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collectors who are not members of the great book clubs follow with interest the activities of those in such organizations, and while club publications are usually limited to club members or at most with only a few copies to spare- there is always an active demand for book club publications when they come into the market through auctions or otherwise. Like the productions of the private presses, they almost invariably reach a premium, for the simple reason that there are not enough copies to go around and books, like other commodities, obey the law of supply and demand. Once in a while a club book is picked up at less than the price at which it was issued to members, but so rarely that the purchaser may consider himself in great luck. Books of exceptional interest soar to undreamed of heights and

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such an authoritative work as Dr. Geoffrey Keaynes's Grolier Club book on "William Blake" or Kennedy's Grolier Club "Whistler" is soon out of the reach of all but buyers with well filled purses.

It is not because of its potential commercial value, but because the book to be issued is of the same class, that the volume announced by the Boston Club of Odd Volumes, on "William Blake's Milton, A Poem", attracts the attention of book collectors. At a sale at Sotheby's in London, December 11, 1923, a member of the club purchased, for £3,400, a unique copy of "Milton, A Poem" by William Blake, bound up with a copy of "The Book of Thel". The only other known copies of this work are in the Henry E. Huntington, British Museum, and New York Public Libraries. The Huntington (Hoe) and British Museum copies are identical, each having forty five leaves. The New York Public Library has forty nine leaves. The Club of Odd Volumes copy has fifty leaves, including the unique No. 9, "Palambron with the fiery harrow in morning returning", one of Blake's powerful conceptions. There are so many interesting points about this work that the owner has generously allowed the club to use it as the basis of the forthcoming book, which is to be written by S. Foster Damon of Harvard, author of "William Blake, His Philosophy and Symbols", published last year.

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THIS

HIS column aims to point out those new books bearing upon religion which should merit the attention of various groups of people, either because the author is a man of standing with a following or because the book seems to meet some special human need. It is an informative rather than a critical column, except that no books are mentioned here which do not pass muster as offering profitable reading hours to some section of a widely constituted reading public. There are many who profoundly disagree with utterances of the Reverend John Roach Straton, D.D., author of a number of books and pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York, but there is a host of adherents to Dr. Straton's viewpoints which will welcome

warmly the collection of sermons brought out under the title of "The Old Gospel at the Heart of the Metropolis" (Doran). These "sermons are typical of the solidity and strength of the messages of this eminent exponent of fundamental religion".

To keep the number of new books within readable range publishers might insist that manuscripts to merit publication should first be interesting pieces of writing; second, that the treatment be consistent. Father Gillis (James M. Gillis, S. P.) has written a book called "False Prophets" (Macmillan) which would pass these restrictions. You do not have to agree with the author in his handling of Shaw, Wells, Freud, Conan Doyle, and others, or with his deductions that these men are "false prophets offering worthless substitutes for religion", to be quite unusually entertained. The chances are that your serious thought will be stirred as well. is a final chapter on "Back to Christ Chaos".

There

or

"Science and Religion" (Scribner) by J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D., professor of natural history in the University of Aberdeen, contains the six Morse Foundation lectures delivered in Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1924. Dr. Morse states that the lectures are published almost precisely as they were spoken and adds, "That may explain a certain insistence of style which seemed natural at the time. They are not meant for the learned, but rather for those who are learning." The author aims to show that "modern scientific formulation in terms of the Lowest Common Denominators cannot be regarded as antithetic to religious interpretation in terms of the Greatest Common Measure", or as the jacket of the book puts it, "The scientific account of nature is essentially in agreement with the religious vision." There is of necessity much scien

tific fact in these nearly 300 pages. It is as well and as clearly stated as involved scientific fact is usually set forth, and is of special interest in its religious import.

A Jewish view of the life of the Nazarene is given in "Jesus as Others Saw Him" (Richards) by Joseph Jacobs. There is a preface by Israel Abrahams of Cambridge University and an introduction by Harry A. Wolfson of Harvard University. If prejudice between Jew and Christian is ever to be supplanted by understanding, this book should help. The life story of Jesus is in the form of a series of epistles purported to have been written in the year 54 A.D. There is imagination, scholarship, and literary genius in this book of a distinguished modern English critic and a leading Jewish literary figure.

Now we approach quite an unusual book. Thomas L. Masson was editor of "Life" for twenty eight years. He is now an editor of "The Saturday Evening Post". He is also the author of a dozen or more books, but the particular one in question is "Why I Am a Spiritual Vagabond" (Century). Evidently from his book, Mr. Masson is not now a "Spritual Vagabond", whatever he may have been in the past. As a "religious book" this one is certainly unconventional, but as a discussion in Mr. Masson's style of "how a man shall live in the midst of common affairs a life that is conscious of eternity and not be unworthy of it", the book is both an entertainment and an inspiration.

For a man within the Church to see clearly the man within the Church and yet not really of the Church, as well as the man outside the Church, bespeaks the true vision of such a man and augurs well for the profitableness of

The Business Man of Syria

By Charles Francis Stocking, E.M. and William Wesley Totheroh, A. M., LL. D.

A "Life of Christ" from a business point of view that is now helping thousands in the business world.

Colored frontispiece, cloth cover, $3.50 net. Postage 15c THE MAESTRO CO., Monadnock Block, Chicago

THE GOSPEL AND THE
MODERN MIND

Rev. Walter Robert Matthews, D.D.
Dean of King's College, London

An exposition of the Gospel for present-day thinkers marked by the same vividness and conviction which made Dr. Matthews' preaching so welcome in America. Net, $1.75

THE OLD GOSPEL AT THE HEART OF THE METROPOLIS Rev. John Roach Straton, D.D.,

Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, New York These sermons by the eminent fundamentalist preacher are typical of the vigorous messages extensively quoted by New York daily papers. Net, $2.00 THE TEN GREATEST CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES Rev. J. C. Massee, D.D., author of "The Ten Greatest Chapters of the Bible,' etc. With masterful clearness the distinguished minister of Tremont Temple expounds the great fundamentals of the Christian faith. Net, $1.50 LOOKING TOWARD THE HEIGHTS

his services to mankind. "The Church at Prayer" (Doran) is written by such a man Percy Dearmer, M.A., D.D., professor of ecclesiastical art, King's College, London. The book is "conspicuously sincere".

"God Is Writing a Book" (Dorrance) by Howard L. Waldo, M.D. - "God is writing a book . . . some of its pages lie open for whosoever has eyes and a heart to learn ... some are hidden among the stars, to be read only by those who are hungering and thirsting for knowledge, willing to devote their lives to the search for truth as written by God . . . some of its pages are written on the minds and hearts of men and women and children and may be discerned in the great social, political and religious movements of human history. . . . Poor, ignorant, stupid man must learn to read." This book is a liberal education in its mass of scientific knowledge, popularly presented, and ranging over astronomical, biological, anthropological, and philosophical subjects in their bearing upon the meaning of life.

In 480 exceedingly well written pages the "Foundations of Christianity" (International Publishers) are dealt with by Karl Kautsky (in an authorized translation from the thirteenth German edition). The book is in four parts: "The Personality of Jesus" (in three chapters); "Roman Society in the Imperial Period" (in three chapters); "The Jews" (in two chapters); "The Beginnings of Christianity" (in six chapters, ending with a chapter on "Christianity and Socialism"). It is a carefully reasoned social study, written by a Socialist of the Markist school, who in his presentation lays claim to desire neither to belittle nor glorify, but to understand. In this introduction he states: "I cannot understand present-day society unless I know the manner in which it has come to me, how its various phenomena: Capitalism, Feudalism, Christianity, Judaism, etc., have developed." It is of his understanding of origins that he writes. Just in passing, may we remind the publishers of this book that no reader today can afford time to cut leaves?

W. J. C.