In truth, taking Dr. MacDonald at his word, that the old symbol which was held as secret and not printed or written, but was handed down orally by tradition and verbal teaching, was simply the Apostles' Creed substantially as we have it to-day, which, after the days of Constantine and the favorable winds of heaven that gave the Christians might and liberty to fly over the whole world with a feeling of freedom in their wings: that this symbol was our Apostles' Creed amended and re-edited by saint Athanatius if you please, it is plain that the so-called discipline of the secret was merely transient, accidental, conditioned by or on the pagan surroundings of the word of God—not permanent, not an esoteric Christianity known and to be known only by bishops or priests—but an open word of God shining in the face of the whole world. The Eternal Word made flesh and dwelling among us— the Radium and radiating luminary of all men of all eternity. In a word the early Christians, teachers and taught were cautious at first; timid, reticent- for fear of unjust tyranny and persecution, but when the detective pagan was tied and silenced there was no longer any need of such nonsense as an esoteric and exoteric Christianity, and it seems rather far-fetched ecclesiastical pomposity on the part of MacDonald to lug it in and make so much of it in this twentieth century of Christian light and freedom.

I understand that it may have seemed to the author necessary to magnify what he calls the "discipline of the secret" in order to make strong his ground as against Harnack and others that the reason why they do not find the whole Apostles' Creed written in full in the earliest manuscripts of Christendom is that it was not then written and was not, because of an apostolic agreement that it should not be written, but I think it far more dangerous to the faith to magnify this agreement, provided there was one, into the foolish notion that there was or that there is to-day an esoteric and exoteric Christianity than it is to adhere to the simple truth of Catholic Christian tradition and say that we believe in it, which Harnack & Co. do not and are not expected to until by other reasons and forces, as happened to Saul of Tarsus, their blinded eyes are opened and they see something of the superiority of the beauty and constancy of Catholic faith as compared with the poor, halt and maimed, and lame, and hideous, and ugly and crippled duplicities of their own insincere and stumbling thoughts and lives.

In various places throughout Dr. MacDonald's book there are instances of weakness, sometimes of his own and sometimes of others: mere fanciful notions of conceited and over-pious and superstitious souls all bearing on this "discipline of the secret." It seems to be sort of blinding disease of his mind, as for instance on page 60 where he credits St. Augustine with defending o.- justifying this discipline of the secret as illustrating and fulfilling in some sense the Old Testament prophecy: "This is the covenant that I shall make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will give my law in their bowels, and in their hearts will I write it." In tokin of this, he, that is Augustine, adds the symbol is learned by ear, nor is it written on tablets or any kind of material, but in the heart!

To such weakness may the greatest minds descend, when under the fascination, the hypnotism of a wrong a foolish idea.

The very glory of the Old Testament prophecy was and is in its prophetic splendor and breadth of humanity, which sawT or seemed to see the brighter days of human freedom and enlightenment when the priest and the old law would not be needed to exhort men to know the law and the Lord, but when all should know the light and the law since the very essence of light, the Radium and central soul of God had shone upon the face of the whole earth and was become part of the very vitals and heart and mind of mankind.

I do not say that the perfect flower of this bloom of Heaven has yet transfixed or transfigured the world, but to dwarf the splendid prohecy to the meaning of the "discipline of the secret" or hiding of the Christian faith from the pagan enemies of the same and for reasons of prudence or safety is to belittle the scriptures to the merest opportunism of hack politicians such as Loubet or Roosevelt. Away with such nonsense. No amount of learning can excuse it or make it sane.

The same sort of sophistical bombast under the guise of apparent erudition is found in other passages of this book where the strong and natural and penetrating utterances of Jesus relative to casting pearls before swine are made to serve and excuse the same "discipline of the secret." It is all folly to twist the great words of God in Christ to such petty and mere ecclesiastical uses. Besides, if the so-called "discipline of the secret" were so deep and far-reaching, so absolute as to have been foreshadowed and prophesied in the noblest words of Christ and the Hebrew prophets we should expect that the meaning of these words ended in such fulfillment, and that the esoteric secret of prudence and temerity would, like God Himself, abide forever. That the Apostles' Creed, and many others, too numerous, in my judgment, have long since been written and printed and blazoned on the walls of fame seems evidence enough that they at least were not a part of the supposed esoteric secret of the Catholic Christian faith. Drop such fanciful and foolish stuff, Dr. MacDonald, and use your wellstored powers of reason for the application of Christ's light to human eyes and not for the hiding it from the souls of men. The best part of the Doctor's book is in the middle of it where he grapples in earnest with the presumptions, errors and assumptions of Harnack & Co., and fires red hot shot into the camp of the enemy; and there are some concluding sections on the evolution and meaning of the term Catholic that are worthy of the fine scholarship, and the able reasoning powers of this gifted author.

The Rector of Hazlehurst, as defined by Dr. Gilliam, is a fine fellow, of good blood, and his career was luminous of good works and sound doctrine, but he was a little too steadily serious, his attacks of neuralgia were a little too opportune, and the opposition of his bishop and his fellow clergymen was a little too damnable, offensive and killing to admit of "Father Martyn's" longevity hence he proved a martyr to neuralgia, love and the despicable conduct of his superiors in the ecclesiastical fold.

Dr. Gilliam is a good writer; his pen has the touch, and leaves the impression of realism in its work but we are not inclined to believe that he will ever set the river on fire by writing such serious novels. The book is good, as we once said of Lippincotfs Magazine, many years ago, but edited for a public that does not exist. There are serious people in the world, people who are still loyal to truth and honor—not the old-time honor, as we now say— for really there never was and never will be but one kind of honor and truth and trueness of soul in this totally depraved planet, and spite of the rigidity of Calvinistic interpretation of total depiavity even to the verbal kind, there are still honorable, chaste, true, sweet and noble men and women in the world and lots of them, but they hardly seek or care to find in a novel elaborate dissertations on politics, the all-round and silly degradation of the negro race or the neuralgic or other idiosyncracies of comparatively mediocre clergymen and bishops or their rascally and worldly assistants and vicar generals.

We all know that such vermin exist, but who wants to settle down to a work of fiction, presumably for pleasure, to find himself entangled with a lot of promiscuous ecclesiastical intriguing and church gossip?

It is too late now to be of any service to Dr. Gilliam or his readers to say that a novel whose opening sentences deal formally with the theological differences or distinctions between the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius may go to limbo or purgatory for readers, where said gentlemen may still be asserting themselves for all the modern reader of novels knows or cares, nor do we ourselves think the opening very winsome or catching. Better at once to have told the straight story of the duel between John Martyn and Colonel Henry and then have introduced the presumptive rector of Hazlehurst, and the reader would readily have seen what noble influences on the part of his bishop led to said Bishop's first and last infamy. This is all the more provoking because the reader will find as he or she approaches the close of the story that Dr. Gilliam knows of what stuff human passions are made and is able, if he settles to it, to work these into situations and complications that hold and fascinate the human mind.

As a matter of fact all that Dr. Gilliam says in Hazlehurst regarding and in adherence to the principles and actions of human honor, all that he says in his left hand definitions of the tree status of the negro race, all that he says in condemnation of the lack of principle in modern political and social life; and ail that he says of the moral obligations of ecclesiastical officialism, Anglican and other, has been said and is being said in this magazine over and over again, and had the Doctor's dissertations or prescriptions even in stronger form appeared in this or in any other periodical given to the proclamation of religious and moral truth and honor, they might have brought him fame and financial remuneration, though that may be doubtful, but to put them into a novel in these days of Hall Caine and Humphrey' Ward is to fall behind his imperious predecessors because he has not their heresies to make him popular in a world of thieves.

All the great novelists have, in their way, been moralizers as well as entertainers. There never was a purer gospel preached or a more elaborate sermon than you may find in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward has done some elaborate if false theology in her various yarns, but, ye gods, these were people of genius, whose written words were and are among the treasures of the modern mind. The same is true, in lesser phase, of the writings of Ouida and.Marie Correlli, and again supremely, of Scott, who has whole sections of the veriest padding of learned and false verbosity, and Dickens and George Eliot and Cooper and the whole fraternity of novelists in all languages, and we all read heaps of theology, moral philosophy and denunciation of the criminal aristocracy of vulgarity, duplicity and hypocrisy in Dante, Tasso, De Musset, and Hugo, as noted; in Goethe and Schiller, in Shakespeare, Wordsworth, the Brownings and Tennyson, but their dissertations are clothed and radiant with genius and the light of beauty, of flowers and of supreme poetry.

We do not object to novelist's moralizing any more than a poet's or a preacher's, but he must have the winged touch of power to win and hold his readers' attention, to drive his moral home.

We do not say that Dr. Gilliam has not this power, but it seems to us that with the facts and theories and possibilities at his disposal, and with his real gifts as a writer, he should have made better use of it all.

We congratulate him on his principles and send our regrets that he has not made a more fascinating story.

****** In thesedays of the passing of the girl child, it is a pleasure to find that some one still thinks it worth while to write sweet and wholesome stories to delight the girl hearts that remain. Such a story is Belinda's Cousins. A Tale of Town and Country. By Maurice Francis Eagan. H. L. Kilner & Co., Philadelphia.

Mr. Eagan certainly loves and understands children to be able to write so into their lives, and with the heart of a naturalist—that is, the heart of a poet, he understands and loves "all out doors ;" otherwise he would not see and know the changing tints of color and feeling, manifest all the way up and down from flowers to the heart •of a dog. William Henry Thorne.

GLOBE NOTES.

Within the past twelve months a good deal of lively interest has been revived in the reputation of Thomas Carlyle, especially his reputation as a "husband." On this matter the world never had any right to be informed or to express an opinion—ninety per cent, of the data necessary to the formation of any just judgment 01 opinion on that question being of necessity hid from the blinded and injudicious eyes of the curious world. The civilization of our generation, however, has been aptly called "newspaper civilization," and the life of the average newspaper is in depicting the sores by which all civilization has been cursed and crinkled since Mrs. Eve, of Eden fame, grew too intimate with some other gentleman besides her husband. It is a lively subject for comment from Adam to the Vanderbilts, and a man's domestic troubles will always be of interest to the women and the newspapers.

The so-called revelations of the skeleton in Carlyle's closet were made some twenty years ago by the publication of Froude's Letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Froude was trusted by Carlyle, but proved himself unworthy of that trust, and his books, though all the more interesting to newspaper civilization on that account, were one sided, unjust and utterly untrue to the memory and reputation of the great man he undertook to defame.

During the last twelve months the question has been revived, as we said, and especially by some injudicious parties, who fearing that Carlyle might permanently suffer from the shadows cast upon his fame by Froude, have published various other letters of Jane Carlyle's which depict her first, as having on the whole a most devoted husband, and which prove, secondly, that Mrs. Jane was, as is seen in her letters descriptive of her kitchen relationships, a most talkative, complaining, unstable virago, a good deal of her time.

The foregoing, also, is about the position of articles of mine published in one of the leading dailies of Philadelphia in review of Froude's books at the time they were published, which articles afterwards appeared in my first book, Modern Idols, which book, as known to most intelligent readers acted at the time and has for many years acted as a sort of counter irritant to Froude's onesided exposition of the Carlyle episode.

Time and again it has been suggested to me to republish the