interesting portions of his book. A glance at the remaining

divisions of the volume must suffice. Doctor McCosh insists that the conscience is not a mere emotion, but contains both a cognitive and a motive element. It cognizes intuitively the distinction between right and wrong, and the moral quality of particular acts. The cognition is accompanied by a feeling of approval or reprobation, and the concrete voice of conscience includes both. Moral distinctions are given directly by conscience, and do not spring from utility, or from sensations of pleasure and pain. The will is the choosing power, and acts both spontaneously and deliberately. The author repudiates the current distinction between will and motive. An impulse or incitement becomes a motive to choice only when it has received the assent of the will. Into the dispute about freedom and necessity he declines to enter; but as every volition is accompanied with the conviction of freedom, he considers the belief in the freedom of the will well founded."

CREATION OR EVOLUTION is the title of a very valuable book by George Ticknor Curtis; pp. 564: $1.50. (D. Appleton & Co.) Mr. Curtis is well known as a lawyer of distinction. He is no ecclesiastic and no theologian. The honors paid to the memory of Charles Darwin led him to examine the works of that writer, and subsequently those of Mr. H. Spencer. The result of that investigation and the processes he has traced in this volume. He has not written to defend the foundations of religious belief, nor has he advanced arguments in favor of any special interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He has treated the Mosaic account of creation as he has the hypothesis of evolution or any other hypothesis which undertakes to account for the origin of animal existence on the planet. He has simply examined whatever has been presented on the subject, in accordance with the rules of evidence. We cannot trace his argument, but this is his conclusion: "The result of my study of the hypothesis of evolution is that it is an ingenious but delusive mode of accounting for the existence of either the body or the mind of man; and that it employs a kind of reasoning which no person of sound judgment would apply to anything that might affect his welfare, his happiness, his estate, or his conduct in the practical affairs of life." Students interested

in this subject owe it to themselves to read this contribution to its literature.

THE SIXTH VOLUME OF THE PEOPLE'S BIBLE, by Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, of London, has just been issued (Funk & Wagnalls. $1.50). It seemed so stupendous an undertaking that we feared there might be some falling off either in sharpness of exegesis or strength of homiletics; but the book seems to grow in ability as the number of volumes increases. This volume embraces the last sixteen chapters of Judges, the whole of Ruth, and the first eighteen chapters of Samuel.

FUNK & WAGNALLS have published an "Encyclopedia of Living Divines and Christian Workers of all Denominations in Europe and America, being a supplement to the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge." The title of the book tells the whole story, and nothing is to be added except that the names of the editors, Rev. Dr. Schaff and Rev. S. M. Jackson, guarantee the fullness and accuracy of the work.

UNIVERSAL BELIEFS, OR THE GREAT CONSENSUS, is the title of a book published by the American Tract Society, New York, and written by the gifted author of "Ecce Cœlum," Rev. Dr. E. F. Burr, who has the sharpness of a scientist and the warmth of a poet. A common excuse for neglecting personal religion is found in what is supposed to be great difference among the Christian denominations as to their faith. Dr. Burr shows that men cannot afford to surrender all opinions in science, politics, art, education or religion because there are some debatable grounds. He goes further and shows that all the great Christian sects are agreed on certain main points of religious belief, and still further that the same is true of all the religions of all the nations of the earth. We could wish that all our readers would exert themselves to put this attractive volume into the hands of all the thoughtful readers in their circles of acquaintance.

IN every Sunday School library, for the benefit of the teachers, should be placed "A Handbook of Biblical Difficulties; or,

Reasonable Solutions of Perplexing Things in Sacred Scripture." It is an 8vo. of 568 pp., London print, republished in this country by Thomas Whittaker, Bible House, New York, price $2.50; the editor is Rev. Robert Tuck, B. A. (Lond.). These particulars are stated, because we know that there are those who need and who desire just such a book. There are good women in Christian families who are annoyed by young male relatives, who have reached that peculiar age when it seems to them to be a grand manly thing to have the courage to find fault with "the old book," and that it shows "insight" not to touch such things as Adam's eating the apple and the whale's swallowing Jonah, but to bring forward the assassination of Eglon, an "evil spirit from God," etc., etc. It will do her good to be able to give a reasonable and convincing solution of the difficulty on the face of the text. Sometimes the quick and thorough removal of even one such objection topples over the whole edifice of a young man's infidelity. This book is an armory.

CHRIST IN LIFE, by J. L. Batchelder, is published by the author, 817 Washington Boulevard, Chicago. A unique book. Very readable. The author thinks for himself and is a master at quotation. If Emerson's saying be true, "Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it," then Mr. Batchelder is next to many great writers. The reader can scarcely turn to a page without finding something bright by the author or something from some other author worth quoting.

NATURAL LAWS AND GOSPEL TEACHING, by Herbert W. Morris, D.D. (American Tract Society), is another assistant to the Christian who wishes to give a scientific as well as a Scriptural reason for the hope that is in him. The author examines nature's records and the Gospel narratives and points out their coincidences as to localities, vegetation, living creatures, and climate. He then shows the relation between Natural Laws and the Miracles of Christ; then Natural Laws and Answer to Prayer; then Natural Laws and the Resurrection of the dead; and, lastly, Natural Laws and the Final Conflagration. The work is capitally well done.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT.

THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.

[Á lecture delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, at Key East, N. J., August 17, 1887, and stenographically reported for CHRISTIAN THOUGHT by Arthur B. Cook.]

BY LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D.,

THE

Editor of "Christian Union."

HE great battle of the ages between spiritual religion and a purely earthy philosophy is, in its essential elements, always the same. It varies in its form, but not in its essence. The great question of the nineteenth century after Christ is, in its essential character, precisely the same as that of the first century. The question of to-day between the Christian Church and the Godless philosophy is precisely that which Paul had to meet on Mars Hill, and Christ with the Sadducees of Palestine. It is a question of philosophy, a question of theology, a question of ethics.

It is a question in philosophy. Spiritual philosophy asserts that there is an invisible and an intangible world-a world that transcends all perception by the senses; and that there is in man a power directly and immediately to perceive that world, to know it, not by deduction, not by argument, but by direct perception. This power is called, in the Bible, faith; in the Hindoo literature it is called the Yoga faculty. It is recognized by the prophet of every truly spiritual religion: Socrates, Buddha, Christ, Paul. This philosophic issue is not merely religious. It underlies art and literature as well. According to the materialistic philosophy, art and literature impute something to nature. According to the spiritual philosophy, art and literature discover something

in nature. According to the one, man speaks-the poet, the artist, the sculptor, the writer-and listens for the echo of his own voice, which comes back to him from the sea, the clouds, the river, the mountain. According to the other, he listens, and sea, river, clouds, mountains speak to him, and then he translates their voice, unheard by other ears, that other ears may hear it.

It is a question in theology. According to the spiritual religion, man directly and immediately sees God. He does not merely conclude God from certain phenomena. God is not merely a scientific hypothesis to account for the order of the creation. On the contrary, He is the most real, He is the most immediately known in all the universe. He is, in the expressive words of Faber, "Never so far as even to be near." According to the other philosophy, God, unseen, untouched, unheard, is unknown. He is at best only an hypothesis. Under the teaching of this sensational philosophy,* we conclude, with John Stuart Mill, that there is a God, but an imperfect one, imperfect in wisdom, in knowledge, in love, and in power; or we conclude, with Huxley, that all talk of a God is mere babbling, tinkling cymbals, and sounding brass, that is, we are agnostic; or we conclude, with Professor Clifford, that there is no God: the dim and shadowy features of the Superhuman fade from our vision, and there appears instead the august figure of man; man, who, says Prof. Clifford, "made all gods, and will unmake them;" man, who, says Prof. Clifford, declares: "Before Jehovah was, I am."

This issue, which is philosophical and theological, is also ethical. In the one philosophy there are great laws of right and wrong. They are ultimate facts. The ght is right, as God is God. According to the other philosophy, the ultimate facts are pain and pleasure. That is right which produces pleasure, that is wrong which produces pain. If you will excuse the familiar illustration, I can set this point before you by a simple story, and a true one. My father, sitting at the boarding-house table next a French Roman Catholic lady, remarked: "I do not know whether it is owing to religion or to race, but the French seem to have a different theory of truth from the English. According *So called because it is based wholly on the testimony of the senses, all other testimony being regarded as unverifiable.