animals were cast. There occurred the last struggle between the Jews and the Romans, and the bodies of the slain were consumed in that perpetual fire. The fire was perpetual only to consume all that was thrown therein; and the worm in succession, generation after generation, continued to feed on the dead bodies of man and beast, carried there, till time closed the horrid banquet. All now is changed. The fire has ceased to burn; the worm is not; it is once more a "pleasant valley," where the olive grows, and the fruit trees bear, and grains and grasses and flowers delight the eye.

Symbols vanish, shadows depart, types perish, but realities endure and truth abides forever. Put out the fires of the Jerusalem gehenna, drain dry the apocalyptic "lake of fire and brimstone," change the "outer darkness" into noonday, yet man is immortal, with memory to recall, with imagination to suggest, with conscience to annoy. Hell may be a ubi, but hell is a state more than a place. Change the Orientalisms of the New Testament into the Occidentalisms of the nineteenth century, yet the constitution of man changeth not. Beneath the drapery of rhetoric is the stern fact of logic. Vice and misery, virtue and happiness, are tremendous facts within the experience of many and the observation of all. All the physical in the universe may perish, but the spiritual will endure. The soul is the seat of sensation. Matter has qualities; mind has energies. The elements of heaven and of hell are within us-moral conditions lead on to their development. Heaven and hell flow out of character. Milton made his devil sing:

"Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell."

And he could have made his angel sing:

"Which way I fly is heaven, myself am heaven."

John P. Stewran

24-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.

ART. II.-BISHOP HURST'S "INDIKA.”*

NEXT in value to a visit to an unknown country is the privi lege of reading a book which conveys in clear outline, with fullness and accuracy of detail and in a vigorous and interesting style, the essentials which we desire to know concerning it.

Indeed, unless one be skilled in traveling, and accustomed to accurate and discriminating observation, a book is often more instructive than a visit. All the characteristics of a great book are found in Bishop Hurst's Indika. The author is by natural endowment and education a careful observer. He has the faculty of seeing things. He brings to the work the advantage which comes from extensive travel in other lands. His information on the subject is thorough and exhaustive. His study of the works which have been written on India is followed by careful personal investigation of the land and people of which he writes. The style of the book is at once concise and pictorial. From the first page until the close of the book the reader is carried along with an interest which never flags.

The interest of the book is increased by the personal element which pervades it. Like the artistic and philosophical novelist, the author has narrated just enough of his own journeys to invest the story of India with his personality, while the subjects of discussion arrange themselves naturally in the progress of the history.

The name of the book is a very happy one, derived, as the author tells us, "from the Greek Megasthenes, the first writer to reveal the inner life of India to the western world." But the contents of Indika must chiefly claim attention. Some thirty years ago a distinguished Methodist scholar, addressing an Annual Conference, said, to the surprise of most of his audience, "Africa is the continent of the future." Events since that time have in part justified what then seemed like a very precarious prophecy. Africa is attracting the attention of the religious and political world to an extent which would have seemed impossible even a quarter of a century ago. From present

By John F. Hurst,

*Indika. The Country and People of India and Ceylon. D.D., LL.D. With Maps and Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1891.

indications, however, it seems probable that India may claim. to be the "continent of the future."

The India of to-day is a new India, penetrated with new ideas, and manifestly going forward to a new and proud destiny. The changes which have taken place since Robert Clive, in 1757, at the battle of Plassey, won for England that magnificent empire of which England's queen, Victoria, is now the empress, have been marvelous. In order to appreciate these changes the early India must be studied. No prognostication of the future of India can be made without a knowledge and recognition of these changes and of the causes that produced them. The history of its progress is unfolded in Indika. The table of contents indicates the wide range of topics of which the author treats. The antiquity of its civilization, the changes in its government, the varied forms of religion which have controlled its vast multitudes, the new religions which have arisen to replace the old, the social changes which have taken place, the past achievements of Christian missions in that benighted empire, the conditions and possibilities of the people, all mark out India as a field of study which must hereafter form a part of a liberal education.

India at once presents itself to our consideration as a field of study and of action. There are many things to commend it to the student of history. There can scarcely be found anywhere a subject more full of stirring incident and of opportunity for research than historical India. This department is treated by the author with marked clearness, and is placed as a kind of background to the further discussions. The early history of India throws light upon its present condition and possibilities.

There is to India a prehistoric as well as an historic period. There were long periods of which we know almost nothing except from its mythology and its implements of war and peace. The remains of the early inhabitants give no trace of any thing but the most primitive civilization. They were ignorant of literature, and, so far as we know, of any means of transmitting thought by writing. A warrior class, in part savage, they had no desire to transmit records of themselves, and thus they have left few traces either of their civilization or of their religion. Indeed, in this respect the primitive inhabitants of India resemble the primitive inhabitants of all countries, not excepting our

own. The mythological period of India is not more surprising than the mythological period of Greece, of England, of America. These primitive inhabitants, like our American Indians, yielded to the superior power of the Aryan race, and have generally disappeared or else have maintained themselves without power or influence.

The invasions of India during its historical period have been remarkable, both as regards the invaders and those against whom they fought. Eleven invasions are mentioned in Indika, but not all have had an equal bearing upon the history of this remarkable country. The people of India are the descendants of a vigorous race, and their possibilities are to be judged by the achievements of their race in other lands. The Aryan civilization has made its impression wherever it has gone, and its possibilities must not be overlooked even when they have been overshadowed, and perhaps suppressed, by inferior influences.

In the employment of a true historical method Bishop Hurst unfolds the successive conquests of India at every stage of the book. It is not possible to understand the life and character of a people without a knowledge of their government and of the political changes through which they have passed, such as is here given. The Aryan invasion is the first, and one which the author emphasizes throughout the entire book. Its influence appears again and again as one traces the progress of India. The Aryans are shown to be the real makers of Europe, and in their return to India they but return to the land of their early achievements and conquests. Their advance into India was one of three movements which went forth from the central Aryan home, probably the Pamir plateau and the region surrounding the sources of the Oxus. The later history of that part of India designated as the Panjab has its roots in this great invasion. It was not so much a conquest as the acquisition of a permanent possession. The author sets forth in a few sentences the far-reaching effects of the halting of the Aryans at this part of India. "They halted in the Panjab, and founded settlements along the banks of the Saraswati, a small river between the Jamna and the Satlej. Here they became famous. It was in this territory, including the North Behar of the present Hindustan, that the Aryans created the rich Sanskrit language, produced their immortal bards and sages, and developed that wealth of poetic literature which

must forever hold a firm place in the family of the world's great epics. This is the country which bears the name of Brahmarshidesa, the Hindu's Holy Land. It is his Palestine.

The Brahman or priest rule was an evolution from the Aryan conquest. It is one of the striking proofs of our innate relig ious conceptions that the natural tendency of superior minds is to develop the idea of priest and sacrifice. The advance of Greek culture and civilization led to the multiplication of their gods and goddesses. The fixity of the idea is seen to-day in the position of the priestly order in the old lands. In England the Archbishop of Canterbury ranks next to the royal family on state occasions. The Brahman became the chief caste, and retained its position for fifteen centuries. The priestly period produced the Rig Veda and other works which have exercised so wide an influence upon the mind of India. This period was a long succession of priest-kings, in some regards like Melchizedek, whose relationship was both priestly and sovereign. The religious element, however, appeared more fully in the Buddhist period, which began B. C. 543 and lasted to 1000 A. D.

The expedition of Alexander was the chief feature of the Greek conquest of India. The victories of Alexander were more than conquests by forces superior in numbers, in arms, and in training; they bore along with them the greater victories of peace. In fact, the political supremacy of Greece disappeared, but traces of her intellectual conquest still survive. Greece left upon India the impress of her art, her science, and her literature. The author happily designates the movement of Greece against India as the visit of one Aryan brother to another:

For ages there had been no direct intercourse between the Aryan wanderers in Europe and their kinsmen in India; each, widely separated in the world, was working out its destiny. The two groups were strangely alike, however, whether studying astrology on the plains of Delhi or rearing the matchless Parthenon at Athens, or building on the banks of the Tiber a city destined to rule the world. Each scion of the Aryan family was intense in its search for truth, for framing law, for occupation of the land, for government of men. Greece was fragrant with Indian associations. The brothers long separated seem to have maintained a subtle sense of relationship. When he (Alexander) led his army from the Dardanelles, and never rested until he reached the Indus, it was the visit of one Aryan to another after centuries of separation. It was warfare, but it was that of brothers.