help us better to understand: "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and they shall become one flock, one shepherd."

Every day, as the last words of friendship are said over the clay of some one who never claimed the name of a Christian, we shall hear his Christian traits and principles-his unconscious but practical Christianity-recognized by preachers of rigid creeds in the sympathetic tribute of a man to true human worth. This unconscious but practical Christianity ought to find recognition elsewhere than at the open grave. It is for the churches to inquire what there is in their theology, and what in their attitude to each other, that creates needless antagonisms in minds which revere the Christ of the Gospels ;what they can do to give a better opportunity of expression to the moral unity in the fundamental truths of Christ, which, already reaching far beyond church lines, is waiting for its time of manifestation.

This time will come. 66 They shall become one flock, one shepherd." There will be different folds; there will be no such thing as one world-wide organization; but the unity of the different folds in one flock will be manifest because One will be manifest as the shepherd of all; because all hear his voice alone. Whether this is to be in our day, or whether the settled summer of Christianity has yet to wait longer for the ending of its changeful spring, the tendency is clear enough to make the issue certain, and to give encouragement to those who have grown melancholy over church arithmetic. Many a church is accomplishing a silent work recorded in no earthly statistics, and measurable by no report of professed conversions. The circle which the sun illuminates, and in which men walk by his light, is considerably larger than the circle in which his orb is seen. Below the horizon of conscious recognition as Christ may be, yet, in the high moral latitudes of Christendom, there is a far-spreading Christian twilight, in which multitudes, who have owned no formal bonds to him, walk parallel and not crosswise to those moral lines which he drew for "the way everlasting. Many such, we are constrained by the realities of character to reckon as unconscious followers, perhaps afar off, yet followers of the Redeemer of men. The evident bent

of their principle and endeavor to Christ's side against the world's evil, prompts our moral instinct to judge them as those who, when the misleading shadows shall have melted in the eternal day, will devoutly recognize the Divine shepherd of humanity, and hear his voice, though they heard the voice of no Calvin, or Wesley, or other speaker in his name.

Wherefore let us take heart. The coyness or deafness, which meets the call of the church, is by no means to be interpreted as wholly a rejection of the Master, obscured as he is to many by dogmas, or misrepresented by various falsities to his ideal. Meagre accessions to church membership may be signs of a declining ecclesiastical interest, rather than of that moral interest, which with Christ was supreme; a disinclination to churches as they are, rather than to Christ as he is; a failure of theological and sectarian Christianity, rather than of ethical and practical Christianity. There is some discussion in the public journals whether there is a gain or a falling off in church-going, but none at all whether there is a growth of interest in the good works which Christ commanded, or a development of that moral sentiment in behalf of truth and righteousness, which lies at the foundation of every life that is essentially rather than nominally Christianized. The simple fact, to be noted for encouragement-and for correction toois, that the spirit of Christianity has spread faster and farther than some of its present traditional forms.

ARTICLE X.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

ROBERTSON'S LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT.*-"John Bright, in the flesh is undoubtedly an Englishman, and physically, a capital specimen of the breed; but in the spirit John Bright is essentially an American." Such was the opinion of the Tory mind in England twenty years ago; and the book here named goes far to show, that though meant for a sneer, the aforesaid remark was not far from the truth. Of how well Mr. Bright was able to sustain the allegation of being "in spirit essentially an American," let the following sentences, from a speech in Parliament at the outbreak of our civil war in 1861, bear testimony:

"I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States Government, could have been different from what it is at this moment. We had a heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history, to their own great act of 1834, to which reference has been made, will have no sympathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow men.”—Page 394.

Personally, publicly, politically, John Bright has always been. the champion of the "masses" in preference to the "classes," and though this has earned him the spite of those who count every popular orator a "demagogue," his most honorable character and career have constantly offset the obloquy of his opponents.

The time has not come for the full record of his life; but to those who desire a clear and connected account of his public career thus far, the volume here compiled will be of practical service. The compiler is at the sources of information; and, with great minuteness, he details the movements, conflicts, speeches, and successes of Mr. Bright, first in the abolition of the corn laws, and, subsequently, in those reforms that in recent years have advanced the well-being of the British people.

Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright. By WILLIAM ROBERTSON, author of "Old and New Rochdale." London, Paris, and New York: Cassell & Company. Limited.

The following extracts from a speech delivered at Rochdale, gives Mr. Bright's own account of how he was led, by his friend Mr. Cobden, more fully into the work of the Anti-Corn-Law League. It of interest to all who are aware of the fine blending of a high morality with a deep sympathy in all the distinguished orator's efforts:

"In the year 1841 I was at Leamington, and spent several months there. It was near the middle of September, there fell upon me one of the heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself there with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me, and so prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much; there are at this moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who are dying of hunger, of hunger made by the law. If you will come along with me we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to the starving people of this country."-Page 108.

There is a fine piece of political rhetoric, worthy the study of those who would move men by effective speech, on page 562 of this volume. It shows that the profoundest wisdom may be made popular by noble men bent on noble ends. After showing that the man who warns the dwellers on the slope of an Etna or a Vesuvius is not responsible for the eruption which the smoke and lava betoken, the orator says:

"I merely warn men of their danger. It is not I who am stimulating men to the violent pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights. We are merely about our lawful business; and you are the citizens of a country that calls itself free, yet you are citizens to whom is denied the greatest and the first blessing of the constitution under which you live. If the truth must be told, the Tory party is the turbulent party of this nation."

The general teaching of John Bright's life is that, in the best sense, the wise reformer is the true conservative; and for this one lesson this book is to be welcomed.

MEYER'S COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.*The circulation of Meyer's Commentaries among ministers and * Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Epistle to the Romans. By H. A. W. MEYER. Translated from the 5th edition by Rev. J. C. Moore and Rev. E. Johnson. The translation revised and edited by Rev. W. P. Dickson, D.D. With a preface and supplementary notes to the American edition, by Timothy Dwight, Professor, etc., in Yale College. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1884. VOL. VII. 29a

theological students is an event of happy augury. His grammatical thoroughness is a great relief from the slipshod style of interpretation which confounds text with inference, and makes an Apostle say what it is conceived that he might have said with profit to the reader or pleasure to the sect to which the commentator belongs. Meyer's independence of traditional dogmas relative to Biblical impeccability is of the more value, as regards his influence, from his sincere and firm faith in the doctrines of the evangelical system. No one can ascribe his deviation from old views of the harmonists and dogmatists, out of a desire to get rid of unwelcome doctrines. In the volume before us we have the new suggestions of Meyer's German editor, Professor Weiss, whose eminence in this department has been fairly earned, and whose peculiar merits make his editorial additions of great interest. Weiss does not surpass Meyer in philological skill and accuracy; but he has some qualities in which he is not excelled, even if he is equalled, by his predecessors. The American edition of the Commentary on the Romans is greatly enriched by the additional notes of Professor Dwight. These are subjoined to each chapter. They refer to points of special inportance, and, generally, of special difficulty. Professor Dwight brings to his task the mature judgment which has been reached by many years of diligent study of the New Testament. He has had the inestimable advantage of conducting the studies of inquisitive classes of pupils, and of thus looking at the points of difficulty from all sides. Like Meyer and Weiss, he thinks and writes in a truly scientific spirit which aims to ascertain what the Apostle really intended to say,-be the doctrinal corollaries what they may. The combination of scholarship and common sense in Professor Dwight's expositions renders them both lucid and trustworthy. There is no hesitation in expressing opinions, and there is the courage to differ from other commentators where there appear to be reasons for dissent. As an example of the style of these comments of Professor Dwight, we subjoin an extract from his remarks on the aorist in Rom. v. 12-" for that all sinned"-"The view adopted by Hodge himself [Dr. Charles Hodge], with others of similar theological opinions, gives to the verb the meaning 'were accounted as sinners;' that is, all men were regarded and treated as sinners on account of Adam's offence, although they, in no actual sense, participated in it. He was their representative, and they are subjected to penal