prophecy, the religion of Christ is the militant foe of exploiting priestly rule and the partisan of all the exploited and oppressed.

The prophetic religion of Jesus became an exploiting ecclesiasticism flourishing in His name. This came about when the Church gave the sanction of ecclesiastical authority to the ancient sacrificial principle of the priestly code, which had been attacked by all the prophets and Jesus Himself. The sacraments were made the central feature of a soteriological cult. This virtual suppression of the Gospel of its Founder was completed by the Church even before the days of Constantine. The transformation began with Peter, who founded after the death of Jesus a special Apocalyptic-Messianic cult which sought to live at peace within the Jewish national cult, against which Jesus had begun a campaign of eradication. Paul, on the other hand, rejected the narrow particularism of Judaism and preached an expansive and progressive Gospel. But even with Paul his early rabbinism with its doctrine of predestination had a stronger deterring influence than the prophetic literature of his race and the prophetic career of his Master. Paul's influence has been overemphasized by modern students of Christianity. He never grasped Christ's conception of a universal redeemed community coextensive with mankind and living a normal life here upon earth. Paul accepted the current assumption that mankind was inevitably lost without some kind of miraculous intervention, and consequently found himself in harmony with the programme of the Mystery Cults. Jesus never intended to found a new cult with Himself as the centre. The Church, as the Fourth Gospel particularly shows, ran right into the danger and conceived of Jesus as the cult-God.

The cult early developed a clerical caste which, like the Jewish priesthood, became exploiters. Men of wealth and members of the nobility came to have a prior claim upon the higher ecclesiastical offices. By the time of Cyprian the Church was completely separated from the mind and programme of Jesus. The Body of Christ had become a rigid ecclesiasticism, handed over to the very hierarchical system which the prophets and Jesus had given their lives to combat. It was now possible to be a good Catholic and a false Christian. It is the contention of Professor Thomas that even before the alliance with the State

the Christian Church, trustee of the religion of insurgent prophecy, militant foe of every exploiting priestly rule, had strangled and suppressed the Gospel of its Founder. At one stroke the Church deified its Lord and disobeyed Him. From the days of Constantine "shameless exploitation strode forward with splendid mien." "It has been the prevailing heresy of the Christian ages that God wishes to be worshipped by means of things instead of by the establishing of the Beloved Community which shall extend the principles of the divine life and love to all the children of God."

After an illuminating review of the insurgent prophets who from time to time have protested against exploitation and attempted to recall the Church to the purpose of Christ, Professor Thomas concludes his study with a chapter on the recovery of a lost Christianity. The world is reaping in this war the fruits of the leadership of false Messiahs. The hour of the Kingdom has again struck. Will mankind repudiate its false Messiahs, its demi-gods, its Mammon? Will it heed the Message of the true Messiah, the Son of Man? Jesus preached but one sermon-He had but one theme: The Kingdom of God,-the way and the means of its coming. Collective humanity under God must now remould the scheme of things entire nearer to the heart of the suffering Son of Man-nearer to the heart and mind of the Universal God and Father of all Souls.

The heart of this book is its comprehensive answer to the allimportant question, What is Christianity? Its suggestive study of apocalypticism, its incisive criticism of the sources of the New Testament, its illuminating generalization of historic movements and fine characterization of great insurgents are all directed to that one end. And what more vital question is there to-day? A leading Christian nation which in the past has served the Christ as no other has turned apostate; its apostasy consists in its denial of the applicability of the kingdom of God to the state. Other Christian nations, servants of the same Christ, have taken the sword to resist the Apostate. Out of such an anomalous situation spring questions that search the heart and minds of thoughtful men and women through and through. What is the religion of Christ? Where to be found? In these warring ecclesiasticisms,

in the teaching of Paul, in the teaching of the Fourth Gospel? Or is Christ's mind found revealed in the Synoptic Gospels? If there, are those principles applicable to society, or must we fall back upon the theory of the interim ethic? Such questions, once academic, press hard upon the thinking man in the street to-day. In Professor Thomas's book he will find his questions fearlessly faced, honestly and intelligently discussed, met with sympathy and insight, with learning and candor. It strikes me as the most radical book written by an American Churchman. But this is a time when one is impatient with any writer who does not try to get at the roots of things. Professor Thomas is no iconoclast, but he is a builder of a better theological and social order, one that is in harmony with the mind of Christ and the needs of man. J. HOWARD MELISH.

THE GOD OF VENGEANCE. By Sholom Ash. Boston, Mass.: The Stratford Company. Price, $1.00 net.

The stories and plays of Sholom Ash form strikingly realistic contributions to the Yiddish literary revival inaugurated by such men as Abramovitch, Rabinovitch, and Peretz. In the hands of these forerunners, the long-despised Yiddish vernacular began to reveal theretofore unsuspected values in tone-color, idiom, and melodic connotations. Ash is their lineal inheritor and, like them, has drunk deeply not only in Jewish sources, but also in the lavish fountains of the Slavic literatures, so that his works (best known among which are Meri, The Road to Self, Mottke the Vagabond, The Sinner, and the present drama) are instinct alike with the stoic, melancholy realism and the mystical, pensive beauty of the Russian masters.

In The God of Vengeance, admirably translated into English by Dr. Isaac Goldberg, and frequently presented since 1910 upon European stages, Ash develops through three cumulatively tragic acts the inevitable spiritual ruin overtaking Yekel Tchaftchovitch, the middle-aged, coarse, yet not ungenial owner of a Russian brothel, who loves intensely his daughter Rifkele, supporting her in carefully guarded purity on the proceeds of the impurity of others. Her mother, Sarah, was formerly a daughter of joy, and most of the other characters are in Yekel's

professional employment. Yekel secures from a pious scribe a copy of the Holy Scroll (the Scriptures of the Pentateuch) to place in Rifkele's room as a talisman against threatened evil. His superstitious awe of the Scroll and his unselfish affection for Rifkele are all that redeem him from utter callousness. "But they say," declares Reizel to Hindel, both of them inmates of the cellar-brothel, and somewhat reminiscent of the Girls in Pippa Passes, "that you mustn't read from such a Holy Scroll, and that the daughters of such mothers become what the mothers themselves were. that something draws them on like a magnet, and that the Evil Spirit drags them down into the mire. . . . And so it proves with Rifkele, in a dénouement of great pity and horror, not unmingled with memorable symbolisms.

GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE.

JEWISH THEOLOGY SYSTEMATICALLY CONSIDERED. By Dr. K. Kohler, President Hebrew Union College. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1918. 492 pp.

One of the most important fruits of modern biblical scholarship is the recognition of the fact that the prophets of ancient Israel were the exponents not of a narrow national cult but of a universal religion based on the fact of essential human solidarity and involving a mission of reconciliation whereby the whole human race should be brought to vital relationship with the Divine Father from whom it was estranged. It is of the genius of what is known as Judaism to maintain this prophetic vision and especially to stimulate the Jews themselves to confidence in and loyalty to their sense of mission. This is the spirit of the present work on Jewish theology. The book itself is directed first of all to the Jew that he may be kept loyal to his spiritual heritage. Secondarily it is intended for the student of religions, to present to him the truths of universal religion and to show how far the profoundest type of Judaism has embodied its essentials. The student of theology and of Biblical interpretation cannot fail to profit from a careful study of Dr. Kohler's contribution. That Dr. Kohler should completely succeed in doing justice to the universal religion embodied in the most enlightened type of Christianity would be expecting too

much in the present stage of religious transition. A study of his scholarly work will enable many Christians to get a truer insight into the depths of the real Jewish religion and of its close affinity with the universal type of Christianity.

JAMES BISHOP THOMAS.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MYSTICISM. By Charles Morris Addison, D.D. (University of the South). New York: E. P. Dutton. 1918.

How can a book on mysticism hope to find readers in a country where the energies of its people are absorbed in waging stupendous war? Does not the appreciation of such a book depend upon external peace and leisure to devote to purely personal and subjective problems? The answer is that there are two types in mysticism and two kinds of war-time problems, and that between one type of mysticism and war problems there are intimate relations. The author of this clear handbook treats mysticism as the art of seeking and finding God through the channels of the "Mystic Way." There are mystics who are content with their own personal quest, and its immediate goal in discovering a personal connection between the soul and God. These are the mere mystics. There are others who seek not merely to experience God in faith and rapture, but who seek to know God's will and to make that the programme of their lives in strenuous service to the triumph of that will in history. Their mysticism becomes a source of practical wisdom, of heroic strength, and devotion. These mystics emerge from the mystic state to become reformers, prophets, and missionaries, devoted to their fellows and to mankind. These are the "Mystics in Action." Such a mystic was Cromwell. A great war can only be a great moral cause if its participants can enter it in this mystic spirit.

But war also has its very intimate personal side. It throws upon multitudes burdens of personal sorrow and loss and suffering. The "shell-shocked" and all whose nerves break under the strain may find restoration through mystic experience. The loss of loved ones finds in it the only personal compensation. Those who suffer at the hideous spectacle, apart from personal losses, find in it the means of hope and calm courage.