dent is left to observe and describe it and trace its connection with the principle it illustrates. In this work precision and conciseness of statement are required, and the reports are subjected to critical examination by the teacher. With each copy of the book there goes a separate slip stating how much apparatus and chemicals are needed for every ten students taking this course of practice.
While in its main features the manual is introductory to a more extended course, it may still be used with profit by students who have no time or opportunity for subsequent study.
Lessons in Elementary Chemistry: Inorganic and Organic. By Henry E. Roscoe, B. A., F. R. S., Professor of Chemistry in Owens College, Manchester. New edition. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1878. Price, $1.50.
This text-book, which was first published in 1869, conforms to the metric system of weights and measures, and the centigrade thermometric scale. The most important facts and principles of modern chemistry are so presented as to give the pupil exactitude of knowledge, without which science in schools is worthless. The work was revised in 1875, and important changes were made in the organic portion, while the whole book was brought up to the level of the science of the day. The present edition, among other alterations and additions, adopts, for the combining weights of the elements, numbers derived from Sta's accurate experiments, oxygen being taken at 15·96 instead of 16. In ordinary calculations, however, the older numbers, for the sake of simplicity, are still employed.
Christ's Words as related to Science, Law, Government, History, Philosophy, Religion, and Universal Human Experience. By Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, Illinois, author of "Three Great Races of Men," "Essays on Meteorology," "Industrial Education," etc. Springfield, Illinois: H. W. Rokker. Pp. 425. Price, $2.50.
This is an able and vigorous work by an earnest believer in the religion of Christ, the object of which is to cleave through the body of dogmatic theology that has been accumulating for centuries, and get at those simple teachings that are embodied in the words of the founder of the Christian faith. "What is it that Christ really taught, and that constitutes the essence of his religion?" is the problem that Prof. Turner puts before him and undertakes to solve. The task he has ventured upon opens a very broad field of inquiry, embracing various departments of knowledge. Prof. Turner does not claim to be an expert in all these branches of learning, but only to have considered them with reference to one controlling idea—how far they have been employed to obscure the elementary inculcations of the Master. The author is both a firm believer and a vehement doubter. He says he "does not believe that all or most of the current ideas of either religion or science, of philosophy, law, or history, are true, or in accord with the teachings of Christ. It will be forever impossible to harmonize such a medley of false assumptions with each other or with the facts of being, either natural or spiritual." It being thus assumed as out of the question to bring the chaotic schemes of belief into reconciliation, the sincere Christian has nothing left but to find out for himself that which is essential in his religion, and Prof. Turner avows no other object than to aid him in this work.
The author remarks: "What Christ actually said may be one thing; what the world has been catechised or thumb-screwed into the belief that he said may be quite another." How natural it is for the meanings of Scripture to have been distorted in the long ages of ignorance and prejudice, during which they have been a matter of conflict, is well illustrated by Prof. Turner in an example which everybody can understand. He says: "If in half a century our national Constitution, written in our native tongue, consecrated to the broadest liberty, could be perverted so that union, fraternity, and justice, were synonymous with the right of domination of white over colored men; and if our Legislatures, our courts, our army and navy, our literature, schools, and churches, our very psalms and prayers, could be marshaled and used for the defense of one of the most infamous forms of slavery the world has ever seen, what may not have been done during the ages of barbaric ignorance, with the records
