physical, mental, moral and spiritual conditions of health and disease, and there is not one chapter but has meat for the preacher and pastor. Take the chapter headings in the second part: Intellectual Effort, Competition, Defeat, Anxiety, Fear, Misfortunes. There's a theme for a sermon in each one. Or consider these quotations from a paragraph in the chapter on “Phagocytosis" is there not here a sermon on the beneficence of Providence?

"When bacteria gain entrance to the blood, they are assailed by the white corpuscles and are eaten up, if not too numerous, by the corpuscles called the lencocytes, which first envelop the germs and then proceed to digest them. . . . Millions of leucocytes concentrate in the infected area, and engage in hand-to-hand fight with the bacteria. Perhaps no battle in the history of warfare would compare with the activity of the bacteria and leucocytes that takes place in an ordinary boil."

But the value of the volume does not depend on its homiletic availability. It is a good book for the individual and the family.

What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself. An Outline Study and Interpretation of His Self-revelation in the Gospels. By ANSON PHELPS STOKES. The Macximillan Company, New York, 1916. 114 pp. $1.00.

In order to answer the question, which modern modes of thinking have reopened and forced into the forefront, "Who and What is Christ?" it is necessary to ascertain by way of a preliminary investigation what Jesus did and how he imprest men, and also what he thought and said of himself. The order in which these preliminary questions are taken up is unessential. They aim to bring into view the facts for a generalization on the person of Christ. Mr. Stokes has made a fresh excursion into the field opened up by the title of this little book. He conducts the inquiry in the spirit of pure scientific research and uses well-accredited exegetical and historical methods. His crit

ical assumptions regarding the origin and nature of the gospels are in no sense radical, and his conclusions are constructive. They strengthen faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Savior of the world. The book does not, of course, solve the problem of Christology for the present-day theologians, but it makes a contribution of value toward its solution.

The Readers' Commentary. Edited by DAWSON WALKER, D.D., and F. S. GUY WARMAN, D.D. (1) The Epistle to the Romans, by H. G. GREY, M.A. (xii-120 pp.), (2) The Epistle to the Galatians, by CYRIL W. EMMET, M.A. (xxxi-68 pp.). Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York. $1.25 net each.

In general, the plan of this new series of New Testament commentaries covers the chief items of interest to the student and teacher of the Bible. Each volume begins with a brief introduction to the book to be studied and goes over the text (R.V.) verse by verse after the manner of the typical exegetical commentary. It is the aim of the expounders of the books to combine sound scholarship with the spirit of devotion, a careful explanation of the text with a reverent appreciation of the book itself. Judging from the two volumes already issued the series promises to furnish many teachers and students with exactly what they have been looking for. The notes are brief, but omit nothing of importance, the introductions, too, throw light on all the chief problems of criticism raised in recent years.

Weapons for Workers.

Three Hundred and Twenty-two Outline Addresses, Illustrations and Incidents, Children's Addresses and Illustrations, Bible Readings and Talks, Temperance Addresses and Points, and Seed Thoughts. Arranged by J. ELLIS. Robert Scott, London, 1915. 72 x 44 in., xii-174 pp. 2s. net.

We give a specimen of the outlines on pages 251 and 252 oi this number. The outpages 251 and 252 of this number. The outCleansing of the Leper."

VOL. LXXII

No. 4

THE THEOLOGIAN

The

THE chapters of this book which have a direct theological bearing are the last four on the fulfilment of personal life in Jesus Christ, the creative spirit of Christianity, the future personal life and personal realism. The work is characterized by several features which are symptomatic of the time. It allies itself with the presentday inclination to look at personal life from the biological rather than from the theological point of view. meaning of life is disclosed in its genetic development of tendencies which gathering volume and significance are determinative of the future. The title aptly describes the aim as not dogmatic but interpretative. More attention is paid to facts than to assumptions. Instead of claiming as set. tled matters which are still subject to historical criticism, the author contents himself with a minimum of accepted data. As an instance of his method one may refer to his treatment of the virgin-birth and the miracles of Jesus. The virgin-birth story has its value not in an alleged mysterious and unrelated event but in its witness to the supernal meaning of Christ's person to those who would match his exceptional life with a beginning no less exceptional. Yet even here the essential thing is his sharing fully the inheritance of our nature, even if from the very beginning he was sub

ject to an unusual impartation of the Holy Spirit. The question of miracles as such is left at one side; in the healing ministry of Jesus there is disclosed a superior psychic force in the physical realm in which the dynamic of personal life appeared in its highest degree. Jesus is thus revealed as the supreme person in those principal ways-his transcendent ideational energy, as in his consciousness of God and of the kingdom of God, in his will as reflecting the will of God, and in his feeling, in which, quite in accord with the author's genius, appears the most illuminating revelation of personality.

The Christian consciousness is defined as a continued creation of the spirit of Christ as this is evident in the "collective mind of his disciples, enlarged by the history of Christian thought, enriched with the experience of believers of every age, and illumined with the knowledge of God which increases with the years."

The longest chapter-seventy-seven pages-is devoted to a consideration of the future personal life. Here Dr. Smyth finds four strands of our present existence which must be conceived of as constitutive factors of the hereafter an integrating power of memory, a self-identifying activity in consciousness, responsiveness to an external universe, and a will to live. Rising above purely natural grounds.

for belief in a future life, based on survival value and the possible continuance of life, he inquires whether such a life carries us on toward a goal which has already been ours here. Indications of such a tendency appear in Jesus's singular power of controlling physical forces, and particularly in the conviction of the first disciples that Jesus continued to live and to manifest himself after death. The positions thus won are reenforced by the moral and spiritual values which are inseparable from the inner personal life.

Until the final chapter we come upon no reference to a theory of knowledge or to a particular philosophy, or theology. Not that these are not involved in this discussion and may not be invoked in defense of the positions advocated, but they have been kept in abeyance, since the search is not for proof but for the meaning of reality. Now, however, the author presents his doctrine of reality and bases his world-view on personal idealism which he differentiates from various types of idealism and the new realism.

With reference to the Christian belief in God Dr. Smyth offers three suggestions. First, our conviction of the divine existence is not a conclusion from a process of reasoning, as in the so-called theistic proofs, but is derived from personal experience which seeks an interpretation of that experience in rational form. Secondly, the personality of God is the conception of what is central and essential in our own life carried to its supreme degree of fulness. Thirdly, we may expect to know more of God through enlarging scientific interpretations of the world, the making of history, the development of man's higher life, and through men specially gifted with spiritual insight and expression. A plea is thus entered for a new natural theology not indeed in the old lines

but out of material furnished by increasing scientific apprehension of the world.

From what has been said, it is evident that Dr. Smyth traverses a field which is alive with intense human interest. If the trained theologian finds little in the discussion that is new, and if he would here and there qualify a statement, yet by reason of its scientific temper, its Catholic spirit, its reverent handling of the most sacred contents of our Christian faith, and not least of all its palpitating literary style, he will wish for this book many readers to whom it will bring light and perhaps life.

THE SCIENTIST

Of all the men who have studied the problems of the human spirit in the light of modern science, and have given popular expression to conclusions that are vitally constructive in this age of changing faiths, Dr. Smyth is easily one of the leaders. Always open-minded, always illuminating, he wins alike by his broad intelligence and his sympathy. Of the group of men of which Henry Drummond was perhaps the greatest, the author of the present volume has continued well-nigh the longest his mission, which is, in the highest sense, prophetic.

The present volume is the most comprehensive, in purpose, of the author's list of some eight volumes, published by the Scribners. All science, all religion, all philosophy has its significance in the last analysis, in the meaning of personal life. The concept of life is the most comprehensive in the categories of universal phenomena, and when life becomes personal, whether in its long evolutionary history or in the growth of the human consciousness that contemplates it, the meaning of creation is disclosed, if such disclosure is possible at all. In Dr. Smyth's own words: