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 1 20 Rez'iezi's of Books that his chapters relating to American history doubtless contain valuable hints for the special investigator. It is perhaps pardonable to express here the hope that the American sailor may never fail to illustrate the high ideals which speak in Professor Rawson's pages. W. F. TiLTON. A Manual of Church History. By Albert Henry Newman, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History in McMaster Univ-ersity. Vol. I. Ancient and Mediaeval Church History, to A.D. 1517- (Philadelphia: The American Baptist Publication Society. 1900. Pp. xiii, 639.) The author here presents in text-book form the results of his twenty 3'ears' experience as a student and teacher of ecclesiastical history. His work is thus arranged : an Introduction discusses the nature, method, and divisions of church history, with a history of the discipline. The Graeco- Roman civilization and Judaism are treated as preparatory to Christianity. Period I. (to about 100 A.D.) covers the life of Jesus, the work of the apostles, and the constitution of the apostolic churches; Period II. (to 312 A.D. ), the relation of Christianity to the Roman government, the doctrinal development, and the early Christian literature ; Period III. (to about 800 A.D.), church and state, theological controversies in the age of the great councils, the growth of the papacy, and various aspects of the Christian world and the Church in the eighth century ; Period IV. (to 15 17 A.D.) includes a miscellaneous chapter, entitled "Some Aspects of Mediaeval Civilization" (^e. g., the Holy Roman Empire, canon law, monasticism, the crusades, the inquisition, universities, schol- asticism, and the Renaissance), and chapters on the papacy and various reformatory movements. This, it will be observed, is the familiar, con- ventional division of the field of church history, which it is so hard for us to get away from. We go on giving to civil rulers, especially to Con- stantine and Charlemagne, an ecclesiastical significance which they do not deserve, and we fail to understand that the only proper division of the history is into primitive. Catholic and Protestant Christianity. The merits of Professor Newman's book are that it is clearly written, compact, comprehensive, and well adapted for use in the class-room. It contains extensive bibliographies, from which however one misses here and there an important title, and it is well indexed. The sections which treat of medieval theology, sects and parties, are among the best in the book, yet their arrangement is sometimes poor and the treatment frag- mentary. Why are the Taborites (p. 581), the Bohemian Brethren (p. 593), the Hussite movement (p. 607), and the Brethren of the Common Life (p. 617) put in that order, and with other sections sprinkled in between them? And why must we read about the Lollards (p. 589) before we have made the acquaintance of Wyclif (p. 600) ? More than once our author lays himself open to the criticism recently passed upon many writers of general history, viz. that they give prominence to the ex-