Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/143

 Rh variation that is noticed in different persons. With this information the mother need have no alarm when unaccustomed sensations are felt, or if she or her child do not do exactly the same as her friend and her friend's child have done. The book does not attempt to take the place of a physician, but tells, under the various divisions of its subject, what symptoms require that a physician should be called.

efforts of partisans, the author of this book says, to manipulate early history in the interest of special views and narrow conceptions have been a fruitful source of error. Equally dangerous has been the assumption that the Christianity of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was identical with that of the New Testament, or was a fair representative of it. The constant development of new facts shows that at the point where the average student takes up the history of Western Christianity it was already fundamentally corrupted by pagan theories and practices. Its unfolding from that time to the present must be studied in the light of this fact and the rise, development, present status, and future history of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism can not be justly considered independently of it. The fundamental principles and the underlying philosophy of these divisions of Christendom originated in the paganizing of early Christianity. This fact makes the re-study of the beginnings of Christianity of supreme importance. The book presents a suggestive rather than an exhaustive treatment of these influences, and of their effect on historic Christianity, in the four points of the influence of pagan thought upon the Bible and its interpretation; upon the organized Church, through the pagan water-worship cult; upon the practices and spiritual life of the Church, "by substituting pagan holidayism for Christian Sabbathism"; and upon the spiritual life and subsequent character of the Church, by the union of church and state, mid the subjugation of Christianity to the civil power, according to the pagan models. Under the first of these headings came the corruptions derived from gnosticism and various allegorical interpretations of scriptural doctrines and symbols; under the second the corruptions of Christian baptism, giving rise, among other things, to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the use of holy water; under the third, the origin of the substitution of Sunday for the old Sabbath, and the rise, purpose, and tendency of Sunday legislation—to which the author is opposed, on principle and as a Seventh-day Baptist; and under the fourth the whole course of secular interference with the Church. "Other forms of pagan residuum in Christianity" include a low standard of religious life; the metamorphosis of an ancient phallic emblem into the Christian cross; various beliefs connected with baptism; lights in worship; the eastward position; certain features peculiar to the Roman Catholic Church; and the observance of certain Christianized pagan holidays. Regarding the fundamental principles of Protestantism, as involved in present issues, the author concludes that Protestants must accept the Bible in fact as well as in theory, reinterpreting it in the light of "higher criticism" and deeper spiritual life, or be overthrown; that baptism must cease to be the football of denominational polemics and be raised to a question of obedience to the example of Christ; that Protestants must return to true Sabbathism, "which is as undenominational as faith"; and that all union of Christianity with the state must yield before the normal development of true Protestantism.

is the latest of the excellent series of text-books in science published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. It is especially worthy of the attention of educators, on account of its simplicity and the natural method of instruction, scientific accuracy of statement, clean text, type, and admirable illustrations. The four simple divisions are: Matter and its Properties, pp. 1-53; Kinematics, pp. 53-64; Dynamics, pp. 64-179; Heat, pp. 179-229.

One is inclined to envy a generation of beginners in science to whom each step is so clearly explained, and where the illustrations really assist the student. The longest chapter, very properly, is devoted to the