ward, while the communal Christ was the coming man, who should bring in the kingdom, or who would realize in the world the communistic ideal. Thus Christianity was prepared for and rendered inevitable by the entire development of the period. The portrait of Christ was complete in all its principal features before one single line of the gospels was written. The Pauline epistles are all spurious, and even the synoptic gospels were so late that Pope Callistus was the pattern after whom the unjust steward of Luke xvi, 1, was patterned. The great difficulty with Kalthoff is that he has allowed his communistic ideas to warp his historical judgment. It is no worse in him than in any other to read into historical documents what they do not say, but he has made a worse blunder by that method than many another would have made because his preconceptions were originally far from the truth. It is a pity for a man of real ability and learning to waste his powers in the vain attempt to bolster up a falsehood. Jesus Christ remains, after all said and done, as the founder of Christianity. No man will ever be able to take his crown.

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

Zur Geschichte der evangelischen Beichte. Band II (The History of Confession in the Evangelical Church. Vol. II). By E. Fischer, Leipzig, 1903, Dieterich. The first volume of this interesting work portrays the customs connected with the confessional in the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, and Luther's attitude toward confession down to the year 1520. The second volume begins at this point. Luther recognized the untenability, from the evangelical standpoint, of confession. His pamphlet "On the Confession" shows that the pope has no such jurisdiction as would warrant his requirement of auricular confession. Yet he could not bring himself to draw, for practical purposes, the consequences of this cognition. It was his hope that he might escape the necessity of violent measures by the natural development of things. So he contented himself for the time being with compromises. He taught that every Christian should thankfully avail himself of confession, although it is not a divine but a human institution. But there should be no compulsion in the matter, and the confession made should not be necessarily in detail. Furthermore, the priests should not be the only ones who hear confession, but it should be expressly provided that the laity may hear confession, and when a priest hears it he does it not as a priest, but as a Christian brother. The true worth of the confession lies in the inner attitude of the heart toward sin, and where this is not present confession is not only not helpful, it is positively sinful. Over against this temporizing policy of Luther stood Carlstadt. Luther was in hiding in the Castle at Wartburg. Carlstadt was anxious to have a genuine evangelical administration of the Lord's Supper. This he felt was hindered by the existence of the confessional, even in the modified form admitted by Luther. Much discussion took place among the theologians at Wittenberg, but at length Carlstadt took the decided stand

which did away with the custom. Then came Luther's return from the Wartburg to Wittenberg, and his celebrated eight sermons, which were intended to put a stop to the radical measures of Carlstadt and the other extremists at Wittenberg. It is an unanswered question just how much and by whom Luther was influenced, but when he reestablished the confessional again it was an entirely different thing from what it had been under his first plan. The reinstitution took place about Christmas, 1523, and was made to serve the purpose of furnishing a guarantee of the worthiness of those who were about to partake of the communion. The idea of absolution was completely eradicated. The author does not discuss the relation of the confession in this form to the cases of those who were about to partake of their first communion. But one reviewer of the book says that it is quite probable that Luther made the confession in such cases especially thorough, and thus provided something that might correspond closely to child confession in the Roman Catholic Church. Thus he thinks there may have been in the arrangement a sort of beginning of the practice of confirmation in the evangelical Church. It is also to be regretted that the author did not take a somewhat wider range of vision and include the history of confession as related to the Churches of the Reformation generally. But it is characteristic of the German theologian that he seldom looks beyond the fences bounding his own ecclesiastical communion.

Herders Theorie von der Religion und den religiösen Vorstellungen (Herder's Theory of Religion and of Religious Representations). By Rudolf Wielandt. Berlin, 1904, C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn. The onehundredth anniversary of the death of Herder was overlooked by the vast multitude, but by many of the more thoughtful it was a time of profound reflection. Especially was this the case with those who are acquainted with and feel the importance of the changes that have passed and that are passing over the minds of men in regard to the meaning and value of religion. Wielandt availed himself of the awakened interest in Herder to publish this book, a little late, to be sure, but still timely. His task was not an easy one, as what Herder had to say on the various phases of religion was written at different times during a period of thirtyseven years. Wielandt has, however, fairly well developed the changes of Herder's views during those years. The extraordinary influence of Herder may be estimated when it is taken into consideration that he profoundly modified Schleiermacher's religious opinions, and that these in turn were epoch-making in the history of religious thought. Wielandt thinks that Herder's religious theories grew out of his mental and moral constitution and his psychology. As to the former, he regards as of primary importance his power of entering into the feelings of others, his rhetorical skill, and his energy in many-sided reflection. In psychology he regards Herder as having pioneered the way in respect to the unity of the soul life, the connection between the psychical and the physical, and the significance of the unconscious and instinctive. Wielandt

thinks that Herder had no real theory of knowledge, because he did not seek for the grounds of belief, but only truth as practical for mankind. According to Herder religion belongs to the sphere of the self-conscious feelings, and consists in an immediate perception and possession of the divine. It stands independent beside philosophy and ethics. It is awakened by impressions from the outer world which find their unity and harmony in the idea of God. Hence it is related to philosophy, and at the same time all morality really in germ included in it. The religious consciousness finds expression in poetic form and in art, though it is governed by the laws of the mental life in general. It is influenced by the national peculiarities of thought, speech, and custom, by communication from one nation to another, and by the gradual superficializing of the concepts. Hence arises the necessity of returning to the original forms of religious speech, and of making its spirit available for the people of each age. In other words, it is necessary to reproduce the biblical conceptions in the language of the present day. As to the representation of religion in dogmatic form, Herder distinguishes sharply between religion and doctrine, and opposes all attempts at demonstration of the truth of religion, being entirely unable to understand Kant's attitude. He even avoids all attempts at clear formulation, and strives to leave the fact and the representation in their original, unreflective unity. This aim is not a dogmatic, with positive value for theoretical thought, but such an explanation of the biblical ideas as can be secured by historical methods, and, as before said, their transfer into the language of the present. He hesitates between rationalistic fondness for abstract ideas and an intuitive need of actual facts. According to Wielandt all modern religious history and psychology is present in Herder's religious ideas, and thus he is distinctly more modern than his later contemporary, Schleiermacher. This is but a brief and in many respects inadequate account of a book meritorious because of its subject and its inner worth.

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

Jerusalem and the Russo-Japanese War. Early in the year 1904 Patriarch Damianos of Jerusalem sent to Alexieff a golden cross containing a piece of the genuine cross of Christ. Damianos sent with this a letter in which he expressed his sympathies with the Russians in the war, and naming Alexieff as a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord. A couple of months later Alexieff replied accepting the honor and expressing the belief that the presence of the sacred relic with the Russian army, together with the prayers of Damianos, would aid in securing victory over the Japanese. One feature of Damianos's letter may have a profound ecclesiastical significance. He claimed special honor for the see of Jerusalem because it was from there that Christianity went forth. This has not been done since the fourth century, and during all this time Constantinople has enjoyed the primacy in the Eastern Church. The present Patriarch of Constantinople is more Greek than Russian. The

whole affair looks like an attempt to set up Jerusalem as a rival to Constantinople.

French Protestants and the State Church. Strange as it may seem in our republic, the Protestants of the French republic are opposed to the separation of Church and State. A recent writer declares that neither the government, the senate, the chamber of deputies, nor the people at large desire separation-it is a danger that hangs over the nationand that when it comes it will put the Protestants into a most painful situation. The deficit for the various Protestant charitable works for the year 1903 was over three hundred thousand francs, and this writer calls attention to the fearful burden that would fall on the Churches if the state should withdraw its annual budget of one and a half million francs. Nevertheless the Protestant Churches are preparing for the calamity by coming closer together, and there are some who will hail the separation as a distinct step in the path of progress.

Progress of Liberal Christianity in Switzerland. Liberal Christianity is not as terrible a thing in America as it is in Europe. But it is spreading rapidly in Switzerland, where until recently it had but little foothold. It is represented by a band of men who seem to have chiefly in mind the destruction of the supreme power of orthodoxy. At a recent convention the speakers declared this as their chief end, though they named also the establishment of the ideas of the divine love and of human brotherhood in place of dogma. One would suppose from their talk that orthodox Christianity had never preached nor evinced these traits.

Berlin Jewish Mission. At the beginning of the year 1903 there were 13 catechumens, to whom 66 were added during the year. Of these 21 were rejected for various reasons, and 13 more dropped out of their own accord. There have been 26 baptisms, 14 men and 12 women. The men are from all walks of life, including merchants, bank officials, students, and laborers. The income of the mission was 54,900 marks, the expenses 45,128 marks. The Jews converted through the agency of this mission are mostly convinced on all essential points of difference between Judaism and Christianity. But the greatest comfort in connection with the work thus far is that these small results are but a beginning.

GLIMPSES OF REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.

DR. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, writing of "The Religion of America" in The International Quarterly (New York), says:

Cotton Mather had the sense of humor, as greater men than he and lesser men than he have had. So it is to Cotton Mather that we owe the story which is often brought out by writers on the religion of America-the story of an Essex County fisherman who at the end of the seventeenth century flung in his word as to the origin of New England. Some one at a religious meeting had been talking of the religious motive of the first planters, and one of the veterans of fourscore rose and said, "It was all this, and fish too." The story may or may not tell a fact, but it is a story well devised and contains the truth. Of the early American history it is undoubtedly true that many men and women came to better their physical condition. But that is also true, which is not true of the first English settlers of Jamaica, of Australia, or of England, namely, that many men and women came among our first settlers because they sought a closer walk with God. Certainly this is true of Puritans in New England, of Quakers in Pennsylvania, of Catholics in Maryland, of Huguenots in Carolina. It is also true that these people, who had a distinctive religious purpose, had a very large agency in the history of the States where they settled. Whoever traces the history of those States finds that for a century, more or less, the presence of people who had come for religious motives visibly affects the status of either colony. It was thus with the Puritans, with the Quakers, with Lord Baltimore and his Catholic companions, and with the Huguenots farther south. . . . Dr. Andresen, a recent German writer, in his interesting treatise on the world's religion, says squarely: "It has been prophesied that it is the United States whence will come the religion of the future. And, notwithstanding the fact that there is a tendency to outspoken materialism, it cannot be denied that Americans as a rule highly value religion. This is proven by the striving for religious truth manifesting itself in various ways. Hardly in any country of the world are there so many religious sects as in the United States." Yet he appears to believe that the supremacy of the nation which gives every man a right to say what he thinks and to think for himself will assert itself as distinctly in religion as it does in the manufacture of iron or of the supply of gold. This is probably so. Whether you are on the stump a month before the Presidential election or whether you are at a missionary convention to celebrate the centennial of the missionary society, it might be observed all along that the country is profoundly religious. It believes in right, and it wants to have right done. The Puritans did not cross the ocean for nothing, nor the Huguenots. Such men as Asbury and Brainerd did not preach for nothing. Such lessons as the Revolution taught, of great made from small, by the mere power of faith, were not neglected. And that eternal experience, by which people who live much in the open air, in hourly presence of Nature, become thoughtful and religious people, has made a religious race from the pioneers and settlers of the frontier. The leader of Americans, who may wish to lead them forward in the line of that destiny which has triumphed thus far, leads a religious race in the methods of personal and spontaneous worship, with constant reference to the Eternal Laws. He does not appeal to this man's selfishness or to the greed of that community. He does not teach the wretched doctrine of a bald economy, to induce them to pile up