Christendom's Divisions. By Edmund S. Foulkes, formerly Fellow and Tutor
of Jesus College, Oxon. (Longman and Co.)—The author denominates his work a philosophical sketch, and intends it as the pre- cursor of a history of the different reunions of the various Christian sects which have been projected both in the East and West. It is in fact an essay, in which a great deal of very curious information is brought together and laid before the reader in a scholarlike way. And no one can help sympathizing with Mr. Foulkes's motives, even if he has little hope that anything can be done to bring the warring sects together again. It is very easy to point out that the doctrines about which Christendom disputes rest after all on passages of Scripture, " few is number, or recondite in meaning,"—are based either " upon the literal sense of two or three isolated texts or upon deductions from a number of texts mutually supporting or balanced against each other ;" while the
simple command to love one another " occurs over and over again in the New Testament." This has been urged often enough before, and we
honour the man who urges it again ; but neither in secular nor ecclesi- astical quarrels did such considerations ever induce a disputant to waive a single syllable of his contention. By all, however, who take interest in the subject, Mr. Foulkes's book will be found very entertaining as well as useful.
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