Book Reviaus.
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��human breast, and is the same that Paul is conscious of in the combat he de- scribes between himself and sin that was in him. The Avestan Morals are brought out by Mr. Johnson in their original and exceeding purity.
But the larger sweep of Mr. John- son's purpose carries him into an ex- haustive and moat interesting consider- ation of Persian influence upon the Hebrew faith and thought — through the conquests of Cyrus and Alexander — and through Maurchaeism and Gnosti- cism — down to Christendom.
Mahometanism is. in our author's mind, the culmination of the religion of personal will, and he devotes many glowing and instinctive pages to bring- ing out the meaning and heart of the religion of Islam, especially in its later and in its more spiritual developments. The final object of the volume is to show the relation of the rehgion of per- onal wiU to universal religion.
Of course our author has not been foohsh and unfair enough to portray the perversions and lapses of this particular type of Oriental faith and ethics ; but his aim has been to set forth its essen- tial principles and to show how they spring from the universal root.
The study of comparative religions, and hence of the universal religion, is one of the characteristics and glories of
��our time. Once every people despised, as a religious duty, every nation and every religion but its own, and sword and fagot were employed, as under divine command, to exterminate all strange manifestations of religious sen- timent. Now the advance guard ol civilization is giving itself to devout and thankful study of all the rehgions under the sure impression that they will prove to be one in origin and essence : and so a sweeter human sympathy and a more complete unity are beginning to be reahzed among men.
No man has in most respects been better fitted for this study than was the lamented authoi di these books. Mr. Johnson was almost or quite " a religious genius," with an enthusiasm of faith in the invisible and the ideal, which few men have ever shown ; and his devout- ness was equalled by his catholicity. His religious lyrics enrich our Christian paslmody, while his published dis- courses, mingling philosophical light with fervor of a transcendent faith in God and man, rank among the grandest utterances from the American pulpit and platform. No American can afibrd to miss the power and influence of such a mind ; and no student of religion should fail to have in his possession Johnson's Persia. S. C. Beane.
��«THE OVERSHADOWING POWER OF GOD. A synopsis of a new philosophy con- cerning the nature of the soul of man, its union vsith the animal soul, and its gradual creation through successive acts of overshad- owing and the insertion of shoots, to its per- fection in Jesus the Christ; with illustrations of the inner meaning of the Bible, from the He- brew roots; offering to the afflicted soul the way of freedom from inharmony and disease. By Horace Bowen, M. D.; transcribed in verse by Sheridan Wait, with chart and illus- trations by M. W. Fairchild. Vineland, N. J. New Life Publishing Co., 1883."
This book of Dr. Bowen's opens
��into a field of thought that has hereto- fore mostly escaped the survey of the- ologians and philophers : classes that are supposed to be in pursuit of essen- tial truth concerning both God and man. Its leading aim seems to be to present a reliable clew to those truths by an unusual interpretation of the Scriptures as a revelation of creative order. The author stands with a com- paratively small class of ardent explorers
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