attention to the restrictions imposed for each seventh day. Since then there have been repeated allusions to the "Babylonian Sabbath," and some employment of it by a too hasty Apologetics.Pp. 688, 689.

For some reason not clearly disclosed the professor sets himself to sever the apparent connection between the Babylon seven and the primeval. It seems a useless labor. He merely shows subordinate differences; but who imagines that in the course of ages and racial changes a clean identity would be preserved? That the number seven among the antediluvians was transferred to a variety of sacred groups of objects, so that there were weeks of things as well as weeks of days, is abundantly narrated in Genesis. It seems then perfectly a natural result that it should be found in Babylon as follows:

It is quite certain that this number appears among the Babylonians in different connections with such frequency as to prove that a special significance was attached to it. The mention of seven Planetary Gods," of seven Evil Spirits, the use of seven as a multiplier to express many sins, the occurrence of "seven days" three times in the Chaldean account of the flood-these are well-attested and ancient examples.-P. 690.

Nor are we quite ready to indorse such reasoning as this:

We are nowhere informed that the command to keep the Sabbath was laid upon man at the creation, and there is nothing irreligious in the supposition that the seven-day week was the result of lunar observations for the Hebrews as well as for other peoples. In the presence of historical proof that the Hebrew Sabbath owed its origin, as a regular institution, to Shemitic or Akkadian heathen, the soundest faith need suffer no shock.-Pp. 696, 697.

To attribute the Jewish Sabbath to lunar observation, when. the decalogue assigns its origin to the divine creative week, seems truly heroic. Nor are we ready to accept such a statement as this:

It is a groundless assertion to declare that the Babylonian seventh-day observance points back to a primitive revelation.P. 697.

On the whole, the professor's article seems to us to be a regular battle between his facts and his conclusions.

English Reviews.

BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, July, 1882. (London.)-1. Recent Japanese Progress. 2. The Puritan Element in Longfellow. 3. The Hittites and the Bible. 4. Bach and Handel. 5. The Poetry of Rossetti. 6. The Situation in Ireland. 7. The Ministry and Parliament.

October, 1882.-1. The Sieges of Rome in the Sixth Century. 2. Is the Church of England a National Church? 3. Incidents of Land and Pleas for Reform. 4. Is the Belief in Miracles Reasonable? 5. Frederick Ritschl. 6. The House of Obrenovitch. 7. The War in Egypt. 8. Songs of the Italian People. EDINBURGH REVIEW, October, 1882. (New York.)-1. Gardiner's Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I. 2. The Ancient Architecture of India. 3. Sir Jolin Lubbock on Ants and Bees. 4. Mozley's Reminiscences. 5. Inland Naviga tion. 6. Shelley and Mary. 7. Natural Religion. 8. The Egyptian Rebellion.

WESTMINSTER REVIEW. October, 1882. (New York.)-1. River Pollution. 2. Count Struensee and Queen Caroline Mathilde. 3. Socialism. 4. The Poetry of Mrs. E. B. Browning. 5. France: The Chamber, the Gambetta Ministry, and its Successors. 6. The Jubilee of the First Reform Act. 7. The British Association for the Advancement of Science. 8. Parliamentary Procedure.

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1882. (New York.)-1. Henry Erskine and His Times. 2. The Speaker's Commentary and Canon Cook. 3. Greek Sculpture. 4. Vauban and Modern Sieges. 5. The New Religion of Nature. 6. The Fish Supply of London. 7. Oxford Under the Puritans. 8. Ten Years

of Italian Progress. 9. Dr. Pusey and the Church. 10. The Justification of Lord Beaconsfield's Policy.

A work on "Natural Religion" by the author of "Ecce Homo" is a subject of leading articles in the Reviews of the quarter. "Ecce Homo" appeared seventeen years ago, excited great attention, and greatly divided public opinion. All admitted its great ability, while one class condemned its heterodoxy; whilst others, without according with its outside stand-point, found thoughts evolved in it of great value to the Christian argument. To this last class our Quarterly belonged, and our notice aimed at a brief development of its logical results. Sadly has the author receded, under the influence of scientific conclusions, not only from Christ but from God. His position is, in fact, blank atheism; yet the purpose of his book is to find a substitute. for God to which he may transfer the name of God, and so claim to be a theist and a maintainer of a "religion." That substitute, which is henceforth to be God, is the Universe, with its matter and its forces. The awe we feel for its stupendousness is worship, the benefits we derive from it work love, and the science and the civilization that result complete the sum-total of a full religion. The "London Quarterly " well

replies that religion requires a personal object of worship, and cannot take up with a mechanical bulk of matter for a God:

We say that it is not a natural religion, but the very reverse. If the history of religion teaches any thing, it is that it is natural to man to look above Nature to some mysterious Power beyond it, toward which his religious emotions may ascend-some Being whom he can believe to be conscious of him and interested in him, and to whom, therefore, he may utter his aspirations and desires with a hope of obtaining sympathy and help. When we look within ourselves and listen to the voice of our own hearts, we find them confirming this lesson of history, by refusing to bestow reverence and worship where sympathy is out of the question, and no response is possible to their emotions of desire, faith, and trust. All real experience attests that nothing is more contrary to human nature, nothing more unnatural, than for the living, palpitating, aspiring soul to lavish its religious affections on that which it knows to be nothing better than lifeless matter and unconscious mechanism. There was, indeed, a time when Nature-worship was possible and even natural; but it was only when living, personal, unseen powers were supposed to animate the physical world, and to use its elements and forces as the vehicle of their own manifestation and action. But science, by sweeping away that ancient belief and reducing the conception of Nature to that of a mechanical system governed by invariable laws, has extinguished such worship, and rendered it henceforth impossible. As soon as Nature ceases to be credited with a conscious spirit, responsive to human desire, the worshiper is impelled by the very constitution of his being to turn away from it with disdain, to carry his prayers and longings elsewhere, and to direct them toward some new object which he believes able to hear his cry, and to be touched with his aspirations and wants. "Le roi est mort, vive le roi" expresses the inevitable transfer of homage from the dead to the living. We do not, of course, mean that Nature, as expounded by science, ceases to be admirable. Its immensity, its order, its manifold adaptations and relations, its magnificence and beauty, all appeal to the intellectual and aesthetic faculties, in proportion to their development by culture, and are the sources of genuine wonder and delight. But it is not to the religious faculty that Nature appeals, until it comes to be regarded as more than a mere physical system, and is understood to be the symbol and veil of a lower greater than itself, whose handiwork or habitation it is, and with whose mysterious presence it is instinct; and hence, in the absence of such a faith, and so long as Nature is viewed with no other eyes than those of science or of taste, it is not possible that the contemplation of it should produce that uplifting of the spirit, that attitude of reverence, that outpouring of desire and reposing of confidence, which religion claims for the object of real worship. I then, by a streten of language, the sentiment inspired by mere

Nature is allowed to be styled a religion, we must maintain that, so far from deserving the title of "Natural Religion," it is of all religions the least natural to mankind, the least akin to their mental constitution, or in unison with the voice of their hearts. -Pp. 225, 226.

And the atheistic "Westminster" thus responds to this sad result in pessimism :

As we read, we ask, Is there a Power, not Matter, nor Force -but a form of being, infinite, eternal-one called Nature, yet higher than Nature; or is not Nature the Nature we know, multiform, enigmatic, fallacious, and even cruel ?-P. 247.

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1882. (London.) — 1. William Rufus. 2. Siberia. 3. Two American Divines. 4. Hofmann on the Epistle to the Hebrews. 5. The Jewish Question. 6. The Latest Assault on the Fourth Gospel. 7. The Revised Form of Baptism. 8. The Author of "Ecce Homo" on Natural Religion.

In a notice (p. 217) of this Review of a work entitled "The Fire-Baptism of all Flesh," by S. Borton Brown, B.A., the learned editor says: "There is no express statement in this volume as to the nationality of the author, but his speech bewrayeth him.' The frequent use of the word 'transfigured,' in a sense not usual with English writers, and some other peculiarities of style, indicate that he is an American; and he is also a Universalist. Of course there is nothing in his nationality to be ashamed of."-P. 217.

Of course it is a very generous concession that our "nationality" is "nothing to be ashamed of;" especially as we had no choice in the selection of our "nationality." We were not asked before born; and "we might have been a Russian," "or a Prussian," instead of an Amer-i-can. But we greatly doubt whether Mr. Brown is an American; as we are assured by the highest authority, Dr. Thayer, of the "Universalist Quarterly," that "there is no such person as S. Borton Brown, B.A., among our clergy; and even if he were a layman, it is hardly possible I should not know something about his book. It is wholly unlikely that an American Universalist would publish his book in London." We also venture a doubt whether the editor knows as much about the distinguishing peculiarities of the "speech" of the countrymen of Lowell and Longfellow as he imagines. We are tolerably well read in English literature, having even in and from our boyhood been familiar with the best authors from Queen Anne's age to the present, and we are

also slightly versed in American literature; but we are yet to learn that the word "transfigured" is used differently in these two literatures. If the free use of an Americanism distinguishes an American, then, singularly and happily enough, the editor is himself an American! For, four pages later, he twice, in two successive sentences, uses an Americanism. The sentences are: "Thirteen ten minutes' sermons or sermonettes of excellent quality. We should be sorry if the sermonette were to become the model of English preaching."-P. 222.

Now this word "sermonette" is an Americanism. This we know, because it is a word of our own personal invention. It is one of what Dr. Buckley calls our "jaw-breakers," and what Dr. Bledsoe styled our "Whedonese." Three or four years ago a discussion arose in our western Methodist papers as to the originator of this word, and two or three early utterers of the word were designated. We sent a postal to the editor of our St. Louis paper informing him that if he would turn to the "Ladies' Repository" for about the year 1854 he would find a brief sermon of ours entitled "The Sacred Test," and headed "A Sermonette." We had the conscious recollection of the origination, and may safely deny its earlier existence. We have since seen the word canonized by use in "The Catholic Mirror." And now it felicitously serves to show that our brother of the "London Quarterly" is an American; which means "a nationality" not "to be ashamed of."

CALCUTTA REVIEW, July, 1882. (Calcutta.)-1. The Aryan Germ; by H. G. Keene. 2. Hindi, Hindustani, and the Behar Dialects; by Syamachurn Gangooly. 3. Some Hindu Songs and Catches from the Villages of Northern India; by R. C. Temple. 4. Antecedents of the Modern Book; by J. W. Sherer. 5. Mandelslo and Thevenot: Their Travels in India; by E. Rehatsek. 6. N.-W. P. Settlements; by J. S. MacIntosh. 7. Phases in the Fortunes of the East India Company; by G. W. Cline, LL.D., F.G.S. 8. Chronicles of the Marava Country; by J. L. W. 9. Modern Researches into the Origin and Early Phases of Civilization; by R. C. Dutt, C.S. 10. A Resumé of the Various Theories Respecting the Maintenance of the Sun's Light and Heat; by John Hardie.

INDIAN EVANGELICAL REVIEW, October, 1882. (Calcutta.)-1. Missionary Letters: III. Siam and the Light of Asia; by Rev. T. S. Wynkoop. 2. Patna, Gaya, and Benares-Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity; by the Editor. 3. The Theosophical Society; by Rev. Arthur Theophilus. 4. Swedenborg; by C. E. G. Crawford, Esq. 5. Indian English Churches and Mission Work; by Rev. T. H. Whitamore. 6. The Aborigines and Outcastes of India; by Major Conran. 7. Hindu Caste and its Practical Operation in Travancore; by Rev. S. Mateer.