NOTICES OF BOOKS.

What determines Molecular Motion?—the Fuudamental Problem of Nature. By JAMES CROLL, of the Geological Survey of Scotland. London: Taylor & Francis. Pp. 25.

MR. CROLL'S essay evidently goes to the roots of things, and treats of a most momentous subject, which deserves precedence of all others, and respectful priority of consideration.

The subject of Force is at present engaging the attention of scientific men throughout the country; and this essay, which is reprinted from The Philosophical Magazine, sets the whole subject before the reader in a clear and condensed light. The great idea on which Mr. Croll insists is the important distinction between force and the determination of force. Everybody admits that there is force in the universe. The silent growth of the plant proves it, as well as the revolutions of Jupiter round the sun. But why does the plant grow as it grows, or Jupiter wheel as he wheels? It will not do, according to our author, to speak of mere chemical affinity, or natural selection, or blind gravitation. What determined that particular selection in the plant, or that delicate union of the centrifugal and centripetal forces in virtue of which Jupiter rolls as he rolls? I see a bricklayer mounting a ladder with bricks. I recognize his energy; but I know that a planning mind is behind, directing his labours. In like manner, back of all these affinities and adjustments, there must be a divine mind originating all, and maintaining all. Such is the chief thought in Mr. Croll's essay, and we thank him sincerely for it. We read lately of an earnest evangelist who was assailed one night with the temptation that there was no God. It was a winter night, and going out to the garden, he looked up to the stars, and was immediately set free. He exclaimed, "Yes, there is a God; and he is my God!" The perusal of Mr. Croll's pamphlet has led us to exclaim, “The Originator and Determinator of all molecular or atomic force is the Infinite One; and He is mine, and I am His!"

A Practical Bible Temperance Commentary.

By the REV. ALEX. STEWART, Aberdeen. Aberdeen: William Lindsay. Pp. 218. CONSIDERING the terrible state of our country through strong drink, we feel as if we required to go abroad among the people with the Bible in the one hand and the Temperance Pledge in the other; and, consequently, we hail with satisfaction every work which is written on the subject in an earnest and prayerful spirit. Especially do we welcome a book like that now before us, which is calculated to show the Christian people, who, drinking strong, distilled liquors, entrench themselves behind the practice of the Holy Saviour and the statements of the sacred Scriptures, that those fortifications, far from supporting their practice, really turn their guns against them.

We understand that Mr. Stewart's work came out first in successive parts, which were much appreciated by those who perused them. The entire result of his patient labours on the Wine Question and the Word of God is now presented to the public in this handsome volume.

Mr. Stewart's well known acquaintance with the original Hebrew and Greek of the Old and New Testaments, as well as his thorough knowledge of chemistry and the anatomy of the human frame, abundantly qualify him to produce this book, which will be found to be a valuable repository of linguistic, chemical, and physiological information on this important subject.

Our author's plan, like that of Dr. Lees and Mr. Burns, is inductive and exhaustive. He takes up all the texts in the Old and New Testament alike that bear upon the subject, and tries them in the crucible of his critical analysis. His reader does not conclude his various excursions with his conductor through even the preliminary Pentateuch without finding out the main points of the author's position. Mr. Stewart maintains that the Hebrew word, yayin, is applied in the Old Testament to the juice of the grape, either in an unfermented or fermented state; that sheckar is applied to all other liquid fruit-beverages in common use, except the juice of the grape, and especially the liquor which was obtained by piercing the palm tree; while tirosh denotes the grape in the cluster. These are the principal words which are used in the Old Testament when the sacred writers are speaking of wine and their Greek synonyms are well known. Now, our author holds that yayin and sheckar, when unfermented or undrugged, are always spoken of as blessings; but when regarded as having been fermented or drugged, they are spoken of as the opposite of blessings, and therefore to be avoided. Mr. Stewart maintains that the rendering, "strong drink," by which sheckar has been introduced to the English reader, is unfortunate and inaccurate, since the beverage was sometimes strong and sometimes not.

The interest of the work, of course, culminates when the author is examining the account of the miracle at Cana, the institution of the Lord's Supper, and "Timothy's prescription." On such passages, Mr. Stewart's comments are patient and elaborate. He fortifies his own statements, moreover, with weighty quotations from numbers of the most eminent American temperance reformers, such as Dr. Nott, Mr. Delavan, and Dr. Moses Stuart. One important and unique feature of the work is that, besides the discussion of Hebrew roots and Hebrew fruits, the author never closes his criticism of a passage without adding important practical remarks, which are calculated to bless the soul of the reader. We cordially commend the Commentary, both as a book to be read through with profit, and as a book of reference to ministers of the Gospel, temperance lecturers, and all earnest people who desire to form an intelligent opinion on this great question of the day.

The Nature of the Spirit's Work in Conversion; or The Question-Do Evangelical Unionists Deny the Work of the Holy Spirit in the Conversion of the Soul? Answered by the Rev. A. Stewart, Aberdeen. Aberdeen William Lindsay. Pp. 26.

HAVING in the work already noticed exhorted his fellow-countrymen "not to be drunk with wine wherein is excess," Mr. Stewart turns round upon them in the pamphlet under review, and "but be ye says, filled with the Spirit-and He longs to gain admission to the heart of every one of you." It really looks as if Ephes. v. 18, had been the burden of the Lord especially laid upon our author's soul in the year of grace 1873, and that he could find no peace or rest till he had delivered himself of it by means of the press as well as of the pulpit. And we must say that we like his pamphlet in favour of the Good Spirit, as well as his volume against the bad "spirits."

We are sorry indeed that there should ever be any occasion for such a pamphlet as that now lying before us. We have often been pained at heart to hear of good people misunderstanding us and misrepresenting us. We would like to have the good will and respect of all the Lord's people; but it seems to be the cross which we have to carry in this country, to be charged with the denial of the Spirit's work, when all the denial of which we are guilty is the denial of his partiality and unwillingness to save all. And we think Mr. Stewart's pamphlet well calculated to bring intelligent Christians to see that they had been misinformed about us, and that we really just "believe what they believe," or state clearly out "what they had often thought themselves."

Mr. Stewart's tractate puts us in mind of the brochures which we required to write more than twenty-five years ago. He goes over all the old points-only with a clearness and completeness of his own-with an acquaintance both with the philosophy and the theology of the subject which renders him a specially competent expounder of our doctrines. He shows that man, being a moral creature, cannot really be changed by a purely physical cause. Hihilo nihil fit; and our author finely adapts this old adage to his subject by thus rendering it-"out of nothing moral, nothing moral cau come." He proves from the Scriptures that "to-day" and "now" is the accepted time with every sinner, and that all might be converted if they would only hear and turn; for it is "the Spirit" that says "to-day." He demurs to the idea that the world is just in the state the Lord is pleased to have it in. He holds that the Lord is saying to the world, "What more could have been done for this vineyard that I have not done in it?" and that he who wept over Jerusalem is weeping over the globe in 1873.

We hope that Mr. Stewart's pamphlet will be widely circulated, and that it will do much to give many of our fellow-countrymen a better opinion of the Evangelical Union, and especially a better opinion of the moral character of God, than they may hitherto have had.

THE

EVANGELICAL REPOSITORY.

FIFTH SERIES.

No. XIV. DECEMBER, 1873.

THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. BY AN ENGLISH INDEPENDENT MINISTER.

STEP by step the truth will be reached; and the time is sure to come when a pure theology will be universal; and then, as sure as is the relationship between life and thought, a pure and undefiled religion will overspread our globe, and turn it into paradise restored. In every place, incense and a pure offering shall be presented in the name of the Lord: for his name shall be great among all nations."" Thus wrote Dr. Morison in a Review of Dr. Candlish and Dr. Crawford, on the Fatherhood of God, in the year 1870. Were the Doctor now in England, and had he to survey the whole field of thought, he would see many pleasing proofs of the far-sightedness of this prediction; for, although within the pale of the Established Church the demonstrations would not be very manifest, yet, outside that church, and within the circle of Evangelical Nonconformity, the proofs would be abundant, and the evidence of progress towards this desirable end most gratifying. time and space permit, we might adduce many facts in favour of this view of Christian thought and progress; but we must confine ourselves to-day to the address of the Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, whose autumnal meetings have this year been held at Ipswich.

Did

The Chairman was the Rev. Eustace Conder, M.A., of Leeds, who delivered an inaugural speech which, had it been spoken by the foresaid Dr. Morison, or even by an independent thinker like Dr. Thomas Binney, would have called forth the criticisms of all the Calvinistic journals and magazines in the kingdom; but, coming as it did from one of the most cautious, most evangelical, and most pronounced ministers on the side of Calvinistic thought, it will do infinite good, without the risk of

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being severely criticized in England. Mr. Conder is the son of the late Josiah Conder, for many years the learned and accomplished editor of the London Patriot, and grandson of one of the first of the Puritan clergy in East Anglia, who had to pay the price of position, and almost of blood, for the principles of civil and religious freedom which he held and professed. And, by the way, it may here be stated that at one of those meetings the Rev. Mr. Davids, of Colchester, held up a little book, by Mr. Brown, father of the Brownists in the sixteenth century, and stated that for preaching the Gospel, and the religious freedom which that book set forth, in plain and simple language, and which is preached in every evangelical pulpit in England to-day, four ministers had been executed in East Anglia! What a change! Surely such a fact is well fitted to put the mind into a state of sincere and ardent thankfulness to God, that the Congregational Union could meet at Ipswich, in 1873, as the logical outcome of those principles, and the practical exemplifiers of the marvellous progress which has characterized the civil and religious history of England during the last three hundred years.

The subject of Mr. Conder's address was "The Decay and Restoration of Theology." This was a startling title. It was bold also, and yet it was singularly felicitous :

"I am hopeful," he said, "that this decadence of systematic theology is not that decay which foreruns death, but rather like the fall of the leaf in Autumn, which falls because it has done its work in nourishing the hidden life that Spring shall unfold, and enriches the soil where it falls. The theology of the future, as I venture to forecast it in my own mind, will not be the fruit either of the destruction of the past, or of the reproduction of the past, or of the fusing all doctrines into one featureless mass, where faith is replaced by feeling, although these three seem the prevailing theological tendencies of the present. It will be the fruit of deeper study of God's truth. Despising no ray of light from the past, it will-fill its own lamp with fresh oil and kindle it with altar-fire."

And what was the decadence which he sought to demonstrate? The decadence of hard and fast Calvinism which could look complacently on the burning of Servetus and the reprobation which sent infants to perdition only a span long. From all this there has been a most blessed decay. And yet Mr. Conder contended for a modified Calvinism, for he said:

"Calvinism is an iron ring of logic, which the hammer has not yet been forged that can break. It was burst asuuder by the expansive force of love. The breaking point of the strain was the restriction it laid on an honest offer of salvation to all. Men began to suspect that if their theory of the Gospel hindered the Gospel, they were paying too dear for logic. It was possible there might be a hidden flaw in their reasoning; it was impossible God should be insincere. Perhaps they were consuming in defence of orthodoxy energy which should have been spent in turning many to