if all the religious writings in the world had been obliterated save the Gospel of Matthew he would have been the same theologian that he was. The religious leaders of the world have been non-contented men, unsatisfied with theology or religious life as they found it, and have led the way to different and, as they believed, to better things. Dr. Hopkins was a man who feared God and hated iniquity, but he was a man who saw the good in everything that constituted his earthly or spiritual environment. Instead of organizing departures to new religious realms, he planted new germs of religious thought; and the tendency of his nature was to teach men that they already possess, or can possess, all of the spiritual hopes and treasures of the universe, if they will but accept what the great Beneficence has given. Love and duty were the two great elements of his theology as of his life and character; and his theological instruction may be analyzed by saying that it was to teach the individual man to open his heart to the impulses of the one, and to direct his eyes to the pathway of the other.

The extraordinary contentedness of Dr. Hopkins's nature, and his absolute submission, as it may be termed, to love and duty, may be seen in the manner and methods by which he solved the problem of his own life. Given a young physician, appointed professor of moral philosophy and rhetoric at the age of twenty-eight, elected president of a poor and poorly managed college in a remote mountain hamlet at the age of thirtyfour, the college for thirty years never far from the verge of insolvency, — with such gigantic improbabilities of success, what would the ordinary solution be? Undoubtedly, the aspiring young professor would take the first "better place" that came in his way, and leave the insolvent college to take care of itself. Familiar as we are with the life of Dr. Hopkins, we confess to astonishment at the number of "better places" that beck

oned him away. In 1844 it was Plymouth Church, Brooklyn; in 1847 it was Andover; in 1850 it was the chancellorship of the University of New York; again, in 1850, it was the Union Theological Seminary; in 1851 the Mercer Street Church in New York; in 1852 the presidency of the University of Michigan; in 1853 a church in Philadelphia; in 1858 the Chicago Theological Seminary. But Williams College needed him, and he no more thought of abandoning it than of abandoning his children. A good workman does not find fault with his tools. In the struggles of the struggling college he rose to eminence, and had at his feet some of the greatest and best of our time and country.

Dr. Hopkins was one of those men whose lives it is not easy to portray. We are often confounded, in the records of human nature, by finding much where we expected little, and by finding nothing where we expected much. General Sheridan, subjectively the most reserved and reticent of our generals, for a long time refused to write his own life, and indeed began by having somebody write it in the third person; yet we do not recall another autobiography of a great soldier which so unconsciously takes the reader into the inmost recesses of the writer's confidence, into his hopes and apprehensions, into his petulance and diffidence. Dr. Hopkins was frank and genial, sympathetic and unreserved; yet his writings portray his thoughts, and not his life. The death of his daughter was the great, the incomparable bereavement and sorrow of his life. She was his firstborn, his companion, critic, counselor, and friend. Knowing the anguish which shook him as he saw her going, day by day, down the sharp decline of her last illness, and the wonderful tenderness and sympathetic nature of the man, it is inconceivable to us that in less than a fortnight he could have written of the affliction to his oldest and most intimate friend, and have said absolutely nothing

of himself. "I have known no one who seemed to me to come nearer to my conception of a saint," is all that escapes from the wounded heart of the father as expressive of his individual loss. It seems as if a writer, to depict his life or himself graphically to other men, must have the element of egotism, consciously or unconsciously, as a large ingredient of his nature. This ingredient was not in Dr. Hopkins. As a matter of judgment, he knew accurately what he could do and what he could not do, and to his mind, to use one of his own phrases, "that was all there was of it." A great address on a great occasion never took away his appetite or disturbed his night's

rest.

When pressed by his children or his friends to write the story of his early life, he could say, in all sincerity, "Pooh! I went to school and to college, as other boys did, and studied medicine, and was called to a professorship here, and that was all there was of it." He moved in a calm, leisurely, deliberate way, yet performed an immense amount of work. During the six months in which he wrote his work on the Evidences of Christianity he preached every Sunday, conducted college prayers at least once a day, heard two recitations a day, and carried on the correspondence and much of the administrative work of the college. His house was the hostelry for college visitors. His study door was never locked. By nature he was a student and thinker, a philosopher; but he was strong physically, mentally, morally, courageous, cool, and ready, and he could have been anything, - a general, a judge, an eminent lawyer, an eminent statesman, — anything but a physician. It is an extraordinary fact that, like one of the greatest of American lawyers, Horace Binney, and one of the greatest of American jurists, Mr. Justice Miller, he chose for his work in life this profession for which he was not fit ted. Two of these three were diverted from the path which they had chosen,

each by other influences than his own judgment; the third rose to distinction in two professions, and to eminence on the bench of the highest judicial tribunal in the world.

The work of President Carter may be defined as being the exact opposite of Boswell's Life of Johnson. It consists of one small octavo volume; it is one of a religious series; it deals chiefly with the thoughts of a great thinker as expressed in his written words. Within these limitations President Carter, we think, has done his work well. The greater portion of Dr. Hopkins's writings relates to three abstruse subjects, -mental philosophy, moral philosophy, and the deepest currents of religious thought. Such writings may not be hard to understand, but they are easy to be misunderstood. To handle them intelligently, and to bring the views of such a writer clearly within the vision of the ordinary reader, of the readers of this series, and to do so in the brief space allowed, is no easy task for a biographer. In a word, the book places before the reader clearly and comprehensively, if not fully, the thoughts of the man, but not the man. The anecdotes are few, the traits indistinct, the personality meagre. The chapter entitled The Friend is made up entirely of letters from Dr. Hopkins, and they are letters to a single individual, and relate almost entirely to a single theme, the literary work of the two men. Of the events in the chapter on the College Rebellion President Carter was an eye-witness; he there drops into the character of annalist, and it is the most living chapter in the book. In the intellectual fields the ethical, metaphysical, and theological - President Carter's lines are clear and strong. His delineation of the views of Dr. Hopkins, of their growth, development, and perhaps modification, is admirable. The student of other days will find not only that the book revives memories, but that it discloses views which he did not then

truly perceive. The reader who acquires his first knowledge or impressions from it will understand why it was that so unobtrusive a man was such a force among thinking men, and will perceive the strength, sincerity, and simplicity which were the chief elements of his nature. President Carte has shown, with commendable disapproval, how the office of president is changing, in our American colleges, from a moral and intellectual to an administrative power; and not the least interesting portions of the book are those which show his own growth in respect and appreciation from the time when he entered the college, a thoughtless boy," to the time when, as the president of Williams College, he delivered the affecting eulogy at the funeral services of his teacher, friend, and predecessor.

66

But the students of Williams, and the great army of the American Board, and

missionaries in foreign lands, and scholars in mental and moral science have been supposing, in a vague way, that there was a Boswell lying in wait through this long life to record the humorous stories, witty rejoinders, shrewd incisive thrusts, the serene wisdom, and the hardly spoken admonitions of a great and good man. The Boswell is not here. If he exists, he has given no sign. Nevertheless, while the most we know, biographically, of Dr. Hopkins is seen through the cold medium of an intellectual atmosphere, the radiance of his lofty and tender character is felt, if not portrayed. Mr. Lowell, with the insight of poetic genius, perceived the fact when he wrote, "His personal character is a possession valued by all his countrymen;" and, in the words of one of the ablest governors of Massachusetts, we may still "claim his long life as a glorious part of our moral public riches."

WHETHER hymns have a place in literature has been frequently questioned, perhaps generally doubted. Dr. Johnson's objection to devotional lyrics, if rather confident than well considered, availed to set the current of opinion. Matthew Arnold, who avoided sacred themes no more in his verse than in his prose, professed "very little sympathy" with the provision offered in the hymn books. The critics, and literary folk generally, have maintained this unfriendly estimate, with an exception in favor of Latin hymns, or some of them. tance lends enchantment, and perhaps that which is enshrined in a dead language, and yet has managed to keep itself in view for several centuries, is entitled to vastly more honor than any corresponding efforts in the vernacular; yet

Dis

if the Dies Ira and the Stabat Mater be admitted within the gardens of the Muse, why should the modest claims of Rock of Ages or Lead, Kindly Light be denied consideration?

The question is cumbered by the facts that hymns have a double character, and that many which make but the scantiest pretense to poetic grace have been valued and used for their religious quality. But that the entrance of this element necessarily involves the exclusion of the other is surely a large assumption. Recent researches have disclosed in the hymns of the Greek Church (though nobody but Dr. Neale has succeeded in translating them) beauties not inferior to those found in the canticles of Bernard and Adam of St. Victor. Some of the German songs of faith, if not yet classical, are in a way

to become so, dating back to the early years of the Reformation; and one would think twice before assigning the importance of Ein Feste Burg solely to its historical associations. England, it is true, began much later, if we count out her somewhat wheezy and rheumatic psalm versions; so that Watts and Wesley may be esteemed parvenus beside Luther and Notker and John of Damascus. But its age is not the only point to be considered in a hymn, and within the last century or so Great Britain has made up for lost time, and come in a good second to long-industrious Germany. The other northern lands of Europe have also a record of their own, and France and Italy have done something.

All these various portions of the hymnic field are duly considered by Mr. Julian, whose work,' though he keeps a careful eye upon the lyrics "contained in the hymn books of English-speaking countries and now in common use,” aims to be comprehensive, if not exhaustive. He and his co-workers, especially his indefatigable assistant editor, Mr. Mearns, were not the men to disregard the preReformation era of hymnody, or to slight what has been done in former ages and foreign lands. Previous treatises have been tolerably sufficient guides for those whose interest was confined to a single hymnal, like Dr. Hatfield's Hymns of the Church or Dr. Robinson's Laudes Domini, or to the two dozen British collections covered by Miller's Singers and Songs; but until now no volume or series of volumes ever attempted such a range as this work. It would require a careful specialist to point out any hymns or writers that are not included here, and then the omitted topics would usually be recent, probably American, and of very slight importance. Not only has the intention been to take in everything note

1 A Dictionary of Hymnology. Setting forth the Origin and History of Christian Hymns of all Ages and Nations. Edited by JOHN

worthy, without regard to nationality, creed, or sect, but this design has been carried out thus far with amazing industry and eminent success. No labor has been spared to get light from all quarters, to shed it on remote and dubious dark places, to correct the errors of earlier investigators, and to fill up the wide and numerous gaps they left. The filling up of gaps, indeed, has been a main part of the business; but it has not interfered with the exposure of blunders and the withdrawal of misplaced credits.

For instance," the most complete and popular account of Latin hymn writers and their hymns" in English up to 1889 is here (page 1526) said to be the posthumous work of S. W. Duffield, enriched by the additions of Professor R. E. Thompson. Now, Mr. Duffield laid great stress on certain discoveries of his own, especially the transference of Veni Sancte Spiritus from Robert II. of France to Hermannus Contractus of Reichenau. On page 1213 we are told that he "altogether fails to produce anything that can be called proof in support of his assertions and conjectures," which indeed was apparent at the time, -and on page 1531 that "the manuscripts at St. Gall and at the British Museum were not examined by Duffield, and are much older and more important than any of those with which he was acquainted." On page 1526 two lines are added as to the qualities which led the American student so far astray. The hymn (page 1214) "is certainly neither by Robert II. nor by Hermannus Contractus. The most probable author is Innocent III."

This is merely a sample. One may be vexed at having, through the peculiar construction of the book, to look up a single subject in two or three different places, but a diligent study of the indices will point the way to these; and if the

JULIAN, M. A., Vicar of Wincobank, Sheffield. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

matter be important (especially if it be a Latin or German text), the reader, after hunting far enough, will usually get all he wants about it, and may be sure that research has said its last word on that topic.

Mr. Julian has earned the respect of scholars by the abundant attention here bestowed on the more classical portion of his field. Not only is every important Latin hymn annotated by itself, but there are long and learned articles on Latin Hymnody (fifteen pages), Translations from the Latin, Breviaries (ten pages), Hymnaries, Sequences (twelve pages), the Te Deum (fifteen pages), and other special subjects. These are from several pens, and include lists which must be supposed to be exhaustive. The Greek material is handled with equal fullness (considering its lesser extent as known in the West), chiefly by the Rev. H. L. Bennett. The huge German field has been looked after by Mr. Mearns, to whose marvelous knowledge few native Germans could add anything, and whose minute and careful handling of his diligently accumulated and arranged stores leaves nothing to be desired. He is a Scotchman, and now a curate in Bucks. The only other hands that have been allowed to touch his chosen province are those of Dr. Schaff, in a brief survey of the whole Germanic field, and the Rev. J. T. Mueller, of Herrnhut, who supplies authoritative papers on the Bohemian Brethren and the Moravians.

For cosmopolite scholars all this is admirable. The plain Englishman or American, who takes his hymns in the vernacular, loves them for their uses and associations, and has hitherto known but a few thousand of them, may be moved to complain that here is too heavy a preponderance of foreign or ancient matter. Two or three hundred Latin and German lyrics, he will be apt to say, and some dozen from the Greek, have been rendered into our books and won a place in our hearts; for the rest of them,

"What's Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?' From his point of view, it looks as if the native English field had not received proportionate attention. He is at a loss where to look for old friends, among this multitude of strangers; and when he finds them, they or some of them look dwarfed, neglected, and out of countenance, as if they had been thrust aside in the crowd, and robbed of part of their due honors.

We fear this supposed charge has some foundation in the facts. Not as to the longer articles; those on Early English Hymnody and that of the Church of England are proportionate to the Latin and German ones, and those which deal with the Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Unitarians, etc., appear sufficient. Scottish writers (apart from the paraphrasers) receive more than twelve pages from the loving and allgathering hands of Mr. Mearns, and there is a unique paper, the longest in the book, on the hymnic history of foreign missions, which are almost solely those conducted by Britons. Enough space is given to Dr. Watts, the Wesleys, Dr. Neale, and others of eminent fame, but minor writers of at least former repute and usefulness, not yet forgotten by their beneficiaries, are often coldly and narrowly handled, so that no account seems taken of their personality; to get the facts about them, one must, in some cases, go back to Miller and other books of far less scope and accuracy tnan this. One is tempted to ask, Would they have been treated thus if they had written in German or in Latin?

To this and other obvious criticisms there is an obvious if partial answer. The book is what it purports to be: a dictionary, not a collection of anecdotes; a history of hymns, and only incidentally of their authors, therefore much more bibliographic than biographic; caring greatly for texts, dates, and titles, slightly for weddings and funerals; a