are towards such an effort. The Bible is to be studied with better intelligence, more thoroughness and keener interest in the near future than it has ever been. We regard this series of expositions as both a sign of the times and as a useful stimulus and almost a model to aid the work of opening the deeper meaning of the Bible to the people in ways that will not discourage and dismay them, but attract and interest them.

GEORGE B. STEVENS.

DURBIN'S LIFE.*-The subject of this memoir was one of the most gifted preachers of the Methodist church of this country. The preparation of the memoir was evidently a work of love and is well worthy of the man whom it honors. We do not look for severe critical judgment, for excessive caution or reserve or for measured terms of praise. The author is an enthusiastic admirer and he pours forth his laudation without stint. Estimated by the severest literary standard it may be pronounced extravagant. The literary quality of the work is defective and at times distasteful. But we do not fail to catch much of the author's enthu siasm for the subject of his eulogy and we are constrained to rejoice and to be grateful that such preachers as Dr. Durbin are possible in an age like this and that the noble church that has done so much for this country is still able to produce them. One of the interesting and valuable features of the volume is its discussion of homiletical principles in the light of their concrete manifestation in the subject of this memoir. It in fact succeeds in becoming a valuable contribution to homiletical literature. It is to be cordially commended to students of homiletics as containing some of the most helpful and fruitful suggestions about preaching to be found. They are the more valuable that they interpret and generalize the concrete facts of Dr. Durbin's preaching.

LEWIS O. BRASTOW.

THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE.t-There is always a chance for new contributions to the work of interpreting and enforcing the teach

* The Life of John Price Durbin, D.D., LL.D.; with an Analysis of his Homilitic Skill and Sacred Oratory. By JOHN A. ROCHE, M.D., D.D.; with an Introduction by RANDOLPH S. FOSTER, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe.

1889.

+ Through Death to Life. Discourse on St. Paul's great Resurrection ChapterBy REUEN THOMAS, D.D., Harvard Church, Brookline, author of "Divine Sover eignty," "Grafenburg People," etc. Boston: Silver, Burdett & Company, 50 London: James Clarke & Company, 13 Fleet street. 1888.

Bromfield street.

ings of the Apostle Paul. There is especially a chance for new applications of those teachings from the pulpit. Paul is a teacher of Christianity whom the church will not outgrow, and each age with its special intellectual and spiritual difficulties needs him to set it aright. The testimony of Paul with respect to the resurrection of Christ and with respect to the significance of that fact is of priceless value. It is new and fresh for every age of the church. Dr. Thomas has entered a field that has been thoroughly worked. The great minds of the church have preceded him. There is but little new work to be done upon the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians. But Dr. Thomas is a preacher of no inconsiderable merit, and he brings to us in the volume before us an exposition and application of Paul's teaching of the crowning fact of historic Christianity that are worthy of our attention. We have here ten sermons of an expository sort. They bear the marks of thorough study. They are suggestive and practical and helpful in an eminent degree. Their ethical and spiritual tone are appropriate to the grand and solemn themes discussed. In literary form they are interesting and impressive. We have here the old truths of the Christian centuries, but they are wrought into a form sufficiently distinctive to sanction their publication.

LEWIS O. BRASTOW.

THE ART AMATEUR completes its tenth year with the May number. It is almost impossible to overestimate the good influence this able magazine has had in popularizing art in this country. The current issue, which is a fair sample of the general quality of The Art Amateur, is filled with all kinds of artistic designs, mostly full working size, and practical articles on Oil, Water-Color, Tapestry and China Painting, besides others on Wood Carving and Church and Home Embroidery. The strong point of the magazine is its very practical tone. One of the colored plates, which accompany each number, is a superb study of "Tulips," by Victor Dangon; and for china painters, besides other designs in black and white (with directions for treatment for all), there is a charming Fern Decoration in green and gold for a tea service. The well illustrated articles for the benefit of young artists who wish to become illustrators for the magazines are continued, and the Home Decoration and the Amateur Photography departments are well kept up. The National Academy

of Design, the Paris Salon, and other important picture exhibitions are critically noticed. Price 35 cents. MONTAGUE MARKS, Publisher, 23 Union Square, New York.

The frontispiece of the MAGAZINE OF ART for May is a photogravure reproduction of G. P. Jacomb-Hood's "The Triumph of Spring," which was one of the principal attractions at the summer exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1888. Mr. JacombHood is one of the most promising of young English painters, and he has done nothing better than this graceful composition. N. V. Diaz is the subject of the paper on "The Barbizon School." We are given a portrait of the famous painter and several engravings after his works. Ford Madox Brown follows with a paper on self-painted pictures, which gives a portrait of the writer painted by himself. It is capital as a painting and as a likeness. Frederick Wedmore has an interesting paper on "Our Elder Art at the Grosvenor Gallery," giving some fine reproductions from Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough. The papers on Art in the Theatre are continued, by Mr. William Telbin, one of the best known scene painters in London. There are no more interesting illustrations in the magazine than those from the selfmade portraits of Sir Fred'k Leighton, Josef Israels, John S. Sargent, Luke Fildes, and Jules Breton; all of which hang in the famous Kepplestone Gallery. From these modern painters, we are taken to "Ancient Art in Ceylon," and a batch of very modern art notes. CASSELL & COMPANY, New York. 35 cents a number, $3.50 a year, in advance.

Memorials of The Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, M.A., late Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, and Missionary to the Mohammedans of Southern Arabia. By the Rev. ROBERT SINKER, B.D., Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co. London: George Bell & Son. 1888.

THE number of Christian biographies continually issuing from the press, of the class to which that whose title is above given belongs, is a notable literary feature of the modern time. There are a good many such; enough, and of a quality to make it a probable statement that Christianity is, in these latest generations, not only bringing forth, as hitherto, the noblest specimens of that universally acknowledged supreme type of humanity, the Man of Faith; but is producing an order of men as illustrative in their persons of the all-surpassing power and

glory of The Faith as ever were; peers in gospel grace of the worthies of any epoch of the gospel annals. Which vital phenomenon is a comment on the state and prospect of Christianity of the clearest significance.

But to proceed to the memoir before us. Its subject, which one is obliged to say is its principal merit, was the third son of the eighth Earl of Kintore. He was born in Edinburgh in 1856. His descent was illustrious through a long line; one of his ancestors having been Frederick the Great's famous Marshal Keith, and others of them men of renown in the history of Scotland. Of his parents, it must suffice to remark that they were worthy of their rank; intellectually and morally of a noble strain. The Earl, his father, was a man of earnest piety and active benevolence; a liberal patron of all enterprises of education and religion. The boy who was born to such station, was born also to wealth; a circumstance to be noted as not usual in the case of those who win the kind of honors he did. How rich he was we are not told; but all through his life he seems to have had plenty of money. He used a good deal of it in one way and another.

His education in its early stages was conducted after the accustomed manner in noble families. His nurse,-half nurse and half governess-in his childhood, was, judging by her contribution to the biography, a person of considerable culture. The tutor under whose hand he next passed was a member of the household, and in the discharge of his office accompanied the family on their occasional tours and seasons of residence abroad. At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Old Harrow School in England where he remained four years, till within a few months of his entering Cambridge University in 1874.

Physically he was a superb specimen of manhood. In his maturity he was six feet three inches in height, but of such symmetry of build that he did not seem so tall; sturdy, alert, very strong, full of animal life and spirit as he could hold, a really magnificent fellow, a strikingly impressive figure seen anywhere.

He was one of the foremost athletes of his time, at school and at the University. His exploits on the bicycle especially made him a public character, before he was well through his