their own eyes have seen, and discuss missionary theories in the light of actual personal experience. For this reason, as well as on account of its comprehensiveness, and the exceedingly practical nature of all its discussions and addresses, some missionaries of the American Board have not hesitated to declare that the meetings of the Union exceed in interest and value even the famous and enthusiastic gatherings in which the constituency of the American Board so greatly and so worthily rejoices.

A few words describing the exercises of the recent meeting at Thousand Island Park, in connection with the general remarks on the character of the Union now given, will enable the reader to understand more accurately what it is and what it does. The daily sessions were always introduced with devotional exercises, which lasted usually for about an hour, and which were seasons of rich spiritual enjoyment. Necessary items of business would then be considered. Including the time spent both in devotions and in business, the morning sessions would usually occupy two hours. The afternoons were mostly given up to the discussion of practical topics; these sessions were considered by the missionaries exceedingly valuable and helpful. Two subjects which were brought forward are of the greatest importance to us at home: the one related to the best means of arousing missionary interest in our churches; the other to the Christian use of money. In connection with the former subject, Rev. W. H. Belden, of New Jersey, formerly of Bulgaria, read a very earnest paper descriptive of the simultaneous missionary meetings, first planned by the Church Missionary Society of England, and now to be tried by the Presbyterian Synod of New Jersey. It will be strange if this paper does not bear fruit in similar series of meetings elsewhere. As an introduction to the second topic mentioned, Rev. Dr. Speer, formerly of China, read a paper on the consecration of property to Christian uses. The church has

not yet more than begun to realize her duties and the possibilities of service which are involved in the possession of property; it is a cheering fact that she is now awaking to some sense of what is demanded of her. A very interesting and spirited discussion on the higher education, already alluded to, revealed very plainly the fact that the missionaries do not propose to see the converts abroad left in intellectual darkness; at the same time they insist most strenuously upon an education based on Christian principles, and inclusive of Biblical training. The reports by missionaries personally cognizant of them, of wonderful instances of piety among native Christians, and of remarkable instances in which pagans themselves had, in their dissatisfaction with ancestral faiths, asked for the gospel, and had welcomed it when brought to them, were most thrilling. No less so were the accounts given by some of the missionary ladies of the transforming power of the gospel upon the faces as well as upon the character of ignorant and degraded women in China, Siam, or Ceylon. It is impossible here to particularize the addresses, frequently of exceptional interest, made by many members of the Union.

As it is one object of the International Missionary Union to diffuse missionary intelligence, and to arouse enthusiasm at home, the evening sessions were wholly given up to popular addresses on missionary work and experience in many lands. Large audiences gathered at these times, and received impressions of evangelistic work abroad which they will not soon lose.

It is not yet decided where the meeting will be held next year; probably, however, at Clifton Springs, N. Y. The meetings are all open to

any who wish to attend, and the members of the Union hope that the pastors and members of many churches will avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded of becoming familiar with missionary operations. The Union already seems to have justified its existence, and it is hardly doubtful that it can be made still more efficacious than it has yet been in securing the several ends which it was designed to foster.

BIRMINGHAM, CONN.

C. W. Park.

CURRENT GERMAN THOUGHT.

THE event of the autumn in the German theological world is the appearance of the second volume of Harnack's "Dogmengeschichte." The first volume of this work (1886) marked an epoch in German theology, and the influence of its principles and of its method has been very widely felt. The appearance of the second volume will be the signal for a renewed study of the first, and will doubtless extend the influence of the principles which underlie the whole work, while at the same time the sharpest controversy will be again aroused. The work may therefore be looked upon as a probable topic of German thought for some time to come, and as such I shall attempt here to point out briefly its chief characteristics, and to show in what its real significance lies, without attempting to give a review of it, or to pass any sort of a judgment upon the positions and principles of the author.

It was the original intention to complete the work with the second volume, but that has been found impracticable, and a third volume of about the size of the second will be needed to bring the history to a close. The first volume treated of the rise of Christian doctrine under the two divisions Vorbereitung and Grundlegung. The second and third volumes are to exhibit its development from the beginning of the fourth century to the present time. The second embraces "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Dogmas als Lehre von dem Gottmenschen auf dem Grunde der natürlichen Theologie. Nämlich die Geschichte des Dogmas von Anfang des 4. Jahrhunderts bis zu seinem Abschluss in der morgenländischen Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert."

The author is of the opinion that the dogmatic period of the church is but a single period, and he attempts accordingly in his first volume to show how and under what conditions this period began, while in the second he pictures the "classical age" of the dogmatic period, and in the third intends to show how Christian dogma in the Middle Ages, and especially in modern times, while indeed continuing in existence under one form or another, has everywhere lost its original significance as the complete and authentic expression of Christianity.

The second volume discusses the development of the Christian doctrine of the God-man. The author shows that if Augustine be left out of account, the whole doctrinal history of the Græco-Byzantine period is embraced within the frame of Christology. In his treatment of the material he combines the systematic and the historical method.

The history of Christian doctrine is treated by Harnack in the present work in a manner which varies widely from that of all previous historians. The most important points of difference may be summed up as three. In the first place he takes the word dogma in a stricter sense than his predecessors, and accordingly has attempted to write, not a his

tory of theology in general, but of officially recognized dogma alone. The superiority of such a method is conceived to be that the peculiarity of the dogma as an ecclesiastical formula in distinction from theological speculation is thus more clearly brought out. In the second place he distinguishes sharply the earliest period of Christianity, when dogma had not yet come into existence, from the subsequent ages of the church. He thus divides the history into two periods; first: The Rise; second: The Development of Dogmas. As in the history of the canon the conditions under which it took its rise form the most important subject for investigation, so Harnack conceives of the first period, in which the ground was prepared and the foundations laid, as by far the weightiest part of the history of doctrines. By this method is brought out most clearly the difference between the original gospel and the later development of dogmas in the Christian church, and in the emphasis laid upon this difference lies a lasting service upon the part of the author. In the third place, Harnack regards the conception of dogma as such not as a natural fruit of the gospel itself, but as the combined product of the gospel and of ancient Græco-Roman thought and philosophy. As the Catholic church in other respects grew out of a union of the gospel with Græco-Roman culture, (Christian forms of worship developing under the influence of the ancient heathen mysteries, Christian literature under the influence of classical literature, the Christian ecclesiastical constitution under the influence of Græco-Roman forms of polity,) so in the opinion of the author Christian doctrine is a structure which was reared by Platonists and Stoics upon the gospel as its foundation. In this third point lies the great moment of Harnack's work. In it he introduces a principle which, if accepted, changes completely the hitherto existing conception of the growth of Christian doctrine, and is consequently epoch-making in its significance. Baur, as is well known, explained Christian dogma as a product of the conflict of Jewish and Pauline Christianity, and treated it as a natural and necessary development of the gospel itself without reference to the influence of external forces. Baur's conception was epoch-making, and its influence over enemies as well as friends was prodigious. It is Ritschl's great and lasting service that he first broke the spell of this thoroughly unhistorical scheme by showing indisputably that Jewish Christianity had no such influence in the formation of the Catholic church as had been ascribed to it. According to him, Christian doctrine as developed in the church catholic was a "verschlechterter Paulinismus" growing out of the efforts, but at the same time the utter incapacity of heathen Christians to understand and appreciate the theology of Paul, for which was required a thorough acquaintance with Judaism which had been Paul's training-school. The vital force, according to Ritschl, was therefore Paulinism, instead of a Pauline-Judaistic conflict, but in common with Baur he looked upon Christian doctrine as a development which took its rise within Christianity itself. To heathen culture he accorded only an indirect influence in so far as it was through the incapacity of those trained under it to understand and perpetuate Paulinism that the peculiar theology of the church catholic was developed. Harnack contradicts the theses both of Baur and of Ritschl, while with Ritschl he emphasizes over against Baur the absence of Jewish Christianity as a factor in the development of the church after the second century; he at the same time rejects Ritschl's position in that he shows that neither did Paulinism exert the supreme influence in the formation

of Christian doctrine, which the latter had assumed. To Harnack, in fact, the development of dogma presents itself as due, not to an inherent force within Christianity itself, a force which has naturally brought about such a development, but to the power of Græco-Roman philosophy working upon the gospel as its material.

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the fact that in the positions of Ritschl and of Harnack alike it is assumed that Christian dogma as it has existed in the church catholic for more than fifteen centuries marks a degeneration from the position of Christ and his apostles. From those who hold that the dogmas which have grown up amid the strifes of the centuries and have been crystallized in our existing creeds and confessions are a glorious acquisition of history to be treasured as exponents of what Christianity is, and wishes to be, or from those who hold that they are simply an unfolding of the truth which was believed by Christ and his apostles, such an assumption can of course excite only opposition. In so far as Harnack finds the gospel in the life of Christ rather than in doctrinal formulas he is in exact accord with Ritschl, and where Ritschl finds enemies there will Harnack also. But however we may stand in relation to the positions taken by the author of the present work, it must be acknowledged to be a work of great significance, especially under the present condition of theological opinion. It is the first really original history of Christian doctrine which has appeared in Germany since the great work of Baur, and as such is destined to leave its mark upon German thought.

PARIS, FRANCE.

Arthur C. McGiffert.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

COMMENTARY on the Gospel OF MATTHEW. By JOHN A. Broadus, D. D., LL. D. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1420 Chestnut Street.

If this book gets the recognition it deserves it will get it by conquest. Its back confronts us with the legend, "An American Commentary on the New Testament." Now, though a lover of his country is, and ought to be, long-suffering towards the diverse appeals to his favor made by employing the national prefix, though when suffering the pangs of expatriation he may even read with a certain patriotic titillation the placards of foreign shopmen advertising "American sewing-machines," "American canned meats," "American overshoes," and the like, yet a Biblical scholar, whether at home or abroad, will shake his head dubiously over a distinctively "American commentary." If his curiosity gets the better of his scruples, and he opens the book and looks at the list of more than two hundred and fifty authors who are referred to so often that their mere name (or even an abbreviation of it) must represent them in the body of the page, he is relieved to find that not one in six is an American. The learning of the book, therefore, is not of the extreme “ protectionist" or "know-nothing" type.

But again when he notices that by far the larger number of the American authors cited belong to the Baptist denomination, and reads in

the Preface that "this Commentary does not profess to be undenominational," he feels a stirring within him of that disgust which every healthy Christian soul entertains for books designed to foster denominational selfconceit and narrowness. But examination dissipates again the repugnance. The comments on the standard proof-texts in the Baptist controversy (such as chaps. iii. 6, 11; xxviii. 19) show that the author is no bigoted partisan, but a candid reasoner, who is chargeable, at the worst, only with such over-emphasis of the formal element in the rite as harmonizes rather with the genius of Judaism than with that of Christianity. The general tone of the book is thoroughly unsectarian.

Yet a third unfavorable prepossession, however, is started by the practice adopted of interspersing the exposition with whole sections devoted to "Homiletical and Practical" remarks. Such remarks, interesting and carefully culled as they are, are out of place in a "commentary." There is often no discernible reason (as, indeed, the author confesses) why many of them should be classed as "Homiletic " rather than as "Expository." In so far, moreover, as they are "pious reflections," there is no natural end to them. And when they take the form of "schemes for sermons, they are positively pernicious. The habitual use of crutches will make any man a cripple. One who can read our author's expositions of the Sermon on the Mount or of the Parables without discovering that they are abundantly "profitable for teaching," may safely conclude that he has no "call" to be a preacher. The omission of all this homiletic material would have been a positive advantage to the book by reducing its size.

But the reader who disregards the repellent suggestions started by the external and incidental particulars mentioned, and examines the Commentary proper, will form a high estimate of its merits. It is the product of honest, thorough, scholarly, first-hand work. Every page of it gives token of wide learning, ripe culture, good judgment. These qualities, indeed, will be looked for by all who are acquainted with Dr. Broadus's previous publications; but they are exhibited here in a new field, and to a degree so unusual that the reader is not surprised to learn that the book "has been on hand more than twenty years," and "considerable portions of it have been twice or thrice rewritten."

Into the discussions of Higher Criticism the Commentary does not enter. The broad preliminary questions respecting Matthew's sources, the date of our present Gospel, its original language, its relations to the other Synoptists, are passed over. The author simply recognizes the fact that Matthew groups his material topically rather than chronologically, adheres to the current opinion that our Lord's ministry occupied about three years and a half, and then troubles neither himself nor his reader about delicate harmonistic problems. This course is a wise one in a commentary designed for general use; at any rate, it leaves the more space for exposition.

In matters of Textual Criticism the author has not exercised the like self-restraint. Where the text is doubtful and the variant materially affects the sense, the evidence has been briefly presented and considered in foot-notes. These discussions indicate an acceptance in general of the conclusions of the later critics, particularly Westcott and Hort, yet evince at the same time an independent and intelligent judgment.

The foot-notes further contain occasional discussions of points of Greek grammar, and also of single Greek and Hebrew words, such as those for