Early Church History. Compiled by the late Edward Backhonse. Edited
and enlarged by Charles Tyler. (Hamilton Adams, London ; J. B. Lippencote and Co., Philadelphia.)—Mr. Backhouse, who was an energetic member of the Society of Friends, devoted the last few years of his life to the design of writing Church history from the stand- point occupied by his own communion. Time failed him in the execu- tion of his purpose; he left his work in a fragmentary condition ; and it has been completed in a way by Mr. Tyler, who "is responsible," as we learn from Mr. Hodgkin's preface, "for fully one-balf of the matter of the volume, and for the form of the whole of it." We regret that the design was not more frilly carried out. "His desire," writes Mr. Hodgkin, "perhaps not fully allowed to himself, was to find out with what early teachers stigmatised as heretics he himself could, in any way, sympathise; what protests against priestly assumption and ritualistic corruptions had been made in the early ages of the Church." There are hints, and little more than hints, of this in the book itself. Two pages only, for instance are given to Montanism, though of all the phenomena of early Christianity, Montanism is surely the most significant as regarded from the Quaker point of view. But though the volume does not give us what we should be glad to find in it, it contains much that is interesting. It is something of a novelty to have Church history regarded from the side on which the author and his editor approach it. Nothing, too, could be more laudable than the moderation and can- dour which are shown throughout. Some points also have been care- fully studied. The chapters on "Christian and Pagan Epitaphs" contain a very interesting epitome of what has been discovered on this subject. The photographic illustrations, too, add much to the value of I he volume.
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