servant style, with a buoyancy which is perpetually gushing up through the melancholy of many an hour. They reveal a heart of womanly affectionateness, and manliest honor and generosity. The collection is of great value as a study of character. What a mockery almost are the praises now lavished on his name who was buried by one or two obscure friends in a literal" potter's field," where within a few months his own wife could not identify his grave, and it has never to this day been found! It is well that such genius and worth be recognized and honored even though late, rather than never; but it is a shame that a man like Mozart can live and toil in a civilized land, and be compelled to wait for his reward until it can do him no earthly good.

7.—Children in Heaven; or, the Infant Dead Redeemed by the Blood of Jesus; with Words of Consolation to Bereaved Parents. Large 12mo. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication. 1866.

THE Old School Presbyterian church here enters its protest, in behalf of the Calvinistic sisterhood, against the charge so often and ignorantly made of her belief in the final perdition of all or any souls who die in infancy. Proofs are cited from such thorough Calvinists as Calvin, Toplady, the Synod of Dort, Thomas Scott, Gill, Junkin, that this dogma has never been taught in Calvinistic standards, or by any of that doctrinal school, save here and there an ultraist. The phrase in the Westminster Confession, "elect infants," is shown to have been intended to indicate, that all infants who die are of that number. It is shown with equal clearness that the theology which does consign these unfledged souls to "outer darkness" has its home in the churches, or sections of these, which hang the fact of salvation on the sacrament of baptism, as is done by all the highkeyed prelatists from Rome outward. Oxford must accept this impeachment as well as the modern Babylon. These are the cruel stepdames who shut the infant host out of Christ's "many mansions." Even John Wesley is not altogether clear on this record. In his Doctrinal Tracts, p. 251, published by the General Conference, he "boldly avows the sentiment that infants can not ordinarily be saved without baptism. If,' says he, infants are guilty of original sin, then they are proper subjects of baptism; seeing, in the ordinary way, they can not be saved, unless this be washed away by baptism. It has already been proved,' he adds, 'that this original stain cleaves to every child of man; and that hereby they are children of wrath and liable to eternal damnation."" pp. 12, 103.

The remainder, and, indeed, the bulk of this elegant volume, is

occupied with choicely selected extracts and contributions, in poetry and prose, consolatory to parents who have lost their children in early life. These selections are from sources so pure and high in literary and religious character, that the frequent perusal of them will not be likely to pall the interest which they may inspire. The volume is edited by one of the eminent men of that denomination, and is worthy of its subject, and of the church which sends it forth on its mission of consolation.

8.-The Centenary of American Methodism. A ry, Theology, Practical System and Success. LL.D. THE Methodist church in this country inaugurates its year of centennial jubilee by the issue of this volume, for popular circulation, the design of which is to show its membership what reasons it has for thanksgiving over the past, and for renewed efforts in the future. The task was committed to competent hands, and the result is an admirably arranged and lucid book, full of pertinent information, and as valuable for permanent reference as for immediate ends. Dr. Stevens answers historically, practically, and doctrinally, the question "What is Methodism?" largely exhibiting. its working system, its capabilities and responsibilities prospectively. With such a record of earnest and successful labor for Christ and man, we can overlook what, at first sight, might savor a little of undue self-gratulation. We do not make this criticism on the temper of the work, albeit a kind of devout glamour might seem to glorify these pages to an outside spectator. But we shall never quarrel with any class of religionists for loving their own church and believing in it supremely, so far as church organizations are concerned.

sketch of its HistoBy ABEL STEVENS, 12mo. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1866.

We doubt if any other work will give the inquirer into this particular branch of church polity, so much of exactly the desirable sort of knowledge as he can gather from these pages. Appended to it is the Creed of the denomination, and the plan of the Jubilee-commemoration for the current year. This church evidently counts on securing a great momentum by these arrangements. So far as she is sowing the seed of a soundly Christian harvest, we bid her Godspeed. But so far as she grounds these hopes on a special expansion of her dogmatic basis, on which no little emphasis is here laid, we do not see our way to wish her marked progress. We esteem it rather an amiable weakness than a reliable intuition, which would regard the illogical and inharmonious theology of Wesleyan Methodism as the predestined doctrinal foundation of the Christian life of the Millennial age.

9.-The Women of Methodism: Its Three Foundresses. By ABEL STEVENS, LL.D. 12 mo. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1866.

No people understand the power of a popular denominational literature better than our Methodist brethren; or are more enthusiastic in building the sepulchres of their prophets. It is one secret of their almost unexampled esprit de corps. And, in truth, they are fortunate in the subjects of their hagiology-its simple, fervid, selfdenying, romantic missionary zeal. It is unquestionable that there was very much of this in the early movements of that church. As the years lengthen which throw that primitive devotion more remotely into the past, it is taking on a yet mellower hue of Christian purity; the ivy and the mosses are softly covering the rough and jagged rents of the real historic genesis. So, when a writer of the acknowledged skill and refined sensibility of Dr. Stevens puts his facile pen to these materials, we can not fail to have a book suffused all over with the sunset tints of a Protestant saintliness.

This book is written at the instance of the American Methodist Ladies' Centenary Association, and forms a part of the jubilation of the current year by that religious society, being a companion volume to the last on our list. It includes sketches of Susanna Wesley, the Countess of Huntingdon, and Barbara Heck, who are thus elevated to the honors of the first three, with notices of many of their companions in the evangelical revival thus celebrated. It will be seen that the Methodist movement originally took in the Calvinistic element as no small part of its propulsive force. The power of this mainly survives in the British Dissenting churches. We need say no more about the volume than that it is as attractive as a good religious novel, while it not only is "founded on fact" (a very loose phrase as currently employed) but is fact in an unusually high and pure region of Christian experience.

10. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Genesis. With a New Translation. By J. G. MURPHY, D. D., T. C. D., Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. With a Preface by J. P. THOMPSON, D. D., New York City. 8vo. pp. 535. Andover: Warren F. Draper. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

DR. MURPHY is a native of County Down, village of Comber, near Belfast, a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and a member of the Presbyterian church. In 1847, he received his present position of Professor of Hebrew in the Assembly's College, Belfast. He is the

author of a Hebrew Grammar, translator of Keit on Kings, and has a Commentary on Exodus nearly ready for publication.

The author controls his exegesis by very strict rules of interpretation, and a very close adhesion to the text, his Hebrew standard being that of Van der Hooght. His views on inspiration are clear and strong.

"By the inspiration of the Almighty, the human author is made to perceive certain things divine and human, to select such as are to be revealed, and to record these with fidelity, in the natural order, and to the proper end. The result is a writing given by inspiration of God, with all the peculiarities of man, and all the authority of God." Introd. p. 12. A leading and most profitable thought with Prof. Murphy, and underlying his whole work, is that he should explain the text according to the obvious intent of the author and the light of his times, so far as these can be had. "The usage of the time and place of the writer determines the meaning; not that of any other time; not modern usage." "The very first rule on which the interpreter is bound to proceed is to assign to each word the meaning it commonly bore in the time of the writer." This so obviously just rule for interpreting any ancient document cuts off a vast amount of philosophizing and speculating and heresy-making over the Scriptures. It rejects summarily and deservedly the theory of some that an ancient writing may mean all that we can get into its words, instead of all that we can get out of them by a proper use of the lexicons and grammars, contemporaneous history and common surroundings of the

This safe and leading principle of a good interpreter of either a sacred or secular document he enforces by another and more specific rule: "The usage of common life determines the meaning of a word or phrase; not that of philosophy." So he saves inspiration, while he escapes a score of wordy contests with science, leaving the savans an unbounded field.

So between the creation of the heavens and the earth "in the beginning," and the creation of man, he says the Hebrew warrants an indefinite space of time. The geologist, therefore, can have all the ages he wishes for his rocks and fossils to grow into hard facts. The Bible is not in the way at all. Prof. Agassiz wants twenty-four thousand years to make a breadth of sixteen miles of coral reef on the Florida shores, and "hundreds of thousands of years to build that prolongation of the peninsula of Florida which is entirely made up of coral reefs." Animal Structure, Lecture III. Very well. Hebraists and biblicists give him and those slow building insects all the cycles of time they ask. And it is high time that sacred scholarship and verent science unite understandingly and cordially

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to unfold, eachf or itself, and yet harmoniously, the true revelation of the Great God. Indeed, substantially, we think they have already done so.

Of the extent of the Deluge, Dr. W. remarks: "The land is to be understood of the portion of the earth's surface known to man. This, with an unknown margin beyond it, was covered with waters. But this is all that the Scripture warrants us to assert." Of Noah's flood in New England or Oregon or Australia we can say nothing, because Moses knew nothing of their localities, and therefore can not be supposed to have referred to them. He meant only to affirm that the waters prevailed over the land so far as man had wandered or the regions become known. "The whole work was manifestly the Lord's doing, from first to last." Speculation, therefore, is not called on to raise or solve hypothetic difficulties, while candid science may well be trusted to dispose of all evident physical facts. A miracle does not require explanation. We confess to a peculiar satisfaction in this Commentary for this thing, that the author does not feel called on to go, in his exegesis, beyond the text and the light of the times when it was written.

He resolves the book of Genesis into eleven divisions, according to topics. Concerning the "document theory" of the book he says: "Whether these primary documents were originally composed by Moses, or came into his hands from earlier sacred writers, and were by him revised and combined into his great work, we are not informed. The latter of the above suppositions is not inconsistent with Moses being reckoned the responsible author of the whole collection."

In fitting up the chaotic material for the home of vegetable and animal and human life, he lays the highest claim to a divine and creating power. "Chemical forces, as the prime agents, are not to be thought of here, as they are totally inadequate to the production of the results in question."

The style of the writing is peculiarly good, being simple, clear, and quite free from scholastic words and hybrid English, such as we find in Bengel. We quote an illustrative passage from the comments on the first verse of Genesis :

"This simple sentence denies atheism; for it assumes the being of God. It denies polytheism, and among its various forms, the doctrine of two eternal principles, the one good, and the other evil; for it confesses the one Eternal Creator. It denies materialism; for it asserts the creation of matter. It denies pantheism; for it assumes the existence of God before all things, and apart from them. It denies fatalism; for it involves the freedom of the Eternal Being."

That is good English, strikingly reminding us of Webster.