deeper experience, than others, the family circle should not be sundered."-P. 277.

It is true that some of the family are only babes in knowledge and experience; but they are to be all the more loved and cared for because they are babes. The weak, the feeble, the halting, and the faint,.need all the more encouragement and aid. Some may and will think and act differently from others; they may occupy different stand-points; but they are neither to be slighted nor ignored because of these things. The "strong" in the family ought "to bear the infirmities of the weak." And more than this: not only should this love and care be extended to the members of our own branch of the family, but also to all the branches of the family of God. Here is a plane of Christian experience which is elevated far above the narrow lines of denominationalism, the petty jealousies and envies, the contentions and strifes of parties; and where Christians of all creeds and of all forms of worship, "who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity," are united in the inseverable bonds of love.

In presenting the motives for the attainment of entire holiness, the distinguished powers of our author are more fully brought to bear than in any other part of his book. He calls our attention to a "ceaselessly preaching universe," while he analyzes its utterances as it speaks of the "intrinsic excellence and glory of this state," of "the command of God," of " the interests of the cause of Christ in the world," of "our surroundings," of "time and eternity," of "heaven and hell." On these last motives he speaks as follows:

Would you see the value of holiness, linger here. Pursue the upward destiny of a soul brightening under the smile of God forever. See its ever-increasing and unfolding beauty; hear the ravishing melody of its triumphant song. The ages flee away; but mightier than decay, stronger than death, the soul lives on, ascending, widening its circle, becoming more and more like God, and losing itself ever in his ineffable radiance. Such is the destiny of a soul washed in the blood of Jesus. Behold, on the other hand, a soul darkening under the frown of Jehovah. Ages fly away; its darkness broods darker still, its sorrows gather down in denser folds; it is lost. The lengthened periods of eternity roll by, but they bring no redemption; deep, dark, dismal gloom settles around its sphere forever. Learn by the contrast the value of holiness. Its presence is life; its absence is eternal death.-P. 323.

We are truly thankful that this great doctrine has been so clearly and ably presented. God is calling upon his people now to be holy as at no former period in the history of the Church. Never before was this privilege so clearly and extensively proclaimed. Never were there so many living witnesses of its experience. Never were there so many of our ministers and people really "groaning after perfect love." Nor is this work confined to our own Church. Episcopalians and Quakers, Presbyterians and Baptists-in a word, representatives of all the evangelical Churches-are beholding their calling, and beginning to "apprehend" more fully "that for which they are apprehended by Christ Jesus." And this mighty movement is characterized by the absence of all controversy, and by the high and increasing valuation which is placed upon testimony. While it is essential that the doctrine should be clearly formulated and simplified, yet it would be nothing but a dead letter if it were not vivified by a blessed experience and enforced by the saintly lives of those who profess to enjoy it. And it is this "word of their testimony" by which the saints of God are to overcome this world-testimony based upon experience, and corroborated by a holy, blameless life. If the whole Church were coming up to this experience, if all its ministry and membership had graven on their hearts and on their lives "Holiness unto the Lord," how soon would this redeemed world bow down at the feet of Jesus Recognizing her obligations, she would employ her energies for this purpose. Acknowledging her stewardship, she would lay her wealth upon the altar of sacrifice; and what is now expended for luxuries, trifles, and extravagances, or hoarded up in the spirit of covetousness, would become holy unto the Lord, and would be employed for the world's redemption. Not only so: she would also gladly give up her sons and daughters to bear her messages of salvation to the ends of the earth. Then the strongholds of heathenism, infidelity, Romanism, intemperance, impurity, and error would fall before her victorious arms, while, comprehending her possibilities, and reaching forth to experience and enjoy them, she would confess, illustrate, and exemplify that entire Christian purity which is the inheritance of the saints.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.-15

ART. III.-THE LAND OF THE VEDA.

The Land of the Veda: Being Personal Reminiscences of India; Its People, Castes, Thugs, and Fakirs; its Religions, Mythology, Principal Monuments, Palaces, and Mausoleums: together with the Incidents of the Great Sepoy Rebellion, and its Results to Christianity and Civilization. With a Map of India, and Forty-two Illustrations. Also, Statistical Tables of Christian Missions, and a Glossary of Indian Terms used in this Work and in Missionary Correspondence. By Rev. WILLIAM BUTLER, D.D. Third Edition. Royal 8vo. Pp. 550. IT was at the very beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era that Mahmoud of Ghuznee, that fierce and intolerant iconoclast, poured down from the highlands of Central Asia his Tartar hordes upon the teeming plains of Hindustán, marking by his sanguinary crescentades the eleventh century far more deeply in the pagan East than any event, whether of martial prowess or religious propagandism, marked that era in the Christian West. The first faint streaks of morning light had not yet appeared above the European horizon, shrouded in mediæval darkness; from the Bosporus west, and north from the Pillars of Hercules, the whole continent was wrapped in an almost starless night. Peter the Hermit and his motley following of crusaders had not yet made their first march for the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, and the songs of the troubadours were yet unsung. Mahmoud and his followers did more to stir the stagnant pool of Hindoo life-the religious life of India-than the aggregated efforts of the whole world of Christendom were at that time accomplishing in awaking and arousing moribund Europe from the deep lethargy in which it lay during those centuries of intellectual, moral, and religious gloom. In doing this they laid the foundations of a new empire-the most splendid known in the annals of the gorgeous Orient upon the ruins of more than a hundred kingdoms, principalities, and states, the rulers of some of which might have traced their kingly descent back beyond the days of David and Solomon.

Not only did Mahmoud and his chieftains, during their twelve principal incursions-made ostensibly in the interests of religion, but resulting in bringing to the raiders treasures of untold wealth-prepare the way for, and even inaugurate, the upbuilding of the magnificent Mogul empire, but, while propagating the faith of Islam among the timid and yielding

Hindus-teaching the Koran in the land of the Veda, until to-day, at the sound of the muezzin's call to prayer, more than thirty million followers of the prophet turn their faces westward from the plains of India toward the Kaaba in Meccathey also became the unconscious founders of the Urdu tongue, a language now spoken more or less fluently by perhaps a hundred millions of people in the great Gangetic valley and the provinces of Northern India, and in which the traveler may make himself understood from the Himálayas and Peshawar on the north to Calcutta and Cape Comorin on the south.

The story of these invasions is clearly seen to mark a new era in the history of India; in fact, it marks the very beginning of all succinct and reliable history concerning that great South Asian peninsula and its babbling millions. Just there its trustworthy written chronicles begin, and the anxious historian is able to separate between the dubious past and the surer and more trustworthy records of subsequent chroniclers. Beyond that all is hopelessly mixed and blended with the uncertain, extravagant, and improbable. As a race or sect the Hindus possess very few, if any, really authentic records of their country and the vast peoples who have from time to time inhabited it. In this the Buddhists, who for a time occupied nearly the whole peninsula, far surpassed them, as these have left something from which to weave a partial history of their advances and successes, and of their final defeat and overthrow by the Brahmans of India.

It may be that the wide and fertile domain of mythology, giving free range to fancy, offered a more pleasing and attractive field to the glowing oriental mind than the cold and circumscribed one of matter-of-fact history. It is hardly possible that the extravagant imagination which revels in the creations of gods and demons, genii and giants, and in clothing them with fantastic powers to perform supernatural acts, should take delight in the sober details of historical facts. Certain it is that the Hindu is rich in a literature detailing with marvelous imnuteness the history of his gods and goddesses, the powers and operations of the heavens above and of the hells beneath; but any connected history of the real events happening on his native soil will be sought in vain. Kingdoms and dynasties have passed away without one faithful chronicler. Empires

have been lost and won without a single record of their fate. We know that vast and important changes have taken place, but are left to conjecture their causes. Historic fact is so blended with fantastic myth as to render both alike worthless. Human agents are so confused with demons and preterhuman beings, and their acts so inextricably intermingled, as to render hopeless the task of gleaning even a sheaf of fact amid a whole field of fancy. Coins, sculptured monuments, inscriptions on pillars and rocks, in caves and cave temples, the legends of the people and the genealogies of bards-these constitute the sources whence the history of India covering long ages must be drawn. But these sources, though tedious and imperfect, are yielding to the patient and scholarly efforts of western savants -numismatists, archæologists, and comparative philologists—a rich and increasing harvest of historic data, from which certain theories of more recent date are receiving confirmation, and others of long standing are being overthrown and discarded as now untenable or worthless.

To this sweeping assertion of the poverty of historical data in India, an exception might be urged in behalf of a catalogue of the Solar and Lunar races of kings, so-called, because they claimed descent, the former from the sun and the latter from the moon. Their rule in certain provinces of Hindustán reaches back to a date anterior to that of the Macedonian invasion. But this list of names, when any thing else than a mere list, becomes a "loose legendry of licensed fiction," and gives little idea of the reigns of these Hindu kings or the condition of the people under them. Far more of historic value and interest has been gathered from certain inscriptions on rocks and pillars, now generally ascribed to the era of Asoka, a powerful emperor who is supposed to have reigned toward the close of the third century before Christ, and to have extended his dominions to the most distant provinces of India, as these sculptured monuments, covered with records in the ancient Pali character, have been found in all parts of the peninsula, in Cuttack on the eastern coast, in the mountains of Gujerat on the west, and in the interior of the North-western provinces.

A theory has been advanced that much of the history of India which might have reached down to the present time is not forthcoming because of the great Buddhistic awakening