type of theosophical thinking. It would appear that our physical hunger can best be satisfied at an ideal home: so in the Christian theory, heaven is our true home, and we need the "spiritual body" wherewith to enjoy blessedness instead of going through the tread-mill of reincarnation. However, everyone to his taste! The book is worth reading if only for this sentence: "If you want advice and ask: 'Shall I disobey the customary law, and go my own way?'- then wait. The wanting of advice is the sign that the Spirit in you has not yet spoken with the compelling voice that you ought to obey."

It is a pleasure to see Miss Besant fighting against the caste system with the weapons that can reach the Hindu mind; nor can her teaching be improved upon when she insists that true democracy means leveling up and not leveling down.

The "pamphlets" and "text-books" serve a useful purpose in awakening interest in the Theosophical movement, which undoubtedly emphasizes some aspects of truth often overlooked by many ultra-timid teachers of Christian doctrine and occidental democracy. T. P. BAILEY.

THE PROSECUTIon of Jesus: ITS DATE, HISTORY AND LEGALITY. BY Richard Wellington Husband: Princeton University Press. 1916. Pp. 302. In this careful piece of work Professor Husband, of Dartmouth, subjects the gospel records to a searching study in the light of Jewish and Roman legal procedure. It is interesting to note that his critical sifting of the four accounts reaches results closer to Mark, Luke, and John than to Matthew. His finding of John's account of the arrest of Jesus to be the most likely seems to lend color to the conservative belief that the Fourth Gospel contains material furnished by an eye-witness.

A summary of the author's conclusions (pp. 279-262) may be found interesting:

"The trial and crucifixion occurred on Friday, April 3, A.D. 33. . . . . The arrest took place about midnight, and was effected by the regular police force, commonly called 'officers of the Jews,' but sometimes named 'servants.' . . . . The Romans were not concerned in the arrest. . . . . The hearing (by the Sanhedrin) was comparable to grand jury proceedings, held for

the purpose of preparing a bill to submit to the trial court. There was but one hearing by the Sanhedrin, held on the morning following the arrest. The Sanhedrin submitted to Pilate an indictment charging Jesus with false prophecy and with treason against the Roman Empire. The trial in the Roman court was a formal trial, conducted according to the usual procedure. The governor did not acquit Jesus technically, but asserted that he did not display criminal intent. Pilate obviously believed that he was a religious enthusiast, and not deliberately revolutionist. He, therefore, asked the prosecutors not to press the charge, but, failing in his effort, he was forced to pronounce him guilty, and to sentence him to the regular penalty of crucifixion. The conviction was based solely upon the accusation of treason, for the governor refused to investigate the ecclesiastical charge of heresy or false prophecy. The arrest was legal, for it was conducted by the proper officers, acting under instructions from the Sanhedrin. The hearing by the Sanhedrin was legal, for it was merely a preliminary hearing, and was not a formal trial. . . . . The course of trial in the Roman court was legal, for it harmonized with the procedure shown in the sources to be that pursued by governors of provinces in hearing criminal cases. The conviction was legal, and was justified, provided the evidence was sufficient to substantiate the charges, and the records do not prove the contrary. But the accounts of the trial are so incomplete that it cannot be demonstrated whether the evidence would be consided adequate by an unbiased Roman lawyer, not under stress of surrounding excitement and mob impulse."

The author gives a dozen pages of bibliography. T. P. B.

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW THOUGHT. Edited by Horatio W. Dresser, author of The Power of Silence, etc. New York: T. Y. Crowell Company. 1917. Pp. 320. $1.25.

Dr. Dresser, dean of New Thought, herein does a service for the much-taxed general reader, who is enabled by means of this collection of representative papers to get his bearings and to discriminate New Thought from Christian Science and other allied "movements."

Conspicuously thin as New Thought is, culturally and philosophically it is a vast improvement on the lesser cults without the law, for it is unsectarian, many-sided, an attitude and a methodical tendency, rather than a "church" or a "party."

The following quotation from a 1916 pronouncement of the International New Thought Alliance points out the central rallying ground for all these "healing" cults of expansion, without trying to hypnotize us with cabbalistic, esoteric, monotonous verbigerations:—

"The New Thought practises in the twentieth century what Jesus taught and practised in the first century. He taught healing-it practises healing. He said: 'Judge not that ye be not judged' it discourages condemnation and sees the good in others. He admonished us to take no anxious thought for the morrow - it practises the divine supply. He taught faith - it makes faith the central principles of its theory or practice. He taught love and brotherhood it is demonstrating unity and coöperation. The New Thought is the Christ-thought made new by being applied and proved in everyday affairs."

--

T. P. B.

THE MIDDLE ENGLISH IDEAL OF PERSONAL BEAUTY; as Found in the Metrical Romances and Legends of the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries. By Walter Clyde Curry. Baltimore: J. H. Furst Company.

Although each country and each race is supposed to have its own ideals of beauty, it is clear from this investigation of Professor Curry's that in literary descriptions certain types readily become conventionalized and handed down from one country to another and from one generation to another. The Greek Alexandrian poets appear to have set the type, which furnished the model for the Roman Elegiac poets, and through them for the entire western world. "Beginning with the Renaissance, however, Italian poetry was perhaps the main channel through which traditional conceits were distributed." Thus the entire middle English ideal of both masculine and feminine beauty is borrowed, as well as the ideal of ugliness. All of which might seem to indicate the powerful sway of fashion over the minds of men and women. Professor Curry has investigated with pains

taking detail every portion of the human figure from the hair to the feet, in order to discover the particular ideals of beauty attaching to each, and brings out many interesting facts. His conclusions would seem to show that after all human nature has not changed very much with the centuries, and that beauty is more than skin deep.

TOWARDS AN ENDURING PEACE. A Symposium of Peace Proposals and Programs 1914-1915. Compiled by Randolph S. Bourne. New York: American Association for International Conciliation. Pp. xi, 336.

THE BASIS OF DURABLE PEACE. By Cosmos. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1917. Pp. 144.

The aim of the first of the above publications "is to present a discussion of some of the most hopeful and constructive suggestions for the settlement of the war on terms that would make for a lasting peace." Many writers are represented; Mr. Bourne selecting his material from books, magazines, manifestoes, programmes, etc., that have appeared since the beginning of the A most valuable compilation.

war.

The second publication consists of sixteen essays written by the anonymous "Cosmos" and published, as readers of the Times will remember, in the columns of that newspaper in the months of November and December, 1916. In an appendix are gathered an exchange of letters between "Cosmos" and his critics. S. L. WARE.

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER, with an Excursus on the Historical Conception of the Puritan Revolution from Clarendon to Gardiner. By Roland G. Usher. Washington University Studies, Vol. III, Pt. ii, No. 1. St. Louis. 1915. Pp. 159. In this essay Professor Usher has little trouble in convicting the great historian of the Puritan Revolution of numerous inconsistencies in his judgments on men and events. He also taxes Gardiner's work with the lack of broad generalizations, and accuses him of employing the methods and style of the learned annalist rather than those of the scientific historian. So far so good. Had Dr. Usher pointed out these flaws in a simple straightforward manner, he would have rendered good service to histor

ical criticism. But our critic at once predisposes the impartial reader against his own critical ability, when he shows a desire to pursue his noble quarry even to the death. We cannot better condemn this tendency of Dr. Usher's than in the words of his own critics, the first in reviewing a previous work of Dr. Usher, the other two in speaking of his present essay on Gardiner. They point out his pride "in avoiding all old-fashioned and outworn views"; his "strain of exaggeration"; his application of "so much knowledge, ingenuity and labor . . . . to the search for petty flaws in the work of a great historian"; his selecting "isolated sentences, whole volumes apart," and subjecting them "to mathematical analysis"- these faults are all exemplified in the work that lies before us. (See American Historical Review, October, 1914, pp. 161-163, and October, 1916, pp. 143-145. Also Pease, The Leveller Movement, 367, reviewed supra.)

S. L. WARE.

WORKFELLOWS IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION. By Kate Stephens. New York: Sturgis and Walton Company. 1916. $1.50 net.

This late volume of essays by Miss Stephens includes a Prologue, followed by six papers on the working together of social forces which have had some important effect on social progress. The Prologue presents a clever discussion, and admits an advancing social will and mankind's secular progress. This is followed by "Our Country Newspaper as a Workfellow❞— its record of social conditions. The second essay shows the influence of "Woman's Collegiate Education as a Workfellow." Then follows: "Uses and Abuses of Two English Words, namely, 'female' and 'woman'; "Plato's Imperishable Epigram," a suggestive piece of work; "Fables of Bronze and Iron Ages," and "Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered," based on a contemporary poet's protest at the beginning of tobacco-smoking in England. T. P. B.