Wesley. George Maunder and Luke II. Wiseman give their burning testimony. The year 1877 is memorable from the formation of a Conference temperance organization; and in 1880 was established their "Temperance Sunday," in which the principles of temperance were to be publicly proclaimed in every Methodist charge in England, the exercises being previously published in the public newspapers to announce to the world that Methodism is alive on this subject.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Wheeler well shows, is a great, and ought to be an aggressive, total-abstinence society. It has organized an exterminating war on the manufacture, the traffic, and the appetitive consumption of all intoxicants. It so applies its General Rule, by disciplinary enactment, as to prohibit "the buying, selling, or using intoxicating liquors as a beverage, signing petitions in favor of granting license for the sale of intoxicating liquors, becoming bondsmen for persons engaging in such traffic, renting property as the place in or on which to manufacture intoxicating liquors."

And what is the Christian citizen's duty as the possessor of an elective franchise? Does he cease to be a Christian on the election grounds? Is the government of a righteous God to be nullified at the polls? A revival of a sense of Christian responsibilities in civil franchise has already commenced, and it augurs propitiously for our future. If the Christian Church in all its branches and in all sections will firmly and inflexibly exert its civic powers it can put down bad measures and bad men, and inaugurate every beneficent reform to a degree hitherto unrealized. The twin movements of civil service reform and temperance will remove an immense amount of the evils of our present politics. And politics is the government of the country. Purify our politics and you regenerate our governmental system and attain that "righteousness" which "exalteth a nation." Nor must we be frightened at the bluster of politicians-by-trade who would silence the voice of moral rebuke that they may monopolize political power and emolument. Politicians are at the present day mightily menacing when they think they can frighten, but perfect cowards when our persistence tells them that their craft is in danger.

Corea, the Hermit Nation. I. Ancient and Medieval History. II. Political and Social Corea. III. Modern and Recent History. By WILLIAM ELLIOTT GRIFFIS, late of the Imperial University of Tokio, Japan. Author of The Mikado's Empire." 8vo, pp. 462. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1882. Price $350.

Mr. Griffis won reputation with the reading public, both of Europe and America, by the patient research, sound judgment, and literary ability apparent in his "Mikado's Empire." What he did for Japan and its history in that production he has done in this volume for Corca, or Chō-sen, "the land of the morning calm," as that hitherto little-known peninsula is named by the Coreans themselves. The curiosity of general readers, of Christian philanthropists, and especially of men of commerce, respecting a country which until recently has been little else than a terra incognita to Europeans and Americans, will lead many to consult the present volume. And the value and interest of the information it contains are such that its intelligent and thoughtfal readers will be both gratified and made acquainted with a very ancient people who have hitherto succeeded in making themselves impregnable to the approaches of modern civilization.

This is not a book of personal travel or adventure, Mr. Griffis never having been nearer to Corea than the coast of Echizen, Japanese province which lies on the sea that separates Japan from Corea. This coast for ages had been the landing-place of rovers, immigrants, adventurers, and envoys from the opposite Corean shore. Here, therefore, he found families who were proud of their descent from Chō-sen, and "outcasts" who were descendants of Corean prisoners of war. The traditions of these people, their religion, the names they had given to places and things of art, their implements, their animals, birds, vegetables, and trees, were all eloquent of their kinship to the nation on the opposite shore. He saw distinctly that his studies in Japanese history and antiquities reflected much light upon the neighboring hermit nation, and began to search for materials out of which to weave its then almost unknown story. This volume is the result of his research, which, judging from the ninety-nine books and documents in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, German, French, and American mentioned in the book, and from the other sources of information and living witnesses consulted personally and by correspondence, must have been, if not exhaustive, yet sufficiently painstaking to justify his claim that his book, though less fascinating than one giving the impressions of a traveler through the country, is more valuable, because it "views

the whole subject, and reduces the impressions of many details to unity, correcting one by the other."

The peninsula of Corea, including its almost countless islands, is nearly equal in size to the State of Minnesota, having an area of between eighty and ninety thousand square miles. Touching the Chinese province of Manchuria and the Russian Possessions on the north and west, it extends southward between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, from the 43d to the 34th parallel of north latitude. Its climate is varied, but the winters are not more rigorous in the higher latitudes than in the State of New York, while in the most southern they are "as delightful as those in the Carolinas." The summers are hot and rainy. The land is generally fertile. Mr. Griflis thinks that "there are at least 12,000,000 souls in Chō-sen."

The ancient and mediaval history of Corea, like that of European countries, is a record of migrations and conquests, of invasions and counter-invasions, of fierce wars of succession and usurpation. It is, of course, a tangled web of legend and tradition interwoven with more or less of historic truth. Our author, by a process somewhat tedious to his readers, has industriously labored to separate authentic from legendary history, reaching the conclusion that the present race of Coreans are not the aborigines of the peninsula, but descendants of a hardy race, the Fuyu, whose original home was in Manchuria, a thousand miles away from the seats of Chinese culture. This people were among the first of their race to emerge from barbarism, to form themselves into a political organization based on the same principle of feudalism as once existed in Europe. After sundry migrations they entered the Corean peninsula and subjugated its barbarous aborigines, together with the emigrants from China whom they found within its borders. Hence the Coreans are neither Chinese nor Japanese, though more allied to the latter than to the former. In disentangling the thread of their history from its myths Mr. Griffis appears to have incorporated every important accessible fact into his excellent work.

To the general reader the most interesting portions of this work are in the second and third parts, which treat of the present political structure of its government, of the social life and character of its people, of its religion, which is a compound of Shamanism, Confucianism, and Buddhism; of the efforts of the French Jesuits to introduce Romanism, with the terrible persecutions which prevented their success; and of the various methods by

which the Japanese, the European, and American nations finally secured the opening of the ports of Corea for commercial purposes. Hereafter Corea promises to be the theater of struggles which will have a world-wide interest. Russia, on its northern border, is fortifying herself, as if intending to create a base for its invasion, since she is hankering for the possession of its southern harbors. The Buddhists of Japan are preparing agencies for an effort to revive their decaying superstitions within its borders; and the Christian Churches both of England and America will now feel compelled to make it the field of fresh missionary conquests.

Professor Griffis' book is, on the whole, a well-written volume. We notice that here and there, when the author attempts to throw a dash of humor into a paragraph, he utterly fails, as when, in stating that Corea, warned by impending dangers, became willing to listen to proposals for opening her ports, he expresses that disposition by citing from Dickens the phrase, "Barkis was willin'," which in that connection was not witty but silly. So, also, after observing that in worshiping the "god of the hills" the Coreans make their pious trip to the hills a pic-nic, he adds, "Thus they combine piety and pleasure, very much as Americans unite sea-bathing and sanctification, croquet and camp-meeting holiness by the ocean and in the groves." Mr. Griffis apparently belongs to that class who see no inconsistency in consecrating the summer sea-shore to drinking, gambling, horseracing, and carousing, but see something wonderfully ridiculons in carrying your religion into your vacation, and even providing the means of worship and self-consecration in the sublime presence of the ocean. He seems to think that religion must be kept apart from our business, or at least our recreation; and that a broad chasm should separate our devotion from our every-day life. That is not Christianity, but superstition; or, more likely, it is infidelity playing superstition. The divine founder of our religion, with his twelve apostles, frequented the sea of Gennesaret, and carried on there their blended business, religion, and pleasure. A boat was once the pulpit of Jesus, and the beach. the church where the congregation listened. At that sea they sailed, preached, fisned, and held great camp-meetings, at one of which five thousand were fed, the great Master himself having preached and supplied the provisions which were distributed by his disciples, in "pic-nic" fashion, to the vast multitudes seated on the grassy shore.

Political History of Recent Times, 1816-1875, with special reference to Germany. By WILHELM MÜLLER, Professor in Tübingen. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. Translated, with an Appendix covering the period from 1876 to 1881, by the Rev. JOHN P. PETERS, Ph.D. 8vo, pp. 696. New York: Harper &

The last sixty-five years have been marked by great events; by great changes in the relations of the leading nations of Europe to each other and to other parts of the world, and by the growth of liberal ideas tending to the transference of political power from the aristocratic few to the democratic multitude. To treat all these events intelligently, yet without wearisome dullness, in one volume, demanded of the writer a thoroughness in his knowledge and a power of philosophical analysis and of skill in composition such as few can justly claim. But Mr. Müller has fully met this great demand, and given to his readers a comprehensive clew by which they can seize on the links which connected the formation of the Holy Alliance with the fall of Napoleon; the rise of revolutions in Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, and Portugal, and especially in France, with the usurpations of the kings in that Alliance. The vast consequences which followed the expulsion of the Bourbons and the ascendency of the Second Empire in France; the usurpations of Prussia in Germany; the creation of a united Italy; the establishment of the German Empire; the overthrow of Napoleon III.; the conflicts of Russia with Turkey; and the relations of England to these great political events and to India, are also all treated with judicial fairness and in the spirit of a man thoroughly possessed of liberal ideas. To students already versed in history Mr. Müller's book will be exceedingly valuable for occasional reference; to the general reader it will furnish as much information of recent events as he may care to know; and it will prove particularly desirable for use in academies and colleges by students of modern European history. President White, of Cornell University, heartily commends it to this lastnamed class.

Heroic Methodists of the Olden Time; or, Anecdotal Sketches of some of the Noble Men and Women whose Beautiful Lives Adorned, and whose Faithful Labors Built the Walls of Early Methodism. Intended to Please and Profit Boys and Girls. Illustrated. 16ino, pp. 307. New York: Phillips & Hunt. 1882. The fluent and graphic pen of Dr. Wise, so well known and appreciated in the literature of our Church, has here given us a few leaves from what has been esteemed our heroic age, and