SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as Mu not bun reserved for reins in ether forms.]
We give a hearty welcome to the first number of The East and the West (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, ls. net), describing itself as "a Quarterly Review for the Study of Missions." There are many interesting things in this number; the Bishop of Carpentaria's account of the settle- ment of Australian aborigines at Yarrabah, in Queensland, is peculiarly so. There can be no doubt that the race, judiciously and kindly treated, admits of development into an orderly society. But instead of noticing details, we give a quotation from the editor's introduction. It is an answer to the common objection to missionary effort, —If you are so eager to save souls, why not begin with souls that are perishing at home ?— " That St. Paul's chief object in preaching Christianity was not to benefit individuals may be seen by a study of the method of his work. If his chief object had been to save souls he would never have left the great centres of population, such as Antioch, Ephesus, or Rome. Whilst he was engaged in his long itinerant missions men were dying every day in these cities who had never heard of the Christian Faith, and who had at least as great a personal claim upon him as those to whom he was endeavouring to preach. His real aim in traversing sea and land was not to benefit individuals, but it was, as he said himself, to build up the Body of Christ—the Christian Church—by bringing to it that which every part was intended to supply. He regarded Christi- anity as the universal religion, not simply because it was intended to supply the needs of all, but because the manifestation, we might almost say the incarnation, of Christ could only be com- pleted through the experience of all. It is, then, the possibility of helping to complete the Body of Christ, and of discovering and demonstrating the full significance of our faith, which supplies us with the highest and most imperious of motives for the prosecu- tion of missionary work."
This is'to put the matter on its true foundation.
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