If Thou indeed hast drunk our cup,

And known the doom of Right,

A gentler God went surely up

To reassume His might.

Characterizing the two noted artists who recently died in Eng. land, The Critic says that while "Whistler's egotism was exclusive, Phil May's humanity was broad and pervasive; the one cultivated with scant gentleness the art of making enemies, the other called every man friend." May introduced the East End of London to the West End, Whitechapel to Mayfair. He made all men acquainted with "the guttersnipe," of whom he said, "I ought to know him, for I was a guttersnipe myself." The Critic calls him "the terse, sincere, and veracious chronicler of that line of fallen kings whose only heritage is human fraility, whose palace is the gin mill, and whose flowered parterre is the gutter."-Ambassador Choate writing of Emerson quotes his genial fable of the tiff between the squirrel and the mountain:

The Mountain and the Squirrel had a quarrel,

And the former called the latter "Little Prig."
Bun replied:

You are doubtless very big,

Yet I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel-track.

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.

DR. OLDFIELD's article in the April number of The Hibbert Journal (London), entitled "The Failure of Christian Missions in India," is calling out replies numerous and weighty enough to refute and crush it. The July issue of the Journal contained a demolishing answer from Dr. William Miller, vice chancellor of the University of Madras, who is in a position to know of a certainty the facts of which he speaks. What he writes is not conclusions from a visit to the East like Dr. Oldfield's, but tested knowledge derived from long residence, study, and labor. Among the facts which make the future of Christian missions in India most hopeful Principal Miller ranks the increasing purity and power of the native churches foremost. He illustrates the whole condition of Indian missions by one of the best-known military operations of the Duke of Wellington:

When the British army was compelled to embark at Corunna there was what might well be reckoned a total failure of the attempt to deliver the

Peninsula from the grasp of Napoleon. The attempt, however, was renewed. There were gleams of success from the beginning of Wellington's command. Erelong he had secured a fairly safe basis of operations in Portugal. Still, for year after year, it seemed that no real advance beyond it could be made. Even after world-renowned victories he was once and again driven back, so that his task was pronounced impossible by those who judged only by the immediate present. There were multitudes of those at ease in Britain, there were critics by the score who had paid flying visits to the field of operations, ready to declare that the whole undertaking was a failure, and that the army ought to be withdrawn. If their counsels had been listened to the attempt would have been the failure they predicted. But Wellington remained undaunted. He received support which, though too often vacillating and half-hearted, proved to be sufficient. The time came, after much disappointment and delay, when the final advance could be wisely made. It is said that the great captain, as he crossed the frontier of Spain, yielded, as he rarely did, to the love for theatrical effect, and turning his horse and taking off his hat exclaimed, "Farewell, Portugal! I shall never see you again." Whether the story be true or not, the issue showed it to be appropriate. Within one short year thereafter, though even yet not without desperate effort and temporary failure, the Peninsula was free. The condition of Indian missions in our generation is like that of the army of Wellington after his second or his third retreat to Portugal. Great things have been done great in the judgment of those who are able to estimate moral forces rightly. Errors are being corrected. Experience has been gained. No small preparation for the final advance has manifestly been made. No doubt, if counsels like those of the articles before me should prevail, the whole attempt may yet prove a failure. But if there be even such moderate amount of steady perseverance and support as was given to the forces in the Peninsula the time of full success may not be distant. When the full fruit of what has been done in the bygone century is gathered, not only will India acknowledge Christ, but it will be found that the thoughts which have been strong in her for millenniums will be as important a contribution to the health and vigor of the Christian Church as that which has been made by the gathered thought and long preparatory training of Greek and Roman and Teuton, and of every other race whom that Church has been the instrument of bringing to a knowledge of "the only wise God, our Saviour." And here it may not be amiss to quote once more the oft-repeated words of Keshub Chunder Sen: "If you wish to secure that attachment and allegiance of India it must be through spiritual influence and moral suasion. And such indeed has been the case in India. You cannot deny that your hearts have been touched, conquered, and subjugated by a superior power. That power,

need I tell you, is Christ. It is Christ who rules British India, and not the British government. England has sent out a tremendous moral force in the life and character of that mighty prophet to conquer and hold this vast empire."

-In an article on "Physical Law and Life," Dr. Poynting, professor of physics in the University of Birmingham, claims and shows that we are more certain of our power of choice and consequent responsibility than of any other fact, physical or psychical. Our freedom of choice is a fact by itself and unlike any other fact

in Nature. The physical account of Nature cannot be a complete account. The mind and moral nature of man are territory which the physicist cannot annex to his kingdom; they are simply inexplicable to his science. And we may claim for our mental and moral experience as firm and unquestionable a certainty as the physicist claims for his experience in the outside world. In a notice of Felix Pécaut's Quinze Ans D'Education, it is said that in France the pressing problem of the present is to so educate the young as to impart seriousness of character, a lofty ideal of duty, reverence, true spirituality, and an enthusiasm for truth and goodness; and to protect them from the brutal and cynical influence of naturalism. Over his pupils in the normal college at Fontenay Pécaut has exerted for many years a salutary and lasting influence. He thus refers to the defects of modern French education:

The weakness of secular education is its neglect of religion and of the religious feeling implicit in human nature. There is no necessary incompatibility between the secular and the religious; for Nature is full of God and the soul tends Godward along all the paths of its activity, through knowledge, will, and love. . . . Nevertheless, the secular spirit starts from and returns upon man and his energies, it makes the natural life its domain, and ranges itself over against positive religion; in morals as in science it either drops out the religious idea or reduces it to an abstract notion unconnected with the rest. The result is the teaching of a morality which lacks any far-off perspective, has no window open toward the Infinite, no background to rest upon-a dry ethic which cannot take hold of the soul in its depths, nor respond to that presentiment, that deepest instinct of us all, that sense of the mystery and greatness of life and destiny, through which man feels himself bound up with the great whole of reality. Religion remains the greatest power in the world. It alone moves and uplifts man and transports him with sorrow or joy, and with an authority that governs his inmost self. Religion alone touches and warms him in that part of him which is akin to the Infinite, the Eternal, the Perfect and Unchangeable.

Of the sixteen articles in the Fortnightly Review (London and New York) for September the one of most interest to our readers would probably be Dr. Alfred R. Wallace's "Reply to Criticism" of his article in the April issue of The Fortnightly on "Man's Place in the Universe." The chief points .of his April article were that the stellar universe is limited in extent, and that our sun (and the solar system) occupies an approximately central position in relation thereto. The eminent astronomer says that the more important criticisms offered upon his article are three in number: First, that he has given no proof that the stellar universe is not infinite in extent; second, that if our system holds at present a central position in the universe, that can only be temporary, because of the sun's motion through space; and third, that there is no advantage or significance whatever in a central position for our solar system, even if it could be proven. In reply

Dr. Wallace says, as to the first-named criticism, that he did not attempt to offer proof, since both proof and disproof are alike impossible as regards what exists or does not exist in infinite space. The only question is whether what evidence we have is for or against the infinite extension of the universe. And his contention is that we do possess several distinct kinds of evidence, all pointing toward a limited stellar universe. In support of this thesis he quotes from Sir John Herschel, the man who most completely studied the whole heavens, and most deliberately thought out through a lifetime devoted to the science the great problems of astronomy. He also quotes or refers to Dr. Isaac Roberts, Mr. J. E. Gore, Professor Newcomb, and Miss Clarke, the historian of modern astronomy, as among the astronomers who conclude that the universe is limited in extent. And he holds that the three lines of evidence he has presented in favor of that conclusion have not been weakened by any criticisms. As to the second point on which Dr. Wallace's critics lay most stress, which is that even if it be shown that our sun is in a central position in the universe now, the sun's known motion through space shows such position to be but temporary and for that reason of no significance, as to this criticism, Dr. Wallace's reply is too elaborate and intricate and technical to be presented here; but he closes his argument on this point by claiming that he has shown the objections against his view to be worthless. As to the third objection, that if our position in the stellar universe were shown to be central and permanently so, it would be of no advantage or significance to us whatever, Dr. Wallace refers us to his book, about to be published, for a clear explanation of the importance of our central position, as being the only position which could afford the conditions essential for the long processes of lifedevelopment. A careful restudy of the whole subject made since the publication of his first article has only confirmed him in his conclusions. In his study of the biology and physics of the earth and solar system, he finds that such delicate adjustments and such numerous combinations of physical and chemical conditions are required for the development and maintenance of life as to render it improbable to the last degree that such conditions should all be found again combined in any planet, while within the solar system this improbability approaches very near to certainty. In the strictly astronomical part of his coming volume Dr. Wallace shows that a large body of facts, ascertained by recent research, have a direct bearing on the question of there being other inhabited planets revolving around other suns; which facts, he thinks, will satisfy those who come to the subject without prepossessions that the combination of probabilities against such an occurrence is so great as to encourage the conclusion that Our Earth is the only inhabited planet in the whole Stellar Universe. We would like to turn over to Dr. Wallace those depressing if not pusillanimous gentlemen, the apostles of "the cosmic chill." Let them settle with him.

BOOK NOTICES.

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

Reason, Faith, and Authority in Christianity. By ALFRED MAGILL RANDOLPH, D.D., LL.D., Protestant Episcopa! Bishop of the Diocese of Southern Virginia. Crown 8vo, pp. 272. New York: Thomas Whittaker. Price, cloth, $1.20.

Six lectures before the Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York in 1902, on the Paddock Foundation, the first annual course having been delivered by Bishop Williams, of Connecticut, in 1881. Of the twenty-one courses eleven have been given by Episcopal bishops, among whom one wonders at not finding the name of Bishop F. D. Huntington, of Central New York. Bishop Randolph's lectures display ability, scholarship, culture, spiritual earnestness, and practical wisdom fit for the episcopal office. He tells the young theologues that the most indispensable qualification for their work as ministers is "that power which is born of living convictions based upon personal experience of the Living God, together with that spiritual intelligence which can apprehend the spiritual meaning of the Bible and apply it to the spiritual needs of human nature." And this is what is now exacted more and more from the ministry by those who constitute the strength, the working energy, and the steadfast faith of all evangelical congregations. Without this no man can reach the consciences and hearts of men. Speaking of reason and faith, Bishop Randolph shows that the reasons which bring men to faith are practical reasons such as reach the human heart; not philosophic argument nor theological demonstration, but the fitness of the Gospel to human needs in a world which is troubled by pain and sorrow, sin and death. John Henry Newman, though a reasoner of rare subtlety and power, knew the futility of mere abstract reasoning, and he wrote: "To most men multiplication of argument makes the point in hand more doubtful and considerably less impressive. Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences and deductions; we shall never have done with beginning if we determine always to begin with proof. . . . We shall forever be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into textuaries. Resolve to believe nothing without reasoned proofs, and next you must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, till you sink to the broad bosom of skepticism." Practical reasons brought back to simple Christian faith, from years of scientific doubt, George J. Romanes, whom Huxley called one of the ablest of modern scientists. The desolate misery of disbelief pushed him, and the close adaptation of Christ to the needs of the human soul drew him, toward faith. During his years of unfaith such practical thoughts as the following kept working in him: "Faith is so beautiful it must mean something. Why is the Gospel story so natural? Why can