Chapel Committee of Review showed that during the year there was an increase in the number of Trusts, of sittings in the chapels, of Trusts contributing to Circuit funds, and in the amount contributed. It also showed that during the same period an outlay of about six thousand pounds had been sanctioned for erections, enlargements, repairs, and purchases; and that debts had been paid off amounting to upwards of two thousand three hundred pounds. The total debts on our Trust-property in Ireland do not now exceed nine thousand pounds. With regard to the Home Mission and Contingent Fund an increase was reported in the income from ordinary sources; but the necessity for a much greater increase is still unmistakably evident. An augmentation of twenty per cent. in the stipends of married ministers was sanctioned; and, encouraged by the growing liberality with which this important Fund is supported, the Conference called into the work two additional ministers. At the same time it is cause of thankfulness that the contributions on behalf of Foreign Missions, instead of falling off, show a tendency to increase. The recently-organized Methodist Orphan Society continues its beneficent and much-needed operations. The responsibilities of the Society are rapidly increasing; but up to the present time the funds placed at the disposal of the Committee have been sufficient for the demands made upon them. The Conference proper began on Wednesday, June 18th. It was presided over by the Rev. Luke H. Wiseman, M.A., who also took the chair at the meetings of the preparatory Committees. He was accompanied from England by the Rev. John H. James, D.D., the ExPresident; the Rev. William B Pope, Theological Tutor, Didsbury; and the Rev. Gervase Smith, M.A. This year there were no vacancies to be filled in the Irish portion of the Legal Hundred. The Rev. Joseph W. M'Kay was re-elected Secretary of the Conference: the Rev. George Vance was chosen for the office of Delegate, and appointed Senior Representative to the British Conference; and the Rev. W. G. Price and the Rev John D. Powell, were elected to accompany him. The Rev. Wallace M'Mullen was also appointed to attend the British Conference with special reference to the new arrangements concerning the Auxiliary Fund. Five young men, who had creditably passed all the prescribed examinations were publicly ordained to the full work of the ministry; and eleven candidates, out of thirteen recommended by the District Meetings, were accepted by the Conference. Four ministers obtained permission to become Supernumeraries; and four names were added to the roll of the honoured dead. Two of these demand special notice,-DANIEL MACAFEE, who was one of the most eminent preachers and controver sialists of his day; and THOMAS WAUGH, who for many years worthily filled the foremost place in the councils and public assemblies of Irish Methodism. Both these distinguished men were gathered to their fathers in a good old age. After the decrease of the preceding year, the increase of ninetyone members in our Societies, (with five hundred and ninety-four on trial,) reported this year, was very encouraging. The deaths numbered three hundred and twenty-six; and the emigrations four hundred and forty-four. Method ism in Ireland is not permitted to garner all the fruit with which God honours her persevering labours; much of it goes to enrich other lands. The Conference session was finally closed on Thursday, the 26th of June. From the beginning there was no unseemly haste, and at the end there was a general conviction that all the necessary business had been done thoroughly. The President commended himself to universal approval by his wisdom, patience, and urbanity in the Chair, as well as by the freshness and power with which he ministered the Word. The Ex-President and Mr. Smith were welcomed as well-known and much-beloved brethren; and Mr. Pope, on this his first visit, has secured for himself a large place in the esteem and affection of the Irish Conference. The public services, including "the open session," were well attended; and were graciously honoured by the manifested presence of the Divine Head of the Church; while the revived proposal for a union of the two principal Methodist bodies in Ireland, encourages the hope of extended usefulness and increased prosperity in future. O. M'C. SELECT LITERARY NOTICES. [The insertion of the title of any publication in this list is not to be considered as pledging us to the approbation of its contents, unless it be accompanied by some express intimation of our favourable opinion. Nor is the omission of any such intimation to be regarded as indicating a contrary opinion. Our limits, and other reasons, impose on us the necessity of selection and brevity.] The Moral Truths of Christianity. Ten Lectures by Dr. Luthardt. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. In these days when strenu ous attempts are made to substitute morality for religion-to represent it as capable of existence and growth altogether apart from religion-nothing can be more important than to show the indissoluble connection and true relations of the two. But the task is one for a master's hand. Dr. Luthardt's work is all that could be desired in apopu lar exposition,-fresh and beautiful in style, extensive without being superficial in treatment, bringing modern errors under review, and contrasting them with Christian truth. What is usually treated in a dull, formal, legal style, is here made as interesting as history. The topics dealt with are, the Nature of Christian Morality; Man as the Basis of the Christian; the Christian and the Christian Virtues; Devotional Life and the Church; Christian Marriage; The Christian Home; The State and Christianity; Humanity and Christianity. We may epitomize the first Lecture as a specimen : The reality of a moral world is attested by universal experience and consent. Conscience is the organ of moral truth, as the senses are of general knowledge. Our last appeal is always to moral considerations. "He has no conscience," is our severest censure: "conscientious," our highest praise. To a teacher the training of character is far more important than the cultivation of talent or the communication of knowledge. "Moral influence is the highest of all influence." Shakespeare Shakespeare owes his peerless position to the fact that he is "the dramatist of conscience." The foundation of morality is freedom of choice. Where there is no power of rejection, as in mathematical and logical truth, there is no morality. The modern school endeavours to bring morality under the reign of necessity; but the mere fact of the recurrence of crimes in averages does not prove this. There are no statistics of intentions and dispositions, so essential in morality, and indeed none of virtues at all. Crimes only are tabulated. What confidence can be put in deductions from data necessarily so incomplete ? Morality depends upon religion,-grows from it as from a root. It is then powerfully shown that the modern attempt to divorce the two is simply a re-introduction of heathen morality. In antiquity they were separated, with what results history tells. Morality was simply human and secular. The outcome was "an immoral religion and irreligious morality." In Stoicism men were feeling their way back to God, the central Sun of moral truth. Consciousness of God and conscience are the two grand factors of man's nature. Religion is the expression of the first, morality of the second. To sever these is to sin against nature, and can no more sticceed now than of old. Justice is done to natural virtue. Naville says, "There are men whose beliefs have all been destroyed, while their conscience like a solitary pillar stands upright among the ruins. The phenomenon presented by these virtuous persons fills us with reverence and wonder. They are, properly speaking, the miracles of that Divine goodness whose name is never on their lips. If there is a man on earth who ought to fall on his knees, and shed warm tears of gratitude, it is one of these-who while he means to deny God, has yet been endowed by Providence with so lively a feeling for the noble and the pure, with so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty stands firm and upright without any other supports. An exception however is not the rule; and what falls to the lot of some does so to them but for a time, and never falls to the lot of others at all. You know the crusts of snow over the fissures in the glaciers of our mountains. The hanging bridge bears one traveller safely over the abyss, but the thin crust breaks beneath the steps of many, and the rash throng are hurled into the depths. So does it fare with those schools of philosophy from which the idea of God is banished; and with that culture in which a lively feeling of the existence of God is lost, they sink into those sunless regions which the light of the feeling for the good never penetrates." The volume is not marked by the usual accuracy of Messrs. Clark's publications. "Natural nature," (p. 28,) is an awkward expression. So "moral philosophy of the philosophers." (P. 17.) "If we are not utterly blasés," (p. 12,) whether the author's or translator's, jars on the ear in a theological treatise. "Revelations was unknown," (p. 25,) is a specimen of several misprints. "Received" stands for "conceived." (P. 26.) These errors, within the first thirty pages, are a disfigurement. The notes, which form nearly half the book, might have been abridged with advantage, and the work thus made accessible to a larger circle. We would not omit any one of the quotations from the ancients, or from Luther. They are too interesting. But we do not see the use of numerous references to current German books which English readers are not likely to see or need. Life of the Rev. William Anderson, LL.D. By the Rev. George Gilfillan. Crown 8vo, pp. 414. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1878.-A deeply interesting memoir of a truly noble man. Dr. Anderson would appear to have been educated into the Christian min istry; at least, we find no mention of his conversion to God as an essential pre-requisite. This, of course, may be altogether the biographer's fault; but, on the other hand, there is the Doctor's own ominous confession of later years, that when he began to preach, Christ was to him more an idea than a Person. But his earnestness of spirit, and devotion to all that was good, may surely be welcomed as indicating that a gracious change had taken place, though at what period of his life we are not informed. come the general aversion to the use of the manuscript, does not thereby occasion considerable mischief. He supports a bad cause, and the more effectually he does so, the worse is the consequence. For, after all that can be said in its defence, reading sermons is not "preaching" the Gospel. Dr. Anderson believed in Christian public opinion; he had a high estimate of its power and value, and intensely loved to arouse and to direct it. Some of his preaching was, it must be confessed, rather too political; but in the City Hall at Glasgow he was always at home, and rendered various good services to the cause of truth and liberty. There, he did not find it necessary to read what he had to say. From the year 1844 till the time when Divine Providence settled the question of American slavery by the sword, this lover of freedom and of humanity assisted at every anti-slavery meeting which was held in that large building. There were various respects in which Dr. Anderson set a noble example. He established two Bible, or Instruction-Classes, and for twenty-five years-busy and popular as he was-never allowed other engagements to interfere with them. His very various public labours made him limit his pastoral visitation to cases of affliction, but to these he seems to have been tenderly attentive. His was a truly genial nature, gifted with a buoy The prominent features of Dr. Anderson's ministry and public life may not be unfamiliar to our readers. He lent all his influence to promote the use of instrumental music in the public worship of his native land, and fought a somewhat severe but successful battle with the time-honoured view which had long excluded it almost entirely from Scottish places of worship. He persisted, too, in the use of his manuscript in the pulpit, in spite of the very strong-and most just-ancy which enabled him to carry dislike of that practice entertained by his countrymen. True, his reading was of the fervid school of Chalmers, rather than of the average hum-drum trafficker in "paper" seimons; but it may be questioned whether a minister of great talents, who manages to over the burdens of life more easily than many of his contemporaries, and which, no doubt, greatly contributed to prolong his days. On his extreme, if not extravagant, Millenarian views, and on his sympathy with the disastrous agitation against Methodism in 1849, and the years immediately following, we will not now dwell. Both are conspicuous blemishes upon the record of his life. He passed away in peace at the age of seventy-three, his last words being, that he was "near the Kingdom." That Dr. Anderson made some serious mistakes, cannot be denied; but that he was an earnest, laborious, devoted servant of his generation, according to his own views of truth and duty, must be thankfully admitted and recorded; and some passages of a sermon quoted in this volume, on the necessity of a prompt and thorough submission to the Saviour, show the preacher in a very favourable light as a heart-searching minister of Christ. Altogether, this Biography possesses a degree of freshness and interest which will secure for it a warm welcome in a wide circle of read ers; but from some of the views expressed and advocated by Dr. Anderson's biographer we entirely dissent. Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. By Professor Keil. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.-This is a new volume of a series of commentaries upon the Old Testament books, which when complete will be of the greatest service to preachers and students. In style concise, in matter full, they remind us of legal text-books. All use and application are left to the reader. The introductions to the several books in the present volume, though brief, well fulfil their purpose, supplying all needful preliminary information, refuting almost too searchingly for English readers-the disintegrating criticism of recent German rationalism, and analyzing the contents of each. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah were reckoned as one by the Jews, in order to make the canonical books correspond with the number of the Hebrew letters. But if this is a disproof of their independent authorship, as alleged, it would be the same in the case of the twelve Minor Prophets, as is not alleged. In the Vulgate, Ezra and Nehemiah appear as 1 and 2 Esdras. There are also two apocryphal books of Esdras, ranked as such even by the Roman Church. A favourite method of rationalism is to imagine some object which a Scripture writer must have had in view, and then judge his work by this arbitrary standard. It is assumed that Ezra must or ought to have purposed to give a complete history of the restoration of the Jews to their own land. Assume this, and it is easy to show how the book is defective. But one would think the natural and truly rational course would be, in the absence of direct information, to infer an author's object from his actual work. Ezra shows very clearly the fulfilment of the prophecies of the restora tion from the seventy years' captivity. Everything necessary to this is related, and no more. Here is a definite plan fully worked out. Is it not reasonable to conclude this to have been the object? In the first part, chapters i. to vi., we have what was done before Ezra comes on the scene, the decree of Cyrus, the rebuilding of the temple, the interruption of the work, its resumption and completion. This done, in chapters vii. to x. Ezra appears and restores social order and Divine worship among the people. Along with other objections the use of the Chaldee language in certain parts is alleged as an argument for more recent authorship. Dr. Keil explains this in a way at least as probable as any |