should serve to enlighten a little obscurity, rather than a little obscurity to darken much luminousness. To the beautiful invitation of the gospel to all men "to come" and partake of the feast of divine love ("the Spirit and the bride say, come!" or God on high, and the church on earth and in heaven thus say), it is added with no less impressive beauty, "let him that heareth say, come!" Who shall forbid any woman from echoing the glad tidings with her voice, and with all her heart, wherever any one else could rightly think of doing so! (Cf. Ps. cxlviii, 11-14.)

Most of the piety of the world hitherto has come, it is believed, in the line of God's covenant-mercies and so has been chiefly the product of faithful maternal training, as in Timothy's case. Paul speaks (2 Tim. i, 3–6), affectionately of the unfeigned faith of his grandmother Eunice and his mother Lois, and also of his own religious ancestry. Woman's worth and work, as a religious home-trainer, has been hithero the great motor-force, of an earthly kind, that has borne on the church, with its many rich benedictions to mankind, from one generation to another; while her cheerful spirit of song, and ardor of faith, and hope have been always the joy of its worship. And what this age now needs as much as any other one superadded force of an earthly kind, and beyond any other, is the free introduction everywhere into all the congregations of the saints gathered for conference and prayer, of the free and earnest expression of woman's love to Christ. That, outside of our evangelical churches, there is no strong all-mastering objection in the natural sentiments of mankind to woman's equal public honor with man, is manifest in several striking ways. Over much the larger part of Christendom to this day, throughout the bounds of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches, the worship of the Virgin Mary prevails in full force, making the great Saviour, who is Lord of all, entirely secondary in authority and importance to his mere human mother. A mere glorified woman, according to their enthusiastic admiration, rules this whole world, and even heaven and earth together, and she is far more an object of worship to them, than was to the ancients the "mother of the gods." Among the Greeks and Romans, similar proofs of natural reverence for the female

sex abound. Their theology was the theology of fate; but the Fates who spun out to mortals their little lease of life, were all goddesses. The Furies also, who pursued and punished criminals after death, were female ministers of vengeance. And who presided over their fields of husbandry, but Ceres the goddess of corn? Who, over the chase and health, but Diana? Who, over the domestic hearth and the perpetual keeping of that sacred fire, on whose unbroken maintenance the continued safety of Rome depended, but Vesta and the Vestal Virgins? Who, over wisdom itself, but Minerva? Who, over the shades below, but Proserpina ? The very ministers of religion in ancient Greece were as much the priestesses who gave the answers of the oracles, as the priests who performed the coarser work of killing the appointed animals for sacrifice. Woman's power was plainly shown in these and other ways to be an element of state-life that no one failed to see, or feel, or accept.

In the same connection in which man is declared by Paul to be "the image and glory of God" in the capabilities of his nature and destiny (male and female), "woman is," he tells us, "the glory of the man" (1 Cor. xi, 7). Does not every true man who has any religion in his character, or even any poetry in his nature and any sentiment of reverence for woman, rejoice to acknowledge that woman is on the average greatly superior to man in moral excellence; and that in her heart is to be found the treasure-house of the moral riches of the world, and of all its highest and best hopes for the future. It was women (and not men?) that when Christ was on earth and had not, sometimes, where to lay his head, "ministered unto him of their substance" (Luke viii, 3). And it was to the women that the angel found at the sepulchre, the elect spirits of the church then as now, that he said "go quickly and tell the disciples, that he is risen from the dead;" a message the greatest in itself and in its consequences that any company of mortals were ever commissioned to bear to the rest of mankind.

All honor to the fact of woman's growing emancipation from all social restrictions that confine her chances of public usefulness as a servant of Christ within narrow bounds. The world's history hitherto has been distress fully disappointing in its character and results to any one who has undertaken to reason

from first principles what it might have been and ought to have been. No part of it has been more sad than that of the church of Christ itself; and whenever and wherever its history has been most forlorn, there woman's active service in the cause has been most repressed, or at least undesired.

The hosts of evil and of good are plainly marshalling themselves, as never before over all the civilized world, for a strife with each other unto the death. There must be everywhere, by necessity, a conflict between all that is right and all that is wrong, until one or the other finally prevails and forever. It is a grand advantage to the lovers of truth and of God, that he, knowing the end from the beginning, has assured them that the right will have the victory at the last, and that evil is doomed, in itself and by his fiat also, to perish in the earth. But for the achievement of such a triumph in the end, the church must gird herself with more and more determined energy until it is accomplished. Woman, with her mighty moral power for good, can not be justly or safely left to look idly on upon any part of the great struggle. Much less can she be wisely or rightly smitten in the face, as if by divine authority, and told to see to it that she keeps quiet and dumb, while everything else around her and above her, and even the very air itself, is astir with the spirit of the great battle, that is being waged for God, or against him.

ARTICLE VII.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN.*-Principal Tullock is already favorably known from his works on Leaders of the Reformation, and Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the seventeenth century, and this volume of Lectures (as they appear to have been from the "prefatory note," where alone we find any date-June 1, 1876) on a very different theme, will command attention as from the same pen. It will be read the more widely as being less extended and more popular in its tone than Müller's great work on the same subject. The treatment, too, is different. Instead of first examining "the individual consciousness in its inner witness to the fact," and then "the conclusions thus reached in the light of Scripture," which was Müller's method, Dr. Tullock prefers to trace the idea of evil in its historical development from the beginning to the latest stages, as in what is called natural religion and in revelation. The several lectures treat of "the question of sin in relation to modern schools of thought ;" the " idea of evil, outside of revelation;" the "Old Testament Doctrine of Sin;" the "doctrine of sin as in the Gospels ;" the "doctrine of St. Paul's Epistles;" "Original Sin." The last forty pages are made up of supplementary notes. We wish the writer had enlarged this volume, as he tells us in the preface he had intended, so as to include here a discussion of Augustinianism, and also of " the Optimism of Leibnitz," and the later "Pessimism," which however he reserves for future consideration. He is evidently at home in the literature of his subject, and writes with perspicuity and candor. The work, though brief, is here and there somewhat diffuse, yet not therefore the less adapted to popular use.

REASON, FAITH, AND DUTY.t-If orthodox preaching, in vindicating the distinguishing doctrines of revelation, has not always given to natural religion and ethics their due place, on the other

The Christian Doctrine of Sin. By JOHN TULLOCK, D.D., Principal of St. Mary's College in the University of St. Andrews; one of her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 12mo, 243 pp.

↑ Reason, Faith, and Duty. Sermons preached chiefly in the College Chapel, by JAMES WALKER, D.D., LL.D., late President of Harvard College. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1877. 12mo, 454 pages.

hand where those doctrines have been denied or ignored these latter themes have received almost necessarily a fuller treatment. Particularly by the better class of Unitarian divines a high ethical tone has been maintained, and earnestness and ability, as well as culture, have been employed in discussing and urging the duties of common life. No doubt their sermons in this department may be studied with advantage by other preachers. They add breadth and delicacy to the culture desirable for the pulpit. And among these divines none can be more deservedly esteemed or more profitably read than the late Dr. Walker. First as a pastor, and then as the President and Preacher at Harvard College, he commanded high respect and wrought valuable service. The volume before us is a welcome addition to other works from the same pen. It contains twenty-six sermons, some of them baccalaureate addresses, and most of them in their subjects and modes of treatment well adapted to young men generally as well as specially intended for college life. They were selected, from such as he had not given to the flames, by a friend to whose urgent request he had reluc tantly consented. One of them," Upon the sin of being led astray," has the more interest as "the only one hitherto unpublished, which he designated." For their high standards of judgment, devout and kindly spirit, clear statements and reasonings, and purity and simplicity of style, they are admirable discourses. A pleasing portrait is prefixed, with an introduction giving a sketch of his useful and honored life.

THREE WORKS FROM MARTINEAU.*-We gladly invite attention here to these three books, which must win attention and render service far beyond the circle of the author's own religious denomination. The first is a reprint from the sixth edition, the earliest of the prefaces being dated June, 1843, and has already taken its high place in the public esteem. The American Unitarian Association have done well to issue it, in this tasteful form, at the low price of one dollar.

* 1. Endeavors after the Christian Life: Discourses by JAMES MARTINEAU. Reprinted from the sixth English edition. Boston: American Unitarian Association. 1876. 12mo, 449 pp.

2. Modern Materialism in its relations to Religion and Theology. By JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D., with an introduction by Henry W. Bellows, D.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1877. 211 pp.

3. Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. By JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D., D.D. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876. 344 pp.