Prophets of the Christian Faith. By Various Writers. (James Clarke
and Co.) —We have in this volume twelve papers, beginning with Dr. Lyman Abbott's "What is a Prophet ?" and Dean Farrar's "Can We be Prophets ? " a vigorous piece of rhetoric, but scarcely addressed, one would suppose, to the same audience as that for which the others are intended. One of the most interesting is Dr. Fairbaim's estimate of Jonathan Edwards. Unfortunately Edwards's very greatness, to which Dr. Fairbairn does a well-deserved justice, gave an influence which was not for good to that part of his teaching which was at once the most easily comprehended and the least to be admired. Ask the ordinary student of theology what was Edwards's characteristic doctrine, and he will tell you "Reprobation." He is wrong, but the error shows what mischief the teaching does. It was only too easily comprehended, whereas Edwards's mysticism, which, indeed, is strongly Pantheistic, is over the heads of ordinary thinkers. Of the other essays we may mention Dr. T. T. Munger's "Horace Bushnell" ("he was accounted a heretic, but he saved orthodoxy, at least what of it was worth saving"), and Dr. A. G. V. Allen's "F. D. Maurice."
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