✓ ART. 6.-THE LOGIC OF THOUGHT AND THE LOGIC OF 1. Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge. By Bernard Bosanquet. Second edition. Two vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. 1. Conférence Internationale pour la prophylaxie de la syphilis et des maladies vénériennes, 1899. And IIème Conférence Internationale, etc., 1902. Rap- ports publiés par le Docteur Dubois-Havenith. Five vols. Brussels: Lamertin, 1899-1900 and 1902–1903. 2. Transactions XVIIth International Congress of Medicine. London: Frowde, 1913. Section xiii: 'Der- matology and Syphilography.' London: Frowde & ART. 8.-SIR DAVID GILL AND RECENT ASTRONOMY A History and Description of the Royal Observatory, ART. 9.-SYNDICALISM IN NEW ZEALAND - ART. 10.-THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND AND 1. Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement. By Werner Picht, Ph.D. London: Bell, 1914. 2. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. By Jane 1. Ecclesia Anglicana. An Open Letter. By Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar. Third Impression. London: 2. The Kikuyu Conference. A Study in Christian 1. Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses oeuvrages, ses doctrines, d'après des textes inédits. By Emile Charles. Paris: 2. Roger Bacon: Essays contributed by various writers on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventh centenary of his birth. Collected and edited by 1. Histoire ancienne de l'Église. By L. Duchesne. Three vols. Paris: Fontemoing, 1906, 1907, 1910. 2. The Early History of the Christian Church. By Mgr L. Duchesne. Rendered into English from the fourth edition. Two vols. London: Murray, 1909, 1912. 3. Early Church History to A.D. 313. By H. M. Gwatkin, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge. Two vols. London: Macmillan, 1909. 4. The Origins of Christianity. By the late Charles Bigg, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Oxford : edited by T. B. Strong, Dean of Christ Church. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. 5. Studies in Early Church History. Collected papers by C. H. Turner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. 6. Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule. By L. Duchesne. Two vols. Paris: Fontemoing, 1894, 1899. 7. The Origin and Development of the Christian Church in Gaul during the first six centuries of the Christian Era. By T. Scott Holmes, D.D., Chancellor of Wells Cathedral. London: Macmillan, 1911. And other works. WHY is the study of Church History at so low an ebb in England to-day? At a time when historical studies in general are flourishing as it is probable that they have never flourished among us before, the barrenness of really good English work on the early Christian centuries, compared with what is being produced abroad, both in France and Germany, both by Catholics and Protestants, is a new and disconcerting phenomenon. Our own scholarship, whether we think of individual attainment or of the combined effort of a body of contributors, has not always, nor indeed till quite recently, proved unequal to the task. Lightfoot's volumes on the Apostolic Fathers are still unique; the Dictionary of Christian Biography remains ahead of anything produced on the same lines abroad. But just at the present moment our historians appear to have acquired a distaste for theology, and our theologians for history. While the modern historian is tempted to a mere concatenation of facts without much regard to their inner nexus, the theologian is even more exposed to the opposite danger of juggling with facts under the influence of ideas. In the field of the Christian origines we are tending to ask not so much what does the evidence tell us, as what weight do our preconceptions, religious or philosophical or scientific, allow us to give to the evidence. The book entitled 'Foundations' is understood to embody the attitude and aspirations of the younger generation of theologians at Oxford; and quite obviously, whatever their other merits, historical enquiry and the historical spirit do not count for much in the equipment of the writers. Certainly the simultaneous publication of two considerable books in English on the history of the primitive Church does suggest, what we may hope is true, that there is still an intelligent public which wants to know about these things; but the authors of the books are just the persons who cannot be cited as examples of any spontaneous interest on the part of our scholars, since Dr Bigg was bound to lecture on Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, and Dr Gwatkin fills the corresponding position and duties at Cambridge. One of these two authors has a very simple answer to the question why historians fight shy of Church History. The Tractarian Movement is to Professor Gwatkin what King Charles' head was to Mr Dick; if 'Church history has a bad name in England,' it is all the fault of the Catholic (Roman and Anglo-) writers.' So stated without qualification, this view is not easy to reconcile with the facts of the case either abroad or at home. Of the admirable work recently produced by French Roman Catholic scholars, and especially of the 'Histoire ancienne de l'Église' of Mgr Louis Duchesne, we shall have to speak presently: and though it is true that we can no longer look, as the early Tractarians loved to look, upon the primitive centuries of the Church as a golden age when all good people were orthodox and nearly all orthodox people were good, no reasonable criticism can fail to take account of the intimate connexion of the Movement with the modern development of historical studies in England. It is beyond denial that at the hands of Newman, Pusey, and their followers the history of the early Church became for the first time invested with attraction for thousands of English men and women. It is scarcely less certain that from the patristic learning of the Oxford school was formed by direct filiation that school of historians of the Dark and Middle Ages which Stubbs and Freeman and Creighton made illustrious. Stubbs and Freeman at Oxford, Creighton and Acton in Cambridge chairs, were not only great historians, but men profoundly interested in the story and fortunes of the Christian Church; and if Acton, as Döllinger's pupil, had not the same ties with the Oxford Movement as the rest, he stood in close touch with its representatives in the next generation. Nevertheless, though the truth only reaches Prof. Gwatkin's vision as refracted and distorted in the medium of prejudice, it is probably correct that we are experiencing a reaction from the time, well within living memory, when religious controversy embittered academic intercourse and divided colleagues into hostile camps. We of to-day have grown to feel that our best results are not likely to be produced in the stress and storm of battle; that learning and scholarship ought to make for union, and that common recognition of good work wherever produced does something to obliterate local and national jealousies. Perhaps there was a bracing element in the strenuousness of the older life which is lacking in our modern fibre: any great religious movement must bring not peace but a sword, and certainly the study of the origins of the Christian Church cannot easily be dissevered from the study of its claim to allegiance. But a generation which shrinks from settling so tremendous a claim with its own little Aye or No, passes by preference to less disturbing fields of knowledge. That, we think, is one cause; another, not much less powerful, we take to lie in this, that Christian origins are a subject at once so difficult and so trite. The would-be discoverer is attracted, naturally and inevitably, to the search of the unexplored; and history, both ancient and modern, is full of regions that are being opened up to-day to scientific enquiry. Archæology is making possible, and therefore necessary, a restatement of large chapters of Roman history, on a scale to which Christian archæological discovery, important as it is, is thought to offer no parallel. Records are being unearthed, deciphered, classified, which recreate for us much of mediæval history, so that we can now, for instance, almost conjure up before our eyes the life of an English town of the thirteenth or fourteenth century; while access to State archives and diplomatic correspondence reveals the secret springs of political stroke and counter-stroke in the long story of national and dynastic rivalries that has evolved the present map of Europe. What wonder if the young historian is drawn into the fascinating paths which promise so much new and fruitful adventure, and neglects the well-worn road where so many feet have passed before him? But the subject is not only trite; it is also difficult— difficult, both because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence out of which the history has to be reconstructed, and because of its many-sided contact with different departments of knowledge. The ideal historian of the early Church should know something of the heathen as well as of the Jewish preparation for Christ; he should be well versed in the secular history and background of the first Christian centuries, and in the current movements of pagan religion and thought; Greek and Latin must be as familiar to him as his mother-tongue, and he should have a working acquaintance with Syriac ; the Christian documents must be known to him, not merely in the mass but to some extent in critical detail, and he must not only know them but also, at least in outline, what has been written about them. He ought himself to have shared in original investigation in some corner or other of the field, so as to familiarise himself with the meaning and methods of historical research. Above all he must be trained in the faculty both of |