things from a very egotistical point of view, has nothing to compare with it. The editor of the Revue announces a large number of articles on very interesting subjects, from the pens of the best Protestant writers of France, which we may expect in the course of the year 1864. Greater attention than before will be paid to the field of natural sciences, as it is from this field that the antiChristian schools of the present age borrow most of their weapons.

ART. XIII.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. With a complete Bibliography of the Subject. By WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. 8vo., pp. 924. Philadelphia: George W. Childs. 1864.

Intellectually we are compelled to attribute to this remarkable work the highest excellence. Theologically and religiously it contains many grievous errors. It is the work of a man scarcely yet forty years of age; but from the amount of study and labor involved in it, as well as from the importance of the results embodied, it might satisfy an ordinary ambition were it the sole product of a long life.

Besides the bibliography of the subject, the volume contains more than six hundred closely printed octavo pages. One would conclude, and at first thought not unreasonably, that there is much here not only foreign to the subject, but likely to be cumbrous rather than in any respect useful. But though there are some topics only remotely connected with the writer's main purpose, there is little that appears inapposite in so voluminous a work, and that little detracts nothing from the interest of the book as a whole. It is the most complete repertory of facts, opinions, arguments pro and con, and whatever else may be desired or imagined in any way bearing upon the theory of a future life, to be found in any book in our language, and perhaps in any other. There is no dry, cold, technical presentation of the doctrines and theories gathered from such a variety of sources, but the style of the author is vigorous and attractive. There is sometimes a rhetorical exuberance and an ambitious indulgence in grand composition which mar the work; but in general there are precision of statement and fullness of information, combined with ease, transparency, and animation.

The arrangement of the subject is scientific and happy. Part I contains four chapters: Theories of the Soul's Origin; History

of Death; Grounds of the Belief in a Future Life; and Theories of the Soul's Destination. Then comes Part II, "Ethnic Thoughts of a Future Life," embracing barbarian notions, Druidic, Scandinavian, Etruscan, Egyptian, Brahmanic and Buddhist, Persian, Hebrew, Rabbinical, Greek and Roman, and Mohammedan Doctrines. Part III is devoted to an examination of the New Testament teachings on the subject. It contains eight chapters, presenting with great care and thoroughness, but frequently, as it seems to us, far from correctly, the views of the several writers of the different books, the doctrine of Christ himself, and the author's notion of the resurrection of Christ, and of the "Essential Christian Doctrine of Death and Life." Under the head of "Christian Thoughts concerning a Future Life" (Part IV) are given the patristic, medieval, and modern doctrine of the Church. Part V consists of Historical and Critical Dissertations on the Doctrine of a Future Life in the Ancient Mysteries, on Metempsychosis, Resurrection of the Flesh, Doctrine of Future Punishment, Five Theoretic Modes of Salvation, Recognition of Friends in a Future Life, Local Fate of Man in the Astronomic Universe, Critical History of Disbelief in the Doctrine of a Future Life, and Morality of the Doctrine.

Of course, we have no small quarrel with Mr. Alger over his theological and anthropological notions-notions which color and vitiate large portions of his book. He is affected, even to a morbid degree, with an antipathy to the more positive orthodox, views, and sometimes, as it seems to us, he goes needlessly out of his way in order to be as remote from them as possible. His doctrine of inspiration is indefinite and unsatisfactory. It is clear enough as to what he does not believe, but far otherwise as to what he does. Mr. Alger evidently believes the human race to have begun in this world at a point not much above the brute. All the notions men have acquired on the future life, or on all other subjects, have been gradually developed in their upward progress. This doctrine unfavorably affects his views of the "Grounds of the Belief in a Future Life," the title of one of the most unsatisfactory chapters in the book. Independently of any revelation on the subject, we see no philosophical reason for supposing that God would have created any such miserable beings as certain specimens of humanity now are; specimens, too, which must have "developed" somewhat beyond the original. We see no reason why the first man or men should not have been perfect, at least in such things as do not depend on experience and culture. Their instincts and intuition certainly need not have been below those of the men and women of

to-day. Nay, more, we are very confident that there are many imperfections which have come into the race only through vice and sin, and of these we take it man was at first destitute, which would certainly leave him at a much higher level than we find a large portion of the race to-day. Of the grounds of belief in a future life the writer mentions ten. But it seems to us only one of these is very important. "The argument from universal consent," we have long held to be the chief valid ground. It is the intuitive conviction of mankind, necessitated by the constitution God has given us; a conviction never doubted till men undertake to demonstrate the theorem and find it indemonstrable; or until men have vitiated their intuitive powers. We see no reason why this conviction should not have been just as strong in the first man as in any of his descendants, stronger than in most of them.

Mr. Alger repudiates the Catholic and Calvinistic theories of the atonement, which is not so bad, if he did not take some of the worst features of these and attribute them to the great body of evangelical Christians now. The "resurrection of the flesh" is scouted with more than necessary emphasis. The doctrine of endless punishment he presents in its most revolting and horrid aspects, and then treats it as "the popular faith of Christendom." The popular faith of Christendom we take to be not widely different from what Mr. Alger himself concedes, only he has great confidence that the consequence of sin will not be endless, while orthodox Christianity is compelled to believe it will. Though marred by these and similar defects, there is a vast amount of valuable matter even in the most objectionable portion of the work. The author's exegesis and interpretation of large parts of the New Testament, though sometimes made to bend to his theory, are nevertheless instructive and profitable.

We must not overlook the remarkable appendix to the work, in the estimation of some scarcely less valuable than the book itself. It contains a catalogue of more than five thousand works on the subject of the future life, with descriptive titles, classified and arranged.

S.

The Heidelberg Catechism, in German, Latin, and English; with a Historical Introduction. Prepared and Published by Direction of the German Reformed Church in the United States of America. Tercentenary Edition. 4to., pp. 277. New York: Charles Scribner. Chambersburgh, Pa.: M. Kieffer & Co. 1863.

Three centuries ago Frederic the Pious, prince of the Palatinate, having adopted the Reformed instead of the Lutheran Church, directed two divines-the one a Christian scholar, and the other

an eloquent preacher-to draw up a catechism, embodying the Christian doctrine which the Church should dispense to her children. So well did these two men of blessed memory perform their work that the communion received the boon with joy, and the Heidelberg Catechism has to the present day been held by the socalled Reformed Churches in special reverence and love. The German Reformed Church of America, upon the arrival of this. third centennial, directed a committee of clergy and laymen to prepare a new edition as a memorial volume. An Introduction, said to be written by Dr. Nevins, done in his pure and often eloquent style furnishes a history, defense, and eulogy of the venerable document. Scribner's graceful handicraft has finished its external shaping; and thus we have a beautiful memento of the fathers' faith three hundred years ago, to be handed down doubtless to a future age; and three centuries hence, we doubt not, it will be accepted by a purer and more Christian age as, with slight exceptions, a true expression of the Christian doctrine.

This Catechism was indeed indorsed by that packed and despotic conclave, the Synod of Dort; but it by no means fills out the dogmatic pattern of that violent body. Arminius, too, accepted it, though it was his very wise and just opinion that it needed some revision. We see little in it doctrinally which, with a reasonable freedom of interpretation, we could not sign as a formula of concord. And yet there are expressions and implications in it which, in voluntarily wording our own views, we should not naturally use. The Introduction claims-and we naturally accord the claimthat this Catechism is eminent, if not unique, in its blending of Christian truth and Christian feeling in its expression. Other creeds and catechisms are coldly and intellectively dogmatic; this at once dogmatic, emotional, and even devotional. The letter is not dead, but instinct with the living spirit. The catechist says thou, and the catechumen says I, and the whole round of living truth is uttered by the candidate as the feeling of his own living heart and soul. The Catechism is in this most important respect a beautiful model.

The writer of the Introduction anticipates, but by no means obviates, the most serious objection to this Catechism, viewing it, as he does, as an authoritative imposition by the Church upon the catechumen. The Catechism holds him as a Christian, and puts into his mouth the earnest language of religious feeling as his own. experience, and all the privileges of Christian character as his right. Most fearful, then, is the danger verified, we sorrowfully believe, in untold thousands of cases, of putting untruth into the mouth,

and self-deception into the heart. Very feeble is Dr. Nevins's defense on this point. It is not justified by St. Paul's addressing entire Churches as truly Christian; for so would we, or any other minister, not as affirming that every individual is truly such, but as assuming it presumptively, yet tacitly leaving the exceptions to be excepted. But this catechetical assumption admits no exceptions; it profoundly Christianizes every individual. Each single one is taught that he is this moment justified by faith and regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

We go very far with the writer in maintaining the value of "educational piety," and the obligation and authority of the Church, organically to hold the children as her own and to provide for them the proper nursery. But we do not admire Dr. Nevins's effeminate prattle about "churchly," "unchurchly," and "churchliness." It sounds too much like the dainty dialect of the dapper and strutting ecclesiastical dandies whom we see in our metropolis, cutting their graceful curves and tossing their empty heads, vain alike and equally of their High-Church divinity and their high-starch dimity. More serious is his most unhappy depreciation (p. 114) of individual subjective Christian experience, which he places in most dangerous antithesis to organic nurture, as if the two excluded rather than co-operated. Faith, repentance, love, joy, peace are all subjective. Justification by faith, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are subjective. Organism has its sole value as auxiliary to these. These are the end and the Church is the means. And where these exist the object of the whole Church apparatus is accomplished.

In our own Church theory we assume these four points: Baptism, Catechesis, Profession, and Communion. 1. By baptism we recognize infancy as a state not of indepravity but of salvation through Christ, a state not forfeitable until actual responsible apostacy. 2. By catechesis, in all its forms of discipline, interrogation, indoctrination, and intercessory prayer, in family, in school, in church, (which are all within the provision of the Church,) we seek to instruct, to convict, to convert; but as the power of depravity is often acted out in terrible form even in childhood, and the crisis of responsibility is known to God alone, so the Church has no right to prescribe a formula of indiscriminate profession of true Christian experience for all her children, but must wait the individual conscious and credible avowal of the subjective facts. 3. In profession we require a satisfactory evidence that the catechumen has made the truth and power of the Gospel a matter of individual application and experience, and that he has the conFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.-22