These, too, are weighty words touching the great underlying verities of Christendom, notwithstanding all the diversities:

Notwithstanding the external discord in the Church, there is vastly greater external unity than is generally supposed to be the case. The most essential things in the Christian religion, the real fundamentals, are the common property of all the ecclesiastical organisations of Christendom.

All Christians hold to the Sacred Scriptures as the inspired word of GOD to guide the Church in religion, doctrine, and morals. The Apostles' Creed is the symbol of the Universal Church. Christians of every name enter the visible Church by the Sacrament of Baptism and partake of the Supper of the LORD, whatever may be their views of the meaning of these Sacraments. They all engage in the worship of GOD on the LORD's day. They all use the LORD's Prayer as a guide to their devotions. Their worship has essentially the same substance, however varied may be its forms of expression. The Ten Commandments and CHRIST's law of love are the universal laws of Christian morals. Now, these are the great verities of the Christian religion. They are vastly more important than those other things about which the Churches of Christendom differ, and concerning which there is strife and discord. The calm and abiding concord of Christendom is vastly more profound than the noisy and superficial discord.

And now let us turn back to the Preface for our closing extracts. There the Author tells us:

The book is irenical. It shows that there have been so many departures from the Standards in all directions, that it is necessary for all parties in the Presbyterian Churches to be generous, tolerant, and broad-minded. The author does not wish to exclude from the Church those theologians whom he attacks for their errors. He is a Broad-Churchman and all his sympathies are with a comprehensive Church, in which not only these divines shall be tolerated, but all other true Christian scholars shall be recognised, and wherein all Christians may unite for the glory of CHRIST. He rejoices in all earnest efforts for Christian Unity, not only in Presbyterian and Reformed Churches, but in the entire Christian world.

And he bravely closes thus, in a strain to which all true Churchmen can say, Amen!

The process of dissolution has gone on long enough. The time has come for the reconstruction of theology, of polity, of worship, and of Christian life and work. The drift in the Church ought to stop. Christian divines should steer directly toward Divine truth, as the true and only Orthodoxy, and strive for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The barriers between the Protestant denominations should be removed and an organic union formed. An alliance should be made between Protestantism and Romanism and all other branches of Christendom. The Lambeth Conference, in its proposals for Christian Unity, points in the right direction.

The Church of England is entitled to lead. Let all others follow her lead and advance steadily toward Christian Unity.

With these noble words we close our extracts, which— numerous as they are--are only a fraction of what we marked when reading this interesting and most important book. It is full, indeed, of affection and reverence for the Westminster Confession, associated as it is with the life experience of the learned writer; and this affection and reverence will be appreciated thoroughly by all his Presbyterian readers. In his differences from it, he differs lovingly; but the breadth and strength with which he rises into higher and wider realms of truth, is refreshing and inspiriting. His book is a pilot ship upon the current, showing which way the waters flow. They flow towards the Reunion of Christendom! When not only the Anglican, but even the Roman Communion, is dealt with so generously and kindly and brotherly by a leading Presbyterian, the reality of the approximation can be doubted by none!

J. H. HOPKINS.

Contemporary Literature.

Notable Books.

Lives of the Fathers. By the REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.
Macmillan & Co.

CANON

2 vols.

ANON FARRAR'S literary activity bids fair to rival that of his favorite, Origen, of whom it was said that he wrote more than any other man ever read. And it is astonishing to see, taking it all in all, how well the work is done. The Lives of the Fathers is the worthy continuation of those contributions to Ecclesiastical History which began with the Life of CHRIST, and which from year to year have been eagerly read by a large and increasing circle of ardent admirers. There is the same brilliance and fascination in the grouping of details; the same impassioned eloquence and breadth of learning. The style, if anything, is more chastened and effective than in the earlier works, and the scholarship impresses one as being more painstaking and real. It is not too much to say that in no other English work can the clergyman or the layman find so much information upon so important a period of Church History. Doctor Farrar has certainly shown here, as in the Life of S. Paul, that he possesses The two the graphic power and imagination to make biography the most interesting and instructive department of history. volumes contain in all eighteen elaborate biographies from S. Ignatius to S. Chrysostom, with critical accounts of the works of the several Fathers, besides a number of notices of less wellknown writers like Firmilian and Gregory Thaumaturgus. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the insertion of full chronological tables, an annotated list of the Roman Bishops and of the early heresies, and by the addition of a very satisfactory Index. It goes without saying that the publishers in type and letter-press have left nothing to be desired.

Having said this much in hearty commendation, we may be permitted to warn the reader that Doctor Farrar's best points are sometimes his weakest. As Dean Stanley once said to J. R. Green, "It is dangerous to be picturesque," and the habit of amatic inferences is no

1

longer regarded as a commendable quality in an historian. This is especially true in Doctor Farrar's case, because he not only has the courage of his own opinion, but a considerable scorn for the opinions of those who differ with him. He is tolerant-aggressively tolerant of all forms of belief, except that form which is professed to-day by the three hundred millions of Christendom who hold to the theory of a visible Church and an authorised ministry. He compassionates the narrowness of Ignatius, and that incapacity in Irenæus and Cyprian to catch the true (modern) spirit of the New Testament. In his defence of Origen he gibbets that "discreditable" assembly called the Fifth Ecumenical Council. The attempt to find in Early Christian documents the ideas of Altar, Priesthood, or Sacrifice vexes his righteous soul, and more than once he triumphantly quotes the distinction between many folds and one flock to denounce the "pharisaism" of the Western Church in General and S. Augustine in particular. Some readers may regret that a great opportunity has thus been used for partisan ends, and may be so pained by certain expressions of the author as to question the fairness and accuracy of the rest of the work. We should be sorry even to suggest any intentional injustice. The review of the Pelagian controversy is wise enough at least to show superiority to the one-sided and almost rabid presentation of it by some of our American contemporaries, and we can only conclude that the author is so infatuated with his own theory of the Church as to be blind to the possible righteousness of any other interpretation.

The broad issue is, whether there is a visible, organic Church, with authorised ministry and life-giving Sacraments, or no recognised visible Church of CHRIST, no authorised form of ministry and no necessary Sacraments. Let the question be plainly stated, and then let the inquirer take the Fathers and read them without note or comment, and we venture to think that he will find the whole atmosphere of the early Church impregnated with the ideas which our author so strenuously repudiates. It is not a question as to this or that isolated expression in one or two writers, it is the whole tone and atmosphere of the period that must be considered. Of what use is it to quote over and over again our LORD'S saying, about "The other sheep which are not of this fold?" Many scholars, and we think rightly, regard these words as simply applicable to the Jews and as having no possible reference to the present condition of the Church, unless we press them with meaning that it makes no difference whether a man be a Christian

or not. Nor can we see the "calm and judicial mind" of the historian in the unnecessarily sweeping remarks about "Altar" and "Sacrifice." It is assumed that these ideas are repugnant and impossible to the minds of the writers of the New Testament, and that therefore when the words occur in Ignatius, e. g., they must not be interpreted in a natural sense. But all Doctor Farrar's scornful rhetoric will not deter men from taking the common-sense view of Hebrews xiii: 10, as applying to the Christian Altar-a view which has been held by the majority of scholars, by men like Waterland and Wordsworth, and even by Richard Baxter. Mr. Gore has shown that "an essential ministry is a sacerdotal conception," and that a Priesthood, properly represen. tative of the people, yet commissioned from above, satisfies all the requirements. Granted that the nomenclature of the first half of the second century appears unfixed, uncrystallised-granted that the latter mediæval sacerdotalism is gross and repellent-the alternative remains that there was either the germinal principle of the Priesthood originally existing, or else that at some time, as yet undiscovered (for our author admits that Cyprian only followed Irenæus and Ignatius), there was a wholesale revolution of Christian ideas. In human history ex nihilo nihil fit, and either GOD Himself created mediæval sacerdotalism, or else men perversely developed and corrupted an original Divine institution The latter conclusion commends itself to us.

All this leads up to the question of Episcopacy. To say, as Doctor Farrar does, that "the Papal usurpation is the only logical outcome of making the Episcopate the representative of Apostolic authority, delegated by direct succession," is a short and easy way of overthrowing the position of the greatest English theologians. With it we might contrast the words of F. D. Maurice, who said:

The whole body of Bishops-each Bishop in his own sphere-present CHRIST to men as the Bishop or overseer of the Church, (and) I would undertake to show and I would go through all Ecclesiastical History in support of the position, that the secularity of Bishops has been in all cases the effect of their not believing in the dignity and divinity of their own ordination; and the assumption of any particular Bishop has always been the effect of his denying the dignity and effect of his brethren's ordination. [Kingdom of CHRIST, p. 372.]

Doctor Farrar seems to imply that the early confusion of the Bishop and Presbyter-a well-worn statement-implies a like confusion of the superior and lower orders, for we are told that