have been challenged, and some of them are shown to be untenable. The minority of the pieces in both volumes are wholly unworthy of their places in it. Two or three of them outrage good taste, common sense, and the intelligence now in possession of thousands of undergraduates. We can enter only very briefly into the details of their contents.

The volume entitled "Replies to 'Essays and Reviews'" is, in the main, a creditable performance. Some of its contents deal, in a dignified and scholarly way, with particular parts or bearings of the whole large subject which has been so boldly thrust upon the attention of those who are responsible for the defence of the foundations and formulas of the faith of the English Church. Very grave exceptions to anything like approbation may be found against two or three of the contributions within its covers. The general effect on the mind of a candid reader will be a persuasion that the book, for the most part, is a successful exhibition and exposure of very many weak points, imperfections, and exaggerations which are undoubtedly patent to critical and conservative students in the "Essays and Reviews"; while at the same time some of the blows most severely dealt in the new volume fail to harm in any way the persons or the positions which they assail. A curious fact, not without its significance, strikes us on the title-page and in the advertisement of these Replies. The first edition of the "Essays and Reviews" came forth from the distinguished Church publishers, the Messrs. Parker. As soon as the alarm was fairly raised about the book, that firm made haste to rid itself of all responsibility for any further share in a most grievous offence, by refusing to reprint the volume when a second edition was called for. The ten very large editions which have been issued since, to satisfy a demand more craving than that following the publication of Dickens's first Christmas Stories, have come from a publishing firm standing in less dread of clerical indignation. As if to make amends for their share in the original error, the Messrs. Parker not only publish these Replies, but they also charged themselves with the duty of procuring them to be written, selecting the writers, and assigning to each of them a subject. The volume has had no other editorial oversight. Its contents, like those of the book with

which they deal, are professedly written without concert or comparison among the contributors. The Bishop of Oxford contributes a Preface, which is the least creditable matter in the volume. It is jejune, superficial, and of a very low grade and tone, considering its intent, and the just expectations which might be entertained of what a prelate of the Church would at least aim to do if he essayed anything in such a cause. He intended, as he says, to have done something. But his engagements pressed him till the moment when his piece was called for, and he then furnished it at call without having read any of the articles which he thus episcopally sets forth. The most pregnant of his remarks, showing a mind of such a sort as would secure but very slight if any value to anything which he might have written, is found in the following sentence, conveying his judgment upon the first course which ought to be pursued in such a state of things as the phenomena of the "Essays and Reviews" present, viz.: "a distinct, solemn, and, if need be, severe decision of authority that assertions such as these cannot be put forward as possibly true, or even advanced as admitting of question, by honest men, who are bound by voluntary obligations to teach the Christian revelation as the truth of God." Luckily the plan of the publishers did not require anything further than a Preface from this writer. Equally aimless, and almost to the extent of being impertinent in the utter futility of any force they might be expected to have as argument or defence of imperilled beliefs, are the letters of the Radcliffe Observer, and of the Reader in Geology in the University of Oxford, which close the volume.

In the body of the work before us we have, in reply to Dr. Temple's fanciful Essay on "The Education of the World," a counter essay, under the same title, by Dr. Goulburn. This gentleman, like the author whom he challenges, has been a Head-Master of Rugby, and one of the Queen's chaplains. There is a charming courtesy and kindliness of tone in this reply, which quite persuades the reader of the ease and force of the grave objections to be urged against Dr. Temple's essay, if the latter be regarded as anything more than a pleasantly ingenious, though forced and fragmentary, device for setting forth its subject in an attractive way. Dr. Temple is

rebuked with equal justice and gentleness for confusion of thought, for incompleteness of statement in his analysis, and for a manifest failure to note or to allow for the positive, objective, and essentially similar influence under a variety of circumstances, which the Bible and the Church have had in educating the world.

The Rev. H. J. Rose, in dealing with Dr. Williams's Essay on Bunsen and the Critical School, finds matter more provocative of sharp temper. There is a strange mixture of the bad and the good, the commendable and the deplorable, in this reply. It begins by reminding us that the two chief questions of religious interest in our day relate to an "inquiry into the evidence for the truth of the Bible, and the true principles on which it ought to be interpreted." But what he means by "the truth of the Bible," one of the vaguest and most comprehensive ways of stating some hundreds of questions in one phrase, he does not inform us. He complains in general terms, and we think with reason, of the want of depth of tone in Dr. Williams's way of dealing with his subject. Bunsen, of whom personally he writes in a spirit of kindly consideration, he pronounces, as a Biblical scholar, rash, superficial, and utterly untrustworthy. He then sets himself to the task of proving that Dr. Williams has greatly misrepresented the facts which are the basis of his whole essay or argument. The specifications very ably and rather successfully relied upon are, first, the proof that Germany, instead of exhibiting in its theology a steady and consistent advance towards rationalism, and a discrediting of the old beliefs about the Bible and an historically authenticated Christianity, has been constantly retracing its steps, retracting its theories, and reconstructing the old beliefs; and, second, that Dr. Williams has most erroneously represented the views of a series of English theologians upon prophecy.

Professor Heurtley of Oxford replies to the late Professor Powell's Essay on Miracles. He addresses himself to meet what is specific from a scientific point of view in Powell's proffered argument as distinct from the philosophic argument advanced by Hume. He deals, first, with the possibility of miracles, and, secondly, with their value as evidences. We accord in the main with his positions and his reasoning. Whoever

believes in a God must, to our mind, logically and religiously believe in the possibility of miracles. Whoever believes that God may for any extraordinary purpose make a special communication to the world, will, to our mind, in the same way believe in the probability of miracles. And whoever believes that a miracle can be and has been wrought, will of course assign to them the value of doing just what they were designed to do, namely, the attesting of a revelation. The fourth of the Replies is a most masterly essay in answer to that by Mr. Wilson on a National Church. Its strength, however, does not lie in its direct answer to the allegations on which Mr. Wilson proceeds, but in showing that the objects for which Mr. Wilson aims are not to be secured by the means which he indicates. We should raise objections, however, to the unfair attempt of Dr. Irons to meet the theory of ideology in interpreting some portions of Scripture, by compelling an advocate of it to apply it to all the contents of the Bible.

The most charming and brilliant piece of composition in the volume is its fifth article, under the title of "The Creative Week," by the Rev. G. Rorison. In no respect can it be regarded as a "Reply" to Mr. Goodwin's Essay on the Mosaic Record of Creation. It far surpasses that Essay in the vigor and boldness, the insight and skill, with which it deals with its grand theme, while it makes no weak concession to the rigid literalistic interpreters, nor to the timid advocates of a cosmical science to be learned wholly from the Bible without aid from the study of nature. Next in order, the Rev. Mr. Haddan takes for his theme "Rationalism," and deals with the Essay on the Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750, by Mr. Pattison, who, since he drew upon himself a full share of the obloquy visited upon his fellow-Essayists, has been made Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Mr. Haddan writes like a Christian scholar and gentleman. He traverses the course pursued by Mr. Pattison with a careful scrutiny; admits many of his positions and pleas, disputing a few of his facts, or rather the use made of them; ventures a correction here and there; and, after thus generously dealing with his subject in a way which shows him a master of his ground, he enters some very apt suggestions that essentially

qualify and reduce the more disagreeable features of the picture which Mr. Pattison had presented of a rather dismal period of English history. Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, sets himself to match the noble Essay by Professor Jowett, on the Interpretation of Scripture. And a miserable failure does he make of it. His coarseness of taste, his temper, his manifest unfairness and incompetence to deal with his theme, more than outbalance an occasional good point which he makes seemingly by accident.

The other volume, the contribution of several pens to a defence of matters brought under question in the "Essays and Reviews," has been reprinted in this country. It bears the title of "Aids to Faith." A book whose contents should really answer to that excellent title would be a most opportune blessing to Christendom. The title itself is painfully suggestive of the deficiencies and longings, the exposed weaknesses and the unsatisfied inquiries, associated with the faith that has previously been identified, through the formulas of the Church, with the grounds and substance of Revelation; but the book contains little that will reinvigorate, and much that will even further impair what still remains of the old confidence in mere literalisms and traditions. No one of the eight writers whose nine essays are found within the covers of the volume, has availed himself of the occasion to give, what is now so earnestly needed, and would be so heartily appreciated, an able discussion of the grounds and essential contents of a religious faith, presenting its subjective and its objective elements, as they are cognizable by the human faculties independently of the fossilized or stereotyped creeds and formulas inherited from the past. Surely, men of devout and believing minds, trained by the advanced science and philosophy of this age, must have something to say on the foundation even of what they regard as the fundamentals of faith. They ought to ratify anew the believing instinct which our Creator has implanted so deep in our nature. We had a right to expect at least one essay of the most comprehensive and thorough character, dealing with general principles, with great spiritual realities, penetrating to the depths of those profound relations of their subject which must yield testimony that can after