The New Testament in the Twentieth Century: A Survey of Recent Christological and Historical Criticism of the New Testament. Maurice Jones, B.D. Macmillan & Co. Pp. xxiv, 467.

This small volume is a timely and needed study in distinctively Christian ethics. The whole world of social relations is conceived as it would be, reconstructed on the moral principles of Jesus. The regeneration begins personally but embodies itself in all the aspects of the collective life. "The State, the family, thrift, competition, the penal system, warfare," are items showing the detail into which the exposition is carried. The result and the process portrayed can hardly be looked upon as wholly valid or probable, but they serve to bring out impressively the "regulative principle"—"kindness with trustfulness as the foundation of all goodness"—which Christ introduced, its final authority, and radical and beneficent working. The spirit of the book is one of devout loyalty and faith towards "Our Lord," of informed social feeling, and optimistic expectation for humanity. The style of the writer is over-homiletic for persuasion or the sustained enjoyment of the reader. It suggests a background of long accumulation of sermonic material and reflections, which, however in their abundance and variety may richly furnish forth other sermon-writers in turn, and supply many shrewd observations; as this, for instance, on one of the apologies for militarism—"that it is only defensive, not for any offensive purpose": "I t is always easy to discover rights that are imperilled or weakness needing to be defended. In Aesop's fable, the wolf was probably perfectly sincere, because he was so much occupied with desire to tear the lamb that he could easily persuade himself that his water was being sullied."