respond to its charm. A Frederick W. Robertson surely needs no apology, when his name is mentioned in this connection; but no man ever had a profounder passion for soldiership than he. Fate drove him as the next alternative into the Church, but he was always at heart a warrior. To read of battles, the storming of batteries, and the braving of dangers was sure to bring back his early disappointment. Warfare with him would have been a religion. He might not have gone so far as to say, with Wordsworth, that

but he never would have fought without the sense of God. With Von Moltke, he might have called war a “divine and divinely appointed institution, an element in the Godordained order of the world"; and it would be as illogical to attribute the statement to ferocity of disposition in the one case as in the other. To the stern old soldier, the mission of war is sad and provisional; but, while he can sympathize with efforts to alleviate its horrors, the proposition even to contemplate its possible suppression is to him unthinkable. But Von Moltke is not alone the greatest military genius of modern Europe, he is also a thinker and scholar. His nature is amiable, tender, and affectionate beyond the wont of men. Poetry contains no finer incident than his loyal devotion to the memory of his dead wife. It was no ruthless hand that built her last resting-place into an altar inscribed with the words, "Love is the fulfilling of the Law"; nor is it any monster of cruelty who for more than a quarter of a century has sought this chapel of the dead for daily communion and prayer.

To call modern defense of warfare a relic of barbarism, a mere survival of savage instinct, does not quite seem to meet the case. At any rate, the old impulse and charm bid fair to outlast all our education to the contrary. There is something of possible grandeur in these things, for the loss of which our culture in the opposite direction does not appear to compensate. We pride ourselves upon our civilization, and point to the lengthening average of human life

as an undoubted gain. Meanwhile, ease and prosperity have grown somewhat selfish under the sanctions of science and the complacent indifferentism of organized philanthropy. The question is heard, Is life worth living? From the midst of cloying comfort or petty routine comes the appeal for a new spirit and inspiration in life. In unguarded moments such as these, men will thrill as of old at the sight of marching armies, hearing in the strains of martial music and the measured tramp of feet the old glad call to selfabandonment in a Cause.

It is out of a sympathy with this general fact that Emerson can see nothing better to be done with warfare than the lifting of it up and the purifying of its processes. He makes no question as to the ideal ends which it has subserved. "There is always," he says, "an instinctive sense of right, an obscure idea which animates either party, and which in long periods vindicates itself." He accordingly ventures the suggestion that the battles to come will be fought from balloons in the air. With Tennyson, he has dipt into the future,"

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"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue." Political economists agree that a great people can be created by the touch of war. The American Revolution made. us a nation. Under a sense of common suffering and danger, our localisms and narrowness were forgotten. But little is said of the later risks which come from an assured and unchallenged existence. These are to be found graphically pictured in that little gem of colonial biography, Weems' Life of Marion. Moralists confess that manliness and virtue have been fostered by conflict in the past, but they say nothing of that demand which generous youth will always make for a sphere of action which takes it out of self. Sometimes, it would seem as if this demand were degenerating among us, as if our young men were adapting themselves to a self-seeking order of society with too ready a zeal. This spirit of the age has reached even as far as the old military civilizations of Europe. The young men are

no longer willing to bear arms, and impatient of the routine and stagnation of camps. The German government finds it necessary to limit emigration as a too frequent resource of escape from the performance of military duty. In our own case, this distaste for service is helped by our isolated situation. We have never had in this country any cultivation of the martial sentiment. We lack the background of tradition, the atmosphere which is favorable to its creation. To be sure, we have our West Point and Annapolis, our ghost of a navy, and our standing army,- rightly so named, if, indeed, sitting army might not be the better term. Nothing more clearly shows our temper as a people, however, than our very indifference as to their existence or condition. Like our system of police, they are largely preventive in character, hardly suggesting anything aggressive. Ours is practically an experiment in the line of unarmed subsistence. We have enough of the general capacity for soldiership to carry through creditably a local issue like that of our last war, but the impulse was spasmodic, not permanent. Even if we cared for "glory," we should not find anything inspiring in a rapidly decreasing Indian frontier. Whatever may be said of a battle-field, a barrack arouses little enthusiasm. Whichever way we turn, we miss alike the opportunity and incentive for adventurous daring or deeds of chivalry. It is evident that an entirely new set of social forces is at work among us, and the results are not so easily foretold as some of our prophets of evolution would have us believe.

Possibly, the civil and commercial instincts, when they have come to full development, may furnish sufficient field for the display of heroism. Arbitration may have increasing availability as a method of dealing between nation and nation. The world's experience with jurisdiction, however, hardly warrants the confidence that large bodies of men will tamely submit to it, in all cases, the grave and pressing issues of the hour. Legal procedure has answered very well as a social expedient. But, in its ordinary use, it seldom reaches beyond the compounding of damages in matters too

small to admit of an absolute appeal. Its most loyal advocates would hardly claim that it had ever represented any great degree of ideal justice. Its tedious and uncertain processes, together with its openness to bribery, will ever tend to bring it under suspicion when the dearest interests of the people are at stake. There are instances where it can and will be used. Many wars are so needless as to suggest some such inevitable means of adjustment, and the part which the sword has hitherto played in human history is bound to diminish in consequence. But can we get on wholly without it, or would it be well for us if we could? Reason tells us that the surgeon's knife, however distasteful to our sensibilities, is not likely to be altogether outgrown. In the actual conditions of life, nations as well as individuals sometimes require the scalpel, as a last resort. The social and political existence of men must, of necessity, be a constant mingling of dangers and delights. Man's nearness to man always threatens to become a disease or a wrong. There are alments of the body corporate which refuse to adapt themselves to mild, innocuous methods of mind-cure. Letting of blood seems to be the only relief for some disorders of collective as well as individual life. Arbitration has its work to do; but there are wars which spring spontaneously and naturally from the soil, and were as much included in the evolution of things as were the geologic upheavals by which the crust of the earth was stratified for human use. The physical world, to be sure, comes at length to a point of comparative equilibrium and rigidity. This is measurably true also of the moral world, but there is less of this fixedness of formation the higher up in the sphere of life we go. It is to be doubted if warfare is not in some degree essential to outward growth, as inward advancement has always depended upon human struggle and pain. Possibly, this element may be eliminated from life; but there would seem to be some question still as to the advisability of doing so. At least, this aspect of the matter does not appear to have had the full discussion that it deserves.

EDWARD F. HAYWARD.

THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Harmonies of the Gospels once enjoyed a repute which can scarcely be theirs again, so greatly has the critical insight of our time modified our feeling both of our ability and of our need of "reconciling" the four narratives of the life of Jesus. We do not feel obliged, in particular, to struggle after a consistent union of the Synoptics with the Fourth Gospel, when we recognize that the latter gives an ideal view of Jesus, in accordance with certain dogmatic preconceptions. The necessity of harmonizing such an acknowledged idealization with the simple realism of the first three Gospels is not apparent; and, at the same time, our ability falters under a plain recognition of these contrary points of view, which made diversities and contradictions inseparable from the fourfold narrative. But every attempt to make one self-consistent story from all the Gospels taken as equally trustworthy has its uses, and such a harmony should keep even pace with the progress of New Testament criticism. We welcome, therefore, a new edition, in the best dress which the Riverside Press can give it, of Rev. Dr. Edward Robinson's well-known Harmony, first issued in 1851. Prof. Riddle, of Hartford, has thoroughly revised the work, while adhering to the original compiler's main lines. The Greek text is now that of Tischendorf's eighth edition (1869) instead of Hahn's; and the critical notes at the foot of the page give the more important readings in which the two great English editions, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort's, differ from Tischendorf, with the authorities supporting each, while the reading followed in the Revised Version of 1881 is also noted. The Received Text is properly treated as of "no critical value whatever," and its variations are not heeded. A few changes in the arrangement of the sections have been made, and many notes added, in order to bring up the appendix to the present state of Biblical knowledge. Dr. Robinson made the ministry of Jesus cover three years and include four passovers. He also considered that he had successfully combined the four narratives of the resurrection. We cannot agree with him or his editor on these points, but it is a pleasure to have so excellent a revision of a reference work which is not likely to be superseded. Every theologian needs