lical researches, only about thirty years ago. The New York professor, learned and painstaking, with a salutary prejudice against monkish traditions, and with a reverent confidence in the veracity of the Scriptures, had the inestimable advantage of being associated with a fellow traveler who was his peer in learning, and to whom the Arabic was as familiar as his own vernacularthe illustrious missionary and translator, Eli Smith. That advantage made the publication of Robinson's Biblical Researches a memorable date in the progress of sacred geography. Dean Stanley's admirable work on Sinai and Palestine is one product of the new era introduced by Smith and Robinson. Dr. Wm. M. Thompson's work, "The Land and the Book," is what no traveller of the former era, ignorant of the Arabic language and of the people that speak it, passing through the country from convent to convent, and trusting in the monks for information, could possibly have produced. Such works have prepared the way for the exhaustive investigations which have been undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Committee, and which are already yielding rich results. The British Government, by its Ordnance Surveys, has contributed with imperial munificence to the progress of knowledge in this direction, and our own Government, twenty-four years ago, did something by its Dead Sea Expedition.

Professor Palmer's book is of the highest value. The "Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic" in the University of Cambridge bears no resemblance to Goldsmith's celebrated professor of Greek in the Vicar of Wakefield, for he knows the language of which he is professor, and can not only read it, but freely speak it. Many travelers have taken the route through the Desert between Egypt and Palestine, but no man heretofore has explored that singular region so extensively or so thoroughly, or has had such helps and advantages. His two journeys, covering together a period of eleven months, and performed entirely on foot, were undertaken, the first in company with an Ordnance Survey expedition, and the second in the service of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The result is a volume in which scientific exactness of observation is combined with liveliness of narrative, which cannot but be recognized as an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the subject.

and numerous illustrations from the photographs and drawings taken on the spot by the Sinai Survey Expedition, and C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake. New York: Harper and Brothers.

THE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE CEREMONY.*-This work, as the long title might lead us to expect, treats of marriage as a divine ordinance, and especially as a Christian rite, its forms, symbolism, and history, from the stand-point of an American Episcopalian, giving prominence to the Ritual of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country. The author has taken pains to bring together a good deal of the literature of the subject, and his citations may be often more highly esteemed than his own comments. The most valuable part of the volume may be said to be in the "Appendices," where we find the ceremonies of the English, Roman, Greek, and Jewish Churches. While we recur curiously to the more ancient forms, appreciating touches of beauty or pathos here and there, we are only the more willing to have escaped from so cumbrous a yoke, and to accept the simpler rites with which we are now familiar. With all his ecclesiasticism, Dr. Bingham regards the ritual of his own church as an improvement on the English, but evidently, like most of his brethren, allows no open question as to further improvement. For instance, there is not a more perfect English phrase than "husband and wife," and, if it had been used in the declaration in the "Form of Solemnization of Matrimony," nobody would tolerate the proposal to change it into "man and wife;" yet Dr. Bingham goes into an argument for the latter, and even maintains that "husband or houseband is not so much a native, divine word, as one of artificial and human arrangements." The perfection of the Prayer-book, as left by the American changes, seems to be as much a "foregone conclusion," with most of those who expound it, as the satisfaction of the Shakesperian critics with their idol, or that of the most devout readers with their Bibles. On the score of taste we should take exceptions to the style of the author as wanting in ease, sometimes florid, almost lackadaisical, as in the last paragraph but one of the Preface, and the titles and part of the matter in the 9th and 10th chapters, on the "Theory of Marriage," and "Whispers for the Wedding Night." The phrase "pervading to every fibre, etc." (p. 14), is not felicitous. And how is "the beatitude of earthly marriage" to be "forestalled" in the future? (p. 20). And how is it that our little tree of life" is an "emblem" of the orange ("whose emblem it is," p. 157), rather than the orange

*The Christian Marriage Ceremony. Its History, Significance, and Curiosities: Ritual, Practical and Archælogical Notes; and the Text of the English, Roman, Greek, and Jewish Ceremonies. By J. FoOTE BINGHAM, D.D. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. 1871. 12mo, pp. 322.

itself the emblem? It is due to the book and its author to commend the earnest Christian view of the marriage relation which everywhere pervades it, as especially wholesome for these times.

THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE.*--Only a few years ago, happening to attend public worship in the "Brick Church" in the city of New York, we found "Watts and Select Hymns" still in use there, and that too in the modern Murray Hill edifice. It was something of a curiosity. Amidst the multitude of new books springing up on every side, no innovation had yet prevailed against the "customs" of that conservative fold. We noted, too, subsequently that when that flock yielded to a change in this department, the change was made by themselves and for themselves. In 1869 the collection called "The Sacrifice of Praise was prepared "by a Committee of the Session" of that Church, among whom we understood the Pastor and Mr. Gilman to have had the chief part. That work we examined at the time with some care and no less satisfaction. It was, as might be expected and as we should desire, conservative, and yet in some respects an innovation as compared with most of its recent predecessors. It had not so many pieces as most of them, indeed hardly more than half the number, and this reduction seemed desirable, the only difficulty in the process of reduction being always that which was indicated by some good man who owned some things from Watts might well be omitted, but was not willing any should decide on the omissions but himself. The reduction, however, in this and all similar collections, relates quite as much to other and later matter as to what was drawn from Watts. A more radical change, -which of course we approved as having ourselves favored it in earlier instances,-was in doing away the formal division prevailing since Watts' time between hymns on the one hand, and on the other what were classed as "psalms," the latter being not strictly metrical versions but rather metrical paraphrases and imitations; and putting all together as hymns. With this innovation we would have joined another by prefixing all the psalms in our Bible version, with other Scripture selections for chanting. This collection contained also the Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds, and one form of prayer to the Trinity. Another feature was added which interested us, and

*The Sacrifice of Praise; with Tunes. Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, designed for Public Worship and Private Devotion. With Notes on the Origin of Hymns. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. 12mo, pp. 597.

we believe most readers also, in the "Notes on the Origin of Hymns," appended to the whole, which had a right to a place in the book, especially as it was meant for private as well as public use. The volume now before us is a new edition of that collection, with tunes the work of compiling and adapting them being under the direction of "the session of the Brick Church." To the body of hymns are now prefixed nearly sixty pages of selections from the psalms in prose, and other suitable Scriptures, and some of the ancient unmetrical church-hymns, with music for chanting, arranged for the mornings and evenings of the several days of the month and for special occasions. This addition, except in the arrangement, makes the book answer more nearly to the preference we have expressed. If the Scotch instead of the New England element had prevailed in that congregation, there might have been more difficulty in using the Psalter according to the days of the month, as savoring of the Anglican ritual. The whole change thus brought about in their worship is only another instance of the fact that a people who are slower to move than others may at length move farther. We pass no judgment on the musical adaptations in the book, except to say that much care seems to have been expended in this department, with a proper partiality for tunes that have been tested and therefore approved. A similar partiality is seen in the selection of the hymns. From the examination bestowed on the first edition we reckon it among the best of the many volumes of the kind, of the making of which there still seems to be no end. For the best effect in public worship it is none the worse for being one of the smallest, and indeed, in view of all the materials offered to a compiler, rather a selection than a collection. Judgment is shown in most of the omissions, and, what is rarer still, in most if not all the additions. We miss few of our old favorite pieces, and find few if any new ones that have no merit but their novelty. Formerly a compiler found it difficult to curtail the limited material already familiarized to the people by use: now he finds it difficult to reject the abundant material that never can be all so familiarized. Looking over some of the recent large collections, we are surprised to find so many pieces, many of them anonymous as well they may be, which we can conceive of no reason for introducing unless to swell the number and hence the bulk and the expensiveness of the work. Our hymnology has come to be abundant and rich, and a compiler's net must needs gather "of every kind;" but he is the more required to "cast the bad away," because the "vessels," if they are

to be used, cannot hold even all "the good."

In this discrimina

tion as to the new as well as to the old, we are most favorably impressed with the work now before us. Its mechanical execution too is unexceptionable.

JACOX'S BIBLE MUSIC.*-A farrago of texts, quotations, anecdotes, and occasional reflections, belonging together only as having some relation to music, and in a degree classified in seventeen chapters, each headed by the chapter and verse for one or more passages from the Bible just noticed in the opening paragraph. From its affinity with music, dancing is made the chief subject of the sixth chapter, entitled, "a Musical Monarch," from the incident of David "dancing before the Lord." Songs and singers, instruments, eminent composers, and musical effect are treated of, not scientifically, but in a fragmentary, gossiping way, with some vivacity. The thirteenth chapter deals with "Music and Morals," not without sobriety and discrimination. Of course such a book is not meant to be read at a sitting, nor to be studied, but rather to be taken up at leisure, a chapter or a few paragraphs at a time, by which method we claim to have read it all, and this is more than we expected when we set out. Hence we feel warranted in pronouncing it, in its way, an entertaining book. Each chapter may be said to have a partial unity, which is at least hinted by the text cited, and sometimes by the title, as in the last two, which are among the best,-'Songs of Exile,' and 'Songs in the Night.' The texts are scarcely more than mottoes, with introductory allusions, yet not irreverently applied. In the musical phrase of the title, they may be called themes, with at least as much propriety as that term is used in some pieces of music, and, we may add, as the text can be so termed in some fashionable sermons. The author disarms criticism here by acknowledging that "the texts are taken less as stand-points than as starting-points; less as something to make a stand upon, than as something to get away from." But the main feature of the volume is the abundance of its quotations, in prose and verse, incidents and sentiments, strung together profusely and often with the slightest connection. We remember nothing to be compared with it in this way, except Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The author must have a marvelous

* Bible Music: being variations, in many keys, on musical themes from Scripture. By FRANCIS JACOX, B.A. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872. 12mo, pp.