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Philosophy of Methodism. By Rev. WARD W. HUNT, A.M. Watertown, N. Y. 1880. Studies in the New Testament. By CHARLES S. ROBINSON, D.D. 12mo., pp. 316. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1880.

Sporting Adventures in the Far West. By JOHN MORTIMER MURPHY. Illustrated. 12mo., pp. 469. New York: Harper & Brothers.

English Men of Letters.

1880.

Edited by JOHN MORLEY. Nathaniel Hawthorne. By HENRY JAMES, JUN. Pp. 177.-Robert Southey. By EDWARD DOWDEN. 12mo., pp. 197. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1880.

The Holy Bible, According to the Authorized Version, (A. D. 1611,) With an Explanatory and Critical Commentary and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter, etc. New Testament, Vol. II: St. John-The Acts of the Apostles. 8vo., pp. 534. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1880. Christian Union Necessary for Religious Progress and Defense. Address before the Evangelical Alliance, in Basle, Switzerland. By JOHN F. HURST, D.D. 8vo., pp. 35. Paper Covers. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1880.

The Three Brothers: Sketches of the Lives of Rev. Aurora Seager, Rev. Micah Seager, Rev. Schuyler Seager, D.D. By Rev. E. LATIMER. With an Introduction by D. P. KIDDER, D.D. 12mo., pp. 58. Paper Covers. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1880.

The Expositor. Feb. 1880. Edited by Rev. SAMUEL COX. Contents: 1. The Value of the Patristic Writings for the Criticism and Exegesis of the Bible, by Rev. W. Sanday, D.D. 2. Christianity's First Invitation to the World, by Rev. George Matheson, D. D. 3. The Call and Commission of Isaiah, by Rev. P. Thomson, M.A. 4. Two New Testament Synonyms: viòg and Tekvov, by Professor John Massie, M.A. 5. Brief Notices. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Fall Conferences of 1879. 8vo., paper. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati:

Hitchcock & Walden.

The Catholic Church in the United States. Is Rise, Relations with the Republic, Growth, and Future Prospects. By Rev. I. T. HECKER. 8vo., pp. 26. Paper. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1879.

Studies of the Greek Poets. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 16mo. Two Vols. Vol. I, pp. 488; Vol. II, pp. 419. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1880. Probably no work in the English language gives a view of the Greek poets with such mastery of the literature, such a critical spirit, and such a beauty of English style, as these two volumes. FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY, 4to. paper: Memoirs of Madame De Rémusat. 18021808. Edited with a Preface and Notes, by her Grandson, PAUL DE REmusat. Translated by Mrs. CASHEL HOEY and Mr. JOHN LILLIE, Part II. The Munster Circuit: Tales, Trials, and Traditions. By J. R. O'FLANAGAN.-Queen of the Meadow. By CHARLES GIBBON.-Friend and Lover. By 1zA DUFFUS HARDY.Mademoiselle De Mersac. By the Author of "Heaps of Money."-The Nineteenth Century, a History. By ROBERT MACKENZIE.-A Sylvan Queen. By the Author of "Rachel's Secret," etc.-Tom Singleton: Dragoon and Dramatist. By W. W. FOLLETT SYNGE.-The Return of the Princess. By Jacques Vincent.

Notices of the following books are postponed to the next number:

Haupt's Epistle of John. Scribner's.

Samson on Wines. National Temperance Society and Publication House.
Farrar's St. Paul. E. P. Dutton.

Walter on Space and Matter. Estes & Lauriat.

METHODIST

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1880.

ART. I. — BISHOP WILEY'S VISITATION OF CHINA AND JAPAN.

China and Japan: A Record of Observations made during a Residence of Several Years in China, and a Tour of Official Visitation to the Missions in both Countries in 1877-78. By Rev. I. W. WILEY, D.D., one of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Illustrated. 12mo., pp. 548. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. New York: Phillips & Hunt. 1879.

To one standing casually upon the ocean beach there seems to be only the same eternal roar, and wave after wave dashing apparently upon the same strand. But if that observer, in his childhood, knew some rock far beyond the reach of the stoutest surge, and now beholds it embraced by the ocean, he irresistibly draws the conclusion that the continent is yielding to the sea; and if such a process were known to be rapidly going on in every part of the earth, natural philosophers would not hesitate to express apprehensions that at some day, more or less distant, land would entirely disappear, and this globe become

one vast sea.

When a great Church like the Methodist Episcopal is known to have been without a strictly foreign mission until thirty years ago, but has now its Conferences in all quarters of the globe, and its thousands of members and hundreds of preachers redeemed during that period from heathenism, and when it is known that like success has attended the missions of numerous other evangelical bodies, our faith rises to positive assurance that if the Church is faithful to her great commission FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII-27

"the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

In the volume now under review, we have the testimony of an intelligent witness with respect to one of the most important missions of the world. He saw it first in 1851, and spent three years there faithfully discharging his duty as missionary physician of the Foochow Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, forsaking his post only when sickness and bereavement left him no ability to continue his work. He saw it again in the year 1877, when, as a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he went to Foochow in the discharge of his episcopal duties. Nearly a year in all was occupied with this official visitation, and he, therefore, had rare opportunity for observations of a most careful kind. What of Methodism did this missionary leave in China in 1854? and what did this same missionary, worthily exalted to be a bishop, find on his return to China in 1878 ?

The entire China mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the departure of Dr. Wiley, in 1854, was in Nantai, and on Middle Island, both suburbs of Foochow. The great city itself had not so much as been entered. When Bishop Wiley revisited the mission, in 1878, the performance of his duties required him to skirt nearly the whole coast of China. He had to take in the capital of the empire, and extend his supervision to the farthest north, for the North China Mission had "some appointments as much as four hundred miles away from Peking, reaching up north to the great wall, and south into the province of Shantung." In the intervening space there were constant and faithful itinerations on the part of the missionaries, after the style of the fathers of American Methodism. complete his visitation the Bishop had to sail five hundred miles up "the wonderful river Yang-tsze-Kiang to Kiukiang, in the province of Kiang-si, one of the largest and richest of the provinces of China," and go the length of the picturesque Po-Yang Lake for one hundred miles, with industrious millions lining its shores. The three districts that compose this Central China Mission extend we learn not how far westward, for the Bishop's time did not admit of prolonged or minute visitation. The old mission at Foochow had penetrated, as he says, within the walls of the imperial city, and well-nigh covered the

To

entire Fuhkien province. Well might the good Bishop exclaim as he stood in Peking:

How great things has God wrought in so short a time! Twentyfive years before, my most sanguine dreams could not have reached the thought that in this brief time missionary stations would be established along the northern coast of China from the Yang-tsze to the head of the Gulf of Pi-chi-li, and that the ministers of Christ would be building chapels within the "Imperial City," and establishing schools within the shadow of the Imperial residence itself. But here it is, a realized fact; and from this great center the "glad tidings" are sounding forth through nearly all Northern China.

The increase of the area of the mission in twenty-five years is truly amazing. It has grown from a single point to cover more square miles to-day than are covered by England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland combined; and it is still growing as never before.

Not area alone, but every other feature of the mission, is expanded. In 1854 there was not a single Methodist Episcopal Church building in all China, nor any thing worthy to be called a chapel. We have not been able to learn from "China and Japan," or indeed from any other source, precisely the number of these now existing, but they are to be counted by scores, with parsonages, school-houses, hospitals, press-building, etc., aggregating in value more than one hundred thousand dollars.

When Dr. Wiley left China, in 1854, there was not in all the empire a single native member or minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Wiley found in 1878 three distinct missions, one of which he organized into an Annual Conference. There was a zealous membership of the Church of more than two thousand, and a gifted native ministry verging closely upon one hundred in number. The author's hope in publishing his work must be realized, and contrasts so striking must interest and encourage those who are really laboring for the regeneration of these peoples.

Progress is to be read in every line of this book. Here is a man who only twenty-five years before had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, traversed the Indian Ocean, and through weary months of voyaging at last reached the Pacific. Now, taking his seat in a railroad car, at the close of July, 1877, and passing over the continent, holding en route three Annual Confer

ences, he arrives at San Francisco by September 1, ready to depart for China. A steamer was not ready till September 12, and yet on October 1 he was entering the harbor of Yokohama, in Japan. The Bishop marks the event as follows:

On the one side of us is a smoking volcano; on the other, the sublime Fuji-yama, an extinct volcano, a perfect cone, nearly thirteen thousand feet high, with its summit capped with snow, glistening in the sunbeams. It was one of the grandest sights I ever saw, and is the pride and glory of Japan. All along, on both sides of the bay, are strung the Japanese villages. At two o'clock we anchored in the bay of Yeddo, before Yokohama, a mixed city of foreign and Japanese life.

At San Francisco, before his departure, the Bishop had found what he justly terms "genuine missionary work" among the Chinese on our own coast, and gives a passing notice to the heroic Gibson and his Christly efforts. The house, the chapel, the school, the retreat for women, were all inspected, and the Bishop concludes that this mission to the Chinese in America is destined to triumph, and become an important element in the wise and just settlement of the vexed "Chinese question."

The Bishop's duties did not at this time detain him in Japan; hence in twenty-four hours he was off to Kobe, the port of Ozaka, the New York of Japan; thence through the Inland Sea, than which he thinks nothing on earth can be more beautiful. He says:

Our course lay among more than a thousand islands of every conceivable shape, some of them entirely bare, but most of them covered with the richest verdure, and nearly all cultivated and terraced to their very summits. All of them are mountainous, full of peaks and water-washed ravines. Towns and cities, some of them fortified, are seen hid away in every little bay. It has been like traveling through Fairy-land.

October 13 the steamer was at the mouth of the Woosung, in China, twelve miles from Shanghai. As she moved up the narrow and crooked river the changes that twenty-five years had wrought greatly impressed the Bishop. He says:

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Then Shanghai was just becoming a port of foreign trade. few inferior hongs and dwellings were stretched along the river, and the stream was literally crowded with native junks of all sizes and classes, with here and there only a sailing ship or two from foreign lands. Now every thing is changed. As we en

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