tion entire as a decided curiosity, the good taste of which, however, as opening a discussion of practical religious duty, we cannot endorse. It is rather too fast.

"The late gunpowder missionary movements in the United States have been so noisy and interesting, that, though ready to fire this Jubilee Salute eighteen months ago, I resolutely spiked my battery. I now clear the vent and let loose these Dogs of War, hoping that Selfishness, the great Rebellion against God, the curse of the earth, may soon be smashed by THUNDER ALL ROUND. Knowing that it will take many campaigns and many volunteers, I dare not longer delay. To make sure of one,' here I bolt. SPRIGGS."

An air of levity is thus, at the threshold, thrown over a book the purpose of which is eminently serious. Many just views are scattered through its concluding sections, concerning doing business for God, and the missionary work of the next fifty years. We certainly wish the author success in endeavoring to replace the luxurious,' by the 'unselfish,' life; 'the 'barbaric,' by the 'heroic' Christian, age.

Harpers' Hand-Book for Travellers in Europe and the East; being a Guide through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, and Ireland. By W. PEMBROKE FETRIDGE. With a Map embracing colored routes of travel in the above countries. New York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 450. Price, $2.75.

GUIDE-BOOKS abroad are as indispensable as a passport. How elaborate they should be depends much upon the length and leisure of one's travelling. We have not found a "Murray" too copious for a good sit-down in a European city, which we designed to do in a thorough way; though its atrocious mis-information has more than once made us almost as angry as the prophet of the withered gourd. But now that two months are considered long enough for the British Isles and the Continent, it is time to put it all between two covers. The carpet-bag is the present touring emblem and quantum-suf.: and this neat, full, loquacious volume will just fit its last vacancy. It furnishes the essential knowledge in the smallest compass. It is the pemmican of travelling lore, the boiled-down and snugly canned pabulum for daily consumption. We look up at our way worn, red-covered compagnons du voyage, with the stains of mule-back sweat upon them, quietly shelved just under the ceiling, and almost sigh to think how unceremoniously this pert youngster will soon jostle the like of them off the track. This book is a suggestive index of "the progress of the age," if not of "the march of mind."

The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed. Translated by GEORGE SALE, Gent. To which is prefixed a Life of Mohammed. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. 12mo. pp. 472. 1862.

THIS is the seventh translation of a wonderful work. The first was made into Latin by Robertus Retenensis, in 1143. From this a translation was made into Italian by Andrea Arrivabene, near the close of the fifteenth century. Johannes Andreas, a Valencian, made a third translation. In the seventeenth century a French scholar, Andrew du Ryer, produced a copy in his own tongue. Ross made a poor translation into English from du Ryer's. In 1698, Lewis Marrocci, Confessor to Pope Innocent XI., furnished a Latin translation, which was published together with the original Arabic, and explanatory notes, and a refutation of Mohammedanism. The seventh translation was made a little before the middle of the last century by Mr. Sale. It is said to be very faithful to the original, and its value is greatly enhanced by his numerous notes and a "Preliminary Discourse on the Life and Times of Mohammed." This discourse, and the notes, give us a view of Eastern habits, laws, manners, and traditions, without which much of the Koran is wholly unintelligible to the American reader. To the deep regret of all scholars, these valuable additions are omitted in the present edition, and so the book is of but little value. The readers of the Koran extend from Morocco and Timbuctû, on the west, to Calcutta and beyond, on the east, and number a hundred and twenty millions. As the Koran had never been printed, it was supposed that the Arabs regarded the printing of it a profanation, because it was a sacred book. This is a mistake. The very critical literary taste of the Arabs could not be satisfied with the old Arabic type. Since the missionaries of the American Board have prepared a font of type, cut after the best specimens of Arabic handwriting, and printed the Scriptures in these, their prejudice against the printing of the sacred book has ceased. This volume, with proper aids, is greatly worthy of study, as a power that controls one sixth of the entire globe.

Waymarks of the Pilgrimage; or Teachings by Trials. By G. B. CHEEVER, D. D., &c., &c. 18mo. pp. 164. Boston: American Tract Society.

We never can regard Dr. Cheever as one individual. He is to us the "Man of Two Lives," far more than the ideal hero thus described

one man

in the German fiction. When he is on the platform of the Music Hall, hurling fire and wrath at the head of our national Moloch, he is and a magnificently detonating one -a very mortar-boat of tremendous projectile force, albeit the markmanship is often of the wildest range. We turn to his " We turn to his "Wanderings of a Pilgrim"; his "Wanderings of the River of Life"; his "Lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress"; and his other life gleams mildly, richly forth, like the evening sun through the paths of the forest. How these diverse individualities can dwell in the same nature we have no reconciling theory. But they are there; and in these directly contrary lines they do their work with marked efficiency.

We suppose that some of these sweet tonings of his gentler mood have discoursed their music to his people from the pulpit of the church at Union Square. How wide their key-note from the hoarse thunder of his organ when all the anti-slavery stops are out! His hearers should have well-strung nerves to bear the transition without a twinge of spiritual neuralgia. Honestly, we like the minor melodies the best. We never tire of his meditations among Swiss mountains, nor along the sacred river of Christian experience and divine grace, nor as he follows the muse of Bunyan up the heavenward path. And here he writes, under the same inspiration, of God's Method of Discipline; Contrast and Variety of Spiritual Experiences; The Trials of Faith ;. The Creed of Doubt; The Creed of Faith; The Reproof of Mercy; The Hope of Glory. The titles of these chapters are enough to show what honey out of the rock is here gathered for the use of the church. It does not very greatly trouble us, in reading these pages, to remember the pamphlet-war of the New York Puritans', although it can. hardly help suggesting the truth-how much easier it is to preach. than to practise; but we learned that long ago from other sources. We confess that we cannot feel that all of our author's pages, thus put before the public, are equally Christian. Those now before us, however, in this neat little volume, breathe the true spirit of the gospel.

The Testimony of Christ to Christianity. By PETER BAYNE, A. M. Author of the "Christian Life," &c., &c. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 200. 1862.

66

MR. BAYNE gives us his quota of the debate now going on over the Readjustment of Christianity" in this brief but cogent argument. It is a new "Short Method with the Deists"-pithy, pointed, effective. Fixing the historic truth of our Lord's earthly mission and works by classic, heathen authority, he demonstrates that Christ's tes

timony to his own religion, as recorded in the Gospels, was not false, nor mistaken; his moral excellence precluding the first, and his intellectual superiority preventing the second. The conclusion is irresistible that, strange as his miraculous acts undeniably were, they were literal facts attesting his superhuman commission to preach glad tidings to the world. The style of the writer is eloquent and forcible. His volume is much better adapted to counteract the scepticism of the day, than some much larger ones which have undertaken the work, particularly in connection with the popular mind. We hoped to have presented this subject of Christ's witness-bearing to his own faith, in a more elaborate way, in our present number. We shall return to the topic, in a somewhat different method to that here employed, in our

next issue.

Essays Historical and Critical. By HUGH MILLER. Edinburgh : A. & C. Black. 1862.

THIS writer's name, if not so often mentioned as once, is still almost a household word with us; at home it is this, with a fervency of love which hardly another of his countrymen has secured. The last years of his life brought him into close contact with the popular mind through the columns of the "Witness" newspaper, the organ of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which he edited from 1840. These years also produced the remarkable series of scientific works upon which his fame as a naturalist rests. The present volume is a reprint of editorials from the "Witness." They furnish a surprising illustration of the versatility, strength, beauty of the mind which originated them, and of the noble, heroic heart which was its worthy ally. Hugh Miller was of the race of the giants. His splendid physical stature was a fair index of his stalwart, manly soul. A true vein of poetry runs through the whole amplitude of his rich nature. His Christianity was alike conscientious, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing. He was master of a style every way fitted to set forth his grand conceptions of truth and life. These papers do not, in one sense, do justice to his powers; for, written as they were, under the pressure of a weekly editorship, they have not the finish of a more leisurely composition. Yet, no amount of polishing could have made some of them more perfect; and, thrown off as they were, they exhibit the ready resources and force of his genius. For genius he had of a high grade. His country's scroll of gifted men is proverbially studded with brilliant names. But few of them will hold their brightness more purely and permanently than the stone-mason of Cromarty.

Stanley's Lectures on the Eastern Church; Clough's Poems; Edward Irving's Life; Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, among other books, are on our table for further notice. A large variety of pamphlets, also, have been received, for which the authors have our thanks.

ARTICLE X.

THE ROUND TABLE.

"And if it comes three times, I thought,

I take it for a sign."

We have seen two indications that fill us with joy. May the third soon appear, and " we take it for a sign" in the right quarter of the heavens. In the opening sermon of the General Association of New York, by Dr. Palmer, a good omen arose in the ecclesiastical sky. His subject was, "An Increase of Moral Power the great need of Modern Christendom." In the development of this subject, his first head is reported to have been as follows: "There is demanded a return to apostolic faith. A distrustful, dubious, half-believing spirit, is manifest in the church, and almost a Sadducean spirit outside of it. The faith of the present day is faltering." What could be truer or more important to be said? How could it have found a more fitting occasion, or an abler and more influential advocate? Just what we are contending for, and what we feel to be worth every sacrifice to obtain. It has lately been said that the one great need of the Andover Seminary is an earnest denominational policy. A new dress, or the old one renewed, is a good thing; we advocate it. But it is not of such vital importance as to lead us to send a constitutionally-sick man to the tailor rather than to the doctor. We would rather say, with Dr. Palmer: An increase of moral power is the great need of modern Christendom (Andover included); and that in order to an increase of moral power there must be a return to apostolic faith, and an abandonment of the distrustful, dubious, half-believing spirit in the churches. Henceforth we shall reckon the Albany seer as more than ever a colaborer.

A second token, almost as important, because of its appearance nearer to the hub of the universe, arose like a new star over Milford, September 4, when Professor Park, in his ordination sermon,