Pharisees were willing to bide God's time for this, others were eager to hasten it by their own efforts. (6) The resurrection of the righteous. (7) The personal Messiah. Our author finds that Jesus shared these views and set forth His teachings in general accord with them. At the same time He modified them to some extent in the light of His deeper appreciation of the prophetic teachings of the Old Testament and of His own personal experience, e. g., His moral consciousness and His conception of God. The result, according to Dr. Mathews is, that while the "messianic" and eschatological elements of Jesus' teachings do have a certain value, still we ought to distinguish between these as, on the whole, simply interpretive and other permanent elements. In a word, the experience of Jesus is the criterion by which the relative value of His teachings is to be estimated.

Essentially the same method, with essentially the same results, is followed by the author as he carries his investigation through the remaining cycles of New Testament teaching. Messianism, with its various elements, gave interpretive forms to the Gospel doctrines, but the permanent elements were brought to light by experience, and it is these that are of greater value than the forms taken over from Judaism.

Dr. Mathews constructs his argument with masterly skill and admirable fairness. In its course he is compelled to deal with most of the important topics of New Testament theology. Throughout he shows himself to be an independent, open-minded and reverent scholar.

While omitting many minor criticisms we wish to say that Dr. Mathews has not convinced us that Jesus could not and did not perceive the "interpretive" character of much of the Messianism of His day, the terms of which He used, of necessity. His perception was certainly as keen as ours who have only a fragmentary report of His teachings to guide us. It is easily possible, for example, as Haupt has proved, we think, that the eschatological discourses of Mark xiii, etc., were originally quite different from the form they now have in our Gospels, and neither in these nor in His other teachings is it necessary to hold Him a slave to the letter while we at the same time acknowledge Him spiritually free.

Dr. Mathews' book can only be a stimulus to the best sort of New Testament study and we commend it to all thoughtful readers. (Univ. of Chicago Press, pp. xx, 338. $2.50 net.)

E. E. N.

Under the title, Who Then is This? Mr. Harris G. Hale presents us with a study of the personality of Jesus. We do not notice anything particularly new in this work. So far as it goes it gives us a very reverent and appreciative estimate of Jesus' person. All that is said of those more superficial aspects of Jesus' character, as His love of nature, His eloquence, His authority, His joy, His sympathy, is well said. We are not so sure that the six chapters on the development of Jesus give any satisfactory exhibit of actual development. Some may question whether the concluding chapter is as positive and clear as it might be. Mr. Hale does not commit himself to definite propositions. He is sure that Jesus was and is for all time the supreme personality. He was the most original, the most complete, the most normal of men, perfectly

pure and perfectly sinless, with all that is involved in these. To say any more than this our author hesitates. Possibly he believes more than he says. Certainly our Christian theology needs something more than this at its foundation. (Pilgrim Press, pp. 398. $1.25 net.) E. E. N.

A synthetic presentation of the manifold doctrinal teachings of the various New Testament books might fairly be called New Testament Dogmatics. Dr. Bernhard Weiss prefers to call it the Religion of the New Testament. By way of introduction our author discusses the essence of Christianity, the essence of revelation, the Sacred Scriptures, and religion and theology. He then divides his theme into three parts: Conditions of Redemption, Redemption in Christ, and Realization of Redemption. One does not expect to find, nor will he find, anything new in this latest work of the veteran Berlin professor. For fifty years the author has been lecturing on the New Testament, and his views on the various questions connected with the Book are well known. His Introduction, Commentaries, Life of Christ, Biblical Theology, and several other minor works have been from time to time translated into English, and are perhaps more widely read in America than in Germany. Dr. Weiss has exerted a profound influence in the realm of the New Testament sciences, and that influence has been salutary. In his early career he was rated on this side of the water as somewhat of a radical. Now he is almost a conservative of the conservatives. This is but natural, for American scholarship has grown more liberal, and Dr. Weiss has grown more conservative. From first to last Dr. Weiss has tended toward the systematic rather than the genetic method in his handling of any and all Biblical questions. The book before us is an extreme example of procrustean systematics. One lays it down and picks up the New Testament and wonders how the author came to call his work the Religion of the New Testament. Surely the writers of the various New Testament books never dreamed that they were living in such a rigid temple of faith, with perpendicular walls and rows of fixed columns supporting a flat square-panelled roof. The present-day tendency is to discourage and denounce all efforts to systematize Biblical truths, and perhaps Dr. Weiss' book is a just rebuke. He certainly reminds us how far the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. We do not believe, however, that the genetic method is destructive of or even hostile to the systematic. It should precede the systematic and furnish the latter results. Perhaps it is worth while to find out how many points of doctrine are touched upon in the New Testament and to place them all in a systematic scheme. Dr. Weiss has done this and his book will be widely read. The translation is only fair. (Funk & Wagnalls, pp. 440. $2 net.) E. K. M.

In 1903 Professor Otto Pfleiderer delivered a lecture before the International Theological Congress at Amsterdam, which has been expanded into the Early Christian Conception of Christ. Dr. Pfleiderer treats the theme in five sections, the first being Christ as the Son of God. Our author scans the Old Testament Messianic passages and the Old Testament Apocrypha, and then goes on to speak of the Logos of Philo, the Incarnation attributed to the kings of Egypt and the Oriental kings, both historical and mythical. Of course the Buddha myth is described,

and the conclusion is drawn that the divinity of Christ was largely the product of the tendencies of the times. The second section deals with Christ as the conqueror of Satan, and our author again searches the legends of the time for parallels. Christ as a wonder-worker forms the subject of the third section, and here again we are treated to the current legends, the inference being that this, too, was of legendary origin. The remaining sections deal with Christ as the conqueror of death, and the life-giver, and the King of kings and Lord of lords. Such a work would have been much more welcome forty years ago. Our author seems to be unconscious of the fact that historical criticism has passed beyond the stage. (Putnam's, N. Y., 1905, pp. 170. $1.25.)

E. K. M.

Among the many "replies " to Harnack's "Das Wesen des Christentums," the Gospel and the Church by Alfred Loisy is one of the most incisive. It opens with a section on the sources of the Gospels. In many respects the handling of the sources is surprisingly free and critical, and yet the whole treatment is dominated by dogmatic presuppositions. "Criticism has not to decide if Jesus is or is not the Word Incarnate, if He existed before his terrestrial manifestation, if He was consecrated Messiah from his conception, or from the day of his baptism, if the idea of the Messiah in its earliest form, and in its successive transformations, is a truth." Very true. But neither can faith alone be trusted to decide. It needs the chastening of historical criticism. Otherwise we are back with Bonaventura. Section second deals with the Gospel idea of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mr. Loisy takes issue with Harnack, who makes "remission of sins and reconciliation with God the central and indeed the whole essential element in the Jesus conception of the Kingdom." But our author goes to the other extreme in declaring that the message of Jesus consisted mainly in the announcement of the approaching Kingdom, and the exhortation to repentance as a means of sharing therein. In the third section, which treats of the Son of God, Mr. Loisy is most trenchant in his criticism of Harnack's views. He denies that "the Father alone belongs to the Gospel," and that Jesus is the Son of God "simply because he reveals the Father." He also contests the truth of Harnack's assertion "that all the name of Son implies is a knowledge of God.". "There is," says Mr. Loisy, "but one Father and one Son," and they are absolute entities, whose relation is also absolute." "Jesus is the Son par excellence, not because He has learnt to know the goodness of the Father and has thus revealed it, but because He alone is the Vicar of God for the Kingdom of Heaven.” “It is his own religion," says Mr. Loisy, "and not the Gospel, which Herr Harnack expounds and defends, when he announces that God and the soul, the soul and its God, are the whole contents of the Gospel." If this be the essence of the Gospel then the idea of the Kingdom and the consciousness Jesus had of himself as the Messiah and the Saviour of the world were sheer illusions. But surely the idea of the Kingdom has become a concrete reality in the resurrection of Christ, in his invisible and constant presence among his people, in the indefinite progress of the Gospel in the world unto his eternal glory. The Divine Liberator has become the Hope of the ages, the Head of the Church, which is his

body and the Saviour of penitent humanity. The remaining sections of the book on the Church, Christian dogma, and Catholic Worship, are treated from the standpoint of a well-read Roman Catholic theologian. Mr. Loisy's criticism of his antagonist is sometimes captious, but in the main he is fair and does not hesitate to state his own divergent views. The views are well worth attention. (Scribner, pp. 277. $1.00 net.)

E. K. M.

In two sumptuous volumes, entitled The Jordan Valley and Petra, Professor Libbey of Princeton University and Dr. Hoskins of Beirut, Syria, have narrated a journey undertaken by them in 1902 from Beirut to Petra.

The record of the journey is written in an easy conversational style and is full of interesting information. The travelers allowed themselves ample time for full examination of interesting sites, and their descriptions furnish many details not easy to be found elsewhere. The descriptions of Jerash (ancient Gerasa), Medeba, Kerak, and Petra are especially valuable. More space is given to Petra, the ancient capital of Edom, than to any other site. As our travelers' stay here was much longer than that of many celebrated travelers and writers such as Stanley, Robinson, and others who have written of Petra, they have been able to give us what must be considered one of the most accurate as well as comprehensive descriptions of that marvelous place. One of the most valuable features of this work is its very large number of exceptionally fine photographs. In this respect it is unique, for in no other work on these regions can anything like this be found. These photographs tell as much as the text and often tell us what the words of the text fail to give us. The ten plates reproducing the wonderful mosaic map of Palestine in the old church of Medeba are also a most valuable addition to the work. In an appendix is given a detailed description of many geological specimens collected on the journey which are now deposited in the Geological Museum of Princeton University. (Putnam, 2 vols., pp. 353, 380. $6.00.)

E. E. N.

Mr. Louis Henry Jordan in his Comparative Religion; Its Genesis and Growth, has produced a book that shows an immense amount of thorough and painstaking work. It should be distinctly understood that the theme is not Religion, but that its subject is the scientific study of religion by the comparative method. It forms the first of a series of three works; the other two, which are "in preparation," are Comparative Religion: Its Principles and Problems," and "Comparative Religion: Its Opportunity and Outlook."

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This volume is really introductory to the other two. Its aim is to define and describe Comparative Religion, differencing it carefully within the field of the science of religions from the History of Religions on the one hand, and from the Philosophy of Religion on the other. The author describes Comparative Religion as "that science which compares the origin, structure, and characteristics of the various religions of the world, with a view of determining their genuine agreements and differences, the measure of relation in which they stand to one another, and

their relative superiority or inferiority when regarded as types. Or, otherwise expressed: Comparative Religion denotes the application and product of a particular method of research,— wherein, in the domain of religion, one's ultimate conclusions are arrived at by means of a series of comparisons (p. 63 f). A more precise definition states that it is "that Science which, by means of comparison, strives to determine with exactness (1) the relation of the various religions of mankind to one another, and (2) the mutual relation of conceptions current within a single religion, but at different periods in its history (p. 65).

This being the topic that is treated the author divides the remainder of the body of the work into two main sections treating respectively The Historical Preparation and the Historical Development. The book therefore contains a description of the science and a sketch of its history, its literature, and its present status. To this is added a series of appendices covering nearly one hundred pages, three colored charts exhibiting in different relations the distribution of religions in the world, and a most elaborate and carefully drawn table showing "the present position of Comparative Religion in the world's universities, colleges, etc." The whole complete with sixty-five pages of index, topical, literary, and chronological.

The appendices contain an immense amount of valuable material such as lists of the lectures given in the various British Lectureships, like the Gifford, Hibbert, Baird, etc., some excellent classifications of the points of view held by different schools of thought, and other interesting matter. The index is a model of painstaking elaboration, containing not only references to the subjects and literature mentioned in the text, but adding chronological data.

We know of no book that begins to give such a clear view of what has been done and what is at present being accomplished in the field of Comparative Religion, in all countries. The great value of the book as a reference handbook makes one forgive the diffusiveness of not a little of the treatment. The author has evidently been hampered by the task of putting into readable form a mass of material quite largely statistical and bibliographical. Even though it seems as if he had attempted the well nigh impossible, he has succeeded in producing a most valuable addition to the literature of his subject. (Imported by Scribner, pp. xx, 668. $3.50 net.)

A. L. G.

Professor Steindorff's American Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, which now appear in book form, are a welcome contribution to the subject from the hand of a master. After a brief sketch of the geography of Egypt and of its history, the author discusses the beginnings of the Egyptian religion. He announces his intention to abstain altogether from speculation in regard to the Asiatic or Semitic origin of any of the elements, and confines himself strictly to historical phenomena. The earliest form of the Egyptian religion was a polydæmonism similar to that which is found among primitive peoples in all parts of the world. Every city, and town, and hamlet had its own protecting divinity. So closely linked were most of these deities to their