"The Formation of the New Testament," by George H. Ferris (Griffith & Rowland Press, 90 cents net), is a well-written account of the development of the New Testament Canon in the early church. It is the result of much study and represents in a popular, but never careless fashion, the positions of the school of Harnack. Mr. Ferris' position is at points somewhat radical and will likely come with considerable shock to the rank and file of people who ordinarily buy the books of denominational publishing houses. The general effect of the book, however, ought to be a strengthening of the belief that the essence of Christianity is not a book, but a life.

Lyman P. Powell, rector of St. John's Church, Northampton, Massachusetts, has given us in his volume

'Christian Science, the Faith and Its Founder' (Putnam, $1.50) what is probably the best criticism of the new cult yet written. It is not as detailed as the volume by Mark Twain (Harper's, $1.75), but it deals with the subject more systematically and with a larger perception of the problems involved. It discusses in detail the relations of Mrs. Eddy to Dr. Quimby, and sets forth the objections to the philosophical and theological positions which lie behind Christian Science. Although its final conclusion is unfavorable, it is in no sense a tirade, and does not lack in appreciation of the real services of the Christian Science movement. Mr. Powell's argument is intelligent, and in our judgment likely to appear unanswerable to those who have not already committed themselves to the new faith.

D. MacMillan's "Life of George Matheson'' (Armstrong & Son, $2 net) is peculiarly welcome. Its value lies not only in its exceptional attractiveness, but also on account of the man whose memory it will perpetuate. The biographer has done his work with a good perspective and deep sympathy. For most of us the opening chapters describing Matheson's life during the slow development of his blindness will be particularly appealing, but probably more important is the main discussion in which the author deals with the really great work of Matheson as a preacher and writer. It is a volume to be placed on the shelf with George Adam Smith's "Life of Henry Drummond."

Fiction

An altogether unusual book is Frank Danby's "Heart of a Child" (Macmillan, $1.50). There are passages in it that would hardly do to read to children, but they are sure to interest readers, for the story deals with the career of a beautiful girl from the slums of London, who became a dancer and singer in vaudeville, was subjected to various temptations, and finally rose above them all to marry an English nobleman who tried to be a villain, but could not. The book is written without cynicism, and has some vivid pictures of stage life. And it leaves a good taste in the

mouth.

Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" to show the evils of one side of our civilization. He has now written "The Metropolis" (Moffat-Yard, $1.50) to show the evils of the sort of life lived by the very rich. We do not know where Mr. Sinclair got his information about the very rich.

It seems to us that he got most of it from "yellow" newspapers. There may be men and women who spend money as lavishly as the characters in his novel; but we doubt if they are very numerous. The story absorbs the reader's interest, and ought to make a highly attractive addition to Mr. Sinclair's socialistic propaganda. It has the weakness of all the author's work in that it generalizes upon exaggerated and unusual data, but it is a book that will be read.

A story of real power as well as technical merit is Anna Robeson Burr's "The Jessup Bequest" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50). It has the merit of introducing few characters and it moves along with something of the inevitableness of the Greek drama. It centers about the terms of a will, and involves hypocrisy on the part of an Episcopal clergyman of high standing, the severe virtue of a young man who is an agnostic, and the unconscious participation of the heroine in the deception of her grandfather, the clergyman. The real interest lies not in dramatic situations, although there is a remarkable account of the wreck of the hero in a storm on the Maine coast, but in the volume's rather extraordinary exposition of human character and motive.

Among the various volumes dealing with the relations of the Roman Church and modern society there are few better balanced than "A Modern Prometheus, by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi (Duffield, $1.50). It is the story of a young New Englander who had separated from her husband, an Italian nobleman, and chanced upon a Jesuit father at Assissi. The story centers about the reaction of the New England conscience upon Roman Catholicism, and incidentally touches upon divorce and remarriage. against the story stands the Jesuit priest, in whom is the inward struggle between man and priest.

Over

Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Shuttle" has proved one of the most widely read and interesting of current novels. It is too long and too melodramatic for a real position in literature, but it is interesting, and at times exciting. (Scribner's, $1.50.)

For a story of mystery, "The Hemlock Avenue Mystery," by Roman Doubleday (Little, Brown & Co., $1.50), is well worth reading, for the reader really is in doubt as to who committed the deed which forms the center of the plot. And this is real commendation for a reading public that is by no means unaccustomed to detective stories.

"Folks Back Home" (The McClure Company, $1.50), by Eugene Wood, is a collection of stories centering about a little town in central Ohio. Many of them have already appeared in the magazine, but they are such realistic human documents that they have something of a permanent value. They certainly make strong reading.

Miss W. K. Clifford's "Proposals to Kathleen" (A. S. Barnes & Co., $1.50) belongs to the class of literature that it is a little difficult for sober-minded folks to read. It tells how various men proposed to an attractive girl.

In reviewing "The History of Music to the Death of Schubert," by John K. Paine, in the March issue of the WORLD TO-DAY, the publishers' name should have been given as Ginn & Co., and the price as $2.

— March 31.- President Roosevelt sent to the Senate the name of David Jayne Hill to succeed Charlemagne Tower as ambassador to Germany; that of Spencer Eddy as minister to the Argentine Republic, and of Arthur M. Beaupre to the Netherlands and Luxemburg.

Graham

Airship.- March 12.- Alexander Bell's new aeroplane, the Red Wing, sailed over Lake Keuka, near Hammondsport, New York, at a height of ten feet, for a distance of 319 feet, at the rate of twenty-five to thirty miles an hour. Assassination.- March 23.- Durham White Stevens, formerly Secretary of the American Legation at Tokyo, later Foreign Japanese Adviser to the Emperor of Korea, assassinated by a Korean in San Francisco.

Capital Punishment.- March 11.- The Ohio senate passed Senator Schmidt's bill prohibiting capital punishment by a vote of twenty-two to

nine.

Coinage.- March 16.- By a vote of 255 to five the House of Representatives passed the bill providing for the restoration of the motto, "In God We Trust" on gold and silver coins.

Congress.- March 19.- The House of Representatives passed a resolution reported by the committee on interstate and foreign commerce, calling on the President to inform the House by what authority of law he had exercised the functions of government on the canal zone since the expiration of the Fifty-eighth Congress... The House passed the pension appropriation bill for $150,869,000, the largest sum ever authorized for the purpose.

March 20.- The Senate passed the ship subsidy bill paying to sixteen-knot vessels plying between this country and South America, the Philippines, Japan, China and Australasia $4 per mile and to twelve-knot vessels $2 per mile.

currency bill by a vote of forty-two to sixteen. [See Events.]

April 2.- The Senate confirmed the nominations made by the President for ambassador to Germany and ministers to other countries. [See under Administration.]

- April 6.- The Sterling employers' liability bill passed by the House, three hundred members voting for it against one negative vote cast by Representative Littlefield of Maine.

-April 8.-The House passed resolutions inquiring as to investigation and prosecution of the paper trust by the government.

-April 9.-The Senate passed the employers' liability bill.

Crime.- March 18.- Harry Orchard, selfconfessed slayer of Frank Steunenburg, former governor of Idaho, sentenced to death.

Deaths. March 17.- William Pinckney Whyte, United States Senator from Maryland, aged eighty-four.

- March 20.- Charles H. Fowler, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, aged seventy

one.

- March 22.- William James Bryan, United States Senator from Florida, aged thirty-two.

March 25.- Charles Cuthbert Hall, president of Union Theological Seminary, and Barrows professor of the University of Chicago, aged fifty-six.

-April 8.-Langdon Smith, journalist and war correspondent, aged fifty. Charles Quarles, constitutional lawyer.

Education.-March 13.-Decided that Andover Theological Seminary shall be removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, next autumn, and affiliated with Harvard University.

March 24.- The New York State Senate passed the bill providing for the equal pay of men and women schoolteachers in New York city.

-April 3.-Andrew Carnegie announced that he would give $5,000,000 more to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in order that professors of state universities may be admitted as beneficiaries of the pension fund. -April 9.- Mrs. Russell Sage gave $250,000 to Princeton University for a freshmen's dormitory.

Floods.- March 19.- Enormous loss from floods in Pittsburg and western Pennsylvania. Industrial plants at a standstill, trains delayed and many families imprisoned in their homes.

Judiciary.- March 16.- Governor Hughes, of New York, appoints ex-Chief Judge Charles Andrews, of the Court of Appeals, as commissioner to hear charges brought against DistrictAttorney Jerome, of New York county.

Labor.- March 12.- Cotton mills at Lowell,

March 23.- Chief Justice Clabaugh, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, rendered a decision making permanent the injunction against the American Federation of Labor, President Gompers and others, from boycotting the business of the Buck Stove & Range Company.

March 27.- Federal troops sent to preserve order at the Treadwell mines in Alaska, where eight hundred miners are on strike.

March 31.- The contracts between the bituminous coal operators and the United Mine Workers of America having expired, some two hundred and fifty thousand miners laid down their tools until a new agreement is signed.

-April 6.- Cotton mills in eastern Connecticut, employing about two thousand five hundred persons, resumed full time operations. Rubber companies also resumed. In Pittsburg six hundred additional men put to work when steel works resumed.

Municipal.- March 13.- John H. Sanderson, contractor; William P. Snyder, former auditorgeneral; W. L. Mathues, former state treasurer, and James M. Shumaker, former superintendent of public buildings and grounds, found guilty of defrauding the State of Pennsylvania in the furnishing of the new capitol.

March 26.- The grand jury at San Francisco filed indictments against Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railways; Tirey L. Ford, general counsel for same corporation, and Abraham Ruef. All three were charged with bribery.

Negro Soldiers.-March 11.-President Roosevelt sent a message to the Senate asking for the passage of a law permitting the restoration to the army of such negro soldiers as can prove they were innocent of participation in the Brownsville affair.

Prohibition.- March 11.- The general local option bill killed in the Maryland State House by a vote of fifty-six to forty-three.....Constitutional prohibition defeated in the Mississippi State Senate by a vote of twenty-one to nineteen.

-April 7.- In eighty-four counties in Illinois, 1,053 townships voted to banish the saloon; 242 remain "wet. [See Events.]

-April 9.- The Alabama Supreme Court decided the general prohibition and 9 o'clock closing laws are constitutional.

Railroads. March 23.- The Supreme Court of the United States rendered decision to the effect that transportation lines are private property, and their owners are entitled to legal protection in their rights. By this decision the railroads in Minnesota can not be compelled to suffer penalty for failure to submit to fixed rates. The recent rate laws were declared unconstitutional.....The Supreme Court also affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court in a case where the Chicago Great Western Railroad was charged with violation of the law in fixing rates on live tock, the court asserting that common carriers

must be credited with honest intent unless proved to the contrary.....The Supreme Court sustained the Southern Railway and Judge Pritchard, of the United States Circuit Court, in releasing Agent Wood, who had been arrested for selling railroad tickets for more than the maximum rate, fixed by the North Carolina statute at two and one-half cents a mile.

- March 27.- The Louisville & Nashville Railroad and the Atlantic Coast Line announced that the wages of employees on their systems will not be reduced.

- March 31.- The Illinois Central Railroad charged with defrauding the State of Illinois in a suit brought by Governor Deneen.....Judge Smith McPherson, of the Federal Court, decided that he had full jurisdiction over the freight and two-cent passenger rates in Missouri.

-April 1.- The Southern Railway and allied lines made a two and one-half cent passenger rate in Tennessee for one year.

-April 8.- President Roosevelt ordered the enforcement of the law giving to all persons who purchase first-class tickets equal accommodations and service. Cases against certain Southern railways using Jim Crow cars had been investigated by Interstate Commerce Commission and railroads ordered to provide equal, if separate, accommodations, but they had not all obeyed law; hence President Roosevelt's order.

Rebates.- March 16.- The United States Supreme Court sustained the Elkins law in the rebate cases against the Armour Packing Company, Swift & Co., Morris & Co., and the Cudahy Packing Company, which had been convicted and fined $15,000 each. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which gave the rebates, was likewise fined.

-April 7.-The Great Northern Railway Company convicted in the United States Court of granting rebates to the American Sugar Refining Company and fined $5,000.

-April 8.- Judge Knappen, in the United States District Court, sentenced the Stearns Salt & Lumber Co., of Ludington, Michigan, to pay a fine of $20,000 for accepting rebates from the Pere Marquette Railroad."

Senatorial.- March 24.- The Maryland legislature voted that ex-Governor John Walter Smith should serve as United States Senator from Maryland for the unexpired term of the late Senator Whyte.....Governor Proctor, of Vermont, appointed John W. Stewart, former governor of Vermont, United States Senator to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Redfield Proctor.

- March 27.- Governor Broward, of Florida, appointed Hall Milton to succeed the late Senator Bryan.

Sunday Closing.-April 2.- The eleventh of the Sunday-closing trials in Chicago ended with a disagreement of the jury, eight voting to acquit.

Tobacco War.- March 24.- Because the state authorities of Kentucky fail to stop the outrages by night riders, an appeal to President Roosevelt was circulated for signatures.

Trusts.-April 7.-The special grand jury investigating the American Ice Company reported that it had not found sufficient evidence on which to indict the company or its president.

Venezuela

Asphalt Claim.-March 14.- The Superior Court affirmed the decision of the lower court, imposing a fine of $5,000,000 on the New York & Bermudez Asphalt Company for promoting the Matas rebellion.

American Claims.—April 2.-The official organ of President Castro, El Constitucional, stated, in reply to Secretary Root's reiterated demand for arbitration, that the cases in question can not be considered, and that the Venezuelan government desired the United States to consider the matter terminated.

-April 9.- Reported that the United States Government is preparing to make a joint naval and military demonstration in Venezuela.

Mexico

Haiti

The

British Empire

Australia.- March

19.-William Humble Ward, Earl of Dudley, appointed governorgeneral.

Casualty.- April 2.- Collision during naval maneuvers off the Isle of Wight caused the loss of thirty-four lives.

-April 6.- By the collapse of two old tenement houses in Oxford, eight persons were killed. Death.-March 24.-Spencer Compton Cavendish, eighth Duke of Devonshire, a leader in English politics, aged seventy-five.

Drury Lane Theater.- March 25.- This historic playhouse destroyed by fire. It had been a dramatic center for 245 years.

Ireland.- March 30.-The House of Commons, after a debate on Home Rule for Ireland, adopted by a vote of 313 to 157 a resolution moved by John Redmond, that "a solution of the problem could only be attained by giving the Irish people legislative and executive control of all purely Irish affairs, subject to the supreme authority of the imperial parliament.''

Florence Nightingale.- March 16.- The freedom of the city of London presented to Florence Nightingale. At her request the value of the gold casket in which the freedom is usually presented was given to the nurses' establishments that bear her name.

Prime Minister.-April 5.-King Edward accepted the resignation of Sir Henry CampbellHerbert Bannerman on account of ill-health. Henry Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer and acting premier, recommended to succeed Mr. Bannerman. The House of Commons adjourned till after the Easter vacation.

-April 8.- Herbert Henry Asquith appointed to the premiership and the post of first lord of the treasury by King Edward. Bill."- March 13.- The "Right-to-Work Unemployed Workmen's bill of the Labor party defeated in the House of Commons by a majority of 149. A clause in the bill made it the duty of the local authorities to provide work for all unemployed persons or, failing this, to maintain them and their families. John Burns, the Labor leader in the House, asked the House to reject the bill.

Steamship Record.- March 12:- The Mauretania of the Cunard line broke the east-bound Atlantic record by covering the distance of 2,932 miles in five days and five minutes.

Swedenborg. April 8. The remains of Emanuel Swedenborg, noted mystic and author, exhumed in London, where they were buried in 1772, and transferred to the Swedish cruiser Fylgia for final burial in Sweden.

The Times.- March 16.- The litigation in regard to The Times ended by a court order sanctioning the formation of a private company to take over the newspaper. Sir Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe) furnished the necessary capital; C. F. Moberly Bell to be managing director, and A. F. Walter, chief owner of The Times, to be chairman of the board of directors. The political policies and the editorial direction practically to remain unchanged.

Elections.-April 5.- The elections resulted in a sweeping victory for the Monarchists; ninetynine members of the Royalist affiliations returned to the chamber out of a total membership of 146. Rioting in Lisbon caused seven deaths. One hundred were wounded.

-April 6.- Lisbon practically an armed camp. Infantry and cavalry patrolling the streets, and guns posted in the principal squares. Republicans charged fraud in elections.

-April 8.-Wholesale arrests made in Lisbon. Two soldiers of the Municipal Guard shot while on sentry duty outside the captain's residence. The city remained quiet.

German Empire

Army Officers' Scandal.- March 17.- Prince Joachim Albrecht, of Prussia, dismissed from the army, ordered abroad and prohibited from wearing the German uniform.

Socialist Demonstration.- March 18.-A thousand Socialists, anarchists and trade-unionists paraded the streets of Berlin and placed wreaths on the graves of the five hundred victims of street fighting in the revolution of March, 1848. The day ended with several riots.

German South-West Africa

War.- March 19.-A battle between the German expeditionary forces and a body of Hot

Stoessel.- March 17. The Emperor firmed the death sentence passed on LieutenantGeneral Stoessel and also the court's recommendation for commutation of the sentence to ten years' imprisonment in a fortress.

Chinese Empire

Japan.- March 11.-The government agreed to release the Japanese ship Tatsu Maru and its cargo of war munitions. An apology was handed to the Japanese minister for transmission to his government. An official statement made that "China, fearing Japan was seeking a pretext for trouble, apologized for hauling down the Japanese flag and proposed to release the ship, only recognizing force majeure."

-March 16.- The Tatsu Maru was released. -April 6.- In Canton the boycott against the Japanese spreading rapidly.

Opium.-April 7.-The throne issued an edict appropriating $72,000 for the creation of an opium board at Peking, to examine into the use of the drug and arraign those indulging in the practice.