sincere peacemaker, who during the period preceding the war did everything humanly possible to prevent the catastrophe.

The Eastern Question and Its_Solution. By MORRIS JASTROW, JR. J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 71⁄2 x 5 in., 158 pp.

By "Eastern" Professor Jastrow means exclusively what is usually called "The Near East" the Balkans, Asia Minor, all Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia.

The interest is due to the fact that this region is "a perpetual menace to the peace of the world."

"It is safe to say that there has been no single decade since 1815 when there has not been either an actual outbreak of war or a threat of war or an interchange of communications between the European Powers in order to tide over a crisis."

Each international conflict over the Eastern Question has been of increasingly serious moment. Can this focus of war-infection be made healthful?

Not by mandates, says Dr. Jastrow. How then? By "international commissions," is the reply.

"Tutelage over the peoples of the East should ... be confided to international commissions, on each of which Great Britain, France and the United States should be represented : [also] two or three other powers especially interested . . . there should also be representation on each commission of the native population."

Thus, our author argues, financial, executive, and governmental burdens would be shared and eventually eliminated. International jealousies would be evaded, and peace and plenty eventually kiss each other.

The proposition belongs as yet to the category of "interesting improbabilities."

Have Faith in Massachusetts. By CALVIN COOLIDGE. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1919. 74 x 5 in., 275 pp. Governor Coolidge's memorable telegram to Samuel Gompers on Sept. 14, 1919 bearing on the question of the policemen's union leaving their duty sent a thrill of appreciation all over the country. The country then needed a strong pronouncement on law and order and Governor Coolidge gave it in no uncertain tone.

public safety by anybody, anywhere, any. time."

His admirers feel that a public service might at this time be rendered by making a selection from the best of his speeches hence this production.

Building the Congregation. By WILLIAM C. SKEATH. The Methodist Book Concern, New York City. 63 pp.

The purpose of this booklet is not to go into the technique of advertisements, but to discuss the various appeals that can be made to the passively religious citizen of the community. It admits that preaching has lost a lot of its old-time drawing power, and shows the reason for the change. The writer makes much of the effectiveness of what is called "social conscience." "The problem of church attendance is the problem of making the individual feel that regardless of the character of the service he is conforming to the decision of the majority when he becomes an attendant at church worship." The majority is evidently here thought of as deciding in favor of such attendance. However this matter of conformity and of majorities may work out in practise, the book presents an earnest effort to apply the psychology of publicity to the acute problem-it is a problem!-presented by the vast crowds which have decided, for one reason or another, that the churches as at present constituted have little to offer them.

Peter: Fisherman, Disciple, Apostle. By F. B. MEYER. Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, 1920. 72 x 5 in.,

224 pp.

The latest volume by Dr. Meyer concerns the apostle who has, next to John, been the subject of the most frequent study. The intensely human character of the "rock apostle" is followed in a series of sermons or talks or lectures which cover practically all of the Scripture passages which concern this apostle. One of the sermons is given in another department of the magazine.

What Did Jesus Teach? FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES. Macmillan & Company, 1919. 195 pp.

Here is one of the many striking passages in the volume: .

two leaders of discussion groups in the University of Pennsylvania. The course was designed to meet the practical problems that arise to-day in accepting the claims of the Christian religion. It seeks out the fundamental teaching of Jesus and rightly finds these in his idea of God, of man, of the ideals and reconstruction of life, of the future, of the kingdom, and of modern society. In every case it attempts to found conclusions on the source material.

It is an excellent book to put into the hands of "the man on the street" or the college student, or to take up in a discussion class. A classified bibliography is appended. The World's Food Resources. By J. RUSSELL SMITH, Professor of Economic Geography in Columbia University. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1919. 634 pp. If people could be induced to read serious books for one year instead of best sellers, many of our social problems would be solved more easily. If such books are at the same time entertaining, they should find many readers.

Professor Smith's book is one of these. It is full of most valuable information in regard to the subject it treats. How many people realize how complicated our modern food problem is. A man in Boston has for breakfast an orange from California, or a banana from Nicaragua, or an apple from Oregon; a shredded wheat biscuit made in Niagara Falls from Dakota wheat; his sugar comes from Cuba, the butter from Wisconsin, and the bread is made of flour from Minneapolis. The lamb chop may come any. where between the Atlantic and the Pacific coast, or, maybe, from New Zealand. The coffee was grown in Brazil, the tea in Ceylon, and the cocoa in Ecuador. New England could be starved to death within a week if outside communication were shut off.

The author takes up every possible food from wheat to peaches, and shows where it grows and how it may be increased in yield by more scientific farming. He points out many new sources of food both by resort to plants and animals unused hitherto, and by cultivating large tracts of land still idle.

Ruth-The Satisfied Stranger. By PHILIP
MAURO. Fleming H. Revell Company,
New York, 1920. 71⁄2 x 5 in., 220 pp.
A study of the Biblical pastoral idyl with
the object of connecting its lessons with

The chappresent opportunities and needs. ters are short, and might be sermons but are not formally such.

Things Eternal. By JOHN KELMAN. George H. Doran Company, New York, 1920. 8 x 51⁄2 in., 271 pp.

This is a volume not of sermons-altho some of them are of sermonic length-"but fragments or abstracts of sermons. They are fugitive glimpses of eternal things." In a general way they have been arranged to fit into the Sundays of the Christian year. In another section of this number we give one of the discourses.

Bible Types of Modern Men. By W. MACKINTOCH MACKAY. George H. Doran Company, New York, 1920. 74 x 5 in., 326 pp.

Whoever sets out to deliver a series of addresses to young men should know what they are thinking about. One who has lived with young men and entered into their games is in a much better position to talk effectively to them concerning the great realities of life than one who has lived apart from them. The contents of this book form a course of lectures to young men. They were formerly published under the title "The Man in the Street."

We give one of the addresses in another department of this issue and it is fairly representative of the twenty-two that constitute the course.

Human Personality, and Its Survival After Death. By FREDERIC W. H. MYERS. Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 1919. 307 pp.

This is an abridged edition of Mr. Myers' large two-volume work, well known to every person interested in psychic phenomena. It should appeal in this abbreviated form to a larger number of readers, especially owing to the increasing interest in this topic during the last few years.

Patriotic Essays. By ELROY HEADLEY (third edition); published by the author, Newark, N. J., 1917. 347 pp.

The author takes up a number of timely topics and discusses them in a liberal and instructive manner. They are: the philosophy of America, success in the making, operative power, the rule of reason, the lawyer statesman, Wall Street and legislation, the railroad controversy, and about twenty-five other equally timely subjects.

VOL. LXXX

No. 3

The

SUCH was one of the "commodities" -not unaccompanied by confessed "discommodities" which Francis Higginson, first pastor of Salem, gratefully enumerated in his New England's Plantation (1630). predilection of the New England father and mothers, especially for sweet herbs, has in it something pleasantly human and revealing. They speedily transplanted the favorites of the "old home" gardens-musk and lavender and mint and box and southernwood, redolent of sacred memories and affections, and also took to their hearts with humble gratitude the "sweet herbs" which in their exile they found awaiting them upon the bleak New England coast. In them was something that appealed to the supprest poetry in the Puritan's nature and gave him a subtle touch with the fair world of delight of which he allowed himself to know so little. The medicinal virtues of these kindly curative (?) "simples" were, to be sure, the cause of much of the consideration given to them, but they were loved for themselves as well. The exiles came upon them as Emerson came upon the rhodora, "in May when sea-winds pierced our solitudes," with the quick and grateful recognition, "The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you." When the rigors of the pioneers relaxed and gave room for less urgent interests, this love of herbs

and wild flowers grew stronger and seemed to incorporate itself into their character, producing a pleasing intimacy of nature and human nature characteristic of New England. It is noteworthy that so many Mary Wilkins' incomparable stories reflect this friendship: "A Symphony in Lavender," "Brakes and White Violets," "A

Lover of Flowers," "A Gatherer of Simples," "Gentian."

As the tercentenary of the memorable advent of the Pilgrims to the shores of Plymouth appoaches, it is fit that we not only recall their sterner virtues, but likewise pluck a handful of sweet herbs in loving memory of their gentler and more humane qualities. Here then is arbutus, that's for their mystic piety, undaunted by the snows; bittersweet, that's for their patient endurance; sweet fern, that's for their sincerity; flagroot, that's for their fidelity; hepatica, that's for their lowliness; wintergreen, that's for their wit, and laurel, that's for their unfading faith.

From this cluster let us detach, for a moment's attention, two-the arbutus and the wintergreen-whose counterparts in New England character are not always recognized.

Longfellow had John Alden gather mayflowers to take to Priscilla, and Whittier has sung the arbutus as the first flower to greet the Plymouth exiles at the close of that first fearful winter. He calls it:

"Sad Mayflower; watched by winter stars And nursed by winter gales."