NEW EDITIONS AND REPturrs.—The Fight of Faith : Sermons Preached
on Various Occasions, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. (Henry S. King and Co.)—The Story of Christianity, by the Rev. Andrew Reed, B.A. (Hamilton and Adams.) Mr. Reed seeks to " diffuse a knowledge of Church history from a liberal stand-point." Is not the name of Clement an exception to the statement that" the list [of Roman Bishops] to A.D. 128 is filled by mere names of unknown men "? On p. 29 Mr. Reed says as much. Tho book is vigorously, and we think, on the whole, fairly written.--Dr. Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines has been edited by the Rev. Robert Williamson. (Gemmel', Edinburgh.) The editor explains that the arrangement of the book in chapters has been somewhat altered, and also that certain "corrections and additions" have been necessitated by the dis- covery of the " Original Minutes of the Assembly's Proceed- ings." These "Minutes" were published, in part, some little time ago, and the volume was noticed in those columns.—We have also to acknowledge a second edition, " revised and corrected," of Dr. Karl Wieseler's Chronological Synopsis of the Four Gospels, translated by the Rev. Edmund Knolles, M.A. (Bell and Sons) ; The Childhood of Reli- gions, by Edward Clodd, "a Special Edition for Schools" (C. Kogan Paul); An Exposure of Popery, by the late Rev. William Anderson (Hodder and Stoughton); Peter, "a Stone :" a Commentary, by Edwin T. Caulfield (Hamilton and Adams); Origin and History of the New Testament, by James Martin, RA.. (Hodder and Stoughton); The Exercise of Faith, by the late Rev. Milos Mahan, D.D. (Palmer.) Dr. Mahan's purpose was to defend the Anglican position against Rome. The English editor (the writer belonged to the American Church) thinks that no one of any learning or weight in theology or Church history " secedes to Rome now." If Dr. Mahan's arguments can confirm weaker brethren, it will be well ; nor would we wish to depreciate their force, though they do not take their departure from our stand-point. Hours of Sorrow Cheered and Comforted: Poems, by Charlotte Elliott (Religious Tract Society).—We have before us a handsome edition in four volumes of Mr. Robert Bell's Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Bell and Sons). To this a Preliminary Essay has been prefixed by the Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A., who has also revised the notes, and made some alterations, rendered necessary by more recent discoveries, in "The Life of Chaucer." But the main feature of the edition is the separation of the genuine from the spurious and doubtful poems. These latter occupy the fourth volume and the latter part of the third (in which " Chaucer's Dream" is included). The chief of them is "The Romaunt of the Rose." From the same publishers we also have a "second edition, revised," of the Handbook of Archceology : Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, by Hodder M. Westropp.
Mr. J. Pretyman, in his Dispauperisation: a Popular Treatise on Poor- Law Evils and their Remedies, a " second edition, revised and enlarged " (Longmans), renews his attack on the Poor Law. We do not see much force in his suggested substitutes, and we do see a great deal of danger in the change which he would make. Every community, he seems to think, has a volcano beneath it. For all that, social arrangements make a great difference. It would be a formidable change, in this crowded country, in which sudden vicissitudes bring thousands close to destitution, to take away the absolute security against starvation which now keeps them so quiet.—Animal Magnetism ; or, Mes- merism and its Phenomena, by the late William Gregory, M.D., appears in a " second and slightly revised and abridged edi- tion" (W. H. Harrison). We have also a "third and cheaper edition " of Hardy Flowers, by W. Robinson, F.L.S. (Macmillan.) We have also to mention The Golden Diary; or, Heart-Converse with Jesus in the Book of Psalms, by A. Edersbeim, D.D. (Religious Tract Society), a boolrof devotional reading ; and From Morning to Evening : a Book for Invalids, from the French of L'Abbd Henri Perroyvo, trans- lated and adapted by an Associate of the Sisterhood of St. John Baptist, Clewer (Rivingtons); Instructions in the Devotional Life, by the Rev. G. H. Wilkinson (W. Wells Gardner) ; The Three Tabernacles : a Golden Treatise, by Thomas a Kempis, edited by the Rev. H. Comerford (Gill, Dublin).—In Poetry, we have Gerard's Monument, and other Poems, by Emily Pfeiffer (C. Kogan Paul); and Shorn Relics (Adams and Francis).—Notes on Muhammadanism, by the Rev. T. P. Hughes (W. H. Allen), is the work of a missionary in India. He makes no attempt at fine-writing or rhetoric, and though he cannot accept—and what reasonable man can ?—some recent apologies for Mahommed, he is candid and fair. His volume is a storehouse of facts, put with perfect simplicity and plainness.—We have also to mention an "abridged edition" of The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, by William Pole (Long- mans) ; and cheap reprints of Country-House Essays, by John Latouche (Ward, Look, and Tyler), and of Dred, by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in the " Rose Library," (Sampson Low and Co.)
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