19 DECEMBER 1863, Page 22

History of the Christian Church from the Reformation to the

Present Time. By J. H. Kurtz, D.D., Professor of Theology at Dorpat. (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh.)—.A manual of Church history, written in a strongly Lutheran spirit. When Dr. Kurtz is treating of Germany—which, in fact, absorbs the larger part of his volume,—we have no reason to doubt his accuracy ; but when he deals with other countries his state- ments are not to be depended on. He classes Sir Thomas Browne, the Norwich physician, as a Deist, with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Hobbes, and Blount. He also tells us that Dr. Pusey was dismissed from his professorship, that "Lord Russell's University Bill opened Oxford to the Dissenters by restricting the obligation of the Thirty-nine Articles to students of theology," and that, "in opposition to High- Church Oxford, Rationalism has gained ascendancy more and more in Cambridge." For purposes of reference, those who wish to study the history of religion in Germany since the Reformation will, we believe, find the work useful. And we cannot praise too highly the table of contents, chronological table, and index, without which a better history would be far less valuable. We have also received a work by the same author, entitled S.serificial Worship of the Old Testament (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh), of which the translator is Mr. James Martin. It is a laborious and exhaustive treatise on the purely theological subject to which it refers.