Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/572

558 is so co-ordinated in the class that each member may, to some extent, reap the benefit of the labors of his companions. The seminary method is adapted from the old scholastic methods of the ecclesiastical and philosophical seminaries, and has been applied in numerous German and some American institutions.

believe that the Bible should be subject to criticism and investigation, in all its aspects, like any other book; and that the criticism should be searching and fearless. Still, there are proprieties to be observed, even by a critic who does not believe the book the product of divine inspiration. It is a very ancient book, embodying unique historical records and traditions of the earliest times of civilization, the genuineness of which is newly illustrated by every new excavation in the ruined cities of the East; prophetic books and poems which, regarded in the literary aspect alone, are worthy to be ranked with the world's masterpieces; and religious declarations and moral precepts which have been built into the foundations of modern manners. These things should entitle it to respectful treatment, even at the hands of an enemy. Mr. Kelso has not given it such treatment, but has made it the object of persistent ribald, indecent, blasphemous assaults, the very violence of which obscures whatever of force his argument might have had ho presented it in a becoming style.

this little book Mr. Newton gives a study of Genesis, with an introduction to the Pentateuch, conducted according to the canons of free, independent investigation. The study is based upon the lectures which the author, a well-known Episcopal clergyman, had begun to deliver to his Bible-class, but which he discontinued at the request of his bishop. The singular position in which he was put by this event made it seem due, he says, "alike to my people and myself, that the public should be enabled to judge of the real nature of the lectures which had called forth such a very unusual if not unprecedented episcopal interruption of a presbyter in the course of his parochial ministrations." Mr. Newton accepts to the full the results of what is called the "new criticism" with regard to the mode of composition, the time, and the authorship of the five Mosaic books; and while he presents these clearly and in all their force, he does it in the spirit and with the manner of one who accepts, as he avows that he does, the religious teachings of the Bible as authoritative.

studies contained in this book seem to be products of a mind much exercised about the relations of religion and modern science. Its author has read widely, and is evidently in much sympathy with the study of natural science, for which he declares he had an early fondness, while he possesses strong religious convictions, and strives with sincerity to bring the two orders of thought into unity and harmony. The second part, on "Scientific Studies: their Place and Use in Education," presents a very fair resume of the educational claims of the sciences, but the author is still in agreement with the classicists, holding that there is nothing like "the humanities" for the cultivation of the mind.

author of this plea for home instruction has made it under the feeling that the subject has at no time received the attention it demands, but that we are coming to neglect it more and more. We are apt to leave the whole matter of the training of our children to the schools, in utter forgetfulness of the fact that the specially important phase of it—that which forms a symmetrical character—is ostensibly ignored in many of them, and that "the most abiding portion of the child's mental seed-sowing has already taken root and given its tints to the soil before the period for entering the school-room arrives." The oversight of "this first lush