even during his human manifestation he still retained his divine consciousness, and, together with the Father and the Spirit, ruled the universe. His entering into, and his return out of, the conditions of time, occupied as it were only the space of a mathematical point in his eternal existence form, and hence involved no interruption whatever of his eternal activity.

The essay on atonement (p. 90) is perhaps as able a presentation and defense of the orthodox view as is anywhere to be found. It appeared originally in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie.

Another marked feature of the book, and one which in some points will collide with the habitual ways of thinking in the majority of Protestant Churches, is the constant treatment of man, not as mere spirit, but as spirit, soul, and body, and the bringing of the incarnation of the Redeemer into a direct realistic relation not only to man's soul, but also to his natural life, his body. Many of the thoughts here presented are. worthy of candid consideration; if we mistake not they will convince us that modern Protestantism is too much inclined to a one-sided abstract spiritism, and to an unscriptural disesteem of the nature-phase of man. To the average Protestant, the doctrine of the resurrection seems like a very unimportant matter-one that might almost be lost sight of without detriment to the symmetry of Christian life and thought. And yet how different was it in the minds of the Apostles! How large a place is given to it, both in their preaching and in their writings! Has not Protestantism, in reacting against the gross realism of Romanism, gone a little too far into the opposite extreme? However this may be, the learned and elaborate discussions of Schöberlein on the significance of the body, the nature of the resurrection body, the relation of Christ's unglorified to his glorified body, and of his glorified body to his eternal divinity, will amply repay the labor of a thorough study.

The spirit that pervades the whole work is admirably charitable, earnest, and devout.

Uber Nationale Erziehung. (On National Education.) Vom Verfasser der "Briefe über Berliner Erziehung." Leipzig, 1872: B. G. Teubner.

This book of 240 large, closely-printed pages is of great interest to all educators, for several reasons. It is a thorough discussion of the whole German system of education, but especially of its higher departments-gymnasial, university, and female education. It is a candid criticism of the merits and defects of the system, and an earnest advocacy of certain wide-reaching improvements, FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.-44

While treating exclusively of German education, it abounds in suggestions that would be profitable to educators every-where. The author of the work has seen fit to withhold his name, but it is easy to infer, both from the stir made by his previous work, "Letters on Berlin Education," and by a glance at the spirit of the present one, that he is an experienced teacher and a liberal thinker. The book starts out with the suggestion that, as now the German nation has at last attained to an approximate political unity, so it is opportune for the educators of the nation to set about inaugurating a combined movement toward the development of a better and more strictly German national character as the future recipient and sole guarantee of the stability of the national unity. This character is made to consist in clearness and independency of thought and in rounded equilibrium of propension. Taking aptness to produce this result as a criterion of the soundness of every phase and feature of existing institutions, he proceeds to apply it in detail to all the studies of the ten years of gymnasial drill, and to the subjects treated and methods prevalent in the four faculties of the university. Of the many points made by the book we can mention only a few: The ten years (nine to nineteen) gymnasial course is not too long a preparation for the university, but the spirit of the teaching is defective. It aims too much at a mechanical cramming of the head with undigested facts. Its spirit is pedantic, and it tends to generate pedants. It should rather aim at stimulating autonomous thinking. It treats the pupil too servilely; it should begin earlier in the course to awaken his sense of manhood and self-respect by addressing him as Sie instead of Du. It should, toward the last of the ten years, introduce some features of the freedom of university study. On passing from the gymnasium to the university, the author finds occasion for still greater reforms-though he is careful to say that Germany has nothing to learn from the great schools of other nations. The prime requisite for training capable servants of the State in the learned professions is practical teachers. Many very learned professors have no talent for teaching. The lecture system is right in itself, but it needs complementing. There should be a "seminary” in each department for giving the students practical training in the subject in hand, under the guidance of a skillful drill-master. Otherwise many of the students pass their three or four years in a fruitless mechanical writing down of what they passively hear. In respect to the teaching personnel, some changes are loudly called for. Professors too old to do profitable work should no longer be paid

full salaries, (and thus incapacitate the authorities to promote able young men,) but should be excused from labor, and retired on moderate pensions. In regard to examinations and promotions, greater stress should be laid on oral than on written examinations, but a still greater stress on the direct judgment of those who taught the applicants. On coming to the subject of female education, the usually clear-headed author suddenly loses his common sense and becomes all at once violently reactionary. This part of his work has no appropriateness for American womanhood. His opinions here are in fact simply monstrous: He hesitates not to aver that the higher female schools of Germany are an unmitigated evil, affording no truly womanly culture, and fatally prejudicing their pupils against the duties of woman's natural life-sphere. With the exception of this last feature, we heartily commend this work to all German-reading American pedagogues.

Die Grenzen des confessionellen Elementes im Bereiche der sittlichen Gemeinschaft. (The Limits of the Confessional Element in the Social Sphere.) Von Dr. W. FALCKENHEIMER. Cassel, 1872.

An attempt by an orthodox moderate liberal to fix the proper limits to the action of the secular and the religious powers in lands where State and Church are more or less organically united. The task is far from easy. The proper attitude of the State to Church property, to Church festivals, to marriage and divorce, to religious corporations, etc., is a perplexing question. IIistory is largely made up of the strifes that have arisen along the border line. So long as State and Church are organically connected the strifes will continue. There is too much human passion in them both to remain peacefully co-ordinate. The one will continually strive to subordinate the other. The only practical solution of the problem is either an absolute organic unity of the two-a theocracy or hierocracy—or their absolute separation and independency. Nor is the celebrated maxim, "A free Church in a free State," the highest wisdom. It should read, "Free Church and free State." The State and the Church having properly no organic relations, need not be conterminous at all. One State may embrace many Churches; but equally well, if not better, may one Church embrace many States. Indeed, the Church has no natural limits; its legislation applies equally to all men of all zones; the whole earth may be embraced in one Church, whereas State legislation has to

be adapted to the geographic and climatic peculiarities of each race and country.

Dr. Falckenheimer looks for help to Rothe's theory, that the State is finally to absorb the Church. He would therefore restrict the confessional element to the strictly religious sphere, and regard the State as already a sort of higher Church, charged with conserving the more general interests of morality, and even of religion.

History, Biography, and Topography.

The Life of the Rev. Alfred Cookman. With some account of his Father, the Rev. George Grimston Cookman. By HENRY B. RIDGAWAY, D.D. With an Introduction by the Rev. R. S. FOSTER, LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Pp. 480. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1873.

Among modern contributions to the biographical wealth of the Church, few are equal to Dr. Ridgaway's Life of Alfred Cookman. So beautiful a theme, in the hands of so ready a writer, could hardly fail to produce a beautiful result. The volume is eminently a delineation of character. It narrates little of incident, little of anecdote, nothing of adventure. The events and scenes which it describes all belong to the living present, and lack the enchantment which distance sometimes lends to the view. The author invites us simply to the contemplation of a human life in which divine grace wrought a good work, and which shone more and more unto the perfect day.

Alfred Cookman was the eldest son of the Rev. George G. Cookman, who went down into an ocean grave in the steamship President in 1841, but whose name is yet as ointment poured forth. He was born in Columbia, Pa., January 4, 1828, and died in the city of Newark, N. J., November 13, 1871, in the forty-fourth year of his age. A subject of deep religious impressions almost from infancy, he gave his heart to Christ in solemn covenant when he was only a little over nine years of age. He preached his first sermon when he was only seventeen years old, was called into the itinerant ministry under the authority of a presiding elder the next year, and was received by the Philadelphia Conference on trial in 1848. His appointments were Attleborough, (Pa.,) Delaware City Circuit, (Del.,) Germantown, Kensington, Westchester, Harrisburgh, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York city, Wilmington, (Del.,) and Newark, (N. J.) He was a member of the

National Camp-Meeting Association, and entered with great enthusiasm into their plans and labors. Mr. Cookman was well known, not only as an earnest and eloquent, acceptable and successful minister of Christ, commending himself, like Paul, "to every man's conscience in the sight of God," but as a confessor and ardent advocate of that grace which bringeth full salvation. The least that can be said of him, in connection with the doctrine named, is that his life was not inconsistent with the profession which he made. Among the names which the Church, with humble, grateful joy, inscribes upon her tablets as examples of the purifying, elevating power of divine grace, there is a place for the name of Alfred Cookman.

The biographer is to be congratulated, not only upon the pleasant character of the work set before him, but the success with which he has done it. He was long and intimately acquainted with Mr. Cookman; he appreciated him; he loved him; and to a kindred spirit we can imagine no more grateful task than the delineation of such a friend when he is gone from earth, but gone in such wise that it can hardly be said of him that he died, but rather that he "was not, for God took him."

A Man of God; or, Providence and Grace Exemplified in a Memoir of the Rev. Peter M'Owan. Compiled chiefly from his Letters and Papers. By Rev. JOHN M'OWAN. Edited by G. Osborn, D.D. 12mo., pp. 367. London: Wesleyan Conference Office. 1873.

The devout mind will receive with pleasure this record of a good man's life. Its special interest will doubtless be for the most part limited to those who personally knew him; but to all lovers of the Lord Jesus, and in particular those who belong to the Methodist family, so excellent a biography of a Wesleyan minister who for more than half a century was an honored and successful pastor cannot fail to prove acceptable. Methodism found him a youth in his Scottish home, under an unevangelical ministry, surrounded by a general religious apathy, and brought him to Christ. The works of Fletcher uprooted his Scotch Calvinism. At the age of twenty-two he was placed in his first circuit, and thenceforth his life was consecrated to the one work of an itinerant preacher. He appears in these pages as a devoted Christian, an eloquent preacher, a faithful pastor, a tender husband, a fond parent, a man ready for any service, however great the toil or sacrifice, and ambitious only to do his duty faithfully and well so as to be approved by his Conference and final Judge. Such