opponents to have been in possession of the field. Mr. Pullan is able to give an apt reference to an admission on the part of Renan that by A.D. 180 or 190 the Divinity of Christ, the unique value of our four Gospels, and a Creed resembling our Apostles' Creed, were only disputed by men who were in open antagonism with the Church. But further, it is impossible, as even the opponents of orthodoxy have begun to admit, to regard orthodoxy as a mere product of the controversies which were rife between A.D. 120 and 160. Professor Harnack admits that he who attentively studies the epistles of St. Clement and St. Ignatius cannot fail to see what a fulness of traditions, topics of preaching, doctrines, and forms of organization already existed in the time of Trajan—that is, between A.D. 98 and 117; and we cordially agree with Mr. Pullan's quiet comment that this concession will prove fatal to any but an orthodox account of the primitive Church, and with his rider that if Catholic orthodoxy is as old as the time of Trajan there can be no absurdity in believing that it is as old as the time of the Apostles. We greatly admire that courageous way of winning the greatest advantage from the acknowledgments of an opponent. Professor Harnack has made many such remarks, which are obviously intended, Mr. Pullan thinks, to save the position of his school of thought, and which are frequently criticized with fairness, but with boldness, in this book. Timid apologies greatly weaken apologetic work, and one cause of the strength of Mr. Pullan's History is that he has the courage of his convictions, and defends them with a sturdy honesty of purpose. We are by no means insensible to the grave nature of the present attacks of the old foe of the Church, but yet we trust that we are too hopeful of the Church's living energy to fall into the error which is implied by the phrase laudatores temporis acti. When we see that the younger school of ecclesiastical historians contains such writers as Mr. Pullan, we may hardly go so far as to repeat the old proverb that there are as good fish in the sea as have already come out of it; but we can say that the orthodox teachers who have presided over Ecclesiastical and Modern History at Oxford during the last quarter of a century have reason to be thankful when they see their sound teaching thus appear in their pupils. Each chapter of the work is complete in itself, and Mr. Pullan goes to the beginning of his period, and, as far as is necessary, works through it steadily towards its close as each subject comes before him. Thus historical finish is given to each topic, and this makes the book very useful for ordination candidates and others who may be in want of concise information upon the Church History of the first two centuries. At the same time the topics are arranged in chronological sequence, so that we naturally pass from one subject to the next with no sensation that the chapters are disjointed. The materials combine theology, history, and New Testament exegesis, as any theologian or ecclesiastical historian of the first two centuries knows must be the case. Before dealing with the chapters in detail we should like to recommend our readers to notice the instances, and the manner, in which Mr. Pullan deals with statements of opponents like Professor Harnack and Renan. (See the index under those names, and especially pp. 141, 205, 231, 264.) Passages of humour, reminding us of Dr. Salmon's style, and heightened by a certain air of delicious meekness, will also be found. We can give an example or two, and that will probably lead our readers to the book itself in search of more. 1. The Paul of Baur, the Paul who made havoc of JewishChristian synagogues, and knew nothing of "the material conception of the Catholic Church," the Paul who fought against twelve Unitarian apostles, is dead. May he rest in peace' (p. 71). 2. 'Renan, amid much agreeable literary perfumery, speaks blandly of "pseudo-Ignatius." But what Rationalism creates, Rationalism can destroy, and Renan's "pseudo-Ignatius" is already in the land from which no traveller returns' (p. 128). 3. 'We do not suppose' (as the Abbé Duchesne has been inclined to think) that Roman Catholics regard the pope as inaccessible to advice or not ready to welcome the observations of his brethren in the episcopate' because what kind of welcome a modern pope gives to the observations of his brethren after the papal decision has once been made is not a matter of conjecture' (pp. 166-7). 4. 'We are familiar with the saying that poets see resemblances and philosophers see differences. The title of philosopher we cannot give to M. Renan, Dr. Hatch, and Professor Harnack for their discussion of Gnostic influence upon the Church. And this is not the place to discuss their claims to the name of poet' (p. 241). A thorough knowledge of the condition of the world at the time of our Lord's birth would be necessary to show how much is compressed into the statement that God sent forth His Son when the fulness of the time was come. But many of us know enough, from the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, from the Satires of Juvenal, and even from the poetry of Matthew Arnold, to show that the world was aching for a Saviour, while it did not really know what was the matter with itself, or how deliverance and renewal would come. We may remark in passing that the bearing of this hopeless state of the old world upon the question 'What does it matter what a man believes if he lives a good life?' is obvious.' The Roman world tried what it could do without belief in anything, and the result is a matter of history which has for every age its grave lessons. But Mr. Pullan's special purpose, in his opening chapter on Rome and her Religion,' is to show into what kind of soil the new seed from on high was planted, and he confines himself to that, although his description suggests many other thoughts. He is not sweeping in his condemnation even of the morals of the later Empire. Virtue,' he finely observes, is like some gentle flower which lingers in many a secluded vale, when it has been extirpated by the high roads. And these are facts to show us that the health and fibre of the old Roman temper were not extinct. Roman morals during the first century of Christianity must not be judged entirely by the Satires of Juvenal, any more than English virtue of the eighteenth century must be judged entirely by the caricatures of Hogarth' (p. 3). But a comparison of the old Roman religion (p. 6) with the new Roman cults (p. 15), which Mr. Pullan draws so well, is sufficient to show that the loss of the old usages and sentiments was accompanied by a loss of purity and power, of compassion and remorse. And yet the change prepared the way for Christianity in some important ways (p. 20). The new cults gave an impulse to a tendency towards Monotheism, suggested a mediatorial religion, and broke up the old idea that ministers of religion were simply ministers of the state. 'There was doubtless something of fever and disease amid the tangled jungle of these wayward and confused faiths. And yet they stretch towards the light of true ideals, and through their glades are heard imperious echoes of the voice (p. 23). Mr. Pullan reserves for a separate chapter the consideration of the Jewish environment in which the Christian Church was born (p. 24). He discusses first of all the Jewish ideas concerning the Messiah, and shows that while our Lord appropriated several contemporary conceptions of the Messiah, He altered them fundamentally and also declared that the relation between Himself and the Father was closer than even the highest Jewish doctrine had taught 1 The witness of history would prevent most men who knew as much as Lord Grimthorpe from quoting with approval Bishop Thirlwall's shallow dictum that 'the study of theology as it is now has not been found to quicken the sense of right and wrong on which the soul's health depends.' Lord Grimthorpe in the Times, August 12, 1898. concerning the relation between the Messiah and God. This involves some references to Philo and his immediate predecessors, to the book of Enoch, and to the distinctive Jewish conceptions faithfully recorded in the Gospels, and particularly in St. John. The conclusion is that the distance between the statements of the New Testament which unfold what our Lord had implied or stated and the dogmas of Judaism is an adequate reason not for doubting but for believing that our Lord is accurately reported. 'To seriously injure Christianity, it will be necessary to show that Christ has failed to fulfil His promises, or at least to show that the various elements which are comprised in His exposition of the Messiah's dignity remain inconsistent and warring elements in spite of the Master's efforts. In the meantime, there will be many who will retain an impregnable conviction that the Founder of Christianity, in fitting thought to thought, and virtue to virtue, showed a power which came down from the highest heaven of originality and truth' (pp. 38-9). If we are to learn what were the characteristics of that City of God which started on its career from Jerusalem, we must turn to the Acts of the Apostles; and here Mr. Pullan gives an excellent summary of the arguments for the early date of that book, an account of the faith of an early Christian, specially as to our Lord's person and work, and a description of the Church's community of goods, its sincerity, its discipline, and its sense of expectation (pp. 39-51). We cannot do more than allude in passing to the excellent paragraph which claims that it is much more difficult not to believe in our Lord's resurrection than to believe it (p. 44). Some wild socialistic talk about the community of goods is dispelled by the sensible remarks that 'if all men were true Christians a community of goods might be harmless. But we must also admit that if all men were true Christians private property would also be harmless. And the fact that the first Christian society was communistic is of infinitely less importance than the fact that it was a community of working brothers, whose brotherhood was not enforced, but spontaneous' (p. 48). Hardly less needed, in days when latitudinarian explanations are given of the term 'National' as used of the Church, is the reminder that in the exercise of discipline the early Church 'did not preach that the chief blessing of heaven was its width of accommodation' (p. 49). The best fruits of Judaism and the most bountiful graces of the new-born Church met together, after the dying prayer of St. Stephen, in the person of St. Paul. In his chapter on St. Paul and the Law (p. 52) therefore Mr. Pullan, when he has observed that St. Stephen 'had only repeated, with illustrations too poignant to be ignored, Christ's parable of the wicked husbandmen' (p. 53), proceeds to trace the train of thought by which St. Paul approaches the problem of the relation of the Gospel to the Law. This, of course, involves an examination, which is carefully conducted, of the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans. Mr. Pullan concludes that the Galatian Epistle was addressed, not to the Celtic inhabitants of the district round Ancyra, but to that more restricted area which included the Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, in fact, to the places in Asia where St. Paul planted the Church on his first missionary journey. A lucid running paraphrase of a very difficult part of the Epistle, from iii. I to iv. 31, shows that to St. Paul the promise given in Abraham, and the position given in Christ represent God's eternal purpose for man, of which the law is not a repudiation but a transitory means of fulfilment. And this conception is neither pretended respect nor a controversial feint on St. Paul's part. It is sanctioned by the Old Testament itself, by our Lord, and by the permanent experience of redeemed and enlightened humanity (pp. 55-9). In the Epistle to the Romans the Apostle goes a step further, or we should perhaps say deeper, and proves that his Evangel is a Gospel of character. Through faith the Christian man can attain to righteousness, and holiness is made possible for him, and so expected of him. Nowhere is it more necessary than here to bear in mind that St. Paul's view of faith is not bound to be that which Luther ascribed to him, and Mr. Pullan in his loyalty to the Apostle makes a merciless exposure of Luther's burlesque of Pauline theology, which able opponents of orthodox Christianity sometimes depict as a true representation (pp. 59-61). An excellent answer to the question What is Faith?' (p. 61) is followed by a paraphrase on the great chapters (vi.-viii.) in which St. Paul shows that the generosity of God is no excuse for moral licence, and in the course of this exposition Mr. Pullan points out the logical connexion between Zwinglian views of the sacraments and Unitarian views of Christ, and notices the eager interest which has always been taken in the description of the conflict with temptation in chapter vii. (pp. 63, 64). The melody and triumph' of the eighth chapter 'fitly close St. Paul's argument for the holiness of the Gospel system' (p. 66). The Apostle's description of the Law is an exposition of the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, in the light given |