he shows how the whole transaction is designed to be an image of the deep and awful truths which ever belong to all the moral government of God.

An "additional note" to cap. x. 12-15, is devoted to the discussion of the Miracle of Joshua, in which the ground is taken that these verses are a quotation from the poetical Book of Jasher, and are to be understood as signifying that the victory was completely secured before the day declined. The miracle is thus no longer an objective fact, but a subjective idea of the past!

Lord Arthur Hervey seems to agree with Dean Milman in the idea that "the Jews had almost a passion for large numbers," and so cuts down the 50,070 of I. Sam. vi. 19, to 70; the 30,000 of I. Sam. xiii. 5, to 300; the 40,000 of II. Sam. x. 18, to 4,000; while the 20,000 of II. Sam. xviii. 7, is declared to be "an impossible number." These reductions, which in some cases seem arbitrary, are hardly compensated for by augmenting the 700 of II. Sam. viii. 4, to 7,000.

There is much valuable information given in the various introductions, especially in those of Joshua and Kings. We regard the apportionment of the "Kings" to Canon Rawlinson as peculiarly happy, and await, with pleasant anticipations, his notes on II. Kings to Esther, which the English publishers promised to give us at Easter.

We wish this commentary could be in the hands of the general reader and student, so as "to put him in full possession of whatever information may be necessary to enable him to understand the Holy Scriptures." Such is its professed object; but we fear that in its present shape this purpose cannot be carried out. The "general reader" will not care to purchase ten or a dozen thick octavo volumes. Why need the text of King James's Version occupy so much space? For a book of reference, much smaller type would answer every purpose, and no one will probably use the twelve-volume work for his devotional reading. Why should not the text be compressed as well as the notes ?

LIFE OF BISHOP PATTESON.

London: Christian Knowledge Society. New

York: Pott, Young & Co. Pp. 218.

One is fain to say, on laying down this fascinating little volume, Is this all we are to know of the life of that noble prelate and true martyr, John Coleridge Patteson? And then comes the answering question, Is not this enough?

The story is told with all that admirable simplicity, that discriminating insight, that delicacy of touch, that truly Christian, and as truly refined reticence, under which strong feeling is struggling, and through which it sometimes for a moment breaks, that are so characteristic of all the better religious biography of our mother Church and land. These are qualities which we often desiderate when fretting under the coarse and blotchy style, the extravagance of epithet, the indiscriminating and wholesale praise or censure, the thrusting forth of everything, even what is most sacred, into the common light, the absence of delicacy and reticence which so often mark dealings with the work of the living or the characters of the dead among ourselves. And yet, noteworthy and praiseworthy as the characteristics just mentioned are, they leave us with an almost unsatisfied feeling, and a half-formed wish that we might know more.

We have glimpses-little else of the bright, conscientious, pains-taking boy, "ever ready for fun, but never for mischief;" never suffering play "to usurp the place of work," "fixed and consistent" in his "moral and religious tone," thoroughly amiable, never priggish, the captain of the Eton Eleven. When we pass to Oxford, we find him, as an undergraduate at Baliol, "not in sympathy with the spirit of his college," "a reluctant and half-interested sojourner, ever looking back to the playing fields of Eton, or forward to the more congenial sphere of a country parish." Later on, as Fellow of Merton, he came out in quite a new character, and, though without a shade of political liberalism, was active in the work of university reform. Then came, in 1853, the short life of the "country parson," at Offington, amidst surroundings too bright to last, and then the life work was reached, and in 1856 the martyr missionary left his native land, never to visit it again. Let faith and love and self-sacrifice be never so strong, there must be a hard pull at the heart-strings when one has to say,

"Nos patriae fines, et dulcia linquimus arva."

But he went without parade of feeling or many words.

Fifteen years of missionary life, five as a presbyter and ten as a bishop (for he was consecrated on St. Matthias's Day, 1861) were now before him, and then, unknown to him, the martyr's crown!

The things that strike one most in that fifteen years' life of selfdenial, unremitting labor, and "perils by land and sea," are its cheerful acceptance of hardness, its "patient continuance in welldoing," and the entire freedom of him who lived it from anything like self-consciousness.

There was no labor too menial, no work too hard or humble for him to undertake; and he put the same rules about many things upon himself which he put upon "the smallest Melanesian boy." Bishop Selwyn wrote: "I wish you could see him in the midst of his thirty-eight scholars, at Kohimarama, with eighteen dialects buzzing round him, with a cheerful look and a cheerful word for every one, teaching A, B, C with as much gusto as if they were the X, Y, Z of some deep problem, or marshalling a field of cricketers as if he were still the captain of the Eleven at Eton; and when school and play are over, conducting his polyglot service in the mission chapel.".

And so he went on in what many who fancy that the Church is to advance and prosper by a hard riding of hobbies, who cannot imagine any progress without a perpetual change of places, would call a very dull routine. But this sort of dull routine comes out in all great things in nature and in grace, and convulsionary movements rarely work much in the way of abiding result.

With it all, there was an utter absence of that self-consciousness which is so repulsive, especially when it works out in what some one has termed "a pious fuss." There was nothing of this in the missionary or the bishop; we are told (how one's heart warms at the words in these sensational days!) that Bishop Patteson "would not have liked to have had fine things said or written about his work. His life in the Melanesian archipelago, which is poetry and romance to us, was prose to him; but prose, nevertheless, which was written in the grand characters of simple duty." Noble words, and true as they are noble !

never know of

That lonely

He was always in some, often in great, and once in special danger before the end came. And what an end! He was alone with his murderers and his God. Perhaps we shall his last words or acts, or just how and where he fell. canoe, which drifted out toward the coral reef, had no tale to tell of what we long to hear; but it bore a lifeless form, on whose brow abode no trace of suffering, but rather a glimpse of the glory which shall be revealed. "Peace reigned supreme in that calm smile." The end had crowned the work!

We need hardly add that we trust this charming volume may have many readers. None can read it, and not be helped and bettered by it.

SPE

PEAKING generally, it is the object of this movement to resist the recent encroachments of Popery upon intellectual, civil, and religious rights; to purge Latin Christianity of its corruptions, and ultimately to restore it in faith, in morals and polity, to the pattern embodied in the primitive and undivided Church. Our religious and secular press have published a great deal of information in regard to it; and yet, for some reason, our people do not seem to be much interested in it. This lack of interest arises, probably, from a partial. knowledge of the facts. What information has reached the reading public has come in the letters of occasional correspondents, or in detached paragraphs compiled from foreign newspapers, giving mere snatches and glimpses of facts. It is not strange, therefore, that this movement should be regarded by some as a short-lived outburst of remonstrance and indignation from a few scattered malcontents, still dwelling within the enclosure of Romanism; and by others as a disorderly, incoherent attempt, on the part of a small school of German Catholics infected by the free spirit of the surrounding Protestantism, to protest against the despotism of that "insolent and aggressive faction" in the Roman Church which originated and forced through xcviii.-1

to the bitter end the decrees of the Vatican Council. Both notions fall short of the facts, and betray ignorance of the issues involved, and of the causes and aims of the movement. There has been no religious uprising since the Reformation of the sixteenth century so deeply grounded in principle, or so important in its consequences, or led by men of such gravity of character, depth of learning, and earnestness of purpose. There is no other movement in the domain of religion to-day, that history will pronounce more clear cut in its aim, or more positive in its tone. It is eminently the duty of every American Churchman to study it closely, and to ascertain how far it is likely to deserve his sympathy, or to excite his apprehensions. It is not yet, by any means, a finality; still tentative and transitional, no one can yet prescribe its metes and bounds, or predict its ultimate results. Many risks are yet to be encountered, and consequently much uncertainty attaches to its future development. The wise and temperate leadership which has thus far guided it may be forced to give way to one of violent and impetuous temper, which will bring with it all the hazards of a revolution, out of which modern rationalism and infidelity may gather a new army of disciples. But whatever its future, such is its character, and such its proportions now, that no intelligent member of the Church of Christ can afford to pass it by as one of the casual topics of the day.

In handling the subject, the writer will turn to account some opportunities for observation afforded him during a recent sojourn in Germany. The movement cannot be well understood without knowing the master spirits who are guiding it, and studying the temperament of the people who are to be most immediately affected by it.

The origin of this effort to reclaim the Church of Rome from her enormous assumptions of power, and from the corruptions of her dogmatic and practical systems, dates far back in the past, and recalls many well-meant but impotent struggles for the same end.

The feelings and convictions which have culminated in this movement were not the growth of a day, or of any one startling event. The promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility simply brought them to a focus, and obliged earnest men to put their wills into their thoughts, action into their theories; and no longer to speak and print their protests, but to organize them into solemn and resolute insurrection against evils which menaced the foundations of the faith and civilization of Christendom.

It is not more true that Joseph II. of Austria, and his brother, Leopold of Tuscany, toward the close of the eighteenth century, and