familiar sounds of "Ave Marias” and “Paternosters." A visit to the library will still aid in the delusion, especially when permitted to examine the collection of sacred relics-Buddha's tooth, the bones of the saints, the urns containing the ashes of departed priests, etc.; all sacredly kept and looked upon with the profoundest veneration. Nor will the resemblance be less complete by discovering it to be a great ecclesiastical organization extending its authorities through various countries; having its infallible head in the Grand Lama, its pontifical court, its high functionaries, its priests, its monks and nuns of various schools and orders, its ordinances of celibacy, its holy water, its sales of charms, amulets and indulgences, its masses for the dead, its worship of relics and canonization of saints, and its womanolatry in the worship of Kwanyin, "the Queen of Heaven."

The history of the earliest efforts to introduce Christianity into China is somewhat obscure. The author dates the first as early as the sixth century by the Nestorians, but traditions of even apostolic preaching in China are still extant. While the Nestorians were yet in the field, Jean de Corvin, and several other Romish monks, entered it, and probably gathered about them a flourishing Christian community. But persecutions broke out under Genghis Khan, and with the fall of the Mongol dynasty, in 1369, all traces of this work disappeared. The Jesuits entered the field later, and were for a time in favor with the earlier emperors of the Tartar dynasty. Theological disputations arose among them, the Chinese became confused as to the relation between ancestral worship and the worship of the saints, and the Pope sought to settle these contests by decrees. This interference the emperor resisted, and plottings and intrigues followed, and the Jesuits were banished. There remained, however, some traces of this work, which became a 'nucleus of the re-opening of the Romish mission, in 1844. The Roman Catholic Church now reports missions in sixteen provinces, two hundred and fifty-four European missionaries, and one hundred and thirty-eight native priests, and nearly five hundred thousand members. Our author says:

The presence and apparent success of these Romish missionaries is not favorable to the real Christianization of China. As stated in a previous chapter, they are practicing many injustices and much oppression in many parts of China. Their priests are assuming official rank and prerogatives. They act in the character of magistrates, deciding disputes between the so-called members of their Church and other natives, even taking their

followers out of the hands of the native authorities and deciding cases of crime or debt according to their own judgment or prejudice. They even in some places assume to arrest natives who are not members of their Church, but who have committed a crime against their members, or fail to pay debts which they owe them.

Under a very unrighteous clause in the French Treaty, by which they were to receive the lands formerly held by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, they claim large possessions of land which they undoubtedly never held, and large compensations for grounds which it is impossible for them now to recover. All these things tend greatly to increase and intensify in the minds of the Chinese, and especially of the authorities, what is really the greatest obstacle to more liberal foreign intercourse and trade, and to more generous treatment of missionaries and their work, which is a fear on the part of the government that the final object of all foreigners in China is to get possession of their government and country. If this fear could be removed from the minds of the Chinese, and they could be made to feel that there are no ulterior plots or schemes, looking to the endangering of their country, or the disruption of their government, all other obstacles would soon give way, and we might have free intercourse in all parts of China to live and trade and preach the Gospel.

No attempt was made to give the Bible to the Chinese till Rev. Joshua Marshman, of the Baptist Missionary Society, attempted it in 1799, but it was not really done till Rev. Robert Morrison, of the London Missionary Society, who began his labors in 1807, accomplished it. The Churches of the United States did not send missionaries till 1830, then the American Board sent Rev. C. C. Bridgeman to Canton, who was followed the next year by Rev. David Abeel, who went to Amoy. In 1833 S. W. Williams went from the same society, and gave forty years to the work. Dr. Peter Parker went out in 1834.

After the opening of the five ports by the treaty which terminated the "opium war," missionaries flowed into China in great numbers, and the work of evangelizing the great empire has been ever since vigorously prosecuted. Our author considers that but twenty-five years of actual mission work has been done in China, and he says:

During that twenty-five years the open ports have been increased from five to sixteen, extending along the whole coast of China, from Canton to Peking, and a thousand miles up the great Yang-tsze-Kiang; and the places where missionaries actually

reside have increased in that time from 6 to 91, and in addition to these places of residence there are 511 "outstations" where the gospel is preached. The little company of about 30 missionaries in 1850 has grown to 473, and the 11 missionary societies operating in 1850 have become 30 in 1877. Of these 11 societies are American, 13 British, 3 Continental, and 3 are Bible Societies.

The missionary force is now 344 married missionaries, 66 single males, 63 single females, a total of 473. Of these 209 are American, 222 British, 33 Continental, and 8 representatives of the Bible Societies. There are 9 English, and 10 American physicians, 3 of the latter being ladies. There has been an increase within the last ten years of 5 societies, 35 stations, 115 missionaries, and more than 150 outstations.

The whole is summed up as follows: 91 stations; 511 outstations; 312 organized Churches; 43 self-sustaining Churches; 243 partly self-sustaining; 13,035 communicants, of which 8,068 are males and 4,967 females; pupils, 3,602; in theological schools, 20; students, 231; Sunday-schools, 115; Sunday scholars, 2,605; school-teachers, 29; colporteurs, 76; ordained native preachers; 73; assistant native preachers, 511; Bible women, 90; church buildings, 243; chapels, 437; hospitals, 16; patients, 3,780; out-door patients, 87,515; dispensaries, 24; applicants, 44,281 money raised, $9,271.

"China" is concluded by an epitome of the history of Methodist missions in China, which embraces the M. E. Church, South, and British Wesleyan missions, giving a total for all these of 14 stations; 109 outstations; 103 organized Churches; 2,319 members; 1,016 probationers; 71 schools; 1,288 pupils; 4 theological schools; 51 students; 78 Sunday-schools; 1,375 scholars; 25 ordained preachers; 113 assistant preachers; 21 Bible women; 43 church buildings; 114 chapels; 3 hospitals; 23 indoor patients; 604 outdoor patients; 3 dispensaries; 681 patients; 57 missionaries, and 30 wives.

These results are both amazing and inspiring. All the more so because the work has for this whole period been in its initiative. Starting from the present vantage-ground, what may it not be hoped will be effected within the twenty-five years next to come? What, ere a century will end? Truly the evangelization of this empire, so vast and populous, is not after all so very remote. The child may be born that will see China a Christian nation. This is an inference from what we see, as

well as the product of a living faith that the stone cut out of the mountain shall fill the whole earth.

Seven or eight chapters of the book remain. These are devoted to Japan, and abound in graphic descriptions of scenes and scenery; in a history of Christianity in Japan from its first introduction, in 1549, by the Jesuits under the leadership of Xavier, until it was extinguished at Shimabara by Iyeyasu, and of its re-introduction in 1854 in greater purity and power by Protestant missionaries; of Shintooism and Buddhism, the false religions we would displace by the bringing in of a better hope; and, lastly, of the suffering of women in Japan, and their need of the Gospel. The wonderful transformations that have so speedily been accomplished in this land appear from these chapters to be evidently the morning rays of a new civilization that ere long must pervade the whole nation, bearing amid its bursting glories the spiritual regeneration of thousands.

A mission just begun is thus placed by the side of a mission a quarter of a century old, only the more to invigorate the hope and strengthen the purposes of the people of God.

Will the author allow one to whom the great mission work is a specialty to render him thanks, on behalf of thousands of Christian hearts, for this interesting and valuable contribution to the missionary literature of the time?

ART. II.-THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION.

Data of Ethics. By HERBERT SPENCER. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1879. A RIGHT estimate of Mr. Spencer's ethics is impossible without referring to his general theory of mind. In common with many speculators of the same general tendency, he is very sensitive to the charge of materialism. Haeckel, Huxley, Spencer, and all the rest, indignantly repudiate this charge, and insist that only a fool or a knave can make it. Self-confessed materialists are as scarce as self-confessed thieves. What is materialism?

Materialism has many forms. It may be built upon the crude conceptions of matter which are framed by uncritical common sense, and it may be built upon a mystical notion of matter which defies comprehension. The first form is practi

cally obsolete. For the modern materialist matter is not what it seems to be, but something mystic, subtle, wonderful. He never tires of dilating upon its mystery; and even while declaring it to be all-sufficient, he also insists that it is past finding out. But to the common mind the essence of materialism does not consist in an insight into the nature of matter, but in the claim that mind is but the unsubstantial product of organization. This claim is quite compatible with the loudest wondering over the mystery of the molecule, and even with idealism and nihilism. The idealist, who regards the organism as an ideal thing, may still hold that the organic idea so conditions the mental idea that the latter cannot exist without the former. The nihilist, too, who views both mind and matter as unsubstantial phantoms, may also insist that mental phantoms can exist only in connection with material phantoms. In fact, the union of idealism and materialism is nothing rare in the history of thought, for it was by this road that German philosophy descended into the materialistic slough. Strauss in his work, "The Old Faith and the New," insists that the difference between idealism and materialism is of names and terms rather than of principles. He himself remained a Hegelian to the last. Probably every thoughtful student of Hegel has felt that a slight change in terms would turn many parts of his system into a scheme of materialistic development. So the left wing understood the master, and they were not without excuse. The monistic materialist would have little difficulty in accepting Spinoza's root principles as identical with his own; and there are points of view from which parts even of Leibnitz's doctrine approach dangerously near a pantheistic form of materialism. There is an idealistic materialism, and there is also a materialistic idealism.

The ground, then, of the current repudiation of materialism by those who still make mind an unsubstantial product is, that materialism may be tested by its doctrine of matter and by its doctrine of mind. The monists judge themselves by their doctrine of matter, while common sense judges them by their doctrine of mind. Since they repudiate the crude and brutal notions of matter held by untaught common sense, they deny and resent the charge of materialism. But since they also teach that mind is a function of matter, common sense insists that they are materialists; for the common thought of materialism is not