Reybaud, the great champion in modern times of the theory of "a migration" of souls. Both authors give a history of the doctrine. Pezzani has already written a number of other works on the same subject, and Flammarion announces the continuation of his work by another, which will be devoted to a description and discussion of the other worlds. Incidentally the article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which analyzes the above works, refers to other recent literature on the same subject, as, to a work by Lambert, who, in an essay entitled Immortalité Selon le Christ, (Immortality According to Christ, (Paris, 1865,) undertakes to establish that the Life Everlasting of the New Testament was meant to be an abolition of death in this world.

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

Reason in Religion. By FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE. Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co. 1865.

Dr. Hedge is, we believe, largely a representative man in the Unitarian ranks of the present day. The present volume exhibits a summary of his views, expressed in clear, eloquent, but diffuse style. Views, we may properly call them; for he simply presents what seems most agreeable in doctrine to himself, rather than attempts to prove them by argument to others. His mind, indeed, appears to be decidedly more intuitive than logical; and he would, perhaps, even positively decline to believe "a religion that can be proved." It may be interesting to our readers for us to give a slight summary of his summary.

The basis of his system is the Kant and Hamilton philosophy. The Understanding is "the faculty that judges according to sense." That is, it takes the material furnished by the five senses, and reflects upon it, classifies it, and judges it by the rules of logic. Hence it is a powerful and a wonderful instrument in the finite, limited, and conditioned affairs of common life. But it mounts not into the universal or infinite, and hence knows nothing of God. Had we the Understanding alone, the conception of God would never enter the human mind. But over and above the Understanding we have the Pure Reason of Kant, the Faith of Hamilton, or the Intuitions of M'Cosh, to which the Deity stands as a self-revealing God. It is in opposition to this philosophy that Comte affirms that no conception of God is legitimate or credible; and Herbert Spencer maintains that there is nothing but an Unknowable Absolute, of which neither intelligence, will, nor any

other attribute, is predicable. Dr. Hedge, using the phraseology of Hamilton, proceeds to develop the God and the religion which unfold themselves to his Faith.

First, there is a "Regent God," or Providence. Our author selects that theory of Providence by which God is the central Will in nature, and nature's laws are his volitions, so that miracle, even if incapable of proof, is intrinsically possible. There is the "Answering" and the "Exorable God," and hence the legitimacy of prayer. Our author's theory of prayer is, that it often forms the condition upon which divine results depend; just as the seed sown is the condition on which the divine will furnishes the harvest. The Understanding never, indeed, will recognize in the particular instance that a particular prayer is answered; yet Faith justly maintains that prayer is often granted either in the specific thing prayed for, or in some blessed equivalent, to the soul. Nay, all true prayer is granted in proportion to the clearness of its truth and the energy of its faith. And in this chapter Dr. Hedge writes not with merely poetical beauty, but with an earnest devotional spirit refreshing as a fountain in the desert. Thus far in relation to God; now in relation to man.

First comes the old enigma, Whence is evil? and the old discord, What is sin? His theory is that of optimism. This world with all its evil is the best possible world, better, in spite of its evil, than the best world without evil. And sin is both an act and a condition of our nature at variance with absolute right and in discord with our own higher nature. Our deliverance is to be attained not so much by a fight with sin within us as by a cultivation and an up-building of our better nature. Our regeneration is rather the full development of our natural goodness, and is rather a positive than a negative work. Both our justification and our regeneration are therefore to be attained by faith. Thus far the theodicy, and now for the Christology.

Christ is divine. We cannot be too thankful, our author thinks, that the Athanasian doctrine prevailed in the Church over the dangerous polytheism of Arius. There doubtless was a divine Providence in it. Thereby the divine in man was retained as a familiar thought in Christianity. But Christ is not God. He is simply glorified man, in whom dwells the power to speak with a divine authority. We have no proof that he wrought miracles; for we have no cotemporaneous reliable record of his sayings and doings. Miracles or deeds transcending the ordinary level of nature he may have performed; but of this there is no satisfactory evidence. Indeed the miraculous part of the Gospel narratives, the incarnation, the supernatural deeds, the resurrection, whether true or not, form no neces

sary or essential part of Christianity. The Gospel's spirit and power are its own self-evident miracle. The marvels of spiritualism, and the supernatural disclosures said to have been made by Swedenborg, show how little miracles avail in authenticating a religion. All of Christianity that is genuinely true is self-evident to the Intuition, and needs no traditional proof.

In his chapter on Penal Theology, Dr. Hedge discloses his doctrine of Retribution. Of the opposite theories, Universalism and Partialism, there is such a counterbalance of proof that no positive decision can be made between the two. The vast preponderance of Theological authorities is in favor of Partialism. Ultra Universalism is artificial and violent, nearly amounting to the supposition of the creating of a new soul at death. Experience shows that there are sinners whose evil nature is intrinsically incorrigible; who are incapable of reformation save by arbitrary reconstruction. On the contrary, Partialism, in the form of the positive eternal misery of the wicked, stands in opposition to the doctrine of Divine Goodness. As a last resort, Dr. Hedge prefers the doctrine, not of annihilation, but of eternal deprivation of consciousness, and the reduction of the substance of the soul to the condition of matter. When a soul has developed to the condition of irrecoverable evil it, perhaps, becomes an evil spirit, a demon, a devil. Its moral nature, which is the life of its consciousness, then depreciates and dies into everlasting death. In the fire of hell the suffering soul relapses from embers into cinder. The substance of the earth may be composed of materalized soul.

Upon all this summary we need only remark, that while it stands immeasurably above the level of Comte and Spencer, it is utterly devoid of power or grapple upon the heart or souls of men. Reduce scripture to a fragmentary scribble of unauthentic documents; strike down the miraculous manifestations of God through miracle in the world; level the Son of God to a mere man, and the virtue has clean gone out from a once living Christianity. Dr. Hedge's book, with all its rhetoric, is but the display of the emasculate character of the Unitarian system. A Unitarian preacher can come before the people with merely his individualisms, his own particular views and conclusions; and the people have a right to reply, What have we to do with this man's singularities? Our guessings are as good as his. When a Methodist preacher comes, he comes with a living word of God in his hand; with a God manifest in the flesh to present; with death, judgment, and eternity at stake. Nor have we the least fear that the power of these realities will fail. They will stand the light of any investigation, they will meet the demands of any age.

Minutes of the Committee on the Centenary of Methodism, appointed by the Bishops in accordance with the Order of the General Conference of 1864. Held at Cleveland, Ohio, February 22-25, 1865. 8vo., pp. 19. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1865.

For her Sabbath Israel had a "preparation" of a few hours; and for our great Centennial Sabbath of 1866, we have a preparation yet of a few months. Our first century of American Methodism draws near its close; and we are to join hands in a great thank-offering for what God hath wrought and for what we are. And, first, let us reconsecrate ourselves to our great mission. Where is the God of our fathers? Him will we serve even as our fathers served, will he but baptize us with a double portion of the Holy Spirit. Wherein we have wandered and lost, let us return and recover. We need not indeed return to the forms and the circumstantials, to the silver-satin bonnet, the stiff-collared coat, and to the Foundry Church. But we may return to the full possession of that hearty, joyous, ever-active religion that constituted our fathers a power in the world. But in this we cannot be so singular and alone as they were. Blessed be the name of our God, we are surrounded with the goodly hosts of our sister denominations, who are very difficult to surpass in labors of Christian faith and love. And, second, we would that in accordance with the resolutions of our bishops, our centennial year could be marked by a reunion of the different fragments of American Methodism. Especially would we rejoice in the return of that Church, the WESLEYANS, who seceded from us rather than make our concessions to the Southern slave-power. We honor and love those men. Their secession, as we believe, saved our Church in 1844 from accepting a slaveholding bishop. They, honorably to themselves, left the Church for the Church's good; and for that same Church's good we trust that they will return, with a full triumphant WELCOME. Never in such a crisis may the Church want those who will desert her ranks and frighten her soul from bowing her knee to Baal. Third, very wisely our Centenary Committee have recognized that our educational department stands most in need of a great revival effort. The record of our laymen in that branch of enterprise is not brilliant. It is much that the liberality of the Church shall be concentrated upon this object for one great year. It is more that her heart is brought to feel upon this subject at this historical point. And if she can reflect concentratedly, so as to yield less to local and meditate more upon great connectional points, we may yet recover from some great errors, and attain some great monumental results. In regard to colleges we need a new spirit and purpose, not to project new foundations so much as to finish the old. There, for instance, is Middletown, with a beautiful location, a splendid beginning, and a most honorable

quarter of a century of history, living and working by the Church's neglect. We would hope not to hear any more trancendentalisms about a College on the Hudson or on Manhattan Island until the University of Fisk and Olin is endowed with a million. And, lastly, while war has been a strange instructor of our people in deeds of lavish benevolent liberality, peace has returned, not only without any commercial revulsion or business stagnation, but with a positive prosperity and a rich augury that render liberality a natural and hearty process. Our laymen will, we have not the slightest doubt, come forth with a thank-offering to lay upon the altars of the Church that will fully demonstrate that the Church will be safe and prosperous so far as its interests are committed to their hands. We venture the prediction that they will roll out a TOTAL which will stand among the many surprises that our history has furnished to the world. We will thereupon gird ourselves afresh, and in the name of God put on new strength and take up our line of march toward that next Centennial, at which, not we, but our children's children, shall testify what further hath God wrought, and call to mind the sayings and doings of their fathers.

Systematische Theologie, Ein Heitlich Behandelt. Von WILLIAM F. WarREN, Dr. und Prof. der Theologie. Erste Lieferung: Allgemeine Ein leitung. Pp. 186. Bremen: 1865.

We have here the first installment of a book which is destined to make its mark upon the theology of the age. Dr. Warren is well known to the readers of this review by his various contributions to theological literature, all marked by accurate learning, clear dis. crimination, and luminous arrangement. He is also known in narrower circles as one of the most thoroughly cultivated and promising of the younger theologians of the time, whether in Europe or America. But we think that his intimate friends, as well as the public, were hardly prepared to receive from his hands a piece of work so complete, so philosophical, and at the same time so thoroughly scriptural and Methodistic as the book before us.

It forms the General Introduction to a systematic theology. Dr. Warren modestly says in his preface that the work was undertaken for the benefit of his pupils in the mission school at Bremen, and for the use of the younger Methodist ministers of the German Church in Europe and America; and that it may serve the additional purpose of enlightening the German theological public in general as to the true nature of Methodist theology. These are very good views indeed; but we predict for the work, if finished as it is begun, a far wider sphere of influence than the author's modesty has allowed him to anticipate for FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVII.-39