." With such a judgment of the Bible, Hatherley's immediate successor, Lord Cairns, "the greatest Lord Chancellor of modern times," fully agreed. The Bishop of Durham recognizes with anxiety the portentous character of the teachings of the revolutionary school of critics whose destructive views receive their latest exposition in the Encyclopædia Biblica, and avows his "mental and spiritual sympathy with the envoi of Anderson's remarkable book." Sir Robert is no opponent of critical methods in Bible study; on the contrary, he fearlessly applies them. His quarrel with a certain class of critics is because their criticism is spurious, because it systematically ignores the science of evidence (in which he is an expert), on which all true criticism rests. He complains of these critics that, instead of behaving like skilled and impartial judges, they are "critics" in the sense of being “harsh examiners," hostile fault-finders. He says: "We do not reject the ascertained results of true criticism. 'We are prepared as Christian men to receive and welcome the fullest light of the new learning; but we are not prepared to be dragged at the wheels of those who would give us a discredited Old Testament, an emasculated New Testament, a fallible Christ.'" Concerning some apparently conflicting statements in the Scriptures the author says: "A dull Evangelicalism in the past was content to believe them all without attempting to explain or understand them. But to maintain such an attitude in the face of modern criticism is to court disaster as certainly as if we were to face modern artillery with the ordnance used at Waterloo. Scripture itself must teach us how all these seemingly irreconcilable statements can be reconciled." These words of Principal Fairbairn are quoted: "Agnosticism assumes a double incompetence the incompetence not only of man to know God, but of God to make Himself known. But the denial of competence is the negation of Deity. For the God who could not speak

would not be rational, and the God who would not speak would not be moral. . . . The idea of a written revelation is logically involved in the notion of a living God." Charles Reade, the great novelist, is quoted as saying that “once grant the creation of the world, and it is a little too childish to draw back and haggle over such miracles as are recorded in the Bible." As to the harmony of Genesis and Science, our author says that Huxley once wrote: "There is no one to whose authority on geological questions I am more readily disposed to bow than to that of my eminent friend Professor Dana;" and then quotes Dana's published decision: "I agree in all essential points with Mr. Gladstone, and believe that the first chapter of Genesis and Science are in accord." Sir Robert offers some samples of true criticism in contrast with the fallacious and senseless methods of the destructive critics. Some criticisms upon the Gospel narratives remind him of an incident which occurred when he was visiting at an historic home in Ireland: "The eldest son and daughter left us one morning to spend the day with relatives some half dozen miles away. Late at night, from my bedroom window, I saw the returning carriage drive up to the hall door. The lady alighted with a gentleman who was not her brother. At breakfast next morning she told us that her brother had remained at his cousin's house, and she had brought back a Mrs. Somebody-mentioning a name I did not know. Owing to the disturbed state of the country, surprise was expressed that two ladies should have thus driven home alone at night. This enabled me to press the question whether a gentleman had not escorted her; and her answer was unequivocal that her only companion had been the lady she named. When in my official life I have found a conflict of testimony between persons of known integrity, I have always sought some way of reconciling them. But in this case I was baffled; and had I not had more confidence in my friend than the critics have in the Bible, I should have given her up as being utterly untruthful and perhaps worse. But I afterward obtained from her the solution of the enigma. The lady she named was the wife of their doctor. His house was very near the gate of the park in which stood the house I was visiting; and when his wife alighted at his home he took her place in the carriage and rode with my friend the short distance to her own door. Now, not all the biblical critics in Christendom can find in Scripture a more hopeless conflict of testimony than would have been my friend's account, and my own, of her return to her father's house that night. If we had both written about it, without first comparing notes, I should have asserted that her only companion was a gentleman; while she would have declared that her only companion was a lady. 'Sherlock Holmes' himself could have made nothing of it. And yet the solution of it seems ludicrously simple when all the facts are known. She was thinking of her six miles' drive; I saw only her arrival at the house. Both our accounts would have been absolutely true, though to all appearances one or the other would have seemed absolutely

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