HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TOPOGRAPHY. Life and Selected Writings of Francis David Hemenway. Late Professor of Hebrew and Biblical Literature in the Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ill. By CHARLES F. BRADLEY, CHARLES M. STUART, AMOS W. PATTEN. 12mo, pp. 404. Cincinnati and Chicago: Cranston & Stowe. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Price, cloth, $2. If we add to the fact of his splendid services to Methodism that in his personal character Professor Hemenway was an example of the teachings of the Saviour, we can understand why those who knew him were moved to put in permanent shape the record of his life and works. He had in part anticipated his editors by preparing the biographical and other data for their task, besides leaving sermons, lectures, and the incomplete manuscript of a book on hymnology from which they might draw if they wished to include the themes dearest to him, the style in which he usually expressed himself, and the spirit that governed him in all his utterances, written and unwritten, and whether made in private or public. By a happy combination of this material with such editorial additions and amplifications as were deemed necessary to complete the sense, or fill up intervals of time, or gaps in events, or to insert what had been omitted, they have produced a charming volume, to be read for its revelation of character as well as for its proof of his devotion to a great purpose in life. The editors divided their task into congenial departments, Dr. Bradley confining himself to biography proper, Rev. Mr. Stuart editing the professor's studies in hymnology, and the Rev. Mr. Patten giving his attention to the professor's lectures and sermons. We have, therefore, a mingled biography and autobiography, the one part incomplete without. the other, but, taken together, constituting a most readable book concerning one who gave himself to the good of others. It is not our purpose to write a synopsis of the contents of this book, preferring that it be read by all who venerate a noble life; but it is in place to say that while Dr. Hemenway was devoted to the pastorate, his chief work was in connection with the Institute which was ever proud of his labors and remembers him with great satisfaction and honor. He commenced his life-work in Vermont, but early removed to the West, identifying himself with the cause of education, and spent the best years of his life in its promotion. Dr. Bradley makes it apparent that he was a man of prayer, of solicitude for souls, and besides reflecting a spiritual beauty in the manner of his life, he exercised a most wholesome influence upon young men and the people generally. Mr. Stuart collects his unpublished chapters on hymns and their authors, giving them to the reader much as he finds them, showing the professor's great interest in worship and the music of the sanctuary. In the lectures and sermons reported we discover the theological bent and signs of the biblical scholarship, as well as the fervid love for Methodism, of the Hebrew professor. He was conservative in criticism, and loyal to the doctrinal structure of the Church. On page 296, referring to Methodist teaching, he says: "This system of doctrine, then, is evangelical as against all rationalistic schemes, and universal as against all partial systems." He exalts the fathers and exhorts his students to follow in their footsteps if they would attain to efficiency and acceptability in the Methodist pastorate. In more than one sermon the reader will detect the utterance of conscientious conviction, the vision of truth in a form that not all others have seen, and feel the shadow of the Shekinah resting upon him as he follows this man into the mount of God. This is not a book for scholastic, or cold, speculative minds, except that possibly, in spite of their icicles, it might warm them; but it is for believers, for the Christian student who treads the divine paths, and for those who delight in the inheritance of a saintly and fragant life. It should have a wide circulation. With Adventures in the Great Forest of Equatorial Africa and the Country of the Diaris. The New World of Central Africa. With a History of the First Christian Mission Africa is the terra fascinans among the continents. To the explorer it presents opportunities for thrilling adventure and eminent discovery; to the geographer the agreeable employment of new map-making; to the cxporter a wider field for trade and personal enrichment from its inestimable treasures; and to the missionary new territory for gospel conquest. As never before the eyes of the world are turned toward the Dark Continent, while interest in this tropic land has lately reached its culmination in the recently-announced discoveries of Stanley. Since, also, exploration always adds to the world's literature, with this late climax of interest has come a new impetus to the authorship of volumes on African civilization, topography, and possibilities, and a growing sale of such publications among many readers. Of the two volumes of this sort which are indicated for present examination that of Du Chaillu is purely a traveler's story. The many observations of a keen-eyed, thoughtful, and even scientific explorer compose the book. Thus the abundant insect and animal life of mid-Africa; the peculiar customs of the different tribes in dress, social practices, war, and burial; the habits of the gorilla; and the existence of dwarf tribes, so lately confirmed by Stanley, are among the matters which Du Chaillu describes with carefulness and graphic power. All students of travel, and especially all younger readers, will find a fascination in this abridged edition of a work long since familiar. A heightened interest will also be added to the volume in the fact that Du Chaillu claims to have been the first white man who penetrated the "vast and unbroken forest" of Equatorial Africa, in exploration of its diversified wonders. The book of Mrs. Guinness is written in the interests of African missions and should be scrutinized from that stand-point. It must be recognized that the work of explorers, however heroic and distinguished, is in a sense subordinate to the no less noble labor and the amazing successes of Christian missionaries. Lichtenstein and Mungo Park were thus the forerunners of Cox and Moffat; Burton, Speke, Cameron, Schweinfurth, Baker, Wissmann, and many other intrepid explorers were the anticipators of Hannington, and other missionary heroes on the African shores, and made possible their triumphs. Mrs. Guinness's book is a recognition of the transcendent value of missionary toil as compared with the explorer's preparatory work, and is a volume on African evangelization rather than a traveler's annotations. Omitting a detailed description of the fauna and flora of Africa, its customs, civilization, ethnological and philological characteristics, except as they bear on missionary success, she writes with more particular emphasis of the personnel and achievements of various African missions, with a glance at their future outlook. The Livingstone Inland Mission and the Congo-Balolo Mission are thus particularly noticed, the portraits of various missionary workers are interspersed, and the whole volume is made attractive by pictures, maps, and mechanical execution. None can read Du Chaillu and not be instructed; none can read Mrs. Guinness and not repeat her prayer, in quickened zeal, for new workers in this white harvest-field of the Church, The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church, By the Rev. L. M. HAGOOD, M.D., of the Lexington Conference. 12mo, pp. 327. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Price, cloth, $1 25. The Methodist Episcopal Church from her organization has known no distinction of class, color, or nationality. That she early gave the colored man a shelter at her altars is essential history; that she has unreservedly acknowledged his eligibility to her highest counsels and dignities is consistent with her first attitude, and that by wise care she still seeks his advancement argues for the enduring catholicity of Methodism and prophesies her continued participation as a leading factor in the evangelization of the races. Such relations between the Methodist Episcopal Church and the colored man, it is claimed, have never before been fully reviewed by any author, but have now furnished Dr. Hagood a fruitful subject for his treatment. The question asked by the General Conference of 1796 was couched in the revolutionary words: "What regulations shall be made for the extirpation of the crying evil of African slavery?" Following this initial utterance the ensuing debates and legislative actions on American slavery, including the decisions of the General Conference of 1844 and continuing until the Civil War, were confessedly unsurpassed in magnitude by the deliberations and deeds of any other American Church. To have tabulated these utterances and legal enactments of our highest council, as Dr. Hagood has now done, is a service of no small labor and surely of no inconsiderable value to the Methodist historian. It is satisfactory that the author furthermore finds it possible to give a somewhat ample consideration to the educational legislation of the Church which has prevailed since the war, and to the noble achievements of the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society. Having been a member of the General Conference of 1884, and of the Freedmen's Aid Committee of that Conference, we would certify, so far as is possible without minute reference to the Journals, to the correctness of the author's summary of the actions of that committee and the final decisions of the Conference. The author's words upon the Freedmen's Aid work in general are a sincere and encouraging recognition of the value of those great forces which the Methodist Episcopal Church, since the close of the rebellion, has sacredly consecrated to the elevation of the freedmen. To discuss the colored bishop question is to trench on delicate ground. The reader will, however, rejoice in the dispassionate spirit with which Dr. Hagood has prosecuted this discussion, as well as in the conclusion reached that color is no bar to episcopal honors, but that color alone, without fitness, is no conclusive argument for such elevation. In its practical advices to the colored membership of the Church the volume is particularly judicious. Protesting against any suggestion for the union of the colored race in a separate denominational organization, it sounds a clarion call for loyalty to the mother Church, her institutions, and her Discipline. The fact that the work deals with living questions makes necessary the reference to living men and justifies the otherwise inopportune use of their names. As a whole the book deserves wide notice. With earnestness, but without acrimony; with affection for his own race, but with no less sincere love for the Church, the writer has contributed a labor that should tend to the greater fraternity of the diverse elements of Methodism and to the promotion of the vital interests of the colored man. The Life and Writings of Alexander Vinet. By LAURA M. LANE. With an Introduction by the Venerable F. W. FARRAR, D.D., Archdeacon of Westminster. 8vo, pp. 333. New York: Scribner & Welford. Price, cloth, $3. The saying that "all great men are providential" seems to have had a verification in the career of Alexander Vinet. His appearance was the opportune time for Swiss Protestantism, and his public life gave an incalculable impetus to the truth. In strictness no reformer can be separated from the times in which he works and which he helped to transform. This biography is consequently more than the life-story of a Swiss mountaineer, with its light and shade, its marriage-bells and its burial-days. It is, besides, a portrayal of the spiritual deadness and the servility to ecclesiasticism which prevailed in Switzerland at the commencement of the century; with the restoration of many believers to spiritual life through the agency of later leaders. The volume thus combines so much of Vinet's family and domestic history as is necessary to give relish to the biography; includes sufficient quotations from the documents of Vinet to reveal the man in his vigor of mind and character; and contains such a portrayal of the doctrinal aspect of the times, and of Vinet's changing phases of belief as makes the theological crisis intelligible. All that is written illustrates Vinet's fitness for leadership in this crucial period of Swiss religious history. Such strong characteristics as strict loyalty to conscience, simplicity, courage, domestic tenderness, and fervent piety inhered in him and shaped the quality of his reform. Nor does Thomas Erskine's tribute, in the light of this biography, seem a fulsome eulogy-that Vinet was "the most remarkable man of the French Protestant Church." The French Revolution. By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY, M.P., Author of An Outline of Irish History, England under Gladstone, etc. In two volumes. Vol. I. 12mo, pp. 668. New York: Harper & Brothers. If Lord Beaconsfield's paradox were true, that there were only two events in history-the siege of Troy and the French Revolution-it were well for students to fix their attention upon those focal points and determine both their origin and issues. Mr. McCarthy concentrates his genius upon the single task of writing of the Revolution, and of showing it in all its formidableness and inherent justice. To succeed in the effort required just such a combination of insight, of breadth of perception, of vigor of conception, of familiarity with details, and of the power of generalization as we find in the author. He is prepared for the onerous duty by an historic taste, a patience in seeking, and a persistence in study which are not eclipsed by such writers as Froude, Carlyle, or Green. We anticipate, therefore, in the two volumes a complete, if not the very best, as it is the latest, exposition of that terrific period of the Revolution, with its causes, and its effects upon the French people and the world at large. The Revolution was not the spontaneous result of simultaneously acting forces in a moment of time; it was rather the culmination of causes that, operating for nearly two hundred years, according to the author, suddenly broke forth in defiance of law and order for the suppression of the defying forces of despotic rule and authority. The casual reader might not think of going back to Louis XIV. for the beginning of a conflict that only ended with the destruction of the Bastile, but our author carries us into the strifes of the seventeenth century to find the first seeds of the great revolution. It is in depicting the antecedent conditions, or in holding before us the law of cause and effect as exemplified in the successive events of one hundred years and more, that the author exhibits his power as a thinker and historian. Every great movement has its philosophical side; underneath every event that makes for progress is a cause that, though hidden, must be found if the event itself would be appreciated. It is the duty of the historian, in addition to discovering and comprehending the facts that make up the story or period of which he writes, to philosophize on the causes or conditions that produced it. The philosophy of history is as interesting as history itself. In this volume the author, seeking for the causes of the Revolution, prepares the reader to understand the Revolution itself. Soon enough, indeed, we pass from "seeds" to fruit, from causes to effect, from antecedent conditions to revolutionary outbursts, the play of the guillotine, the dethronement of royalty, the freedom of France from a tyranny it would bear no longer. We read of familiar names, dates, and movements. The procession of events is the procession either of wrongs to self-extinction or of rights to high enthronement. Every thing reaches to the design of the denouement of |