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538 Revieivs of Books American tendencies. The preface makes a good impression: "This is the crucial question for every student of the Apostolic Age : ' What think you of Acts — is it genuine history or has idealism largely come be- tween its author and the reality?' " Ramsay's glorification of Luke as ' ' among the historians of the first rank ' ' is then contrasted with Mc- Giffert's opinion that the author of Acts is inaccurate because of prepos- sessions of his own time. Bartlet promises to "let his decision between the two views work itself out gradually through discussion of each point on its own merits." The general reader will perhaps make from this the mistaken inference that the characteristic result of severe historical criti- cism is represented by McGiffert. Dr. Cone's careful work seems to be unknown and Weizsacker's classic treatise, which in its comparison of Acts and the Pauline epistles is a masterly instance of historical method, is all but ignored. Ramsay, Hort and Sanday have had the chief influ- ence on the work. In the discussion of each point as it emerges we have a modified exhibition of Ramsay's treatment of Acts, the result of which is the obscuration of the real Paul and a failure to grasp the issues. A passive reader will hardly discover what the problems of this period are. Whoever tamely accepts with Bartlet the account in Acts xvi : 3, which narrates Paul's circumcision of the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father in order to please the Jews of the neighborhood, should rouse him- self by reading the fifth chapter of Galatians, which, according to Bartlet, had only just been written : " Behold I Paul say unto you that if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect to you, whosoever of you are justified by the law ; ye are fallen from grace." To reconcile the story in Acts with this is a psychological impossibility and the details of Mr. Bartlet's discussions are vitiated by his inability to grasp such downright antagonisms. Another defect of the book is that which is so pronounced a charac- teristic of Ramsay, an alles wissen wollen, which, united with an exag- gerated valuation of the sources, ends in a habit of extracting large and ingenious references from slight and innocent remarks. We have several allusions to Luke's " subtle, allusive manner." This subtle indirectness, for example, at the close of xcts leaves us "the suggestion that the cen- tre of the heathen world is destined to supersede the capital of Judaea as the centre of the Kingdom of God. ' ' By the same ingenuity of inference Paul's residence in Rome, enabling him to gaze forth from the centre of the world of men, is made to explain the more advanced cosmological conception of Christ in Colossians and Ephesians. The determination to know everything has an extreme illustration with the brief words of Acts, xiii : 3. — " They had also John as assistant." This is expanded as fol- lows : " Besides looking after the material side of their arrangements, he probably helped to baptize converts and to teach them as a ' catechist ' cer- tain simple facts about Jesus the Christ and some of his notable sayings." Obviously Mr. Bartlet's work might have been briefer. He is somewhat botheredthat Luke should repeat without modification the large predic-