the minister of the American Presbyterian Church of Montreal. The spirit of the addresses is reverent; the literary style is pleasing, and the book sparkles with quotable sentences and is rich with sermon material. How can one help reporting: "Faith is the will to live in the assumption that God is friendly to us"; "History is no more than the story of a lost child in search of its father. Revelation is the tale of a father in search of his lost child"; "The real test of a religion is whether it can be preached from a soap-box"; "Uplift, I am sick of hearing about it. Uplift indeed, and to what level? Our own of course"; "Athanasius said that Jesus came down from above. Arius said that he came up from below. They were both right." He declares that the proper place for a creed is behind us. He insists that it keep its place but also insists that it be there; that we are to gather up all that is past, and possess it.

There are ten short chapters, and young men and women, and some old ones as well, will be better furnished to live, and young preachers will be better equipped to preach after reading these chapters.

The Untried Door, according to its subtitle, is an attempt to discover the mind of Jesus for to-day. It has been adopted by the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association, and is recommended as a text-book for study groups. While it is perhaps not as pungent and as arresting as the other volume it grows steadily upon the reader. The chapter heads and the Scripture verses to illustrate these chapters do not seem to have any logical sequence, but appear as isolated but brilliant fragments of exposition and paraphrase. the author himself seems to realize as in the preface he suggests a redistribution of the chapters for the sake of unity. But orderly or informal the substance is choice, and the pastor who will give a series of prayermeeting talks based upon the Scripture verses quoted, and inspired by the lucid comment, will lead his people into the high places, and feed and be fed upon spiritual vitamines.

This

The problem of life as Jesus gave the solution is not how to make the most of both worlds, which was the ideal of the last century, but how to live in both worlds at the same time. Whether a man thinks that the things worth living for are within him or

without him is the distinction between spiritual and material values. In the world, we are told, there are two types of mindone that builds walls, the other that pulls them down: tariff walls, creedal walls, caste walls it is all the same, and the greatest breaker of walls ever known was Jesus Christ. The most of us are too busy with church organization, and card-indexes, and office details to mix with outsiders. business of Jesus was to seek out this man and that man and tell him the "good news" and then let the "good news" work out its own consequences.

The

It is refreshing to find the great pastor of a great church recoiling at the modern Bolshevik theory of collectivity. According to the "Prolet-Kult" of sovietism even pictures and books must not be produced by individuals. The individual must be suppressed. Mass work even in the study and the atelier. This is the newest cult. The world must be saved sociologically, and in platoons and blocks of five. The soupkitchen is to redeem the slums. Group meetings instead of prayer-meetings. Maybe the fad is passing. Maybe the individual is coming back to his kingdom. Maybe the world is to be saved by saving John Smith and Peter Robinson and sending them out to save the others. This was the program of Jesus. It has not been improved upon.

Smell, Taste, and Allied Senses in the Vertebrates. By G. H. PARKER, Professor of Zoology in Harvard University. J. P. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1922. 192 pp. $2.50.

This book is one of a series of monographs on experimental biology. While written primarily for students of the biological sciences, it presents a line of experimentation, a technique, and a body of facts that should be interesting to most readers who are trying in these days to ground their thinking in fundamental realities. As the author says in his preface:

Sense organs have always excited general interest, for they are the means of approach to the human mind. Without them our intellectual life would be a blank. The Ideaf and blind show how serious is the loss of even a single set of these organs.

The significance of such a study for psychology, therefore, and for all the varied applications of psychology, is evident; for there is an urgent need of exact knowledge about the fundamentals of the human mind

in a world so much given to superficial and vain speculations as to what the human mind is, and how it works.

The following chapter-headings will indicate the ground covered by the book: Nature of Sense Organs; Anatomy of the Olfactory Organ; Physiology of Olfaction; Vomero-nasal Organ, or Organ of Jacobson; The Common Chemical Sense; Anatomy of the Gustatory Organ; Physiology of Gustation; and Interrelation of the Chemical Senses.

It should not be inferred from the physiological terms used in such titles, that such a book has no psychological interest. Consider, for example, a few of the lines of inquiry bearing upon mental problems of fundamental importance:

(1) Absence or deficiency of a senseorgan.

A state of this kind implies a certain mental deficiency in the given individual. If a person has been blind from birth, no amount of description can supply to him the sensation of the wealth of color that the external world holds for the normal man.

sense

(2) Unusual development of a organ. While a lower animal may, in general, be inferior mentally to man, it may have powers of sense-perception far exceeding those of man. Thus a dog's sense of smell is incomparably superior to his master's, while a cat may hear tones of a pitch much too high for the human ear.

(3) Sense-organs entirely unknown to man, and therefore a mentality with factors quite outside human comprehension. Thus fish possess, in addition to the five classes of human sense-organs, certain so-called lateralline organs, which give to the fish a wholly unique set of sensory relations. The bearing of all this upon both psychological facts and philosophical speculation as to different forms of consciousness is evident.

the author is "the science of the production and distribution of adequacy, of man and in man." And adequacy comprises endurance, health, reproductive vigor, intelligence, self-control, ability to make adjustments with others and to get on helpfully with others in cooperation. Then comes a very important statement:

Society produces these factors of adequacy in the same sense in which the breeder produces desired qualities in animals, namely, by selecting them and providing the conditions under which they can survive. The practical manifestations of adequacy are: individual initiative, individual responsibility, and an individual participation that are efficient and helpful in collective endeavor.

We are reminded several times in these studies that while each person can come to know considerable about himself, all we know about the minds of our fellow men is what we learn from their conduct and that is why "there can be no other psychology of society than the behavioristic."

The volume is divided into three main parts: historical, analytical, and synthetic. Les Penseurs de l'Islam. Les Vol. I. Souverains, l'Histoire et la Philosophie Politique. Vol. II. Les Geographes, les Sciences, Mathematiques, et Naturelles. By BARON CARRA DE VAUX. Librarie Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1921. 7 x 41⁄2 in., 383, 400 pp. Both volumes, 12.50 fr. l'Orient vu de l'Occident. By E. DINET and SLIMAN BEN IBRAHIM. Librarie Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1921. 7 x 41⁄2 in., 104 pp. 4 fr.

One has to be reminded occasionally that the Arabs of the late middle ("dark") ages were the transmitters and mediators of classical learning. The French follow the British in the number of Mohammedan subjects in North Africa, Syria, and the Far East. It is natural, then, to find the French interested in Mohammedan literature. De Vaux's two handy volumes on The Thinkers of Islam deal in nineteen chapters with the royal patrons of literature, and with Arabic, Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish historians, philosophers, geographers, mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, etc. Here is a picture of the contributions-original and borrowed-made to human welfare by followers in faith of the Arabian prophet. Eminently readable-can a Frenchman write a dull book?-these volumes lack an index, about the only blemish on a book treating a subject little understood by Christians.

The little work by Dinet and Ben Ibrahim (a French and an Arab Mohammedan?) is designed to correct the Occidental views of the Orient and Islam in particular. These views, the authors say, are errant in part because they construe literally the picture language of the East and try to fit it within logical categories, in part because of undue stress on the argument for silence. The authors plead for fair play from critics of the Koran, Mohammed, and Islam, and protest urgently against applying the critical canons of the West to Eastern literature.

Jesus an Economic Mediator. By JAMES E. DARBY. Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, 1922. 256 pp. $1.50.

It is an encouraging sign of the times to find so much of present-day literature turning to the Master's teaching for the solution of all questions pertaining to the well-being of humanity. The book before us bears the sub-title of "God's Remedy for Industrial and International Ills" and twenty chapters are given over to a discussion of many aspects of this important question.

The author takes his stand on indisputable ground when he says only as Jesus becomes the mediator and helper of the individual can any improvement come to the great number of workingmen throughout the world.

The gospel of social redemption grows out of individual redemption as all human rights grow out of personal rights. Right relations with Jehovah bring right relations with one another, and weld together all interests.

The volume is a strong plea for the redemption of the whole person, spiritual, mental, moral, and physical.

Our readers will get an example of the method in the chapter on "The Making and Using of Money," see page 489.

When Jesus Wrote on the Ground. By EDGAR DEWITT JONES. George H. Doran Company, New York, 1922. 74x51⁄2 in., 234 pp. $1.50.

The sub-title describes this collection as Studies, Expositions and Meditations in the Life of the Spirit, and as such they will prove helpful.

The presence of a fine, strong, brotherly spirit, intent in bringing the life of God into the lives of men, is a striking characteristic of the volume.

Dr. Charles C. Morrison of The Christian Century writes an appreciation of Dr. Jones. There are seventeen chapters altogether.

The final chapter we give in another department of this number.

PREACHERS EXCHANGING

VIEWS

Facing the Facts on Christian Unity Editor of THE HOMILETIC REVIEW:

In the June number of the REVIEW there is an article in the "Preachers Exchanging Views" under the caption "Facing the Facts on Christian Unity." This may be an earnest effort on the part of the writer to point out the way to a desired end, but as it does not suggest the real point of difficulty it could not indicate a plan of accomplishing the desired end, Christian unity. What the writer says about taking the Bible only and abolishing "human creeds," is in fact the same speech that Alexander Campbell started out with over a century ago, and has long since been worn threadbare, but has never yet effected a union anywhere, tho while launching a denomination out upon the mission to bring about union, it has itself become divided into three factions and each one still advocating unity on the same basis. The ultra immersionist insists that unless I am immersed as he was I can not be recognized as a church-member. Unless I will suffer the imposition of his creed on me I can not be a recognized member of a real church. I ask why is that? Then I am told that that is the only scriptural mode of baptism and I must ascribe to it. Of course that is only according to his view of the Scriptures. But I insist upon the privilege of studying the Bible myself; in fact, that is just what I have done. Now if it be demanded of me that I must be immersed or I can not be a member of a church, then I conscientiously could not be a member of any church making such demand, as I am not an immersionist, and having thoroughly examined every passage of Scripture bearing on the subject, I am fully persuaded in my own mind. Yet I do not insist that others must accept my view on the subject. Being satisfied myself I want every Christian to enjoy personal satisfaction, tho his view may not just correspond to mine, I give him the privilege I myself enjoy.

Dexter, Mo.

F. P. DEBOLT.