ing discussions. The retiring president, Mr. John Mansfield, recommended a division of the society into sections, embracing various branches of scientific research and history proper, and the admission of the teachers and pupils of the Normal and High Schools to its privileges. These recommendations are approved and made more definite by the new president, Mr. Isaac Kinley, who would also embrace art within the scope of the society's objects. Mr. Kinley urges energetic industry in the pursuit of the special historical work, while those who were not only the spectators but the makers of the history are still among them, and because the records are in a perishing condition. "The old Mission buildings are crumbling into soil, valuable old manuscripts are being gnawed into illegibility by the tooth of time." Besides the two presidents' addresses, the report contains papers on "California in the Eighteenth Century," as it was described by Father Francis Palon, founder of the Mission Dolores, by J. Adam; "The Glacial Period," by Professor Ira Moore; "Trap-door Spiders," by Miss Monks; and "North American Lakes," by Isaac Kinley.
A Study of Primitive Christianity. By Lewis G. Janes. Boston, 1886. Pp. 319. Price, $1.50.
This book is the fruit of many years of study, issuing in a series of lectures for the benefit of "The Association for Moral and Spiritual Education" connected with the Second Unitarian Church in the city of Brooklyn. The point of view is Unitarian as regards theological conceptions of the personality and mission of the Nazarene; but the author is a sincere lover of the character of Jesus, and disposed to do full justice to the influence and value of his teachings. Dr. Janes is evidently a thorough scholar, and one can not fail to be impressed with the care, the honesty, the faithfulness, the impartiality, the love of truth, the conservatism exhibited throughout this admirable volume. Quite irrespective of the author's conclusions upon special disputed points, no one can gainsay that his work is, in the language of the pastor of his church, who writes a preface, "a wonderfully clear and strong expression" of the facts which his study has determined; and that to this study he has brought "a singularly just and patient mind." We commend the book, not only to Unitarians, but to all who are willing to trace, or to see traced in a masterly manner the operation of natural causes, of race, politics, and social conditions generally, upon the rise and progress of Christianity.
It is not within our province to enter upon a critical discussion of either the theological or historical questions which this work involves; but it is very interesting to note the method which Dr. Janes pursues, and observe his theory of the development of the organized Christian system. He follows its course up to the point when it became the Roman state religion, and his conclusions are, that it "arose by a natural process of evolution out of pre-existing systems to complete the overthrow of the prevailing though effete polytheistic cultus, and to supplement the narrowness and partialism of the decaying ethnic religions by the principles of universalism and human brotherhood." The influences determining its various phases from the simple altruistic teaching of Jesus to the formidable political power which it came to wield in its union with the state are thoroughly studied and set forth effectively in the method of truly scientific exposition.
The author distinguishes sharply between the Jesus of the first three gospels, the "Triple Tradition," and the Jesus of the fourth. The "Triple Tradition," in his judgment, represents the man as he really was in life, "a simple, noble, manly personage, full of intense conviction and prophetic enthusiasm, who moves naturally and freely in his Hebrew environment." The fourth Gospel, however, presents the Great Exemplar with the incumbrances of the many myths of Aryan and Egyptian thought; and to separate the Christ of actual history from the legendary Christ, to whom have been attached these ancient myths of the East and of Egypt, is one of the main purposes of Dr. Janes's critical study. For instance, the great solar myth is indicated as the source of the narrated miracles of cure, of the doctrine of the Logos, and again of the final miracle of the resurrection.
The religion of the future, Dr. Janes believes to be, "the true religion of humanity,"
