no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapor." To Ruskin she sends on New Year's day this message: "I wish you, from my heart, a good, clear, noble year, with plenty of work, and God consciously over all to give you satisfaction. What would this life be, dear Mr. Ruskin, if it had not eternal relations? For my part, if I did not believe so, I should lay my head down and die. Nothing would be worth doing, certainly. I am what many people call a 'mystic,' but what I myself call a 'realist,' because I consider that every step of the foot or stroke of the pen here has some real connection with and result in the hereafter." She looked for a reconstruction and recasting of Christian essential verity into other than middle-age scholastic forms, and said: "Believing in Christ's divinity, which is the life of Christianity, I believe this. Otherwise, if the end were here-if we were to be covered over and tucked in with the Thirty-nine Articles, or the like, and good-night to us for a sound sleep in 'sound doctrine'—I should fear for a religion incapable of expanding according to the needs of man. What comes of God has life in it, and certainly from all the growth of living things spiritual growth cannot be excepted." Harriet Beecher Stowe's last words to Elizabeth Barrett Browning at their final parting were, "Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ never see each other for the last time." In one of the last letters of her life Mrs. Browning wrote, "I don't believe in arbitrary reward and punishment, but in consequences and logical results. That seems to me God's way of working. The Scriptural phrases are simply symbolical. Then, as to redemption and its mode-let us receive the thing simply. Dr. Adam Clarke, whose piety was never doubted, used to say, 'Vicarious suffering is vicarious nonsense.' Which does not hinder the fact that the suffering of the Lord was necessary in order that we should not suffer, and that through his work and incarnation his worlds recovered the possibility of good. It comes to the same thing. The manner in which preachers analyze the infinite-pass the divine through a sieve-has ceased to be endurable to thinking men." The above extracts are samples of the best thoughts on religious subjects contained in her letters. Religion is a frequent but by no means a predominant theme in her correspondence, which is filled with a great variety of interest and opinion. The two volumes are of value to literature, as enduring as the fame and works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The Isles and Shrines of Greece. By SAMUEL J. BARROWS. 8vo, pp. xii, 389. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Price, cloth, $2.

When a man of culture, even though he have not that exact scholarship which often becomes pedantry, turns aside from serious things to rest a while in Greece he is quite likely to see visions and dream dreams. His old struggles over Greek in college come back again, and the result of them is seen to be a real thing, after all. Dr. Barrows has seen Greece more thoroughly than opportunity offers to most of those who are fortunate enough to visit it at all. He has a glow of enthusiasm that enables him to see the wonderful life of ancient Hellas through the sad poverty

and the sorry political abasement of modern Greece. He has in this book set down impressions and opinions and visions and dreams, and he has done it all with a dash and sparkle that will enable the weary man who can hardly read at all to follow him with zest. He has heard men speaking tongues "in which the vowels explode like a Gatling gun and the consonants go off like smoke," and he turns from them to Greek with a burst of enthusiasm like this: "It is nonsense to treat Greek as if it were a dead language. It is living in the speech, journalism, and literature of the Greeks of to-day, just as Chaucer is living in the speech, journalism, and literature of the English people. The letters, the accents, are the same. The old Greek has changed its form in modern usage. It is simpler, less accurate, less rich in moods and inflections, but it is historically, essentially the same language. One may open his Homer and pick out on every page words that are in common usage today, after three thousand years of currency. The universal daily greeting xaipere is Homeric. The resemblance to the New Testament Greek is remarkable. The Greek Church has done much to preserve the vitality of the language, for the New Testament is used in all the services in the old Greek, and children say the Lord's Prayer by heart just as it stands in Matthew." Dr. Barrows has not written the conventional book of travels. Neither has he written a sober history; he has simply produced a most entertaining volume of sketches in which travel and exploration, archæology, and art, description and meditation are happily blended. He begins with the Ionian Isles, with Corfu, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zante, and he tells-well just how they look to-day. Then he comes into Athens and begins at the very beginning with the Parthenon, to follow it with chapters on Attic Grave Reliefs-a most useful chapter for the tourist-the Greek Theater, Modern Athens, the Street and the Agora, the Altar of the Home, and the Christian Shrine. After these there follows a series of sketches with the general title, "Attic Days," on such subjects as the Athenian Press, an Athenian Schoolboy, some Greek Vases, the Greek Calendar, and Greek Philanthropy. The last hundred pages are given to the Peloponnesus, Phocis, Thessaly, Eubœa, and the Cyclades. We commend the book to those who will never see Greece, and more especially to those who are so happy as to have a more cheerful prospect. Let these put it in their bag with the always judicious and accurate Baedeker. It will give spice to his excellent table. The publishers have dressed Dr. Barrows's words in happy fashion, and have supplied a most excellent series of process illustrations.

MISCELLANEOUS.

To-day and To-morrow. By LEWIS RANSOM FISKE, D.D., LL.D. 8vo, pp. 372. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co. Price, cloth, $2.

The subtitle is "Echoes from College Platform," the volume being made up of baccalaureate addresses delivered by Dr. Fiske at Albion Col

lege in the years when he was president there, and affectionately dedicated to the students of those years. Dr. James H. Potts contributes a most fitting and impressive Introduction, in which he justly says that this book "represents, not a momentary contact on the part of its gifted author with those great problems which have engaged the attention of scholars in all ages, but a long, close, persistent, unyielding grapplesomething like Jacob's wrestle with the angel-with those sublime truths of life and duty and destiny which alone seem meet for discussion on the occasions where these addresses were delivered." And again: "One characteristic is especially remarkable in Dr. Fiske's style. While treating the most profound subjects he does not ignore the evangelical and spiritual elements. All his writings show how keenly as a college president he felt the necessity of holding up the deepest truths of the Gospel and of pressing them upon the attention of students. He avoided the cant which too often creeps into the pulpit, yet clung to the vital spiritual essence which gives to the Christian's life its superiority. For the space of twenty years and more, in harmony with revealed standards, he clearly and attractively outlined the noblest life plans, the most urgent duties, the rarest opportunities, and the highest missions possible to trained intellects and consecrated hearts. A glance at the titles of his themes will disclose the sweep of his thought and the burden of his desire." The following are the titles: "The Unknown God Declared to the World;""The Future the Inspiration of the Present;""The Relations of the Seen and the Unseen;""Man's Exalted Nature;" "Freedom the Product of Truth;" "Divine Authentication of the Word;" "Wisdom the Principal Thing;" "The Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ; " "The Resurrection of the Body not Antiscientific;" "The Great Mystery of Godliness;" "What We May Expect of You;" "Conditions of Mental and Moral Growth;" "The Might of Silent Forces;" "The Ideal Life;" "The Three Great Forces in the Soul;" "Human Life and Its Mission;" "Christ in Everyday Affairs the Hope of the World." These seventeen addresses do not read like the chapters of a book, but each one like a separate mighty message from a great, loving, glowing heart spoken with burning earnestness to young, strong, and sensitive souls in the intent to give them light to see by and an impulse which may send them on into noble years of intelligent and consecrated service. They have the power and urgency of reasoned exhortation, with the dignity and breadth of wise disquisition. The volume is a fit memorial of the best years of a devoted and influential life, and will be prized, doubtless, by many, especially by Dr. Fiske's multitude of students, the more so as the standing figure of their president fronts the title-page, while elsewhere in the book are views of the interior of the study, its walls filled on every side with his library and in the middle the table at which these baccalaureate addresses were written and at which he toiled prayerfully through countless hours of many days and nights in order that he might furnish young lives with knowledge and

wisdom for their future careers. Blessed is the man who has deposited his own soul's life in the lives of others, where it must go on forever reproducing noblest effects for the salvation and enrichment of mankind! The army of Christian educators is a splendid and glorious host We whose work is a perpetuation of the labors of the Great Teacher. are glad that President Fiske, at the conclusion of his fruitful labors as a Christian educator, has put these noble discourses in this permanent form. Here and There in the Greek New Testament. By Professor L. S. POTWIN, Adelbert College, Western Reserve University. 8vo, pp. 220. Chicago, New York, Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, cloth, $1.

Professor Potwin's introductory essay entitled, "Hints on New Testament Exegesis" is abundant vindication for the soundness of his findings in the body of the book. Among the qualifications of the Exegete he mentions an open mind, a mind sensitive to language, sympathy with the writer, a genuine interest in ancient and oriental life, a faculty for history, a good knowledge of the Greek classics and of post-classical Greek outside the New Testament, familiarity with the Hebrew, Septuagint, and Syriac Scriptures, and an acquaintance with the principles of He classifies the lower, or textual, and higher, or analytic, criticism. the principles of exegesis into primary and secondary. The former asks: "What does the author mean in the exact form of his thought as conditioned by his knowledge, mental state, language, time and circumstances?" The latter asks: "What does he mean as translated into modern forms of thought, and what is the foundation-meaning, more general and lying deeper than the primary meaning?" Under methods of exegesis the Golden Rule is, put yourself in his place; that is, in the place of the writer or speaker and of the original reader or hearer. Imagination, sympathy, and prayer are helps to this end. Careful study of the great and decisive words, phrases, and synonyms of the Bible, employing the unabridged lexicons, concordances and commentaries thereto, not as authorities nor judicial decisions terminating study, but as storehouses of classified usage, furnishing the materials of study. Eighteen essays or "discussions" then follow upon such topics as: "The Gloria in Excelsis," Luke ii, 14; the words "daily" and "evil" (or evil one Revised Version), in the Lord's Prayer; the term "stature," Matt. vi, 27; the question of demons; the term love in the gospels and epistles; "Christ's Descent into Hades," Acts ii, 27 and Eph. iv, 8; "Agrippa to Paul," Acts xxvi, 28; Paul's use of the words "foreknow” and “anatheIt will be seen from these titles that the author treats a circle of questions and passages of great importance and unusual difficulty, and that a partial reference to his treatment could hardly do such discussions justice. Suffice it to say that this is one of those cheap and compact yet scholarly books which every Bible student can afford to possess and enjoy for himself. The work concludes with three excellent papers on words borrowed from the Latin, from the Hebrew and Aramaic, and words not found in the classical Greek writers.

ma.

The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton. Cambridge edition. One volume. 8vo, pp. 417. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Price, cloth, $2. The wide-working purpose to bring all good things to all men is illustrated in this cheap and compact volume, which gives the whole of Milton's poetry. A picture of the poet in his youth is at the front. The title-page has a vignette showing the small house, the "pretty box," which Elwood found for Milton in the village of Chalfont St. Giles, during the prevalence of the plague of 1665. There are appropriate and helpful introductions and notes to the various poems, also instructive matter in the Appendix, and twenty-five pages are given to a Life of Milton, the closing sentences of which we quote: "As for his poetry, Milton must be thought of as a master stylist. Keats is more poignant, Shakespeare more various, Coleridge more magical; but nobody who has written in English has had the same unfailing majesty of utterance. His is the organ voice of England. . . . Milton is always Miltonic, always lofty and grave, whether the subject rises or sinks. Through him we come nearest to that union of measure and might which is peculiar to the master poets of antiquity; and it is through a study of him that the defects of taste incident upon our modern systems of edution can be most surely made good." A man in the front rank of the Congregational ministry of to-day, well-known in literature and not unknown as a writer of poetry, said not long ago in private conversation: "For stateliness, elevation, sublimity, and grandeur, no one equals Milton. Of all poets I read him most, and in preference to Tennyson, Browning, or any of our nineteenth-century singers." Professor W. P. Trent, in his Life of John Milton, just published, calls Milton "the greatest artist, man of letters, and ideal patriot the world has ever known." Upon this statement a reviewer comments as follows: "That savors of hyperbole, of course, but admiration of Milton is always creditable, and must be respected, even if one can scarcely go so far as to 'shudder,' with Professor Trent, at the risk our literature ran of 'having only one supreme poet instead of two,' when Milton devoted twenty years of his life to the State. It may be fairly said, too, that if the note of hyperbole must be struck in biography (and few biographers seem able to avoid it) it is certainly less out of harmony than usual when Milton is the theme. The gravity and purity of his mind, the profundity of his learning, and the sublimity of his imagination are not to be questioned." The Gentleness of Jesus. By MARK GUY PEARSE. 16mo, pp. 250. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Price, cloth, 75 cents.

This compilation of sermons takes its name from the first discourse in the volume. Though Mr. Pearse is an English preacher in his visible field of work, he is one of those Christian teachers whose influence is felt as well in the western world and whose name is held in highest esteem. The present sermons, like the rest he has written, are marked by devoutness, fervor, and charm of presentation. Whoever reads them will feel himself richly repaid.