to read Robert Elsmere without recognizing an exceedingly matured conception, and it is difficult to attach the idea of conception at all to most of the other novels of the hour; so almost invariably do they seem to have come into the world only at an hour's notice, with no pre-natal history to speak of. Remarkably interesting is the light that Mrs. Ward's celebrated study throws upon the expectations we are henceforth entitled to form of the critical faculty in women. The whole complicated picture is a slow, expansive evocation, bathed in the air of reflection, infinitely thought out and constructed, not a flash of perception nor an arrested impression. feels that the author has set afloat in her large, slow-moving, slightly old-fashioned ship a complete treasure of intellectual and moral experience, the memory of all her contacts and phases, all her speculations and studies.

One

It is difficult to associate with Robert Elsmere any effect cheaply produced. The habit of theological inquiry has long been rooted in the English-speaking race; but Mrs. Ward's novel would not have had so great a fortune had she not wrought into it other bribes than this. She gave it, indeed, the general quality of charm, and she accomplished the feat (unique, so far as I remember, in the long and usually dreary annals of the novel with a purpose), of carrying out her purpose without spoiling her novel. The charm was a combination of many things, but it was an element in which culture— using the term in its largest sense-had perhaps most to say. Life, for her, means predominantly, the life of the thinking, the life of the sentient creature whose chronicler it has been almost an originality on her part to become. She was capable of recognizing possibilities of palpitation without number in the action of her hero's passionate conscience, and that of his restless faith. So in Amiel, she found in his throbbing stillness a quantity of life that she would not have found in the snapping of pistols.

The attitude is full of further assurance; and gives us a grateful faith in the independence of view of the new work which she is believed lately to have completed.*

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

W

NEWS FROM OTHER WORLDS.
CAMILLE FLAMMARION.

Peterson's Magazine, Philadelphia, March.

HEN, during the beautiful starlight nights, we examine the world of Mars through a telescope, when we see the polar snows breaking up in spring, the continents clearly defined, the inland seas and gulfs, its varied configuration, we cannot help asking ourselves if the same sun which warms and animates that world, so like our own, shines on no living creature; if those rains fertilize nothing, if that atmosphere is breathed by no sentient being, if the world of Mars, which revolves so rapidly in space, can be like an empty railroad train hurrying along with neither passengers nor freight.

The idea that the world which we inhabit could thus revolve around the sun without a living creature on its surface appears so improbable that we can scarcely grasp it. Then, by what permanent miracle of sterilization could the forces of nature, which act there as well as here, remain eternally unproductive.

About fifty years ago the astronomer, J. Von Littrow, originated the idea of attempting an optical communication with the moon, by means of luminous geometrical figures, but if one ever attempted to put into practice any such method of communication with the planet Mars the signals would have to be on a much vaster scale. We should be compelled to make our squares, circles and triangles, hundreds of miles in extent, and * The History of David Grieve, for a digest of which, see THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. IV, No. 14, p. 383.

then they would be drawn on the hypothesis; first, that Mars is inhabited; second, that many of its inhabitants study astronomy; that they have optical instruments as powerful as our own; fourth, that they watch with great attention our planet which must appear to them as a star of the first magnitude. The great majority of the excellent common-sense people of this world regard the problem as one of little interest. They deem it beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are the most superior beings in creation, and that even if Mars is inhabited it is probably by beings too lowly to attach any significance to our signals.

But have not the inhabitants of Mars already begun the optical communication? And suppose, after all, it is we who

fail to understand?

Mars has been an object of close astronomical observation in its principal geographical details since the year 1858. The first detailed triangulation of this planet, the first geographical map, including the smallest objects visible through the telescope, and micrometrically measured was only begun in 1877, and finished in 1882. Consequently it is only within the last few years that the planet Mars has entered into the sphere of our complete observation. We might even go so far as to assert that there is only one man, Signor Schiaparelli, director of the observatory at Milan, who has seen all these details. According to the most probable cosmographic theory, Mars is anterior to our world by several millions of years, and much more advanced in its destiny. Its inhabitants may have been making signals to us for the last hundred thousand years, and not a soul on our planet have understood them.

In the newly constructed geographical map of the planet Mars, there is observable in it, in several places, small dots, by which the astronomer notes the presence of luminous spots which shine like snow under the rays of the sun. It is not probable that these spots are due to the presence of snow, for they are visible near the equator, as well as in high latitudes. Nor can they be mountain peaks, for they are close to the seas, and symmetrically disposed, relative to certain rectilinear canals. Moreover, several among them appear to mark parallels of latitude and meridians, and in examining them one is inevitably reminded of geodetical signs. You can distinctly trace triangles, squares, and rectangles.

I do not assert that these luminous spots are drawn by engineers in the world of Mars, but I do say that if the inhabitants of Mars did wish to communicate with us, this way of doing so would be the most simple.

And it seems safe to assume that Mars being so much older than our Earth, its inhabitants are proportionately more advanced, and while they may have a low estimate of our intellectual and spiritual attainments, they probably know a great deal more concerning our world than we do of theirs.

SOME POSSIBILITIES OF ELECTRICITY. PROFESSOR WILLIAM CROOKES, F.R.S. Fortnightly Review, London, February. [NTIL quire recently we have been acquainted with only a very narrow range of ethereal vibrations, from the extreme red of the solar spectrum, on the one side, to the ultra-violet on the other-say from three ten-millionths of a millimeter to eight ten-millionths of a millimeter. Within this comparatively narrow range of ethereal vibrations, and the equally limited range of sound-vibrations, all our knowledge

has been hitherto confined.

Whether vibrations of the ether longer than those which affect us as light, may not be constantly at work around us, we have never seriously inquired. But the reseaches of Lodge in England, and of Hertz in Germany, give us an almost infinite range of ethereal vibrations or electrical rays, from wavelengths of thousands of miles down to a few feet. Here is unfolded to us a new and astonishing world-one which it is

hard to conceive should contain no possibilities of transmitting and receiving intelligence.

Rays of light will not pierce through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through a London fog. But the electrical vibrations of a yard or more in wave-lengths, of which I have spoken, will easily pierce such mediums, which, to them, will be transparent. Here, then, is revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. Granted a few reasonable postulates, the whole thing comes well within the limits of possible fulfillment. At the present time experimentalists are able to generate electrical waves of any desired wave-length from a few feet, upwards, and to keep up a succession of such waves, radiating into space in all directions. It is possible, too, with some of these rays, if not with all, to refract them through suitably shaped bodies acting as lenses, and so direct a sheaf of rays in any given direction; enormous lens-shaped masses of pitch, and similar bodies, have been used for this purpose. Also an experimentalist at a distance can receive some, if not all, of these rays on a properly constituted instrument, and, by concerted signals, messages in the Morse code can thus pass from one operator to another. What, therefore, remains to be discovered is simpler and more certain means of generating electrical rays of any desired wave-length from the shortest-say of a few feet in length-which will easily pass through buildings and fogs to those long waves whose lengths are measured by tens, hundreds, and thousands of miles; secondly, more delicate receivers which will respond to wave-lengths between certain defined limits, and be silent to all others; thirdly, means of darting the sheaf of rays in any desired direction, whether by lenses or refractors, by the help of which the sensitiveness of the receiver (apparently the most difficult of the problems to be solved) would not need to be so delicate as when the rays to be picked up are simply radiating into space in all directions, and fading away according to the law of inverse squares.

It may be fairly assumed that the progress of discovery will give instruments capable of adjustment by turning a screw or altering the length of a wire, so as to become receptive of wave-lengths of any preconcerted length. Thus, when adjusted to fifty yards, the transmitter might emit, and the receiver respond to, rays varying between forty-five and fiftyfive yards, and be silent to all others.

This is no mere dream of a visionary philosopher. All the requisites needed to bring it within the grasp of daily life are well within the possibilities of discovery, and are so reasonable and so clearly in the path of researches which are being actively prosecuted in every capital of Europe, that we may any day expect to hear that they have emerged from the realms of speculation into those of sober fact. Even now, indeed, telegraphing without wires is possible within a restricted radius of a few hundred yards.

The discovery of a receiver sensitive to one set of wavelengths and silent to others, is even now partially accomplished. The human eye is an instance, supplied by nature, of one which replies to the narrow range of electro-magnetic impulses, between the three ten-millionths of a millimeter and the eight ten-millionths of a millimeter. It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be living in a different world from our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of surrounding objects, were we endowed with eyes, not sensitive to the ordinary rays of light, but sensitive to the vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would.

resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realize the dream of medieval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption

of fuel.

In some parts of the human brain may lurk an organ capable of transmitting and receiving other ethereal rays of wavelengths, hitherto undetected by instrumental means. These may be instrumental in transmitting thought from one brain to another. In such a way the recognized cases of thoughttransference, and the many instances of "coincidence" would be explained. I will not speculate on the results, were we evertually to catch and harness these "brain-waves."

These are but a few of the many possible discoveries in electrical science. The total amount of vis viva which the Sun pours out yearly upon every acre of the earth's surface, chiefly in the form of heat, is 800,000 horse-power. Of this supply of energy a flourishing crop utilizes only 3,200 horse-power. The great problem of science is the atilization of the waste energy.

IT

HOUSE PLANTS AS PURIFIERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE.

ERNST EBERMEYER.

Westermann's Monats-Hefte, Brunswick, January.

T is a pleasing characteristic of cultured people generally that they seek to adorn their homes with green plants and flowers. Place is willingly made for them in the favorite rooms where the warm and life-giving rays of the sun can find an entrance. Especially in winter, when fantastic icicles hang from the window-frames, and forest, field, and meadow slumber under a mantle of snow, there is no more pleasing and grateful occupation for the lover of flowers than through careful tending of choice plants in his comfortably warmed rooms to summon Spring, as if with an enchanter's wand, and gladden heart and sense with the beauty and perfume of leaf and flower. For the chamber conservatory it is usual to select freeblooming or ornamental-foliaged plants, which should be annually transplanted in a fresh sandy loam, enriched with humus, or the surface should get a light mineral flower-dressing. Further requirements are a moderately-warmed room, with a sunny exposure, and the plants should stand near the window where the full sunlight can stream upon them. Given these conditions, nothing more is wanted than an occasional light sprinkling from a water-pot to ensure the unfolding of leaf, and bud, and flower.

There is a very general impression, moreover, that growing plants exercise an important sanitary influence, purifying the atmosphere of the chamber, by absorbing the noxious gases of animal respiration; but this is a theory which will hardly bear close investigation.

Men and animals give off carbonic acid gas by respiration and through the pores of the skin. A grown man takes in about a pint of air at every breath; the oxygen, or a portion of it, passes into the arteries, where it is taken up by the red blood corpuscles and utilized for the combustion of fat and the albumen of the tissues. In this process of combustion the oxygen unites with the carbon to form carbonic acid, which passes over to the venous blood, which carries it to the lungs, I whence it is exhaled.

In pure mountain or sea air the proportion of carbonic acid is only 3 parts in 10,000; the respired breath contains from four to five per cent. of carbonic acid: that is over a hundred times as much as pure air; the atmosphere of a close room is quickly polluted by the presence of a person in it; not merely by reason of the carbonic acid, which is deleterious enough, but because, at every respiration impure, watery vapor, carrying decomposing organic matter, is given off along with it. It is this latter which generates the offensive odors in a close, crowded room.

The respiration of plants is closely analogous to that of ani

mals, every part of the plant-leaves, root, stem, flowers, and fruit-absorb oxygen, and give off carbonic acid, and this process is continuous day and night, but in the process of assimilation which takes place only under the influence of light, the plant draws from the carbonic acid of the atmosphere all the carbon required to build up its substance. The ground-work of the common notion that plants purify the atmosphere of occupied rooms during the day, although they vitiate it to a certain extent at night is, hence, intelligible enough; but, as a matter of experiment, it has been determined that a grown man inhales about twenty-four quarts of oxygen an hour, and exhales an equal amount of carbonic acid, or as much as a square metre of leaf surface could assimilate in a summer day of fifteen hours. It is, hence, evident that the influence of plants in absorbing the respired carbonic acid of occupied rooms is very slight, while as repects the removal of the organic impurities, and, in some cases, infectious germs, it is of no appreciable account.

Indeed, under certain conditions, chamber plants may be directly instrumental in vitiating the air. This is sometimes due to the vapors exhaled by the soil of the pots, especially when it is enriched with decomposing animal manures, such as bone-meai, blood-meal, rotten manure, etc. There are, 'known instances in which the soil contains the germs of malaria parasites. In such cases, the warm chamber, with the occasional watering, furnish all the conditions favorable to the development of the malarial poisons in the pots, and cases of intermittent fever have been directly traced to the influence of chamber plants.

moreover,

While admitting that flower-culture in the house is one of the most æsthetic, instructive, and grateful occupations that the members of the family can be engaged in, I must, nevertheless, contend that the popular opinion that the plants purify the atmosphere is an erroneous one. There is one and only one means of purifying the atmosphere of the house, and that is frequent change of the air either by artificial ventilation, or partially opened windows.

THE

UTILIZATION OF HOMING PIGEONS.

W. B. TEGETMEIER.

Nature, London, February 4.

HE utilization of the homing instinct of the domesticated varieties of the blue-rock pigeon, Columba livia, for military purposes, has been effected by most of the governments in Europe. In France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal the organization has become very complete. It has even been extended to Russia, Denmark, and Sweden; and Africa has been brought into communication with Spain by stations at Ceuta and Mellila. England alone, of all the great Powers, has neglected this important mode of communication, which is available under circumstances that preclude the employment of any other means.

The employment of the Columba livia depends upon several conditions which are not without interest. In the first place, this species is one of the comparatively few capable of domestication, a faculty which is totally distinct from, though frequently confounded with, the facility of being tamed. A domesticated animal is attached to its home, and returns to it of its own will; a tame animal is merely familiar with man. These two states are admirably illustrated in the closely allied species, the fowl and the pheasant. Both were originally perfectly wild, but, when domesticated, chickens invariably come home to roost, while the pheasants, though descended from numberless generations of birds bred in confinement, have no attachment whatever to the place of their birth and breeding. In its natural habitat (the rocky cliffs of the seashore) the blue-rock pigeon has to fly long distances in search of food, which, when breeding, it stores up in its crop and carries home to its young. This makes necessary strong powers of flight and well-developed perceptive faculties, it being guided in its

return solely by sight, and not, as is often supposed, by any special instinct.

The pigeons that are used for carrying messages are bred solely for that purpose. A process of artificial selection, as rigorous and remorseless as that of nature, is followed. The young birds, after acquiring their power of pcrfect flight, and learning the lay of the country in the circuits around their home, are taken in the direction in which it is desired they should fly, and trained stage after stage until they know every locality over which they will have to pass. This training is absolutely necessary if their return home is to be depended on. During its performance the inferior birds, those whose intelligence and determination are not well developed, are lost; and the best birds only return. This loss, in the long-distance flights which are flown by the Belgians and by the best homing pigeon societies in England, is very severe. Old birds, that know large tracts of country well, may be taken in new directions, provided they are not too extended, with safety, but young birds that have not been trained would almost certainly be lost if carried many miles from their home.

It is sometimes alleged that sight can be of no avail when birds are liberated some hundreds of miles from their home, but it should be remembered that from an elevated position in the atmosphere immense distances can be seen. Mr. Glaisher records that from a balloon he saw at the same time, the cliffs of Margate on the west, Brighton on the south, and all along the coast-line to Yarmouth on the north.

The homing-by-instinct theory has been entirely disproved by the races which have taken place from Rome to Belgium, a distance of between eight and nine hundred miles, nearly half of which was over country entirely new to the birds. All the birds engaged in these races had been flown from the south of France to Belgium, whence they would have found their way back in one or two days; but of the hundreds liberated at Rome not one returned before eleven days, and, in the first race, in a fortnight four only out of the number dispatched. The country was new to them, and, doubtless, they circled about in search of some known landmark which would have directed their flight; but the objects with which they were acquainted were hidden from them by the Alps, and it was those few only that, flying along the coast, succeeded in reaching the south of France, and then saw objects with which they were acquainted, and returned home.

THE ATTAR-OF-ROSES INDUSTRY IN TURKEY.

JULIEN PETIT.

Revue des sciences naturelles appliquées, Paris, January. HE town of Kasanlik is the most important centre of this

of to Turkish the meaning

of Kasanlik is the place of stills or big kettles. It is said that the cultivation of rose-bushes and the art of distilling the petals of these flowers was introduced into this place, long years ago, by a Turkish merchant from Tunis. The roses are now cultivated in one hundred and fifty villages of the district of Kasanlik, which forms the northern part of Southern Roumelia.

The climate of Kasanlik is temperate. Its soil is sandy and consequently porous and very permeable, indispensable conditions for preventing an accumulation of water in the subsoil, which kills the rose-bushes after a frost. This soil also arrests the development of mushrooms which attack the roots of the bushes.

Two varieties only of rose are cultivated, as a general thing, a red and a white. The red belongs to the species Rosa damascena, sometimes called the rose of the four seasons; the white is a variety of Rosa alba. The petals of the white rose are never distilled alone, but cultivators not burdened with scruples find its culture profitable, because the product of its distillation, though poor in perfume, is rich in stearoptene, that

solid crystalline substance, which is separated from any volatile oil on long standing or at low temperatures. This stearoptene is mixed with the oil of the red rose and the mixture can then be easily adulterated with oil of geranium which comes from India.

The rose shrubs produce flowers from their second year and reach a maximum of production at the end of five years. The roses, which begin to bloom from the 20th to the 28th of May, are picked every morning until the 15th or 20th of June, by women, whose fingers, hardened by practice, do not feel the thorns, but which are covered, in the course of their work, by a blackish resin, which has the smell of turpentine. This is scratched off the fingers at the end of each day, and rolled into pellets, which, it is said, impart a delicious odor to the smoke of tobacco.

Bulgaria produces in good years about three tons of the attar, or, as it is sometimes written, otto of roses. In average

years the production amounts to about one and a half or threequarters tons. The value of the product in 1889 was $210,000. Competition by Turkish distillers in Asia Minor caused the price in 1889 to fall twelve per cent.

The distillation is effected in large stills which hold 110 pounds of petals and 75 gallons of water, furnishing 25 gallons of rosewater, at the extremity of the refrigerating worm of the still. The first product (64 gallons), being more richly perfumed, is called double rose-water; then there are taken off 7%1⁄2 gallons of an intermediate quality, and finally 11 gallons of an inferior quality. The small quantity of oil which floats on the top of the water is separated from it by the use of a Florentine receiver, and sells for $200 a quart, the rose-water being worth about half a dollar a quart.

Attar of roses, taken in a dose of from two to five drops, is thought to increase the activity of the digestive organs. A double dose, it appears, always produces an opposite action. As to its general effect, that is characterized by a marked disposition to sleep. The Turkish oil of geranium has a like effect.

FOR

GREEN PINKS AND BLUE ROSES.
P. HARIOT.

Magasin Pittoresque, Paris, January 31.

OR a little time past there has been much talk about some flowers colored by artificial means, exhibited by florists along our boulevards. The green pinks particularly have been greatly commented on, and I know some good and innocent gardeners-representatives of a past age-who have conscientiously bought some of these pinks and planted branches of them. Some years ago a horticulturist of the environs of Paris sent to the National Horticultural Society of France a branch of a rose-bush, of which the flowers, naturally white, had acquired a bluish tint by no means displeasing. Since that time there has been no doubt, from a commercial point of view, about being able to produce these colorations on a great scale and the year 1892 will doubtless see them in abund

ance.

The question is naturally asked: How can you produce flowers with colors different from those which nature has given them? The answer to this question affords information, interesting to those still unacquainted with it, as to the essential functions of the root, considered as an organ of absorption and excretion. In other words, can you make coloring matter enter into a plant through the root, so as to diffuse that matter through the different organs and through the flower especially? The experiments as to this point do not date from yesterday. Magnol, the famous botanist, whose name was given to the magnolias, conceived, in 1709, the idea of making colored liquors enter plants by absorption, a process which he called colored injections. His example has been followed by numerous botanists who have used two entirely different methods: one was to plunge a branch or bough in a solution of some

coloring matter; the other was to operate on plants through their roots. In this latter case and with the necessary precautions, the attempts have always been fruitless; the coloring matter never entered the body of the plant. The result was different when action was taken on boughs or on plants deprived of their roots.

What happens under such circumstances? To answer this question it is necessary to mention some elementary botanical facts. The central part of the plant, that which is inclosed by the wood, contains vessels which are real canals, and which, starting from the extremity of the roots, continue to the very extremities of the leaves and flowers. By these canals are carried up in the plant the nutritive liquids, and also the colored solutions into which a branch is plunged. By the opening of these vessels, through capillary attraction the liquid is introduced, and circulates through their thinnest and most delicate ramifications. This is what I have remarked in the flowers I have been able to examine. The fine network formed in the substance of the flowers by the veins and nerves has fixed the coloring matter; generally this network is the only part of the flower which presents traces of coloring.

Interesting experiments made at the Municipal Laboratory by Messrs. C. Girard and Pabst, manifest that all coloring matters do not produce equally good effects. The blue of methylene, the rose-red of eosin, both coal-tar products, and malachite-green, easily lend themselves to the effects under consideration. The color produced varies in intensity with the concentration of the liquid. In certain cases, it is not only the veins of the flower, as I said above, which are tinted, but all parts of it are colored. Another process has been tried ; that of dipping the flower directly in a color-bath. The inconveniences and difficulties of this process are evident. You have to use a very concentrated solution, then dry the object rapidly after its immersion. Few flowers endure this brutal treatment. It is, then, by absorption, and by it alone, that you can attain your end.

It is plain, therefore, that in order to have green pinks, it is unnecessary to follow the example of the honest gardeners of whom I have spoken, and buy plants in order to plant branches from them. It is even easier to obtain blue roses by the simple and inexpensive method of absorption above described, than by the process, recommended by gardeners of former times, of watering your rose-bushes with a solution of indigo!

IT

T is a singular piece of good fortune that just at the present time when the apocryphal correspondence between St. Paul and the congregation at Corinth has, by the researches of Drs. Zahn and Vetter, been utilized as never before for the study of ancient Christian literature, we should be surprised by the discovery of an ancient Latin version of these letters, made by Dr. S. Berger, of the Protestant Faculty of Paris, and published, with commentary and introduction, by him in conjunction with Professor A. Carriêre. What has heretofore been known concerning this so-called Third Epistle to the Corinthians is the following:

1. The old Armenian Church has always had in her Bible such a third letter by Paul in answer to one of the Corinthians, and that, too, not in an appendix, but immediately following the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Evidences show that this Epistle has been in the Armenian Bible from the beginning.

2. The Syrian Church of Edessa, in the fourth century, also had this correspondence, and also regarded the letter as canoncal, standing after Second Corinthians, as is clear from the Homilies of Aphroates and the Commentaries of Ephrem.

3. The Syrian Church, soon after the days of Ephrem,

dropped these letters. No later Syrian writer cites or uses them.

4. From the Commentaries of Ephrem it appears that the Syrian Gnostic sect of the Bardesaintes did not have this correspondence in their canon.

From these data, it is plain that this apocryphal correspondence cannot have originated at a later date than the end of the third century. It is not improbable from the fact of the rejection of the Epistles by the Bardesaintes as also the fact that the errors condemned by the third Epistle to the Corinthians are just those maintained by this Gnostic sect, that these Epistles were written in Edassa by the Catholic party in the contest with Bardesaintes. This is the view of Vetter, who thus makes the Syriac the original language of this correspondence. A different explanation is offered by Zahn, who maintains that the correspondence was originally prepared in Greek. It appears that both letters are found connected by an historical narrative, and it would therefore seem that they are a portion and part of some larger historical work, a book after the character of the Acts, possibly the old Acta Pauli, which Origen cites. Now to the surprise of all patristic scholars the views of Zahn, which seemed at first the less probable, have been strongly corroborated by the discovery of a Latin version of these letters, but without the intervening historical narrative. It is not at all impossible that this correspondence was at one time a portion of the Greek Bible. although, as yet, we have no historical evidences to this effect.

As this correspondence constitutes an important item in the investigation of the rise and development of the Christian Church, doctrine, and letters, and is more than a curiosity of literature, it is not a work of supererogation to reproduce them, in substance, here [in translation]:

Now begin the Writings of the Corinthians to the Apostle Paul:

(1) Stephen and all who are with him, all the elders, Daphinus and Eutolus, and Theophilus and Zenon to Paul, their brother in the Lord, eternal greeting! (2) There have come to Corinth two men, a certain Simon and Cleopius, who have perverted our faith with adulterous words; (3) which examine thou: (4) for we have never heard such things from thee [here four lines are lost]; (8) for we believe since it has been opened to Theona, that the Lord has released thee from the hands of the wicked; we ask thee to answer us; (9) for there are those who say and teach as follows, (10) That we must not believe the prophets; (11) that God is not omnipotent; (12) that there is no resurrection of the flesh; (13) that man is not the image of God; (14) that Christ did not come in the flesh; and that he was not born from Mary; (15) that the world is not created by God but by messengers (nuntiorum). (16) On this account we ask, brother, to come to us with all cases, that the Church at Corinth may not remain in offense, and that the saneless teaching (dementia) of these may be found void. We salute thee in the Lord.

Now follows the answer of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians:

(1) Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ to the brethren who are in Corinth, salutation in the Lord; (2) since I am in many troubles I do not wonder that the machinations of the Evil One spread so quickly; (3) because our Lord Jesus Christ will hasten His advent, surprising those who have adulterated His word; (4) for I have from the beginning given you what I have received and what has been given to me by the Lord and to those who were apostles before me and were at all times with the Lord; (5) that our Lord Jesus Christ was born from the Virgin Mary and from the seed of David according to the flesh, from the Holy Ghost sent from Heaven by the Father to her through the Angel Gabriel; (6) that Jesus should enter into this world in the flesh, so that He might liberate all flesh through His birth, and that He might raise from the dead all us mortals even as He was raised; (7) He showed Himself a

type to us since He, too, is made ofthe Father; (8) for that reason the lost are sought by Him, that they may receive life through the creation of the Son; (9) for because He is God of all, holding all things, who made heaven and earth; He sent first prophets to the Jews, that they should be drawn from their sins; (10) for a consolation to save the house of Israel, and from the spirit of Christ was sent to the prophets, who taught the worship of God and the birth of Christ, preaching to many ages; (11) not because the Prince of Injustice, wishing himself to be God, refused his obedience, and forced all men to do his will, and brought the consummation of the world near to judgment; (12) but because the Omnipotent God is just, not willing to cast aside His creature, He is pity; (13) sent from Heaven even His spirit to Mary in Galilee; (14) who believed this from her whole heart and received in her womb the Holy Spirit, that she could give birth to Jesus [here some lines are wanting]; (20) therefore they themselves are the sons of wrath and have the accursed faith of the serpent; (21) whom ye must drive away from you and flee from their teachings; (22) for ye are of the children of disobedience, but of a most adorable church; (23) therefore the time of the resurrection has been proclaimed; (24) but that they say there is no resurrection of their flesh for then there would be no resurrection to life but to judgment; (25) for on him who raisesth the unbeliever from the dead they neither believe nor do they understand him; (26) for the men of Corinth do you not know the seed of wheat like other seed when it is put bare into the ground and dies, and again rises by the will of God and grows and is clothed; (27) not only the body which is put in the ground rises, but greatly blessed; (28) but it may be proper not only to make comparisons with seeds but also with nobler subjects; (29) for behold Jonah, the son of Amathus, when he would not preach with Ninevites, but fled, was swallowed by a whale; (30) and after three days and three nights, God heard his prayer as from the lowest hell (inferno), and not even a hair or eyelid of his was corrupt; (31) how much more, ye of little faith, he will raise us also who believe in Jesus Christ, even as he himself was raised [here follows examples of resurrections from the Scriptures, and the Epistle concludes with exhortations to remain faithful]. The concluding words are: Here ends the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, and the Epistle of the Saint Paul the Apostle to the Laodicians begins.'

DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT CONTAIN DOGMAS? AUGUSTE SABATIER.

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Revue Chrétienne, Paris, January.

HAT is a dogma? It is an historical phenomenon, the motive and distinctive features of which are easily discernible. Take any dogma whatever, that of the infallibility of the Pope, proclaimed in our day at the Vatican, that of the co-essential divinity of Jesus Christ declared at the Council of Nice, that of the Canon of the Scriptures fixed for the Reformed Churches of France by Articles III. and IV. of the Confession of La Rochelle, and you perceive that the dogma, before existing as a dogma, existed as a doctrine discussed, variable, and free; that the dogma, to speak precisely, is the definition of the Church which of this free doctrine has made a dogma obligatory, at least from a disciplinary point of view, on the members of some particular Church.

It follows from this, not only that the idea of dogma implies the idea of collectivity or of the Church, but that there enters into the formation of a dogma two constituent elements: a doctrinal element, elaborated by reflection, and an element of authority proceeding from the deliberating Church and which out of doctrine makes a law.

You find these two elements in the etymology and the history of the word itself. The Greek verb έδοξεν from which the word dogma is derived, means “visum est, placuit, it has seemed good." The idea and the expression of dogma were long anterior to Christianity and quite strangers to Hebrew tradition. The origin of the idea and expression must be sought in the philosophical and political history of Greece. According to Cicero, the regulating principles of a school of philosophy were called dogmata. The word, in this sense, did