of destruction-as, for instance, hacking her to pieces, or roasting her over a slow fire-would be a fulfillment of the order, and that the word immerse, as used in the order, expressed only the general idea of a "controlling, destructive influence?"

But, perhaps, the true reason for our author's treatment of this passage is to be found in what he says when arguing against the construction, "baptize thyself into the sea." He declares that the word baptize in its primary sense (which that construction would require) puts a man under the water, but makes no provision for taking him out again; so that the command to baptize oneself in that sense, if made the strict and single rule of conduct, would inevitably end in a case of felo de se. We acknowledge, with a shudder, the tremendous possibility; yet, at the same time, we have our doubts whether the good-for-nothing mountebanks referred to by Plutarch would have been deterred even by such a possibility from uttering the fearful, perhaps fatal, command.

It is worthy of remark that among all the instances of baptizo collected by the author, this is the only one in which he finds the meaning to purify. With what reason he finds it here, the reader can judge. It is supposed by many that in New Testament times baptizo had acquired the meaning to purify: but for that opinion-however supported by other considerations-we can discover no support in the usage of the heathen writers.

THE FIRST HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY.* -This book is interesting in so far as it gives us a glimpse of the views of the neological writers of French Protestantism, of whom the Coquerels, father and son, are well known representatives. The root of this branch of destructive criticism is to be traced to Germany, and its results are but modifications of the system of Baur of Tübingen. But in France, as the translator says, "This movement originated chiefly in the pulpit, and consequently has a less speculative character and a more practical aim than the criticism of Germany, which sprang from the professorial chair." It is not, therefore, from its learning or originality that the present volume has any claim on the public attention, but only as a

* The First Historical Transformations of Christianity. From the French of ATHANASE COQUEREL the Younger. By E. P. EVANS, Ph. D. Boston: William V. Spencer, 203 Washington street.

1867.

modification of the Tübingen school, produced by the practical stand point and national characteristics of the author.

Assuming the conclusion of Baur concerning the violent opposition of the Judaizing and Hellenistic parties in the early church, M. Coquerel regards the Christianity which proceeded from the lips of Christ as wholly pure, but as subjected, in consequence of men's inability fully to comprehend and receive it, from the very first, to an admixture of error. Thus he makes Stephen not only the first martyr, but the first reformer of the faith. It was he who started the movement usually ascribed to Paul, who was converted by imbibing his spirit. James and Paul represent the extreme views of the early church, and Peter is the compromise between the two-his reason inclining to Paul, his nature and habit to James. Hence the same old story of not only special individual apprehensions of Christianity, but of wholly antagonistic views held by those who were its original expounders. The Christianity represented by Peter became for many reasons the prevailing type in the Roman Church, which, from its metropolitan position, gradually gave the form to other churches, and pushed the oriental mysticism of John into the background, while it absorbed and transformed the Judaizing and Pauline elements. In its contact with Paganism, it was likewise changed by absorbing many of its elements, clothing them with Christian significance and symbolism. Thus, at the time of the Reformation, there existed something wholly alien from the mind of Christ, which the Reformers, in the spirit of the early Reformers, Stephen and Paul, transformed into something much more like the original idea. But as Paul himself had been far too dogmatic, and in his dialectic, especially regarding the decrees of God and the atoning work of Christ, contradicted the spirit in which he wrought and the aim for which he labored, so the Reformers re peated his error, and "fought Catholicism under its own banner." The transformation, therefore, which remains to be accomplished, and which the modern critical school aim at and may hope to accomplish, is to bring back Christianity to the Sermon on the Mount and other utterances of Christ, leaving out speculations as to his nature, objective work, and resurrection, as theological disputes which do not touch the essence of Christianity, "which is the reign of God in the conscience by the sole power of love." This is the universal element held by Peter, Paul, and John, but restrained and injured in the first by Judaizing tendencies to

ritual; in the second, by dogmatic subtleties; in the third, by theo. sophic theories. The church has in its course and creeds developed the erroneous bands which have shackled the spirit. Modern criticism would develop the spirit freed from these cramping errors. Even the Apostles' Creed is too dogmatic and historical. All we want is the pure idea.

So much for the aim and method of this book. There is some. thing, however, very fresh and sprightly in the author's handling of his theme. It is very singular and inconsequent that he admits so much historical verity in the Gospels. He professes a belief even in the Resurrection of Jesus, which, however, he does not deem to be essential for a true Christian to hold, and does not seem to see the tremendous effect which this fact must have on the estimation of the person of Christ and his redemptive work. The difficult questions concerning his birth and nature, if not solved in that alembic, become simply matters of exegesis. This M. Coquerel's German teachers have not failed to see, and, therefore, reject the fact, which he admits, as fatal to that apprehension of Christianity which they seek to establish. And our author's admissions are fatal to his theory. They are an evidence of how the practical mind clings to facts which the mere theorist rejects without scruple; and had M. Coquerel been more true to his practical bent as a preacher, he could hardly, without more effort, have been induced to give up the doctrine of Christ's person, which he confesses John held, or the doctrine of Christ's redemptive work, which he ascribes to Paul, as superfluities not essential to a true apprehension of Christianity; constituting, as they do together, such an historical witness to the self-sacrificing love of God, whose love to man, M. Coquerel confesses, must awaken in him that love to God, whereby God shall rule in the conscience.

Whatever Christianity as a science may, in the minds of philos ophers, be able to dispense with, as a religion, or act for bringing men to the realization of its idea, it demands imperatively the historical basis on which it assumes to rest. The historical Christ is what the soul wants both as a witness to God's love and as a mediator of it to sinful man. And to speak to men of Christianity apart from the person of its founder, or from the way in which it came into the world, is a contradictio in adjecto. This transformation is but a transmigration which must stifle its spirit and extinguish its life. Its soul can exist and work only in the body which God has appointed for it, which Peter, Paul, and John

embraced, and which the Church, despite such reasoning as that of our author, will, with the instinct of self-preservation, ever hold fast.

MONSELL'S RELIGION OF REDEMPTION.*-This volume is in some respects quite unique, and for a theological treatise altogether remarkable. The author, as the title informs us, has been Pastor in Neufchatel. He tells us in his preface that he "has been for a quarter of a century, speaking, preaching, writing, and even thinking in a foreign tongue." But he has obviously been a diligent reader and an earnest thinker of the ablest religious writers of modern times, of every school and type of theology-Romanist, Protestant, and Rationalistic, in the English, French, and German languages, particularly in the two former. He has read earnestly, thought independently, and yet with a comprehensive and catholic spirit. He has quoted abundantly from the writers whom he has read and referred to many whose thoughts he has expressed in his own words. His English style is polished and copious, without being affected or wearisome, and indicates what advantage may be derived from familiarity with French diction, without losing the English idiom. But what is more noticeable than the style is the freedom from theological technicalities, without the sacrifice of precision of thought and the successful use of the language of literature, without either the cant of affectation, or the cant of libertinism. For a work which goes so thoroughly and somewhat minutely into theological distinctions it is surprisingly free from scholastic or theological nomenclature. Mr. Monsell is at home in modern literature as in modern theology, and his acquaintance with the various phases of European life and society is broad and appreciative. His opinions would be pronounced thoroughly evangelical, without being Calvinistic in the extreme. In respect to Sin and Redemption, none but a narrow minded and ignorant critic would think of quarreling with him. He was evidently an ardent admirer and disciple of Alexander Vinet, from whom he quotes more abundantly than from any other writer. The field of his discussion is somewhat wide, as will be readily inferred from the titles of the five books into which the volume is

*The Religion of Redemption. A Contribution to the Preliminaries of Christian Apology. By R. W. MONSELL, B. A., late Pastor of the Congregational Church of Neufchatel, Switzerland. London: William Hunt & Co. 1867. 8vo. pp. 547.

divided, viz., Human Guilt and Misery; Redemption; Appropriation of Redemption; Individual Christian Life; Collective Christian Life and History.

LEA'S HISTORY OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY.*-Mr. Lea, who has already given proof, in a volume of Essays, of his intimate acquaintance with the ecclesiastical history of the middle ages, has undertaken in this new volume to present a full, consecutive narrative of the rise of the custom of clerical celibacy, and of the establishment of this practice as a fixed law of the Latin Church. How copious were the materials which passed under his eye, the reader is enabled to judge from the extended, apposite marginal citations, by which the statements of the text are supported and illustrated. In a series of thirty chapters, the entire course of Church History, from Nicholas, the Deacon, and the Nicolites to the last enactments respecting clerical marriage in Italy, is traversed. The arrangement is clear and logical, and the style of the work is perspicuous and wholly free from all attempts at rhetorical effect. Mr. Lea writes with no controversial aim, and we are under the necessity of making no discount in consequence of any partisan bias in his mind; yet he does not withhold the natural inferences which are suggested to a reflecting mind in the progress of the history, and his work, by the ample array of facts which it offers, is really a powerful and convincing argument against the law of enforced celibacy in the church. The comparatively brief portion of the volume which is devoted to the Ancient Church, though it is instructive and generally correct, is still inferior to the subsequent chapters which relate to the middle ages,-a part of the field where the learned author is obviously more at home. One of the finest passages in the book is the detailed account of the Hildebrandian reform, and of the commotion which that great movement stirred in the various countries of Europe. This account is here more full than in the principal manuals of Church History, and is founded, as is the work generally, upon a careful, independent study of the original sources of knowledge on the subject. We cannot refrain from an expression of satisfaction that an American publisher has had the inclination, and found the time, to add to the literature of his country so substantial and important a contribution to theological learning.

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* An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. By HENRY C. LEA, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1867.