zil is but about fifteen hundred miles, a voyage none too great for Phoenician enterprise. The problem of immigration from the West is not much more insoluble. The numerous isles of the Pacific served as stages on the way; they were once more numerous than now, many having been submerged even during the human age. They were once populous, civilized, and near neighbors. The Pacific gulf streams even now wreck their sailors in considerable numbers annually upon our shores.

The civilization of Central America is unmistakably Hamitic. Shem was no colonizer by sea, and no architect. Japheth did not develop early on the Mediterranean or Atlantic. But Ham had three great descendants-Nimrod, or Assyria, (or Chaldea;) Mizraim, or Egypt; and Sidon, or Phoenicia; and each one of these has had share in setting an impress upon the American civilization. Ham was a sea-rover and a colonizer, and would easily cross to Chiapa; he was a builder, especially in pyramids, and could readily have founded Palenque and Cholula. He was, like the Mayas, a sun-worshiper, a Molochian offerer of human victims. He bore the deluge tradition and the crux ansata to America. His Egyptian orientation and terracing of the pyramids are there. Thither Phoenicia has sent her serpent and her cosmogonical egg. Assyria has sent thither her " sun symbol," her bearded tree-worshipers, and her outspread sun-wings. Yet it is not so much from Egypt that America has imported her pyramids, which in fact are hardly true pyramids. Her truncated structures came from Babel and Babylon; are partially derived from the Jupiter Bel or Baal temples. In fact, these architectures almost seem to have traveled from Shinar eastward, and to have come round to America across the Pacific. So great a master of comparative architecture as Ferguson affirms that Burmah borrowed her architecture from Babylon; that farther east than Burmah the ruined cities of Cambodia show teocallis (pyramidal sanctuaries) like those of Mexico and Yucatan. Ferguson (as quoted by M'Causland) says, "As we advance eastward from the Valley of the Euphrates, at every step we meet with forms of art becoming more and more like those of Central America;" adding that but for the geographical difficulty no doubt would exist of the derivation of the American architecture from that origin-a difficulty amply solved by Mr. Short.

One record of the Mosaic deluge tradition Mr. Short finds so deeply imbedded in the native history that it cannot be rejected as an appropriation from the Christian missionaries without in

validating all existing Central American history. He summarizes the tradition in these words: "In a preceding chapter we have given the deluge tradition from Ixtilxochitl, who states that the waters rose fifteen cubits (caxtolmolctltli) above the highest mountains, and that a few escaped in a close chest, (toplipetlacali,) and after men had multiplied they erected a very high zacuali, or tower, in order to take refuge in it should the world be again destroyed. He further states that then their speech was confused, so that they could not understand each other, and that they dispersed to different parts of the earth." But the story of sending out three birds as weather explorers is, he thinks, so transparent an appropriation that he can hardly name it with "gravity." Change the names of the birds, and you have just Moses over again. And yet this very story is found, fully detailed, in the Assyrian account, as given by both Smith and Lenormant; and if here aboriginal, is, beyond all question, derived not from Moses but from Assyria. How can Mr. Short reasonably reject this striking passage as too servilely biblical, and yet accept the "fifteen cubits" as aboriginal? Though Lenormant half yields the bird tradition to the higher criticisms of Ramirez, we do not; for where one crucial passage of the flood-tradition is fully admitted there is a fair presumption in favor of other passages, which should check hypercriticism. The existence, also, of two records from distant quarters of the same passage, establishes a favorable presumption for the third. There is a valid probability that Assyria, Palestine, and America possess three copies of the same bird-tradition. And this is all confirmed by the fact that the courier birds of the flood so impress the human mind that they are constantly reappearing in the various traditions. Lenormant finds them in the Iranian tradition in Asia; the dove and olive branch are seen on the Arkite symbols at Apamea, Phrygia; and even among the Chippeway Indians Menabosha (which Lenormant suspects to be the Aryan Manu Vaivasvata) sends a bird out of his bark to know if land be dry, and thus restores our race.

Mr. Short quotes a document to disprove the common statement that the pyramid of Cholula is connected with the Tower of Babel. Our own conclusion is that his document, if admitted as good authority, confirms that connection. The document is simply a verbal narrative uttered by an old inhabitant of Cholula, and recorded by Father Duran, A. D. 1585. The story is, that creation being not quite completed, and the land being "all a plain without hill or elevation, encircled in every part by water,

without tree or created thing," certain giants, fascinated with the glory of the new-made sun, endeavored to find his secret place of setting and rising. Defeated in their attempt, (the narrator says,) "they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having collected material for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower, and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamored of the light of the sun and his beauty? Come and confound them, because it is not right that they of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle with us.' Immediately, at that very instant, the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice, and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth." If criticism admits this as a true aboriginal document, Cholula is a second edition of Babel. The remarkable specialty "clay and bitumen" is a crucial proof. We then have the "tower," the purpose of building to the sky, the bituminous material, the parley of Jehovah in heaven, the defeat of the tower, and the dispersion of the builders through the earth. All this in a series of biblical phrases. The flood is, indeed, in the background. From a deluge by rain it has become a quiet submergence in the incompleteness of the creation. We submit that Cholula is Babel Junior.

Lectures on Electricity in its Relations to Medicine and Surgery. By A. D. ROCKWELL, A.M., M.D., Electro-Therapeutist to the New York State Woman's Hospital, Member of the American Neurological Association, Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. 8vo., pp. 100. New York: Wm. Wood & Co. This little volume, from the pen of this well-known and prolific writer on the subject of electricity in its various applications for the alleviation and cure of disease, although addressed to, and especially intended for, the medical profession, commends itself to the general public as a concise exposition of the advances which have been made in the medical use of this subtle and mysterious agent within the past few years. Soon after the method of exciting electricity by friction was discovered, attempts were made by educated physicians to apply this powerful agent to the cure of disease, but with so little success that these attempts were finally abandoned by regular practitioners of medicine.

Similar attempts followed the discovery of Galvanic and Faradic electricity, and with similar results.

It was found that these agents were powerful in their influence on the human system, but that their employment was quite as likely to injure as to benefit the patient. The scientific principles on which their successful use necessarily depends had not yet been studied out. Unscrupulous charlatans, however, found in electricity exactly what suited their methods of practice. By its use they made a profound impression, and now and then a marvelous cure. If they failed to benefit the great majority of their patients, and injured many more than they cured, they ignored their failures and boasted of their successes in such manner as to build up their own fortunes at the expense of their unfortunate patrons. This employment of electricity by charlatans served to bring its use in medicine still more into discredit than the failures of honest practitioners had before done.

Within the past few years, however, many well-educated physicians have been engaged in an honest, laborious, and thoroughly scientific investigation of the subject; and they have succeeded in studying out the principles in accordance with which electricity must be applied in order to make it uniformly of service as a remedial agent. Brilliant successes in practice have been the results of these studies. Duchenne and Remak in Europe, and Beard and Rockwell in this country, have been foremost in discovering and elucidating the principles in accordance with which electricity may be made a powerful remedial agent -Duchenne by his investigations regarding the localized use of Faradic electricity, Remak regarding the localized use of Galvanic electricity, and Beard and Rockwell by their studies and discoveries on the employment of general faradization, through which remarkable tonic effects are obtained, and of central galvanization, through which the brain and spinal cord are directly and beneficially influenced.

There can be no doubt, then, that electricity, as a remedial agent, is now as thoroughly understood as is any other remedy. Indeed, there would seem to be greater difference of opinion regarding the efficacy and proper use of drugs than in regard to the use of electricity as taught by the masters above mentioned. But it should be mentioned that even physicians make signal failures in the use of electricity as a remedy, until to a knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the general science of medicine, they add a special knowledge of the science of electricity, and much

study and experience in its medical use. Hence it is that although the Lectures of Dr. Rockwell are of great interest to the general reader, their perusal will in no wise justify him in undertaking or advising the employment of this powerful remedy without the direction and advice of a competent physician.

History of the Christian Church from its Origin to the Present Time. By WILLIAM BLACKBURN, D.D, Professor of Church History, Chicago. 8vo., pp. 719. New York: Phillips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1879. This magnificent volume is a not unsuccessful attempt to present Church history, with a living spirit, in a continuous readable style, so as to be easily contemplated as a comprehensive whole. It is written from the evangelical stand-point; and as regards the line that divides the evangelical Church into two doctrinal sections, by the predestinarian dogma, it is written, so far as we can judge, in a spirit of entire fairness. It begins from the apostolic founding of the Church, and ends with the present hour. It gives a completer sketch of the American Churches than any we have seen, and thereby suggests a repetition of what we have formerly said, that it is quite time that some scholarly men or set of men should give, in one or more volumes, a complete view of American theology as a whole. Dr. Blackburn has constructed several charts, or rather what might be called maps in theological geography, which present a great deal of history in a single page in an impressive and suggestive manner.

When the Wesleyan Arminian writes a Church history from his own specific stand-point, he will refuse to brand the essential Arminians of the Western Church in the Middle Ages with the epithet "Semi-Pelagian." They were neither Semi-Pelagian nor Semi-Augustinian; but were the true continuation of the primitive orthodoxy of the first three centuries, from which Augustinianism and Pelagianism were opposite aberrations. It was the earliest theology, and is bound to be the latest. Pressensé truly says that predestination was to the early Church a heresy, and Richard Watson well defines his Arminianism as being neither Augustinian, on one hand, nor Pelagian on the other. There never was an Augustinian Church until after the Reformation; and then came Calvinism, more Augustinian than Augustine, black fatalism itself.

The style of Dr. Blackburn is animated and often graphic, but wanting in graceful flow, abrupt, with occasional solecisms. Thus he says of Vincent of Lerins (misprinted Lerius) "his little