benevolences to the working class, and will provide that class with a position in small parish councils throughout London by which they can help to render justice to the whole community, this advance in dignity and trust will be esteemed immeasurably above a paltry pauperising pension; and there will be no further call for Metropolitan reform or unification,' by which their whole class would be degraded into voting items, provender for caucus agents, and Trades Union agitators. As to the District Councils and their "dignity," about which the Municipal Society appears to be so much concerned, this can never be conferred by Act of Parliament. Consideration comes by well-established merit, not by legislation. If the men of London are, by means of their good work in little parishes, intelligent and dignified, the men selected from among them for the District Councils will obtain full reverence according to their worthiness. True municipal government is practical and simple, modest and reserved, not a thing of parade. The Old City' is not estimated by its Guildhall dinners and its Lord Mayor's Show the vulgar trappings of dignity, poor playthings, brought out once a year. Its little Wards are the foundation of the goodwill and consideration of the public; and its Livery Companies, which should be largely imitated in the District Parishes, instead of being plundered in their ancient home, have sprung from social liberality, a sentiment and practice that so greatly need to be revived. These Companies combine the City men in friendliness and works of charity; and so for good administration, the 'Old City' is a pattern for the whole Metropolis, and should, for its example and its history, be steadfastly maintained in its pre-eminence. Above all, the idea that large constituencies of secret, irresponsible, and inexperienced voters are a guarantee for liberal self-government should be abandoned. England became great by strenuous self-government in small communities. In London, with its multitudinous and extensive District Parishes, self-government is avoided as a nuisance; and the administration is delegated to the unknown. Thus, London is not great, but only big, and has no honoured character or social power. Great nations are developed by their very small municipalities. When these are over-populated and become unwieldy, then a nation stagnates, and its decadence begins. At present we require in London wellknown cultivated men of moral power, of every rank, and of experience in public work; not fickle votes, with timid manikins to cast them into the urn. And thus, as formerly, intelligent and practised, very small municipalities again would give a wise stability to all the conduct of our national affairs. In thus endeavouring to discuss and estimate a few of the proposals made in this Prospectus, we are seeking to advance the cause for which the London Municipal Society has been instituted. In its initiatory stages, the peculiar danger of such a society is the tendency to accept from good, impulsive people various suggestions which transgress those rules of policy that experience has ascertained; to strive for great results without first reckoning with the means. During the last half-century England has wonderfully profited by careful philosophic teaching on political affairs; and if advance is still required, wisdom dictates that the lessons of philosophy should be remembered, and should continue to direct our onward progress. Further practical developments for every need are possible upon the lines that, formerly and recently, have led us to immense success; but while in our advance the breath of public feeling and opinion drives the vessel of the State, detailed experience should always be accepted as our guide, and be entrusted with the helm. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. La Sainte Bible, qui comprend l'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament, traduits sur les textes originaux Hébreu et Grec. Par Louis Segond, Docteur en Théologie. London, n. d. 2. New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land, being an Account of some recent Discoveries in the East. By Basil T. A. Evetts, M.A., formerly of the Assyrian Department, British Museum. Illustrated. London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1892. 3. The Holy Land and the Bible. A Book of Scripture Illustrations gathered in Palestine by Cunningham Geikie, D.D. London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1891. 4. (a) Linguistic and Oriental Essays. Three Series. London, 1884 to 1891. (b) Normal Addresses on Bible Diffusion. London, 1892. (c) Essays on the Languages of the Bible and Bible Translation. London, 1890. All by Robert Needham Cust, LL.D., Vice-President of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society. 5. The Ninetieth Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society, with Appendices, &c. London, 1894. 6. From Darkness to Light in Polynesia, with Illustrative Clan Songs. By the Rev. W. W. Gill, LL.D., Author of 'Myths and Songs from the South Pacific,' &c. London, 1894. 7. Forty-two Years amongst the Indians and Eskimo. Pictures from the Life of the Right Rev. John Horden, First Bishop of Moosonee, by Beatrice Batty. London, 1893. 8. My Life in Basuto Land. A Story of Missionary Enterprise in South Africa, by Eugène Casalis, of the Paris Missionary Society. Translated from the French by J. Brierley, M.A. London, 1889. 9. The Gospel in Many Tongues. London, 1893. Vol. 180.-No. 360. U SOME SOME NOME eighteen centuries ago a Galilean fisherman is reported to have uttered a prophecy, the strangeness of which is dulled to Christian ears by their familiarity with it and their conviction of its truth. He foretold that the Gospel which he had been divinely-as he believed-commissioned to proclaim, and which he asserted was inextricably blended with and based upon the teaching of the Old Testament writers, would abide for ever. After the lapse of more than sixteen hundred years the cleverest man in Europe hazarded another prophecy, absolutely antagonistic to that of Peter of Bethsaida. He said that it had needed twelve men to start Christianity on its career, but it would only require one man to destroy it; and he predicted that within a further century the Bible would be utterly forgotten. The hundred years which Voltaire allowed for the quiet euthanasia of Holy Writ is fully expired. The growth of solvent forces, or what are occasionally considered to be such, at the present day is a thousandfold more powerful than Voltaire could have conceived it. The distance of time which separates us from the sage of Ferney is no measure of the enormous strides which science and learning have taken in the interval, and from every branch of this added store of intellectual equipment the fiercest light has been focussed and concentrated upon the Bible. Archæology and philology, history sacred and profane, all the natural sciences, all the ingenuity of scholarship and criticism, have been directed against its authority and integrity; with the result, as we hope briefly to indicate, that the Bible never before had such a hold on the mind and heart of mankind as it enjoys at the present moment. At the outset of our attempt to describe the actual position of the Bible at home and abroad we are oppressed with the same sense of overwhelming material as in a former paper on Church Missions. The work is so vast and so many-sided. Bible translation and diffusion are the indispensable companion and handmaid of all Protestant home and foreign missionary effort, so indispensable that it overleaps the barriers which sever Christians into diverse sects, and unites Ritualist and Puritan in one common effort for its furtherance; so vast that it is only bounded by the utmost limits of our geographical knowledge. If we shall be constrained to notice chiefly the work of one association, the British and Foreign Bible Society, it may truly and literally be said of it that its field is the world, and its work, direct and indirect, simply stupendous. At the indirect results of efforts to circulate the Holy Scriptures we can only cast a very hurried glance, |