Rome: Pagan and Papal. By MouRANT BROCK, M.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

MR. MOURANT BROCK was for a long time the Episcopalian minister at Mentone, and there we have met him in conversation and prayer, and in our Sabbath communion in our own room. He was somewhat warlike, but very genuine. He was a keen and accurate observer, and in this volume he furnishes for Protestantism many potent weapons, and proves to demonstration that Popery is nothing but Paganism wearing a mask. This is an important historical work, and full of interest. Price only 5s.

Christian Womanhood. By MARY PRYOR HACK. Hodder and Stoughton.

A BEAUTIFUL five-shilling book by an authoress whose name stands deservedly very high. Few of the women whom she here depicts were much known to fame; but this makes the volume all the more attractive. Ladies, the book will adorn your boudoirs!

Thoughts in the Valleys: Lessons from the Valleys of the Old Testament. By

CAPTAIN DAWSON. Shaw and Co. A LITTLE upon each of the valleys of Scripture. It is not a scholarly work, but a holy intent is manifest throughout, and a sacred unction bedews the whole. The author modestly hopes that his glimpses at the vales may encourage exploring parties to descend into them, behold their beauties, and gather their harvests. We believe that this will happen: the very incompleteness of the chapters will induce further search. Viewed in this light, a work which is in itself rather fragmentary may be of more value than if it were of a higher order. The binding of this book is in exquisite taste. The cost is 3s. 6d. Christian Ethics and Wise Sayings. By a Presbyter of the Church of England. Nisbet and Co.

A COLLECTION of proverbs, aphorisms, and extracts. It will be useful as one among other common-place books, but we fear it will not enjoy any very extensive popularity. The selection is good, but a trifle dull, and same-ish; and this fault, though it is small in itself, is usually fatal to a sale.

Delight in the Lord. A Manual of Devotion. By HENRY MORRIS. W. Hunt and Co.

We do not care for ready-made prayers at all, good, bad, or indifferent. We dare say these are no worse than the best of such crutches.

His Steps traced from the Great Biography. Practical Readings in the Life of our Lord. By the Rev. GEO. EVERARD, M.A. Nisbet and Co. CHOICE Sermonettes, full of grace and truth. It is among the best signs of this moribund century that such books are popular.

The Story of our English Bible, and what it cost. By Mrs. BAYLY. Nisbet. VERY pleasantly written. A book of the best sort. As gracious as it is fascinating. Rest for the Weary; or, Comfort for the Afflicted. Diamond Settings from the Writings of St. Paul. Selected by J. H. R. Hamilton, Adams, and Co. TINY bijoux. It is easy to make books by putting together hymns or texts; but we fail to see anything to review in the two booklets above. The little things are prettily bound. In Pickings from a Pocket of Pebbles, published by David Bryce and Son, Glasgow, there is much freshness of thought: it is not a mere compilation.

Heroes for the Faith: Lives of the Scottish Worthies. Revised, corrected, and enlarged. Martyrs for the Truth: being the Last Words and Dying Testimonies of the Worthies of Scotland. Ward, Lock, and Co.

VERY cheap at 3s. 6d. These should be regarded as standard works by those who venerate the Covenanters and other defenders of the old orthodox faith. They may be roughly reckoned up as new editions of Naphtali and The Cloud of Witnesses, so well known by our readers north of the Tweed.

Light in Lands of Darkness. A Record of Missionary Labour. By ROBERT YOUNG. T. Fisher Unwin.

THE more of such books the better. Put this into the school-library if you can afford 6s,

Elementary Classics. Eutropius. By W. WELCH, M.A., and C. G. DuFFIELD, M.A. Macmillan and Co. "ADAPTED for the use of beginners," says the title-page, and beginners have much reason to be grateful to the editors for the adaptation. The text is freed from many knotty phrases without impairing the value of the history. Clearness and brevity are admirably combined in the notes, exercises, and vocabularies. Just the help that is needed is given, and no more; and the learner, instead of being over-weighted and distracted by cumbrous annotations, is allowed to advance in light marching order.

There are two other volumes of the same series before us, viz. :— Livy. Book I. By H. M. STEPHENSON, M.A., and

Homer. Odyssey I. By J. BOND, M.A., and A. S. WALPOLE, M.A. THESE carry the student to a higher stage, and the style of editing and annotation changes accordingly. Each

volume is enriched with a very succinct and yet comprehensive introduction, which places the student fully en rapport with the literature of the subject. The notes yield ample assistance; but they also suppose that honest work has been done in the elementary forms and constructions. These editions show in every part that they are the productions not only of ripe scholars, but of able

teachers.

Since writing the above, we have received Virgil (Selections) and Horace (Odes IV.), of which we can speak with equal praise.

The Unwritten Record: a Story of the World we live on. By JAMES CROWTHER. Sunday School Union. MR. CROWTHER has special gifts for keeping up the interest of his readers. Although we are well acquainted with the geological facts which he here mentions, we confess that he has set them forth in such a manner that we were allured from page to page, and forced to read on to the end. The manner in which Mr. Crowther defends the statements of the Infallible Word against the assaults of the conceitedly wise makes us wish that every boy and girl in the three kingdoms may read his

hook. We like this volume as much as his former work upon the senses, entitled "The Five-Barred Gate." This is a fine book for 1s. 6d.

Celebrated Dunces. By Toм BROWN. Sunday School Union.

THIS admirable book will excite many a dull boy to make another effort. This is so desirable a result that we hope parents who are honoured by having slow-developing sons will secure for them a copy of the work. We had no idea that Duncedom owned such great men: it makes one reverence the Dunce's Cap as a sort of prophetic crown. Ward and Lock's Self-Instructor; or, Every Man his own Schoolmaster. Ward, Lock, and Co.

HERE, for one shilling, a person far from a school may get the elements of an education. We are amazed that such a thing should be possible. It ought to sell by hundreds of thousands. Wonderful Animals: Descriptive, Anecdotal, and Amusing. By VERNON S. MORWOOD. John Hogg.

THIS book will greatly promote kindness to animals, and we regret that there is still much need for so doing, though there is a marked improvement. What with the nature of the theme, the abundance of the stories, and the number of the woodcuts, this is as attractive a book as one could wish for. A firstrate present for a boy.

Health Lectures for the People. Third

Series. Delivered in Edinburgh during the Winter of 1882-83. Edinburgh: Macniven and Wallace.

JUST at this time, when so much is being said about the sanitary condition of the poorer classes of society, this book is most opportune and valuable. Ten lectures by competent medical men, on such subjects as "Ventilation," "Physical Exercise," "Nursing the Sick," "Sanitary Law," &c., cannot but do good if only read and practised. District and sick visitors could not do better than invest in a copy and carefully study it: whilst, if it could be done cheaply and easily, a general distribution of the book to the poor would be money well spent. What the lecturers have so generously given should be as generously scattered

abroad.

On the Difference between Physical and Moral Law. The Fernley Lecture of 1883. By WILLIAM ARTHUR. London: T. Woolmer.

It

Ix happy vein our author opens his essay with a sentence which explains and vindicates its title. "In the present day few things are more familiar to us than writing, in which it is taken for granted that minds and bodies are both governed by laws of one and the same order." The drift of this elaborate dissertation is to refute "the New Philosophy," of which Monsieur Auguste Comte was the earliest exponent. passes current in modern literature under the name of Positivism or Materialism. The Rev. William Arthur accepts John Stuart Mill's definition of its leading axiom as his text,-" All phenomena, without exception, are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions, either natural or supernatural, interfere." To disprove this he proceeds with measured tread. He evidently has not taken up the subject on a sudden impulse. Much patient reading and very much careful thinking have prepared him to gather into a volume of moderate compass the results of long years of research. For ourselves, we should hardly think that Comte was intentionally atheistic; but we dare affirm that his arguments inevitably lead up to that miserable climax. And yet mayhap we have no right to think. We conjecture this, because a curious passage occurs in the preface deprecating any unfavourable criticism. Our author advises his readers, if not satisfied with his performance, "to suspend their judgment until they have long read the originals, and taken a good many years with a view to test their estimates of them before committing themselves to an expressed opinion." Now any author who writes thus must be conscious of a weak point in his work; and he betrays himself by an excessive susceptibility. We can only afford a few minutes to ferret this out. Comte says: "Every branch of our knowledge has three different theoretical conditions - the theological or fictitious; the metaphysical or abstract; and the scientific or positive-these conditions being essentially different and radically opposed to each other." How else can we deal

with this definition than by denouncing it? We cannot debate it with a disciple of the Positive school. Before fighting a duel the combatants must be agreed on the choice of their weapons. Mr. Arthur ignores Mons. Comte's objection to use the arms which Mr. Arthur prefers. When Mr. Arthur proves that Mons. Comte sets up a system against Scripture and logic, the response is, "Yes, I told you so on the outset: you have proved nothing."

As for us, we accept the essay with all its beauty. Could rhetoric win back this recreant age to the pure faith of our Puritanic fathers, "The Fernley Lecture of 1883" might occupy a bright page in the history we bequeath to our posterity.

Eudokia: the Angel's Song. By THEO

PHILUS, A.M. Elliot Stock.

IN judging books, beware of being taken in by their titles. This little volume is not a Christmas Carol. What is it, then? Well, it is rather more polemical than poetical. The author has framed a heavy indictment against the Revised Version of 1881, and a still heavier indictment against the Revision Company founded in 1870. He registers the verdict, as if it were an universal, if not an absolutely unanimous, finding: "The Revised Version is found, upon careful examination, to be wonderfully like the Popish Douay, or Rhemish New Testament in English, rendered from the Romish or Latin Vulgate, only outdoing that version, in retaining all its corruptions, in importing into the text many changes of a most doubtful character, and in casting out the most precious Scriptures without cause Or reason shown.". We really should not like to say that the author is very far wrong. But why the title? We suppose because the change suggested in the construction of the Angel's Song is a case in point.

Beyond the Gates. By ELIZABETH

STUART PHELPS. Chatto and Windus. TIME spent in examining this rubbish we greatly grudge. Dreamy, foolish nonsense, with a touch of something worse. Messrs. Chatto and Windus have brought out many curiosities; this is certainly one of the oddest of them, and we think the most worthless.

Life and Writings of John the Apostle.

By Rev. J. THOMPSON, M.A. Nisbet. WHOEVER NOW writes on the Apostle John invites comparison with Dr. Culross's inimitable monograph, and he ought therefore to be an able and courageous man. We are happy to say that though the present volume makes no pretension to special scholarship or singular style, it can bear the comparison and not suffer thereby.

Mr. Thompson has his own angle of vision from which he sees the Apostle, and with a true poetic sympathy he helps to reveal new lights and beauties in John's manifold character. Keensighted readers will observe much that is fresh about its subject. Some of these chapters will mark out capital lines for sermons. The broad, general principles of John's character and writings, rather than details and particular words, are principally treated, and the result is very satisfactory. Mr. Thompson might safely attempt more.

The Freedom of Faith. By THeodore

J. MUNGER. Ward, Lock, and Co. THIS book hails from the other side of the Atlantic. It is a pretentious novelty, and it appears to have made great shouting in the Philistine camp. There is really nothing in it worth crowing over. "The New Theology," which the author attempts to define in his preface and to illustrate in his sermons, is what we commonly speak of as "Broad Church."

Of course, Mr. Munger's essay is distilled from English writers. He enumerates eight or nine representative men (such as Maurice, Robertson, Stanley). The attempt to reduce the erratic discourses of such men to a consistent system is ingenious, and needless. This new theology professes to retain the specific doctrines of Christianity, but puts a fresh construction on every distinctive word in the creed of the old church. It approves of revelation as divinely given, but it asserts that its acceptance ultimately rests on reason. It admits that there are leading and fundamental truths of the Christian faith, but it denies that they have a fixed form. It acknowledges revelations of God, but it repudiates revelations FROM God, because it adheres to

a process of unfolding. It entertains views based on verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, but it disavows any strict adherence to "the plain meaning of the words." It does not desire to construct a new church, but it aims at conducting all the churches into conformity with the age that now is, and with any other age that is to be. Its partisans will be well pleased if these equivocations are gradually instilled into the popular teaching in all our Protestant cathedrals and parochial churches, our Congregational chapels and Puritanic conventicles. "The freedom of faith" will then be established, as they imagine, on the best and surest foundation. Faith will flourish when it ceases to be enchained or enchanted, either by positive conviction or by personal apprehension of anything in particular. “A moulding and redeeming force in humanity" will thus become "the central and broadest fact of theology." We refrain from saying more upon a book of which we cannot in the least degree approve. We prefer infidelity honestly labelled to unbelief disguised with the name of theology.

Witnesses to Truth. By the Rev. E. HOARE, M.A. Church of England Book Society.

CANON HOARE is always devout, evangelical, and very transparent in his writings, and these qualities are most He makes such conapparent here. trary things as "Bible Difficulties," "The Jews," "Scoffers," "The Sacraments," each become a witness for the truth of the Bible as a revelation of the grace of God. We have been helped and stimulated by this modest little book.

Prize Sermons on the Sabbath. Partridge and Co.

TWENTY Sermons to which a prize of Ten Pounds each was awarded by the Lord's Day Observance Society. We wonder if anybody will ever read them. They are all of them able, excellent, and rigidly orthodox; but they seem rather

to be written to order than to have flamed from the heart. Their value for reference is their ruin for readableness: they are so weighty.

The Gospel in Hosea. By J. Denham SMITH. James E. Hawkins.

MR. DENHAM SMITH is sure to give us the gospel, whatever his text may be. Here he discusses certain of the leading passages of the prophet without attempting a connected exposition of the whole book. There is a notable vivacity and freshness about our friend's utterances; and, what is better, a holy unction constantly bedews them. We have no doubt that this volume will be useful to multitudes.

Is Dogma a Necessity?
By Rev.
FREDERICK MEYRICK, M.A. Hodder
and Stoughton.

THIS is to all intents and purposes a sectarian treatise. We have already referred to the series of small books in course of issue under the general title of "Theological Library." Each volume is supposed to solve a question. That before us is the fifth in order of issue. Although it contains arguments and reflections that may interest an ordinary Christian reader, the stand-point from which the author makes his survey is that of an English Churchman. A clergyman of the Established Church himself, he defends her creeds, her catechism, and her bishops. In nothing of this are we agreed with him.

The People's Bible Finger Post. By the Rev. E. J. BARNES, K.C.L. Elliot Stock.

THE title-page says that this book is "a novel and attractive guide to Bible subjects;" it is neither novel nor attractive to us: and we cannot conceive of a person so feeble in intellect and poverty-stricken in experience that this book could be of any use to him. The commonest commonplaces and lamest reflections, even when bolstered up with capital letters and italics, do not change their character. Juvenile, juvenile, oh! so juvenile !

Quit You like Men. A Book for Young Men. By C. F. DowSETT. Copies to be obtained of the Author, 70, Lincoln's-inn-fields.

THOUGH little that is fresh appears in these short papers, and much of it is quotation: still, the whole is written in such a robust style, that it cannot but

be useful to our young men rising up into full manhood. We should think it would pay a publisher to bring it out in small book form, say at sixpence. There is not a dull line in the whole of it, whilst a savour of earnest Christianity pervades every page.

Sunday Parables. Told to Children. By W. J. MATHAMS. Nisbet. ANOTHER book by Mr. Mathams! We began to anticipate, for we know that he can write so as to interest, to instruct, and to open up new vistas of truth. But our reading of this present volume has severely disappointed us. It is prosy, scrappy, and much of it very stale: it seems written to order, and has little dew of inspiration about it. We say this the more frankly because we have not been slow to praise Mr. Matham's other books where his special power was manifested; but even he cannot afford to trust to reputation. Try again, Blunt Robin, for you can do very, very much better.

Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments. A Sketch of the most striking Confirmations of the Bible, from recent discoveries in Egypt, Assyria, Palestine, Babylonia, and Asia Minor. By A. H. SAYCE, M.A. Religious Tract Society.

ALL students should read this work and see how the stones which are dug out of the earth cry out for the instruction and confirmation of believers in the sacred Word. It is singular that it should turn out that Cyrus was not king of Persia, but of Elam. The Hittite kingdom also affords much theme for thought. The Siloam inscription is exceedingly remarkable.

The

Is all Well? James Nisbet and Co. THIS should be a good book if pious words could make it so; but to us it seems a jumble of platitudes. teacher does not see things clearly, and therefore muddles them up. The little book has constantly made us hum to ourselves," Wonderful words! Wonderful words! And nothing else but words." There is no wrong doctrine in the book, but somehow it is not a book at all. We frequently fail to see the connection between one sentence and another.