since fallen into undue oblivion. Hagenbach, in his extensive work on the Reformation, does not even mention his name. Neither the German Theological Cyclopædia by Herzog, nor, what is still more surprising. the new French Theological Cyclopædia by Lichtenberger, have an article on him. He is, however, fully noticed (s. v. Brulius) in the Theological Cyclopædia by M'Clintock and Strong, (vol. i, 1867,) the biographical department of which is incomparably superior in point of completeness to any European work. Recent researches on the history of the French Reformation have brought to light much new material relating to Brully, who at the beginning of the Reformation was a greatly esteemed monk, and, as appears from recent discoveries, a lector in the Dominican convent of Metz. The work enriches, therefore, our knowledge of the history of the Reformation, and, as we have shown, supplements all our theological cyclopædias.

Professor Herzog, the learned editor of the German Theological Cyclopædia, began in 1876 the publication of a Compendium of Church History, which is to be completed in three volumes, and the second volume of which has recently appeared. The name of the editor is the surest guarantee that all the results of the researches in the department of theological science have been made use of and been embodied in this work, which, like few other works, will be found a reliable book of reference for all information relating to Church history. The first volume extends to the eighth century, the second to Luther, and the third to the present time.

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

Beyond the Grave. Being Three Lectures before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and other Addenda. By RANDOLPH S. FOSTER, D.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 12mo., pp. 269. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1879.

When Dr. Foster said that we do not know that our life survives the grave, that is, as the connection shows, with "absolute knowledge," excluding debate or doubt, the shallow newspaper paragraphists took it, isolated the phrase from its connections, and bruited it about that Bishop Foster said that we do not know that we are immortal." And this unwisdom, we are ashamed to say, has been repeated in some of our own religious papers. Now, why is not the same fuss made because Professor Bowne tells us, both in his last able article in our Quarterly, and his late volume, that we cannot know, with absolute knowledge, that a personal God exists? His fundamental maxim is, that our proof of God is not the demonstration of a theorem, but the solution of a prob

lem; to which problem other solutions are "possible." And this same criticism involves our Quarterly, for we took nearly the same grounds two or three years ago in our notice of an able atheistic article in the Westminster Review. The fact is, our word know and the psychological states it designates involve an immense number of gradations of certitude. Reduced to its ultimate, I only know my own present conscious thought. I know that I think. Every thing else is inference of more or less certitude. And it is to very various degrees of this certitude that, with more or less absoluteness, we apply the word know. For, in fact, we apply the word know whenever the evidence is so far clear that we feel content to repose the mind on the assumption of its certainty, and base our conduct in life upon it. Absolutely we do not know the sun will rise to-morrow; and yet practically we assume to know it, rest our whole system of life upon it, and with verbal truth always say we know it. Do we know our own immortality with the same absoluteness as we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Do we know with an equal certitude that the Bible is true? Do we know absolutely that our faculties do not deceive us? Yet we do again say we know a thing merely because we were told so by our neighbor. We know a thing because Bancroft's history narrates it. John Stuart Mill says we know that women are capable of military exploits because the examples of Deborah and Joan d'Arc prove it. And so a physican may know a disease by its symptoms, and a geologist knows the whole structure of an animal by a single bone. All natural science is based upon such a know. And all geometry is based upon an assumption—the assumption that our faculties do not deceive us. And so, passing through our Christian experience, and basing ourselves on the great probability of the divine truth of the Scriptures, we do justly say with calm reliance, "We know that we have passed from death unto life;" "We know God;" "We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him." All of which is no contradiction to Bishop Foster's dictum, speaking from the stand-point by him occupied, that we do not know our own immortality with an absolute knowledge, so but that discussion, reply to objections, clearing of difficulties, and massing of arguments, are necessary. Why need we discuss and try to prove what every body absoutely knows? The very fact that people listened to his proofs, and read his book, is proof that they do not pretend to know it beyond all debate. And the Bishop very sensibly assigns the fact that we do not absolutely know, as the reason why he is about to furnish the proofs of its reliable certainty. What fol

lows is a very successful attempt, quite in accordance with the admirable Chautauqua enterprise, to popularize Christian metaphysics and theology. The Bishop has ever possessed the talent of ar guing in pictures; of clothing logic in living forms and colorings; and so not only impressing the mind's eye of the average audience, but of leaving pictorial truth on the memory. His picturings are so full, so plenary with added and ever-added touches, that 'the mind has time for a complete acceptance and retention. The book is, therefore, well calculated for popular circulation, and for winning a way for the truths it so beautifully unfolds, and we wish it a place in the hands and hearts of the millions.

Our immortal life, its present undeveloped state yet glorious assurance, its advancing stages, its dread alternatives, its transcendent consummation, are the main theme of the book. Its leading point is that the spirit is the man. We are truly spirits enshrined in semi-transparent vehicles. The details of the wonderful developments of our eternal existence are given with a free play of thought, but profound submission to the limitations of Scripture. Readers will especially enjoy the rich discussion of recognition in heaven. On every page of that glowing picture the heart will respond, "It is good for us to be here."

Of the Bishop's rejection of the resurrection of the body, taught by Scripture, the Apostles' Creed, and the Church, and his substitution of something else which is not a resurrection, we cannot speak so favorably. And when we see such views followed up in the editorials of our General Conference periodicals with a denial of a literal judgment day, and an affirmation that there is only a resurrection of the soul from Hades, we seem to have old Gnostic doketism coming back again. What harm in adding that the living body of Christ was only a dokesis? The Bishop's words about "intolerance" seem to us an omen. What other "intolerance" has there been against this denial of a resurrection of the body than the thorough and logical re-affirmation by the periodicals of the Church, our Quarterly especially, of our established doctrine? Will not our beloved Bishop's plea of "intolerance" be quoted with effective à fortiori emphasis by those who are ecclesiastically arraigned for other variations, to them seemingly harmless, as the Bishop's seem to him. We have no taste for heresy hunting. We would allow, indeed, some play for individualisms of private opinion, where the holder feels no mission to inculcate them upon the Church. We should be chary of arraigning a man who published his individualism outside the Church. We would even allow possibility for the mind of the

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Church deliberately and slowly to reconsider her doctrines. But we submit some doubt of the effect of one of our chief pastors using his position to disseminate in the popular mind variances from our established doctrines. And, therefore, we suggest to our esteemed Bishop that in the next edition he substitute a more profitable chapter in the place of the dissertation to which we allude. And such a substitution we would not hold to be a resurrection.

There are other individualisms, not colliding with our accepted theology, in the volume with which we should personally venture, perhaps mistakenly, to differ. We believe that the threefold heavens are not merely Jewish, but scriptural; and that a strict exegesis of the passages given from M'Clintock and Strong's Cyclopedia in our comment upon 2 Cor. xii, 2, compels overwhelmingly a literal and local interpretation.

We cannot consider his removal of the objection to man's immortality derived from brute soul satisfactory. It is, indeed, embarrassing for us, that after having builded a magnificent argument for man's immortality derived from the indestructibility of the thinking principle, we are suddenly brought to a stand with "But do not brutes think? And are they not then immortal?" The Bishop's answer seems to be, that God himself is the thinking soul within the brute, and the brute perishes forever by God's withdrawal. Are then the perceptions, the lively emotions, the energetic volitions of your dog, all the perceptions, the emotions, the volitions of God himself in the dog? That is a very expensive solution. It is very nearly the solution of Descartes, who held animals to be automata; but centuries have failed to render it acceptable to the public mind. We will venture another solution or two.

Our first is suggested in our comment on 1 Cor. xv, 14: "Man is not immortal because he is a thinking substance, for brutes think; but because he is by God placed in the conditions for immortality. A lamp will burn forever if the conditions of carbon and oxygen are properly supplied. An animal would be immortal if placed by God in the conditions for its immortality." Now how easy the thought that paradise is rich with the atmosphere of life, the water of life, the tree of life! What better solution do we want? The tree of life in the original Eden was the preserver of immortality, and man was removed from it to prevent his living forever; but in the new Eden of Rev. xxii the immortalizing tree of life is restored. In other words man, unlike brutes, is immortal by being placed in the conditions of immortality.

Next, how beautifully coincides with this view St. Paul's trinality of man as body, soul, and spirit. Man shares the animal body and animal soul with the lower animals. That much he is an animal. Had he nothing more, there would be nothing to indicate but that he would, like the animals, perish forever. But we all know that over and above the set of mere animal faculties man has an overlay of spirit, in which reside his conceptions of infinity, eternity, immortality, with sublime premonitions that he is candidate for the high region to which these belong. He is as clearly destined for the region and atmosphere of immortality as the live chick in the shell is destined for the light of the sun. His going to a future perpetuity of woe in "everlasting fire" is a sad mistake; for that "fire was "prepared for the devil and his angels."

Studies in Theism. By BORDEN P. BOWNE, Professor of Philosophy in Boston University, and Author of "The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer." 12mo., pp. 444. New York: Phillips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1879.

Professor Bowne's volume is a hard nut for the book-noticers to crack. Those penetrative gentlemen generally expect by scanning title-page, analytic table of contents, running titles, and a little fumble over of the pages, to obtain a notion of the general structure and drift of the book, and thereby to play off a cheap omniscience upon their readers in a masterly critique. But to such prying processes his book is very tight and opaque. If they intend to know what are his subjects, and what he says about them, they must honestly read the solid contents. A somewhat generic title, and eleven concise and sometimes enigmatical chapter-headings, are all he vouchsafes. Perhaps most of his readers, even those of a metaphysical turn, would have preferred some introductory summarizing and some marginal guidances along the pages to enable them to shape their minds, preparatorily, to its drift of thought.

The general title reserves to the writer the privilege of giving a series of disquisitions on the theistic discussion without obligating him to a systematic proving of theism. Under the vague heading of "Knowledge and Skepticism" the first chapter discusses the nature of our certitude of a reality. What is the nature of our knowledge of objects, what its certainty, and what the true existence of the theory claimed to be known? This seems to common sense an unnecessary inquiry, until we realize how keenly and plausibly skepticism has shown that there is no reality in objects,