in their desire to put other people at their ease? Do the very great sometimes turn cold and stiff as they realize that they have failed to charm away hauteur which may have a humble origin, or an awkwardness which hides first-rate ability, or when they have failed-for once to render transparent that opaque social barrier through which, if they love human nature, they would often like to examine the real man? A baffled desire to please is a fruitful source of shyness, and that desire may spring, and in gracious natures does spring, from benevolence and intelligence as well as from self-seeking and folly. We sometimes wonder whether a new shyness may not have attacked the socially great of late years. They do not live any longer exclusively among themselves. Are they ever rendered shy by the atmosphere of criticism which the newcomer must bring with him? If we may believe their own accounttheir social biographies and published letters-they have changed considerably in manners and customs. In deference, one wonders, to what emotion?

Of all the people who ought by all the rules of logic to be socially fearless, we should put the social artist first. We mean the person whose whole The Spectator.

pleasure is in the drama of life, and whole delight is to express his impressions. Oddly enough, this is not the case. The man or woman who ought to accept even disagreeable social experience gladly, as so much grist to his or her mill, is often very fearful. Even that rarest of all things, the consciousness of genius, has no power to strengthen the shaking social knees, though, like Henry IV., their owners may not give in, but pursue their end in gallant terror. Take the Brontës as a case in point.

More of those flood-tides which lead on to fortune are missed through social fear, we should imagine, than through any other single cause. Let their powers be what they may, few men, be they laborers or princes, and no women can afford to do without favor. How many people with courage to analyze their own failure must trace it to social fear? Can social courage be cultivated? About as much, we imagine, as courage in any other form. Some men are born timid and some fierce, some fearful and some friendly. We cannot alter our nature; but, roughly speaking, the majority of those who have undergone drill and discipline not only do best at the moment of danger, but suffer least.

The man who remains indifferent to religion at this moment when the very novelists are calling him towards it, must be deaf indeed, but the call of the Rev. Dr. T. Calvin McClelland's "The Mind of Christ" should penetrate the consciousness of almost any reader. The author's effort is to show, by carefully grouped and expounded citations, exactly what Our Lord believed of his Father, of Himself, of man, sin, salva

tion, prayer and immortality. The proof of Our Lord's idea of God, how a man may come to know God, and the seriousness of believing in the fatherhood of God are the subjects of the eleven discourses composing the volume. The author's endeavor, as stated in the preface, is so to exhibit Christianity that it will be acceptable to those who desire a belief that will take possession of them, holding them not only by the heart but also by the

mind, and cannot find it in any of the creeds as formally stated. It is not to make converts for record, but truly to present his Master that he has written. T. Y. Crowell & Co.

Those who learned to love Poe in the days before it became a branch of trade to be familiar with him, do not greatly care to know all the details exhumed or manufactured since that time, and Mr. Eugene L. Didier's "The Poe Cult," contains much which will be new to them. Happily, Mr. Didier, himself nurtured on the prose and poetry of Poe, assimilated his work long before he began to disturb himself about the author's life. When he attacked the question in earnest, his natural anger as he uncovered the various strata of slander, false witness and stupidity, transformed his warm but tranquil admiration into advocacy and Poe has had no better friend among his biographers. It would be too much to say that he is always judicious. Nevertheless Mr. Didier's book is valuable because it names and ranges those who have written on Poe during the last thirty-five years, thus giving a key to the shifting of the popular estimate of him. The papers have been published as occasion arose and occasional slight repetitions are visible, but any attempt to shape the papers into a single study would probably have caused the loss of much that is interesting, and not elsewhere accessible. The book is the proper pendant to every set of Poe, and to all the worthy biographies. The touching dedication to the memory of the author's only son gives the book a touch of tender grace sure to linger in the memory and to attract sympathy. Broadway Publishing Company.

Mr. James R. Thursfield occasionally reminds the readers of his "Nelson and

other Naval Studies" that he is a civilian, but that accident is by no means inconsistent with a species of criticism acting both as a restraint upon ill judged enthusiasm in martial matters and as an incentive to vigilant seizure upon every detail of character or of conduct. His volume is composed of four Nelson and Trafalgar essays, one putting a new face upon the battle; one upon Duncan, the man of one great action; and one upon Paul Jones, who is treated with rare generosity. The rest of the book is devoted to contemporary matters, "The Dogger Bank and its Lessons," "The Strategy of Position," "The Attack and Defence of Commerce," "The Higher Policy of Defence," and a preface discussing the question of possible invasion and proper defence. The essay on Jones appears in this book for the first time, and brings forward a biography written by the younger Disraeli and published by Murray in 1825. Jones, as a doer of the apparently impossible, an adventurer mingling with the great on equal terms, a masterly manager of men, his tools, naturally attracted the future Prime Minister. Mr. Thursfield grants him the wisdom to anticipate Clerk of Eldin, and Captain Mahan in his theories, and the ability to baffle the diplomacy of England, and protests that he needs no more defence for serving the colonies than was necessary for Franklin and Washington. The airship is not considered at all, having come into prominence since the book went to the printer. Even without the paper on Jones, the book could not be an object of indifference to an American convinced of the importance of a navy to his own country. It is written with spirit yet with grave steadiness and is a reassuring volume to those vexed by the outcry of the English, "Dishonor without peace." E. P. Dutton & Co.

"International and National Christian Literature"-what theme could be more suitable to such an occasion as this? For we are summoned by the circumstances of this gathering to reflect upon our common possession, its extent, and how it has come into being. It is self-evident that, speaking in this festal hour, and speaking as a theologian, I shall be obliged to restrict my enquiry to our common Christian possession. We recognize that this does not consist in our institutions, organizations, laws and customs, and you have just heard that the constitution of our Churches presents so many peculiar features that a foreigner can only after a long time familiarize himself with it. On the other hand, it may with equal emphasis be asserted that a long time is needed on our part so to understand the English Established Church and the various denominations as directly to appreciate the common spirit.

We have in common not only institutions, but also an acquired spiritual wealth. The first element of this wealth is, of course, represented by the Bible and our common work upon the Bible. I need not discuss this at length, and therefore will only say that

This speech, delivered (without notes) at the reception of representatives of British Churches in the Aula of the Berlin University on Tuesday morning, June 15th, 1909, has been translated by the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, M.A., from a stenographed German report, which however Dr. Harnack has not been able to revise. That the report is substantially accurate, the Editor of the "Contemporary Review" and the Translator, both of whom were in the audience, are able to assure the reader.

1 In a preceding address by Prof. Dr. Kahl, Rector of the University.

Geistig is throughout rendered "spiritual," but the English word must be understood in the broad sense of the German. The compound "spiritual-intellectual" would approximately express the meaning.

those men who, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, created the Old Testament, and afterwards the New, have not only opened for all ages the deep springs of edification, but they have also laid a fundamentum aere perennius for our spiritual fellowship; and that so long as there are readers and students of the Bible they will be so strongly and intimately bound to one another that no earthly power may rend them asunder. That is the significance of the international literature as it is represented in the Bible.

Nevertheless, accepting all that has to be said concerning the Bible-its great, glorious and, indeed, inexpressible qualities-it is a book of the past. interpreted in various ways, and to some extent removed from us by the influence of a complex tradition. A fellowship in spiritual life must always rest on the indispensable basis of a present common literature. Moreover, not only must the living literature, the literature of the present, be common, but there must also persist from every epoch of a common historical experience one or more monuments, which are yours as well as ours, and which you reverence in common with us, if a firm spiritual unity, having its basis in literature, is really to endure between our peoples.

What, then, are the facts? What does Christendom possess, what is your possession and ours, in the form of international Christian literature? And if we have such a possession, how have we attained it, and how may we foster and develop it?

Of course, every nation has a right to seek for edification in its own way, and to create its theological literature