tan of Turkey, for his dominions in Europe, Asia, and Africa contain only twenty-one millions of Mohammedans, while British India embraces about fifty millions.* Russia has at present five and a half millions † Mohammedans, and even after it shall have annexed Persia and the Khanates of Central Asia, which is only a question of time, the number of its Mohammedan subjects will remain far behind the millions of Moslems in India. Mohammedanism at present presents a remarkable phenomenon. On the one hand, it spreads in parts of Asia and Africa with a rapidity which excels the progress of Christian missions; on the other hand, all Mohammedan States of the world are in danger of utter decay in consequence of their inability to govern themselves. The Sultanate is at present approaching extinction, as the Khalifate in former times. The hierarchical state system of Arabia is dead; the half-hierarchical, half-military organization of Turkey is in the course of dissolution; a third form of government for Mohammedan States is hardly possible, because the primitive form of tribe associations which is found among the Bedouins is hardly fitted for larger States. On the other hand, the power of expansion exhibited by modern Mohammedanism is marvelous. It grows with the rapidity of a current. Entire nations which but yesterday were pagans or worshipers of fetiches are to-day believers in the Koran. Sierra Leone, on the northern coast of Guinea, has a Mohammedan high school with a thousand pupils. In China the Moslems have already become so numerous that they could recently risk an insurrection. In Tongkin they already number fifty thousand. Among the Malays of the islands of the Indian Archipelago they have made even in our days crowds of proselytes. From Sumatra the Islam has spread to Java, and since the establishment of the Dutch administration the whole population, amounting to about eighteen millions, has become Mohammedan. The larger portion of Sumatra, and at least one half of Borneo and Celebes, have been gained for Islam. Throughout the islands which are under Dutch rule Mohammedanism is making rapid progress, much more rapid than the Christian missions. It is believed that this remarkable advance is chiefly caused by the more frequent pilgrimages to Mecca, which have been greatly facilitated by the introduction of the steamboats. The numerous pilgrims, or hadjis, generally return from Mecca as fanatical missionaries of their faith. In British India conversions to Mohammedanism continue to be frequent in the North-western Provinces, and the attitude of the Indian Mohammedans with regard to British rule will therefore be for the English an element either of great strength or of great danger. In case of a war between Russia and England, the Mohammedan population of British India would undoubtedly side with England, for Russia is regarded throughout the East as the great hereditary foe of

* According to the last census, the British dominions in India contained 40,750,000 Mohammedans, and about 7,000,000 were living under tributary princes.

+ Here Döllinger's estimate is too low. According to the latest official statements the Russian Empire has in Europe 2,400,000 Mohammedans, and in Asia, 5,000,000; total, 7,400,000.

Islam. On the other hand, the Koran leaves to the faithful Mohammedan in non-Mohammedan countries only the alternative to emigrate or to establish by rebellion a Mohammedan government. The most fanatical among the Mohammedan sects, the Wahabees, are openly calling for the execution of this doctrine. An assembly of Mohammedan doctors of Lucknow and Delhi, which some years ago was held at Rampoor, declared for the same view. The Mohammedan Society of Calcutta felt greatly embarrassed by this declaration, and, in opposition to them, declared through her doctors of law that India was still a land of the faithful, and a rebellion therefore unlawful. Moreover, an opinion has been obtained from the doctors at Mecca which likewise declares India, in spite of English rule, to be a land of the faithful, but significantly intimates that all Mohammedans must do what is in their power to re-establish in India the validity of orthodox laws and regulations, and that all that is introduced by the foreign Government contrary to Mohammedan law is invalid. British statesmen, therefore, cannot but look upon the growing power of Mohammedanism as a serious danger. Recently a Mohammedan scholar, Saiyid Ahmad Khan, chief justice at Khazipoor, on the Ganges, has made a translation of the Old and New Testament, since both, he says, are still binding for the faith and life of MohammedThe Mohammedans do, however, not show the same aversion to Protestants as to the Roman and Greek Churches, the members of which they abhor as idolaters on account of their veneration of images. The celebrated traveler, Vambéry, reports that a Mollah (Mohammedan priest) told him, "From the Greeks and Armenians we are separated by a broad and deep ocean; from the English only by a ditch."

ans.

Döllinger's article, from which the above statements have been condensed, confirms the general opinion of geographers, that the real number of Mohammedans considerably exceeds the former estimate. We estimate the present number of Mohammedans in the several countries of the world about as follows:

ART. IX.-FOREIGN LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

AN Armenian scholar of the congregation of Mekhitarists at Venice has published fragments of an old Armenian translation of some of the earliest works of Christian literature. The editor entitles his work S. Aristidis, Philosophi Atheniensis, Sermones Duo, (Venice, 1878.) Both fragments are published in Armenian and in a Latin translation. The one is headed, "Aristides, the Athenian Philosopher, to the Imperator Cæsar Hadrianus," and would fill about two and one half closely printed octavo pages. The other fragment is a treatise, "De latronis clamore et Crucifixi responsione, and is ascribed to the Athenian philosopher Aristæus, whom the editor, without assigning any reason for his opinion, identifies with Aristides. The editor believes that this Armenian translation dates from the fifth century, the golden era of the Armenian literature. If these fragments are authentic, they are an addition of the highest value to the extant writings of the earliest Christian Church. Aristides, a Christian philosopher of Athens, flourished about 123 A.D. He presented to the Emperor Hadrian, at the same time with Quadratus, an "Apology for the Christian Faith," which existed in the time of Eusebius and Jerome, and even as late as that of Usuardus and Addo of Vienne, if the account given of the passion of St. Dionysius the Areopagite may be relied upon. Since then they have been regarded as lost. The apologies by Quadratus and Aristides preceded in time that by Justin, and they were, in fact, the first among the Greek apologies of the second century. The alleged discovery of a considerable fragment of one of these apologies at the present time has for theologians a special interest, as the researches on the theological belief of the apologists, especially of Justin, have been resumed with new vigor. (See our account of the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftlichen Theologie in the present number of the Methodist Quarterly Review.)

Among the works on the history of the Apostolic Creed and other early creeds of Christendom, that published in three volumes by Prof. Caspari, of the University of Christiana, Norway, (Quellen fur Geschichte des Taufsymbols und der Glaubensregel, 1866-1875,) is regarded as one of high value. A continuation of this work by the same distinguished theologian has recently been published under the title Alte und Neue Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, (1879,) and is warmly welcomed by the theological world. Professor Caspari is esteemed as one of the most learned living theologians of the Lutheran Church. His present work is published at the expense of the Norwegian Society of Science.

Dr. R. Reuss, of Strassburg, has published a biography of a prominent Reformer of Alsace, Pierre Brully, (Pierre Brully, ancien dominicain de Metz, etc., 1879,) which will do much toward restoring the reputation of a Protestant martyr who was personally known and highly esteemed by the first historians of the Reformation, Sleidanus and Crespin, but who has

since fallen into undue oblivion. Hagenbach, in his extensive work on the Reformation, does not even mention his name. Neither the German Theological Cyclopædia by Herzog, nor, what is still more surprising. the new French Theological Cyclopædia by Lichtenberger, have an article on him. He is, however, fully noticed (s. v. Brulius) in the Theological Cyclopædia by M'Clintock and Strong, (vol. i, 1867,) the biographical department of which is incomparably superior in point of completeness to any European work. Recent researches on the history of the French Reformation have brought to light much new material relating to Brully, who at the beginning of the Reformation was a greatly esteemed monk, and, as appears from recent discoveries, a lector in the Dominican convent of Metz. The work enriches, therefore, our knowledge of the history of the Reformation, and, as we have shown, supplements all our theological cyclopædias.

Professor Herzog, the learned editor of the German Theological Cyclopædia, began in 1876 the publication of a Compendium of Church History, which is to be completed in three volumes, and the second volume of which has recently appeared. The name of the editor is the surest guarantee that all the results of the researches in the department of theological science have been made use of and been embodied in this work, which, like few other works, will be found a reliable book of reference for all information relating to Church history. The first volume extends to the eighth century, the second to Luther, and the third to the present time.

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

Beyond the Grave. Being Three Lectures before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and other Addenda. By RANDOLPH S. FOSTER, D.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 12mo., pp. 269. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden. 1879.

When Dr. Foster said that we do not know that our life survives the grave, that is, as the connection shows, with "absolute knowledge," excluding debate or doubt, the shallow newspaper paragraphists took it, isolated the phrase from its connections, and bruited it about that Bishop Foster said that "we do not know that we are immortal." And this unwisdom, we are ashamed to say, has been repeated in some of our own religious papers. Now, why is not the same fuss made because Professor Bowne tells us, both in his last able article in our Quarterly, and his late volume, that we cannot know, with absolute knowledge, that a personal God exists? His fundamental maxim is, that our proof of God is not the demonstration of a theorem, but the solution of a prob

lem; to which problem other solutions are "possible." And this same criticism involves our Quarterly, for we took nearly the same grounds two or three years ago in our notice of an able atheistic article in the Westminster Review. The fact is, our word know and the psychological states it designates involve an immense number of gradations of certitude. Reduced to its ultimate, I only know my own present conscious thought. I know that I think. Every thing else is inference of more or less certitude. And it is to very various degrees of this certitude that, with more or less absoluteness, we apply the word know. For, in fact, we apply the word know whenever the evidence is so far clear that we feel content to repose the mind on the assumption of its certainty, and base our conduct in life upon it. Absolutely we do not know the sun will rise to-morrow; and yet practically we assume to know it, rest our whole system of life upon it, and with verbal truth always say we know it. Do we know our own immortality with the same absoluteness as we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Do we know with an equal certitude that the Bible is true? Do we know absolutely that our faculties do not deceive us? Yet we do again say we know a thing merely because we were told so by our neighbor. We know a thing because Bancroft's history narrates it. John Stuart Mill says we know that women are capable of military exploits because the examples of Deborah and Joan d'Arc prove it. And so a physican may know a disease by its symptoms, and a geologist knows the whole structure of an animal by a single bone. All natural science is based upon such a know. And all geometry is based upon an assumption-the assumption that our faculties do not deceive us. And so, passing through our Christian experience, and basing ourselves on the great probability of the divine truth of the Scriptures, we do justly say with calm reliance, "We know that we have passed from death unto life;" "We know God;" "We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him.” All of which is no contradiction to Bishop Foster's dictum, speaking from the stand-point by him occupied, that we do not know our own immortality with an absolute knowledge, so but that discussion, reply to objections, clearing of difficulties, and massing of arguments, are necessary. Why need we discuss and try to prove what every body absontely knows? The very fact that people listened to his proofs, and read his book, is proof that they do not pretend to know it beyond all debate. And the Bishop very sensibly assigns the fact that we do not absolutely know, as the reason why he is about to furnish the proofs of its reliable certainty. What fol