PLATO AND CHRISTIANITY.* Mn. TEMPLE'S volume of lectures displays the
clearness of thought and gift for interpretation, as well as the breadth of sympathy, which have made his previous books popular among that large and increasing number of persons who, without being students themselves, are keenly interested in the results of modern theological study. Here they may learn, what they could not dissever for themselves in Plate's own writings, because of their apparent remoteness from modern problems and the very simplicity of the terms employed, what that great philoso- pher was "driving at," what he meant for his own age, and what he still means for the modern world. The writer of this notice remembers the shock he received some yeses ago on hearing the Chairman of the School Board in one of our great Northern towns announce that he had been reading Plato's Republic ; and could not conceive why persons of intelligence should spend time in reading such stuff, or why it should be need as a text-book for University teaching. People who feel the same difficulty, and there are probably many, though they may lack the courage to express it so vigorously, will find in these lectures of Mr. Temple just the help they need towards comprehending Plato's purpose, and the nature of the vital problems which in that masterpiece he was for the first time dating and considering. They will also learn just where, in Mr. Temple's judgment, his solutions were unsatisfactory, and required to be supplemented by Christianity. The system of Extension lectures is indeed justifying the highest hopes which its founders entertained for it, when it results in such clear and competent exposition as is contained in this book of Mr. Temple's.
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