His main argument is well sustained and those who in future are concerned with biological evolution must give more thought than before to the truly marvelous fitness of the environment in which this evolution takes place. The author convincingly shows that no other known elements could take the place of those found in the human body and that the conditions existing on this earth make possible the existence of life.

Unfortunately the book is not wholly scientific but enters the realm of philosophy in its attempt to show that the teleological argument has been removed by science from the universe.

Evolution is shown to account for the formation of the eye and the hand and to explain their formation in an entirely different way from that used by the writers of Natural Theology one hundred years ago. Nearly all that we can study scientifically can be explained mechanically, argues Professor Henderson, and with the belief in "vital force", -which has been shown to be non-existent,-the belief in any interference whatever with the laws of nature should be abandoned. All is a great mechanism. Its present form was conditioned by the laws of the universe. It is not the scientist's place to ask why the universe exists or how it came to be but only to show that all that we see now can be explained on the basis of the laws of physics and chemistry. There is no evidence of purpose which the scientist must consider. There is no need of such an hypothesis.

The author takes pains to admit that all can not yet be explained by merely mechanical laws. We do not know how life came to be. We do not understand why the system of repair exists in animals. Yet we have explained so much by purely physical laws that it is unscientific to believe that all the rest will not sooner or later be equally well explained in the same manner.

Mr. Henderson's chain of argument is not without breaks and is not wholly convincing. He recognizes this himself and at the end returns to the firm ground of science. But should his argument prove true; should all happenings now be shown to be such as would be explained by physical and chemical laws; should the process of evolution be so perfected that we could follow its steps from the original nebula to the highest man; even then would not the argument from teleology be so much the stronger? Would not this emphasize our need of the Gospel? It would most assuredly. For instead of a few cases of manifest purpose to be accounted for the whole universe would be an argument of astounding cogency. And the explanation offered in the gospel would be the only one large enough to explain the purpose of all, to explain how this marvelous fitness originated, to show to what end all is tending. At one time Calvinists feared evolution. They may now well rejoice in it. Evolution makes it certain that the God who exists is one God, of infinite wisdom, having a plan which He set to work in the beginning of time, carrying out His eternal decrees through unchanging laws with an evident purpose which has not only to do with life but with life in its highest sphere,— with selfconscious man. If we remember in addition that this God

is Himself Eternal and timeless, that He is present with all His creation in all its stages of development, that He can himself interpose and does himself interpose in the course of this development and that His care extends to the smallest details; we will then be in a position to welcome all new truth. For each new proof of the wonders in the earth and of their complex though perfect harmony will only serve to increase our understanding of God's greatness and our reverent wonder that He should have been mindful of us and visited us. Cranford, N. J. GORDON M. RUSSELL.

Verso la Fede. Biblioteca di studi religiosi, N. 4. Edita dalla Direzione della Scuola Teologica Battista di Roma. 1913. Pp. xi, 223. This is a collection of papers on theological and religious themes, written by Italian Protestant scholars, and published as a volume in the "Library of Religious Studies", in the expectation that it may serve to guide the thoughts of Italian readers into channels favorable to the claims of Christianity in its Protestant guise. We in America should feel great sympathy with these Italian brethren, who in their attitude towards religion stand between the ignorance, prejudice or bigotry of an ultramontane Romanism on the one side, and the rashness, conceit and shallowness of the average anti-clerical on the other. In Latin countries where the Counter-Reformation quenched the feeble light of free religious thought in the sixteenth century, Christianity has been so exclusively associated in men's minds with the claims, the personnel and the faults of the Papacy, that when a revolt from its unendurable thraldom drives them out of it, they are not wont to stop short of a complete reversal of all the faiths and principles they formerly professed. In this volume the figure of the pendulum is used, as it has so often been used, to illustrate the naturalness, but also (let us hope) the transient nature of this extreme revolt; and surely one of the most hopeful agencies in accomplishing an early approach of the pendulum to its normal, central point of rest, is the clear exposition of the Protestant doctrines to the view of minds at either extreme of the arc. It is a shock to some Latins to learn that there can be a Christianity that is not Roman Christianity. It is a sobering flash of lightning in a sky that has become all dark with the loss of God and immortality, that reveals to them a community of Christians who hold fast the fundamental verities of the religion of Jesus, yet abhor as they themselves do the errors of Papal doctrine and the vices of Papal society.

Such would be the effect of this booklet on many for whom it is intended. The subjects chosen are well selected to appeal to such readers. The first two papers are the longest, one on the Hegelian doctrine of the becoming and the absolute by Professor Mariano of the University of Naples, and the other on the immortality of the soul by Professor De Sarlo of the Institute of Superior Studies at Florence. We found the greatest pleasure in the article by Professor Luzzi on "A Modern Conception of Dogma", not only because of the writer's

skilful appeal in behalf of dogma in religion, but also because he has endeared himself to us Protestants of America, and especially to us in Princeton through his recent visit when he delivered a course of lectures on the Waldensian Church. The same body of Italian Protestants is represented in this volume also by the Waldensian pastor at Rome, Ernesto Comba, who writes on the fundamental theme, "The Question of Authority in Matters of Faith": its author, we think, goes too far in his assertion of individualism in formulating his view of authority; it is no longer the Protestant principle of the authority of God's Word, guaranteed to us by the "testimony of the Holy Spirit", but the individual religious consciousness crowned with a Papal tiara by Sabatier and his school.

If Protestant ecclesiastical bodies in Italy live as harmoniously together as their representatives collaborate on these pages, there must be a comity among these schismatic "sects" that puts to shame the hopeless division within the "one universal and indivisible" Church of Rome. A Wesleyan pastor writes on miracles, and a Baptist pastor on sin, and the general editor of the Library is a Baptist Theological professor. This is a satisfactory evidence of that true unity of the spirit, compared to which a constrained unity in outward organization marred by schism in the spirit is a mockery and a delusion. Princeton.

J. OSCAR BOYD.

EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY

Jesus the Christ: Historical or Mythical? A Reply to Professor Drews' Die Christusmythe. By THOMAS JAMES THORBURn, D.D., LL.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street; New York: Scribners. 1912. Pp. xix, 311.

It is scarcely to the credit of the scholarship of our age that it has been reserved for the twentieth century to entertain serious doubts of the historical existence of the most influential Figure in history. Jesus Christ has been the centre of controversy in every century of our era, but it has remained for our own to frame the question, Did Jesus live? as a proper subject for academic discussion. The controversy is not an edifying one from any standpoint, but as it is rife in theological circles, it is necessary to take account of it, and it is fortunate that one can do so under the competent guidance of Dr. Thorburn.

It is apparent that the "Christ-myth" theory is more than an eccentricity of criticism, or the frenzied attempt of a reckless scholar to attract attention to himself. The mythical theory is indeed the direct outcome-although parenthood may not be acknowledged-of that quest of the historical Jesus which has sought to find within or behind the Gospels a peasant-prophet reduced to the dimensions of mere humanity. When it is denied, as it is for example in Bousset's late work, Kurios Christos, that Jesus used of Himself even the favorite

title of "Son of Man", when "church theology", "schematic tendency", "interpolation", etc., are written over all the most characteristic features of the Gospel narrative, it is only natural that "Myth" should plumply be written over the whole narrative, or else that its possible historical basis should be relegated to the region of the unknowable.

The rise of the mythical school has changed the battle between orthodoxy and liberalism into a three-cornered fight. Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals are now the contending parties, and at a given moment any two of these may be found fighting against the third. It is interesting to note that the Radicals agree with the Conservatives that the only Christianity that ever existed was a "Christ religion", or belief in redemption through the Son of God. Conservatism, in the meantime, has been cautious in its attitude toward the mythical movement, uncertain whether to welcome it as an ally, coming from an unexpected quarter, attacking the Liberals in the rear, and showing by a sort of reductio ad absurdum the impossibility of drawing a consistent picture of an historic Christ stripped of supernatural attributes; or whether to regard it simply as an expression of that spirit of which the Apostle John spoke, the spirit which denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. (1 Jno. iv. 3).

Dr. Thorburn, after showing the historic antecedents of the new mythicism in the theories of Strauss and Bruno Bauer, divides his material into (1) the Historical Data and (2) the Mythical Data. Features of the Gospel narratives which testify to their trustworthiness are reviewed, and the testimony of Paul is marshalled with telling effect. Dr. Thorburn places a higher value upon the witness of Roman writers than does Loofs, for instance, in his recent Oberlin lectures. Of the passages in Josephus he regards Antiq. XVIII.iii.3. as so suspicious that no weight can be attached to it, but finds the other passage, Antiq. XX.ix.I, which speaks of "the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James", a reliable witness to the historicity of Jesus. In speaking of the Jesus of Jewish tradition, Dr. Thorburn traverses ground more unfamiliar to the general reader, but, he believes, of great importance. While Jewish tradition is full of slander and hostile misrepresentation, it never breathes the slightest doubt of the historical existence of Jesus. Our author quotes the passage in the Talmud, "Simeon ben Azzai has said: 'I found in Jerusalem a book of genealogies; therein was written that So and So is an illegitimate son (mamser) of a married woman'". His comment is "that the Jews of the generations immediately succeeding Jesus acknowledged the actual birth, and, therefore, so far, the historical character of the Founder of Christianity." We might add here that this passage bears testimony also to the fact that there was something in His birth out of the ordinary, and witnesses "so far" to the Gospel narratives of the Virgin Birth, of the historical value of which Dr. Thorburn has a low estimate. At this point the author yields, in our judgment, more than is necessary to the contentions of the mythicists. In the second part of his work Dr. Thorburn discusses "Pre-Chris

tian Jesus-Cults", with special reference to the views of Prof. W. B. Smith; "The Dying and Rising Saviours of Ethnic Nature-Cults", showing the striking difference between the Christian stories of the birth and resurrection of Jesus and the heathen analogies; "Mythology and the Gospels" and "Christian Symbolism". In these chapters the theories of Drews and J. M. Robertson are reviewed. The difference between the nature-myths of the annually dying and rising vegetation gods, without historical reality, and associated with immoral or nonmoral ideas, and the record of Christ who being raised from the dead dieth no more, is strongly brought out. This part of the book is especially valuable at the present time when the analogies between Christianity and other religions are being somewhat overworked.

We do not agree, as indicated, with all that Dr. Thorburn says, but we welcome his book as a scholarly, sane and, within its limits, comprehensive review of what is at best an unedifying controversy. Lincoln University, Pa. WM. HALLOCK JOHNSON,

The Book of Job. By HOMER B. SPRAGUE, Ph.D. Boston: Sherman and French Company. Cloth, 12m0, pp. 243. Price, $1.25 net. In his introductory essay the author attempts to prove that the Book of Job is not historical but an elaborate allegory designed to teach the solution of the mystery of undeserved suffering by the doctrine of Evolution, and the necessity of pain in rising from the lower to the higher stages of existence. Job is charged with serious inconsistencies which are excused on the ground that his sufferings affected his sanity, but allowed him occasional lucid intervals.

The main portion of the volume is occupied by a versified translation of the poetic portion of Job written in iambic meter. This translation attempts to approach more nearly to the original Hebrew than the Authorized or Revised Versions and to be at once more literal and more popular. To this translation are appended seventy pages of brief explanatory notes, designed to aid in the study of what the author terms "the first literary creation of Semitic genius". Princeton.

CHARLES R. ERDMAN.

HISTORICAL THEOLOGY

Savonarolas Erzieher und Savonarola als Erzieher. Von DR. Jos. SCHNITZER, Professor an der Universität München. testantischer Schriftenvertrieb: Berlin-Schöneberg. viii, 141.

1913. Pro8vo, pp.

Believing, as he notes in his preface, that the study of Savonarola can be furthered more through specialized efforts than by comprehensive representations, Professor Schnitzer has made a happy choice in his present study of what he himself regards as "one of the most important and at the same time darkest sides" of the great Dominican