The appearance of the last product of Dr. Cheyne's pen offers occasion to review briefly his work, and to estimate it as far as is now possible, bearing in mind that the significance of a scholar's work is not always clearly visible till some time after he has ceased to be active.

From the time when I began to make a study of Confucianism, it has been my growing conviction that no antagonism should exist between Confucianism and Christianity. The two religions, like two persons, should be friends; and as two persons, who are friends, differ in mien, physique, temperament, thought, manner, and occupation, so these two religions, while differing in many characteristics, ceremonies, and the consciousness as to what is right and what is wrong, should be friendly to each other and helpful to each other, through agreement in those spiritual ideas which are essential and fundamental, through the reverential realization of the common source of all truth and goodness, and through aspirations after higher things, an enlarged vision, and future perfection, which these religions, along with the best in all lands, expect ere long to see fulfilled.

Though the object of business is money-making, its essence is service. Facts in support of this conception face us on every hand. For example, follow through the day the most typical of all citizens, the suburbanite. A cook serves him with breakfast, his town with a sidewalk, an eager boy with a newspaper, an engineer with safe conduct to the city. “Bag carried, sir?” is his welcome there. Thereafter both necessities and luxuries are everywhere thrust upon him—collars, fish, custard pies, vacuum cleaners, pyramids of oranges and of apples vigorously shone on anonymous trousers. A street car takes him to his office-building, an elevator to his office, cleaned for him in the cheerless hours of darkness by a woman on hands and knees. Throughout the day a stenographer and office-boy do his bidding. At lunch a restaurant serves him. When evening comes, superabundant theatres seek to entertain him. No socialist, however ardent, can conceive greater eagerness to serve. The very streets are congested with people bent on serving one another. The activities produced by charitable agencies are in volume as nothing by comparison. There is, however, a stern condition. The recipient of this service must pay for it. With rare exceptions, ability to pay can come only from the recompenses of service. The service of business is reciprocal.

Professor Kent has undertaken to provide English-reading students of the Old Testament with a complete library of hand-books for the study of the contents of that great collection of Hebrew writings, which shall be of scientific value; not necessarily presenting new and original research by the author, but representing the best results of modern scholarship. The present volume, the fifth in this series, deals with the lyric poetry of the Old Testament, including songs of lamentation, songs of love and marriage, and a variety of oracles, triumphal odes, and national songs. All of these together, however, constitute but one-fifth of the total sum of Hebrew lyric poetry here dealt with, four-fifths consisting of the Psalms. It is especially Professor Kent's treatment of that collection of hymns, constituting not merely far the greater part of Hebrew lyric poetry quantitatively but also far the greater part of it qualitatively, which I propose to discuss in this article. As Kent says in his preface, the Psalms “are the real heart of the Old Testament. In them the innermost soul of the Jewish race is laid bare.” Not only this; they are “the link that binds the Old to the New Testament.” They have played as large a part in Christian as in Jewish worship. They have been translated for Christian use in all kinds of forms into almost every tongue, and an enormous literature has grown up about them. From the modern standpoint, however, they “have been to a certain extent neglected.”

The neglect of Pascal by the English-speaking world today is little short of amazing. Within the last decade France has produced literally scores of studies of his life and thought; but, with the exception of a book by St. Cyres and an essay by Paul Elmer More, there has been scarcely a sign that we were conscious of any special relation between the spirit of our own age and that of this seventeenth-century genius. Yet Pascal is indeed a man of the present, and a study of his multiplex personality has never been more pertinent than it is today. Geometrician, experimental physicist, biting satirist, literary artist, keen-sighted moralist, devout believer, philosophical sceptic, man of the world, ascetic recluse, the problem of the balance and inter-relation of these selves is still waiting a completely satisfactory solution. How was it that the geometrician and experimental physicist could be a pronounced supernaturalist? How was it that the almost cynical man of the world could become the devout recluse? What relation can we find between the sceptical doubt of the possibility of knowledge and the obedient acceptance of the dogmas of the church? With what consistency could the rationalistic critic of Jesuit morality be the challenger of all philosophic creeds? How could all these conflicting interests keep house together in the same frail tenement and present the semblance of a unified life? Perhaps they could not, and his death in his fortieth year was the outcome.

The morbid emotional self-consciousness of such a journal as David Brainerd's was not likely to find imitation in the active seaport society of Salem. But journals were kept there. Hawthorne began one at the tender age of twelve with the motive of self-improvement in expression, and the practised ease he gained appears in the later note-books, which are cherished illustrations of his grave and graceful style as well as of the artist's propensity to transmute experience into symbol and dream. The Salem boy doubtless did not know that his most eminent elder townsman was an indefatigable diarist, jotting down in careless, awkward language matter not meant for an imaginative version of life. Certainly too the older Salem diarist was not recording his spiritual condition. The Reverend William Bentley, a short and portly clergyman, living an unhampered celibate life, was wont to close days of phenomenal industry by hasty and incisive records of event and comment. After his vigorous walk in the early morning he had stood at a desk all the forenoon working on sermons and correspondence, on manuscript text-books in science or languages, on scripture commentaries, local history, critical reviews of books read, on bi-weekly summaries of home and foreign news to be printed in the newspapers, on parochial records minutely exact as to family occupation and personal circumstance.