book, if prayerfully committed to memory, will constitute an intellectual and spiritual treasure of unspeakable value.

The Apocryphal and Legendary Life of Christ. By JAMES DE QUINCEY DONEHOO, M.A. 8vo, pp. lix, 531. New York: The Macmillan Company. Price, cloth, $2.50 net.

Perhaps nothing so enhances the sense of their beauty and verisimilitude as to project the canonical gospels against the background of apocryphal and legendary literature, which, like tares that an enemy thickly sowed, sprang up in the early Christian age to choke the word, and, if possible, bring it to naught. The problem of how the canon was formed soon solves itself when all of its elements are once presented to the mind. Mr. Donehoo admits that this literature presents but few golden grains amid an intolerable deal of chaff, yet he claims that, "weighted down as it is with the dreary verbosity of Gnostic madness and the preposterous if lighter inventions of mediæval legend-mongers, it certainly bears across nearly nineteen centuries a few words of the divine Author of Christianity and a few particulars as to his history upon which the four gospels are silent." Certainly no zeal is misplaced which leads to the discovery of such golden grains, be they never so few, and the irreverent spirits of our time who compass land and ocean in the vain attempt to make void the inspired writings and empty the gospels of Christ of their testimony to his divinity and to his authorship of historical Christianity might well take a lesson from this scholar in the pastorate. As a piece of book-making this work leaves nothing to be desired. It covers the entire subject for the first time in English, and this fact together with its prolegomena, notes, scriptural references, and indices gives it peculiar value and finality.

China's Book of Martyrs. By LUELLA MINER. Crown 8vo, pp. 512. Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye. New York: Eaton & Mains. Price, $1.50 net.

This record of the sufferings of native Christians in China during the Boxer uprising, for their steadfastness in the faith of Christ, reads like a paraphrase of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Of whom the world was not worthy is a tribute to thousands of so-called "rice Christians" who astonished their persecutors by suffering martyrdom gladly for Christ's sake, looking unto the recompense of the reward in the world to come. If it be true that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church the fruitage of the dreadful experiences of God's elect in China will be seen in the greater triumphs of the cross in that benighted land for the centuries to come. The experiences recited by the author are taken from the records of ten different denominations operating in mission fields covering hundreds of miles in length and breadth of territory, yet the testimonies given by the martyrs showed the same devotion to the Master, the same abiding trust in the promises of God's word, the same unflinching fortitude in the hour of dissolution. Those who read the volume cannot but be incited to a profounder appreciation and a more generous support of the heroic men and women who against fearful odds are patiently laboring for the redemption of China unto the Lord and his Christ.

METHODIST REVIEW.

MAY, 1904.

ART. I.-JOHN FLETCHER HURST.

JOHN FLETCHER HURST was born in or near Salem, Dorchester County, Maryland, August 17, 1834, and died at Bethesda, Maryland, May 4, 1903. He came from an old Dorchester County family. His grandfather, Samuel Hurst (1765-1822), served in the Thirty-ninth Maryland Regiment in the Revolutionary War, 1781-83. His father, Elijah Hurst (1797-1849), who brought up his children in the fear of the Lord, was a diligent and successful farmer, of whom the anecdote is related that when the Cambridge (Md.) Methodist Episcopal church was built and dedicated he subscribed twenty-five dollars each for his two children, and then hesitated about his own subscription; then the pastor's eye caught that of Farmer Thompson, who shouted, "I'll give ten dollars more than 'Lije Hurst." "Make my subscription two hundred dollars," said Hurst. Thompson was thunderstruck, but manfully paid his two hundred and ten dollars. Elijah was one of the shrewdest farmers in that whole section, and owned at one time one thousand acres. It was from him his son inherited his business instincts and his wonderful administrative talents. The mother, Ann Colston (1808-41), possessed a beautiful spirit and a fine intellect; from her he inherited his literary gifts and wide sympathies. Elijah's only other child married Dr. John F. Kurtz, in the same county, and died in 1886. The famous merchant millionaire of Baltimore, John E. Hurst (1832-1904), was a cousin of the bishop, being the second son of his father's brother Stephen.

Our subject, who was a model youth, told the story of his conversion in a most interesting way to the Northwest Indiana Conference in 1889:

I have been trying to serve God now ever since the year 1853; that is about thirty-six years. I had no parents-they were gone home, to heaven-and I was among strangers. My mother died before I was seven years old, so that I don't remember even her face fully-just a mere outline. I think I will know it; I think I will recognize it when the fight is over and when the happy meetings come, never to separate. My father was a Christian man and died when I was fourteen. I was going home from a little debating society, pretty late at night, and on the other side of the street, as I was going toward my boarding place, I heard them singing in the Methodist church. With me was a young school companion who afterward entered the ministry. We went over into the meeting and crowded well to the front. The minister saw us and came down and spoke to me, and asked me if I didn't want to go to heaven. We both went to the altar, and time after time, meeting after meeting. I was seeking light all the time; trying to do something, trying to perform some obligation, trying to understand Him, and when I came to see that I could not understand anything He gave me light. One night, going home from church, I remember that a change came over me; a light broke out before me; there was a little river in the distance, and it seemed to shine like silver; I didn't know what it all was; I thought it was some sudden glow of good feeling. I went to my room full of joy, and the Lord revealed to me, "You have a new heart." The Lord had given it to me; there was no consciousness of sin. I felt, like the Pilgrim, that the burden had fallen from my shoulders. I could now lose it because I had gotten to the foot of the cross, and I have been trying to serve the Lord ever since. I have been thankful to him that the change was so sudden, so striking; that I have been able to look back upon it as the hour when God, for Christ's sake, spoke peace to my soul. Now and then a cloud comes. I am not satisfied. I want the sunlight ever here. Our privileges are infinitely greater than we think they are; we can do more for God; religion can be more of a joy, instead of a mere service and hard task beneath the hot sun.

The preacher who led him to Christ was James A. Brindle, who, with Henry Colclazer, was pastor of Cambridge Circuit, Snow-Hill District, Maryland, then the Philadelphia Conference, who were holding meetings at Cambridge in the winter of 1849-50. Brindle died in 1894 after a long, faithful, consecrated, and efficient ministry. To him Bishop Hurst pays a glowing tribute in the Peninsula Methodist of April 28, 1894. The man who accompanied Hurst to the altar on that eventful night was Benjamin Douglas Dashiell of the Methodist Episcopal Church,