"non-denominational" or "Rushdee" public schools of the Ottoman Empire. These schools were established some twenty years since under the influence of Western ideas, with the avowed object of promoting a purely secular education, by which the children, both of Mahometan and Christian parents, should be introduced to the civilisation and culture of Europe. The programme of study included European languages, especially French, history, mathematics, natural sciences, and the like. A system of secular education, established in the very heart of Islam, was indeed a portent; but it did not last. There are now no stricter Muslim schools than these very "Rushdee " institutions. "European tongues, European learning, European sciences have dwindled to absolute extinction; they have departed without being desired, and no one seeks after them or regrets... All is as thoroughly and emphatically Mahometan as an Omar or an Othman himself could desire; all else is combated or ignored; the training and the trained are once more on the narrow line of Islam, and Islam only." The second noticeable sign of the times is "the great diminution in the use, or rather abuse, of fermented and alcoholic liquors among the Mahometan populations, high and low, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the "river of Egypt." The observance or non-observance of the prohibitive precepts of the Kura'n appears to be a kind of thermometrical test of the degree of Mahometan fervour at large. On this subject we should be glad of more detailed information. If, as Mr. Palgrave says, "the Turkish soldier is now as eminent in his abstemious sobriety as his predecessor, the Janissary, was in his shameless drunkenness, and the Turkish sailor has abandoned the grog-shop to the Maltese, the Levantine, and the Greek," we should like to look more closely into the nature of the restraining power, even if the contrast with the state of a country like our own should add one more to the humiliations of a nominally Christian people. A third sign is the diminution of Europeans and of native Christians in the public service. The tendency to exclude Europeans, and, where possible, native Christians, is not less marked than was the eagerness to make use of them, and bring them forward a century ago." Here, again, the explanation given is the "purism" of revived Islam. Lastly, is to be noticed the general building and repairing of mosques, colleges, schools, and chapels, and the steady increase in the number of pilgrims to the holy places of Islam. Accepting these results of Mr. Palgrave's observation, some questions of the utmost importance open before us. This problem of Mahometanism presses into the sphere of political, philosophical, and Christian thought. On political grounds alone it would deserve the best attention of Englishmen. We are more concerned with it than any other European power, seeing that our Empire includes, in India alone, no less than twenty millions of Mahometans. These twenty millions are part and parcel of a great brotherhood, with Mecca for its centre, stretching across two continents, with a system of arterial circulation which makes the common gains and grievances of Islam to be the gain or grievance of each of its adherents. This spiritual community is one wherever it is found; political and national boundaries not being so strong to sever as the religious idea to unite the vast constituency. But the religious side of the problem is at once the most interesting and the most difficult. Of all the faiths in the world, the Jewish only excepted, this is the most closely related to our own, and yet is separated from it by the strongest antagonism that one religion has ever shown towards another. It may, indeed, be considered a Christian heresy, "the bastard offspring of a Christian father and Jewish mother," as Döllinger has called it, and the pity is, that the Christianity with which it has long been confronted in the East, is, perhaps, the most miserable caricature of Christianity that bears the august name. At the same time, we see reasons for not accepting too hastily Mr. Palgrave's high estimate of the spiritual force and purity of Islam at the present day. It may well be that from the corruptions of Constantinople and Cairo, the meeting-places of the East and the West, we have argued a degeneracy of Mahometanism which a knowledge of the further East would contradict; but there is room for this admission without going all the way with Mr. Palgrave in his Apologia. We do not, in the least, impugn the accuracy of his statements where they refer to facts, but we have some privilege in the way of doubt or hesitation where his inferences are concerned. In comparing Mahometanism with Christianity, sometimes directly, at other times by implication, he shows that curious injustice to the latter which we have occasionally noticed in some of our much-travelled countrymen. He hits the blots of Christendom with much vigour, being certainly under no restraint of tenderness; but when the evils of Islam are referred to, he ceases to be sarcastic, and is disposed to extenuate and explain. The sectarian bitternesses, the persecutions which have dishonoured the former, are not spared, and the Christian sects of the Levant, in particular, come in for his contempt. His abhorrence of spiritual tyranny and pretentiousness is so strongly expressed, that one would at least expect him rightly to characterise the stern intolerance of Islam, of which, however, he thus disposes :-" Instances have occurred, it will be said, of religious intolerance and violent fanaticism, culminating in scenes like those which have, from time to time, disgraced Aleppo, Nabloos, Damascus, and Cairo. But the causes of these outbreaks invariably prove, on investigation, to have been of a national or political, nowise of a religious character. It would be unjust to lay either the malice of the leaders, or the ferocity of the rabble, to the charge of a religion which has, in the person of its most authentic representatives, Imams and Mollas, invariably disowned such acts, and branded them as the most atrocious of crimes." This is all we ask for in the way of discrimination where the character of the Christian rel gion is concerned. If the Imams and Mollas of Mahometanism, by repudiating certain acts of violence, can clear their religion from the imputation of cruelty and intolerance, surely the spirit and language of Christ should be 66 enough to save His religion from such imputations at the hands at least of Christian writers. Mr. Palgrave's defence of Mahometanism in this particular appears to us to have the fault of proving too much, as it brings him into conflict with the witness of its whole history. He contends that from Mahometan philosophy "springs a tolerating spirit, which, while admitting all, renders further change next to impossible, because simply superfluous; and a largeness of belief that no subsequent discoveries can disconcert, because all are pre-included." By way of illustration he quotes some lines from "the most popular of Mahometan didactic poets, Ebn Farid, speaking as the mouthpiece of the personified Unity : "The savage who falls prostrate to the stone he worships in the plain, : If this amiable Pantheism, breathing toleration, be the real spirit of the religion of Omar and Othman already alluded to, then, by the help of a verse or two from Pope's Universal Prayer, we should not despair of proving that to talk of a persecuting Christianity is absurd, and that Mr. Palgrave might have spared us the allusions to Smithfield and the massacre of the Huguenots. But frequently, throughout this most interesting volume, the allusions to Christianity are such as give us pain, and are not, we venture to say, worthy of the author. "The comparative simplicity, not to say barrenness, of the holograph Koran, is undoubtedly much less embarrassing to the liberal-minded commentator than is the multitudinous array of fact and dogma contained, or implied, in our own more composite Volume." ... "Doubtless, no creed, no articled system, can be absolutely lasting upon earth; and the means which Muslims, Christians, and whoever else, revere, will, in their turn, pass away, and be superseded. But of all the forms and systems now extant, none has, it would seem, a greater intrinsic power of resistance or persistence than Islam." Again, he says, "A time may, indeed, be in store when all dogmatic systems will disappear, all sectarian differences be obliterated before the communism of Humanity and the unity of Divine order; but till then, and so long as the children of one Father shall call on that Father by different names, and the scholars of one Master repeat His lesson each diversely, we may, with tolerable confidence, assert that the Allah of Arabia will not want worshippers, nor the Koran of its Prophet those who read, revere, and follow." We do not stay to ask what "the communism of humanity and the unity of Divine order" may mean. Phrases like these are generally final terms with those who use them, and it is useless to press for their analysis; but sentences which display such misapprehension of Christianity make us doubt whether Mr. Palgrave is right in his reading of the mystery of Islam. We should have had more confidence in his horoscope of Islam had he shown more insight into the distinctive position and character of our own religion. Meanwhile, his book is profoundly interesting; for the facts brought to light, we have all possible respect, and for the conclusions at which the author arrives, all the respect that is possible. Children Viewed in the Light of Scripture. By the Rev. Wm. Reid, Lothian-road United Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Wm. Oliphant and Co. 1872. THIS book deals with children, their relation to the Church and the Church's duty towards them; their mission and destiny; or, to use the author's own language, it is "a résumé of Scripture teaching concerning the young. Receiving a request to publish a sermon he had preached on the death of children, Mr. Reid was led to the wise conclusion that "it is their life and not their death which chiefly calls for solicitude and pious endeavour;" and hence this admirable, earnest, practical little book, eminently suited to the times, and filling up a gap in Christian literature. The first part treats of the mission of children in society, and is almost a cyclopædia of anecdote, poetry, and quotation illustrative of the subject. After devoting the next section to the consideration of "infant guilt and depravity," in which the author asserts the doctrine of the hereditary transmission of the soul, and of universal, and therefore also infant depravity, he enters on that part of his book where a reader will linger with greatest pleasure and satisfaction. In language simple and intelligible to all, enforced by apt citations of Scripture, the evangelical doctrine as to the import of baptism is propounded and upheld. Avoiding the Scylla and Charybdis of the subject and the perils of the ocean between-baptismal regeneration on the one hand, the denial of the obligation of baptism altogether on the other hand, and Irving's trimming between the two-Mr. Reid thus states his creed :-"The efficacy of baptism is similar to the efficacy of any other means of grace, i.e. it is efficacious when properly used; or, in other words, its efficacy results from a belief of the truth which the ordinance symbolises... The fact that baptism is a seal, guarantees that, upon the recipient performing his part, God will be faithful in the accomplishment of all that He has pledged Himself to the covenant of which it is the seal. As the means of grace the ordinance is invaluable, as through it the Spirit may effect the regeneration of which it is the symbol; but it no more infallibly secures grace to the subject of it than do any other means of salvation secure the salvation of those who enjoy them." That the children of believers are the proper subjects of baptism is the thesis of the next chapter. "Children are included in the Abrahamic covenant;" "The relation of children to the Church is perpetuated; therefore those who were the proper subjects of circumcision then, are now the proper subjects of baptism." From this argument, and from the inferential teaching of various passages in the New Testament, Mr. Reid deduces his conclusion, that the position of those who seek "to exclude children from this ordinance is contrary to the entire genius of the Gospel." Nor does he shrink from facing the objections to infant baptism upon which its opponents most strongly insist. That the New Testament contains no express command to baptize infants, that our Saviour was not baptized until manhood, that infants are incapable of faith, that baptism cannot profit them these and other objections are clearly shown to be inconclusive. The mode of administration of baptism is only of subordinate importance compared with the duty of administration. Yet Mr. Reid adduces powerful evidence from the meaning of the term employed in the New Testament to designate the ordinance, from analogy with that purification of the Holy Spirit, of which baptism is symbolical, and from the various instances of indoor and of outdoor baptism recorded in the Scriptures, as well as from considerations of decency, expediency, and climate, to show that the primitive mode of administration was by sprinkling and not by immersion. For this single section upon baptism, Mr. Reid's book is well worth perusal and a place in our libraries. In the remainder of the work the author addresses himself to the practical side of the subject, and out of a large heart claims greater and better organised attention to the religious training of the young. Special services for children, special classes for the preparation of teachers in the Sabbath-school, and the co-operation of parents by the establishment of weekly Bible-lessons in their families, are urged with a pleading persistency. We heartily recommend this little book to all who are engaged in the instruction or interested in the welfare of the young. Life among the Maories of New Zealand: being a Description of Missionary, Colonial, and Military Achievements. By the Rev. Robert Ward, Twenty-six Years a Resident in the North Island. Edited by Rev. Thomas Low and Rev. William Whitby. London: G. Lamb, Sutton-street, Commercial-road, E. Canada: W. Rowe, Toronto. 1872. MR. WARD has written a book which does not deserve the eulogy of his editors. We doubt the wisdom of introducing him as possessing the qualities combined of Livy, Tacitus, Macaulay, and Bancroft, compared with whom Mr. Ward is nowhere, and his editors somewhere behind him. Still the book before us is of considerable merit. It abounds in well-arranged information upon all subjects connected with the islands-religious, historical, social, scientific. It is a most suitable book for an intending emigrant, and surpasses any other work on the subject that we have seen in such details as interest the naturalist, philologist, geographer, and ordinary reader. Mr. Ward has been a resident in New Zealand for more than a quarter of a |