ments of Dogmatic Theology, Church History, Church Worship, Apologetics, and Christian Ethics. The Conference and Committee more or less directly-but none of them individually-responsible for this publication comprise all the Theological Professors of Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham, the Principal of King's College, London (whose Boyle Lectures, we observe, are one of the far too few books recommended as aids to study), and sundry officers of Theological Colleges. A pamphlet of sixty pages seems at first sight to be a somewhat feeble result of a conference of so many specialists during a period of not less than six years. A closer examination, however, will show that such an impression would be hasty and unjust. The work is one which has evidently required and secured no small amount of thoughtful labour. We can only regret, as we have already intimated, that more assistance has not been given to the student in the way of indicating suitable books for mastering each section of the Outlines. In this connection we may express a hope that the useful and able articles which have appeared during the present year in the columns of the Church Times on theological aids to study may be reprinted in a separate form.

The Hunterian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, February 14, 1887, by William Savory, F.R.S., President of the College, surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London, J. and A. Churchill), is an eloquent tribute to the memory of the Father of English Surgery, and a powerful answer to the question with which the oration opens-What has Hunter done?' Few countries, we imagine, can boast of having two great surgeons who exhibit such high literary skill as Sir James Paget and Mr. Savory. At p. 30 are some admirable remarks on specialism '—the false and the true with which we cordially agree. The point which Mr. Savory seeks to establish is that 'the greatness of John Hunter is to be estimated, not only by what he discovered, but rather by the lesson and example of his work?'

The Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature (London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden, and Welsh, 1887) consists of a marvellously cheap reproduction of some of the masterpieces of Christian theology and literature at one shilling each. Among those already issued we find the De Imitatione (in a revised and adapted translation), Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living, the quaint and saintly Andrewes' Sermons on the Nativity, and Wilberforce's Five Empires. Ignatius, Chrysostom, Athanasius are to be laid under contribution in subsequent volumes. There is no doubt that this series will render accessible to the many, works which have hitherto been beyond the reach of any but the few. The type and paper are good, and a cloth binding will for a long time dispense with any other. Indifference to Religion, and its Cause, by the Rev. J. LI. Roberts (London: Church of England Pulpit Office), is a thoughtful and temperate sermon, on the dangers of the 'subtle universalism, a disposition to take it for granted that no soul can be lost,' to which Canon Roberts very justly attributes the growing indifference, if not absolute hostility to religion.

Those who are interested-and shame on those who are not interested in the penitentiary work of the Church will read with great profit Twenty-three Years in a House of Mercy, by H. N. (London: Rivingtons, 1887). It is an account of the Kent Penitentiary, known as St. Mary's Home, Stone, Dartford, which practically owes its origin to the Christian zeal and piety of Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P. This little book, written by the superintendent of the Home, is full of deeply interesting facts and stories relating to the unfortunate girls who came under her kind tutelage, and of wise and sober counsels to those who are engaged in or who contemplate undertaking work of the same nature. The Home (which has recently established a branch at Margate) holds sixty penitents, and it is worked by a community of seven or eight ladies, who must have their hands full. Among the wise words with which the volume is jewelled, we note the following: To deal successfully with penitents, you want especially devotion and refinement' (p. 66). Next to the grace of God, few things are more helpful than a keen sense of humour' (ibid.). Then, as regards the choice of workers, Those who "don't get on at home" are the last people one wants in a penitentiary' (p. 65). The great need of all our penitentiaries is classification as to age' (p. 8o). To those who urge the greater importance of preventive work, to the disparagement of penitentiaries, H. N. retorts, 'If your friends and neighbours are struck down by fever, you do not leave them to die while you look after the drains which you know have caused the mischief' (p. 49). We hope this book will meet with a wide circulation.

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The Agricultural Depression and the Sufferings of the Clergy, by R. E. Prothero (London: Guardian Office, 1887), is a pamphlet reprinted from our excellent contemporary, the Guardian, on a subject of most absorbing interest to all Churchmen. It is written with singular vigour of style, and displays a thorough mastery of facts.

This Church and Realm: a Sermon preached in the Church of All Saints, Margaret Street, at the Anniversary Festival of the English Church Union, on June 16, 1887, by Francis Paget, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and sometime Vicar of Bromsgrove (London: Rivingtons, 1887), is replete with that elevation of tone and severity of style which marks all the utterances of the Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. The object of the sermon is not so much to vindicate the principles and the practice of the English Church Union-which are indeed passed over in silence-as to assert the position of the great Church of England as the historic Church of this country. Dr. Paget thinks that the power of that Church is largely due to the fact that she is fearlessly and unapologetically supernatural.' Of the Church this is certainly true, but of a large and we fear increasing number of the clergy it is not lesscertainly the reverse of the truth.

THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No L. JANUARY 1888.

ART. I. CHRISTIANITY AND THE SERVICE OF MAN.

The Service of Man: an Essay towards the Religion of the Future. By JAMES COTTER MORISON. (London, 1887.)

Six months ago we noticed this work in an article upon 'Substitutes for Christianity.' But we deferred to future consideration the only portion of the subject which is worked out by Mr. Morison with any degree of completeness: we mean his strictures on the moral influence of Christianity. This is not the most important part of the case in itself. If Mr. Morison had indeed offered us what his title promised, a constructive essay towards the religion of the future, it would have been of little moment to consider his criticisms on the religion of the past. A religion for which there is really room and demand will displace its predecessors not so much by criticism as by its own positive power. Christianity, for example, though ready when occasion came to show the moral defects of Judaism and heathenism, placed little dependence on such negative arguments; and rightly, for controversies would have contributed but little to its success if it had not displayed a positive power to give better employment to the religious faculties than these faiths had provided, and to furnish better support to the moral necessities of souls and of societies than they. If Christianity had been less emphatic or less successful in its negations than its affirmations, it would have beckoned in vain either to Jew or to heathen. Its reasonings would not of necessity have gone for nothing, but they would, in spite of whatever protests on their own part, have taken their place with the philosophies of pure religious scepticism which were prevalent at the time. And such is 1 Church Quarterly, vol. xxiv. p. 379. VOL. XXV.-NO. L.

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the proper classification of Mr. Morison's so-called 'essay towards the religion of the future.' Were his clearsightedness equal to the goodwill and earnestness which we cheerfully ascribe to him, he would not have given an affirmative title to a negative book. A man who cannot read the lives of Agnes Jones and Sister Dora without tears,' and who allows that 'the mass of Englishmen are not yet satisfied in their hearts that an improved substitute for Christianity can be found,' must have some sympathy with positive religious. wants, and a conception of the unearthly power which a religion must exert. He must know that even if religion, as positivism tells us, be constructed out of earthly materials, it must, in order to deserve its name, lift itself for human imagination above the everyday circle of common pleasures and pains. This was what Comte in his Catechism of Positive Religion tried to enable it to do. And he failed. The balloon, instead of rising, fell flat upon the ground, and there remains. And what right, we ask, has Mr. Morison to entitle a work, which admits an utter inability to produce a religion, by the name of 'an essay towards the religion of the future'? The Unionists. accuse Mr. Gladstone of asking the nation to destroy the existing constitution while he declines to produce the scheme which is to replace it. But Mr. Morison demands greater confidence still, for he pronounces Christianity already moribund or dead, and writes a book to dry the tears of its mourners by the assurance that, after all, it is no great loss; and at the same time he not only offers no substitute, but declares it impossible to devise one. When we are asked what religion we propose to substitute in place of the old one now threatened with extinction, the answer is that no such pretension is entertained for a moment. Religions are organic growths, and are no more capable of fabrication than animals or plants.3 An essay showing that Westminster Abbey is falling to pieces, and that there is no reason to regret it, could only by a great stretch of language be called an essay towards the reconstruction of that ancient building.

Enough said, however, about the religion of the future towards which Mr. Morison's title promises help while his work declines to give any. We proceed to the proper subject of this article, which is the negative criticism of Mr. Morison upon the moral value of Christianity. Although this criticism is of no value for constructing the religion of the future, it is nevertheless of interest to Christians who believe that, so far 1 The Service of Man, p. 232. 2 Ibid. p. 51. 3 Ibid. p. 248.

from being moribund or dead, their religion never showed more life than at present.

Yet the question of the moral value of Christianity is one on which a humble believer cannot enter with a light heart. It is, we sorrowfully allow, a matter not beyond argument. When we study the moral effects of Christianity, whether in Christian populations at large or in our own lives, it is useless to claim that they are adequate to what might be expected from the moral powers and aids which the religion proclaims. Virtues existed and still exist among unbelievers, and vice in appalling volume exists among Christians. Christianity has not hindered the growth and propagation even of forms of vice which are peculiar to Christian nations, and which the heathen must learn from them: such as the drunkenness of England. Considering what the helps to morality are which Christianity asserts to exist, it ought to have been impossible for a serious person like Mr. Morison to doubt its moral value. But it is not impossible; and when under his guidance we enter upon this inquiry we feel so little disposition to dismiss his arguments as preposterous that, on the contrary, we need to scrutinize them carefully and weigh the principles on which they rest.

Now a defect in Mr. Morison's book almost as serious as the want of any hint of the alternative religion which he presages is the absence of any statement of the philosophical basis on which his work rests. His building wants, not only the roof, but the foundation. Positivism is assumed throughout the volume without ever having been asserted beforehand. And, before we submit Christian morals to the judgment of positivism, it is necessary we should consider the qualifications of positivism to do the office of a judge. It is impossible that one who lays down his laws on a positivist basis can form the same estimate of facts and characters, we do not say as a Christian, but as one who even doubts whether positivism be true. The essential principle of positivism is this: that in the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws-that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.' '1 The intervention of God in human things is, by this philosophy, absolutely excluded as a notion which our faculties do not enable us to entertain. And whatever conceptions of this sort have

1 Comte's Positive Philosophy, by Martineau, vol. i. p. 2.