Medicerai Missions. By Thomas Smith, D.D. (T. and T. Clark.)—
This is the first series of the " Duff Missionary Lectures." If future lecturers emulate the research, the liberality, and the vigour of Dr. Smith, they will do well. He has included a large field within the limits of his subject. The middle-ages reach, in his division, from A.D. 500 to A.D. 1500, having for a starting-point the conversion of Clovis, and coming down to the eve of the great Reformation move- ment. This is a period with which it is very difficult for one who occupies, and that quite firmly and definitively, a Protestant stand- point, to deal sympathetically. The great success with which Dr. Smith does so is one of the chief merits of his book. We do not always find ourselves in agreement with him. Possibly, for instance,
he makes too much of what may be called the Presbyterianism of the British Church, before it had been Romanised by Augustine. It does not seem to us a probable conjecture that Gallus, the companion of Columbanus, refused the bishopric of Constance, because he objected to receive episcopal consecration, his case being parallel to that of John Knox, who, for the same reason, refused an English see. But Dr. Smith's candour and liberality never fail (unless we must except the unguarded expression, on p. 54, "lying legends "). The book has only too many heroes. Such men as Columba, and Columbanus, and Boniface, and Raymond Lail might well receive a more detailed treatment. Yet the book has no appear- ance of being perfunctory or superficial, bearing, as it does, every mark of having been written out of a full knowledge. It should have been furnished with an index.
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