and with graver consequences in the moral order, there is the same confusion as to the functions and rights of the State. Its functions are to protect the people from the common enemy, and to do this in one specific way, namely, by passing whatever laws are needed to define a wrongful act and appoint the appropriate penalty. That the sale of alcoholic fluids is necessarily and always an act of the enemy no one pretends, but everyone admits that there are circumstances in which it becomes so. What are these circumstances? It is the function of the State to say what they are, that is, to pass laws defining the wrong and distinguishing it exactly from the cases in which the same act is no wrong or is right, and declaring what penalties shall be inflicted if it is committed, and what higher penalties if it is persisted in. Has the United States done this? No it has not. There are no State definitions of it, no prohibition of it, and no penalties for it. The whole subject has been left, where for the rest it rightfully belongs to the local governments. For the national government the manufacture and sale of alcoholic fluids are no crime or misdemeanor, and in the absence of all legislation to that effect cannot be made the subject of penalties.

Now for the discharge of its functions in punishing offenders clearly specified, and suppressing offenses clearly defined by the law, the State is entitled to a certain uniform proportion of the property of each of its subjects and to no more. Wrong-doing on the part of a subject is no motive for exceeding this uniform proportion; it is not a motive for taxation at all but a motive for punishment. True the punishment inflicted according to law may be a fine or a confiscation which goes into the treasury as part of revenue, and were perfect justice possible there would be no need for any other revenue. But its destination as revenue does not affect its character as penalty or assimilate it to tribute drawn from the innocent that penalties may be inflicted. Whatever penalties are necessary to suppress and punish the immoral use of Swiss watches, Virginia tobacco, or Chicago whiskey, let the State take according to due form of law, and if fines and confiscations are among them so much the better for the law-abiding whose burden of tribute is thereby diminished. But to tax the wicked seller or consumer

of the injurious article is to confound the guilty with the innocent and to involve the State in the vicious circle of raising revenue to punish and prevent wrong, which it condones and perpetuates in order to raise revenue.

We reach here a fundamental and comprehensive principle both of right and of expediency, concerning equally the authority of the State and the efficiency of its action, namely, that as it is armed with no power not expressly provided in the constitution, so it should use its constitutional power for no purpose not expressly defined in the law. It is armed by the constitution with all powers necessary to avert danger from the commonwealth, but its duty is to identify publicly the foe before it strikes him, that it may strike according to the law, in which it expresses or will in time be made to express the will of the people, and not according to its own caprice or impulse or passion. But this is precisely what the State has not done. It has neither sought to ascertain and express the will of the people in legislation, nor has it waited for legislation in order to act. Under cover of the right to lay taxes, which it pos sesses for the exclusive purpose of providing for its necessary expenses, it has inflicted penalties of the most formidable kind for offenses which it has nowhere defined, in obedience to motives which it has nowhere avowed. And this not in one case but in all cases; its entire fiscal system is an elaborate instrument for concentrating upon certain classes of its subjects bur dens which belong in equal measure to all. I think it is clear that this is a perversion of its power which cannot endure; which will disappear either by the abrupt and violent reaction, or by the steadfast pressure and slow attrition, of popular instincts and convictions. All the unconscious forces at work in the body politic converge along with the abiding purposes of the people upon the ideal of a State deriving its resources equally from the wealth, as it derives its authority from the consent, of all its constituents, and exercising its power for their common welfare.

ARTICLE XI.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THE BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS.*-It is a broad church that can find standing-ground among its clergy for the author of this little book. Let this be said to the honor of that church. It justifies its claim to Christian Catholicity. The church that will not tolerate a free and candid investigation of the Biblical documents, within the limits of a cordial acceptance of the evangelical testimony, will find itself unable to meet the moral and religious wants of a critical age. The Christian public of this country, and especially the clerical portion of it, has not yet adjusted itself to the free spirit of modern Biblical criticism. Dr. Newton will doubtless hold his ecclesiastical position, thanks to the controlling influences of his church, but it will be, as it has already been, at considerable cost of personal comfort. He has been, and will be, subjected to severe and sometimes coarse censure. The scribe, who is supposed to be instructed in the "things new and old" of the kingdom, and yet can trace the Genesis of this intelligent and honest book to a freak of insanity in its author, succeeds, if in nothing else, in displaying, on his own part, a touch of the insanity of bigotry and ignorance. The clerical commotion stirred by the presentation of Dr. Newton's critical views, whatever our opinion of their correctness, is certainly illustrative, not so much of clerical piety, as of clerical intolerance and incapacity for intelligent judgment upon the grave questions at issue. The Episcopal Church is not the only one that is sometimes served by the devil's attorney, and Dr. Newton is not the only one who has been summoned before the august court of the religious editor or the secular reporter. The Congregational churches have made for themselves an honorable record of devotion to Christian freedom in the discussion of theological questions. But there is an effort to dishonor the record and to lift the standard of an ignorant and intolerant revolt. The appearance of the Doctrine of Sacred Scripture by Prof. Ladd, a work alike honorable to

* The Book of the Beginnings. A study of Genesis, with an introduction to the Pentateuch. By R. HEBER NEWTON, Rector of All Souls' Protestant Episcopal Church, New York City. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York, 27 and 29 West 23d street. London: 18 Henrietta street, Covent Garden. 1884.

American scholarship and to Christian reverence and faith, a work notable for the judiciousness of its critical methods and results and for its conservative and constructive character, has proved to be the signal for a campaign of caricature and detraction, on the part of some of the so-called religious newspapers and periodicals connected with the Congregational churches. Prof. Ladd and Dr. Newton have both made the acquaintance of a class of men whose chief characteristic seems to be How not to understand it, and whose vocation, How not to state it fairly when they do understand it. But in their work they part company. Their work is not to be named here in close connection. Those who would see the difference between conservative and radical criticism and between thorough and hasty work may profitably compare "The Doctrine of Second Scripture" and "The Book of the Beginnings." It must be said, however, that the work before us does not claim to be a thorough discussion of its own limited topic. Its contents originally appeared in the form of popular lectures, delivered on Sabbath afternoon in the regular course of professional duties. We have here a discussion of the unity, composite character, and gradual growth of the Pentateuch. It takes positive ground with respect to its variety of sources, its mythical elements, its contradictory traditions, its non-Mosaic authorship, and it advocates the view that the patriarchal traditions are rather tribal than personal, although not without a personal nucleus. The work bears the marks of investigation but of hasty conclusion. Its material is ill-digested. We find no self-assertion nor arrogance here, but a very guileless Omniscience. The author undertakes, after the manner of the critical school which he follows, to know more than he or any other man, at the present stage of Biblical science, is able to know. One is obliged to wonder at this tranquil sense of infallibility and at the inadequate basis of this prodigious wisdom. There is no doubt a critical sense. It finds what the ordinary student does not and cannot. But it is likely to make itself ridiculous with its capricious assumptions and inadequate generalizations. Let it be true that the Pentateuch is a composite work, that it is a historic growth, that this at once involves and explains many repetitions, confusions, and contradictions, and that in its present form it is of non-Mosaic authorship. It is difficult to see how any well-informed and candid person can question this. Let it be true that criticism hits here and there upon original sources in this composite work. Let it be true that myth sometimes gives

itself out as history, and that fragments of tribal legend and tradition emerge sometimes in the form of personal histories. It does not follow, however, that we know all about the Genesis of the records, that we can explain just how they grew, or out of what material, under what hands, or from what age or ages they emerged. Myth, as Rothe maintains, may be a necessary stage in the development of religion, but genuine history also is necessary to genuine revelation, and he who finds more myth than history in the early Hebrew records does not adequately understand them nor the Hebrew religion. The simple realism of the Patriarchal traditions forbids their identification with tribal myths and traditions. We have no criticism with respect to the honesty, the freedom, and the respectfulness of Dr. Newton's work, we criticise rather its assumptions and generalizations; we may question also his wisdom in not proceeding with greater caution in the discussions of grave, critical, ethical, and religious questions in the presence of a promiscuous audience.

BRAHMOISM.*-A Christian Hindoo has here given us his view of the theistic movement in India. That movement has been watched, by the Christian world, with considerable curiosity as well as interest and hope. The possibility of a development from Theism to Christianity and of the re-appearance, on oriental soil, of an oriental type of Christianity has been contemplated, by the western world, with lively satisfaction. But if we accept Mr. Bose's view of the development of Brahmoism as the true one we shall be drearily disenchanted. And there seems to be no good reason for doubting that his view is in the main, the correct one. He is a native Hindoo and a man of training and cultivation. He knows the old religions of India. He is able to estimate them from the Christian point of view. He has knowledge of Brahmoism at first hand. He evidently has the requisite furnishing to grapple with its problems and pretensions. He writes as a Christian, indeed, but with no evidence of defective sympathy with what is good and true in it. He gratefully acknowledges its ethical purity and its influence in counter

* Brahmoism or History of Reformed Hinduism. From its origin in 1830, under Rajah Mohun Roy, to the Present time, with a particular account of Babu Kesub Chunder Sen's connection with the movement. By RAM CHANDRA BOSE, M.A. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 10 and 12 Dey street. London: 44 Fleet street. 1884.