no such
softening touch as that. The book is of a bad sort; but of its sort
most admirable.

[10] "_Sidonie._" From the French of ALPHONSE DAUDET. 16mo, pp.
262. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

* * * * *

The Lenten season is peculiarly the time for religious books, and the
publishers have not failed to take advantage of it this year. Among the
most interesting and valuable of the new works is Dr. Gregory's
examination into the reason for having Four Gospels.[11] Why there
should be two, three, or any number more than one, or less than eleven,
is a question that has been considered significant for many centuries.
Why out of eleven faithful disciples, precisely four should be inspired
to write the history of the founder of the Church is certainly a
problem that must be worth examining. The first idea, and it is one
that has not died out yet, was that the four Gospels were so many
incomplete but supplementary narratives, and in the second century
efforts were made to improve upon the Biblical record by the
Harmonists, who tried to compile what they considered a consistent and
progressive account of the acts of Christ's ministry. They were
followed by the Allegorists, who took the vision of Ezekiel, with its
likeness of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, and applied it to the
writers of the Gospels as an exemplification of the meaning each of the
narratives was intended to have. Though they, and their modern
followers also, have not been able to agree upon this symbolical
purport, the four Evangelists have retained in art those symbolical
figures. The lion and St. Mark, the eagle and St. John are indissolubly
connected in ecclesiastical art and story. The other schools of
interpretation are, according to Dr. Gregory, the rationalists and "the
common-sense critics." His own answer to the question, Why Four
Gospels? is, that Christ had a mission to the Jews, and Matthew
presented that argument for his divinity which was best calculated to
impress that people; and to the Romans, to whom Mark was an
interpreter; and to the Greeks, to whom Luke spoke; and to the Church
at large, for whom John wrote his gospel of gentleness and love. The
Jew, the Roman, and the Greek then composed the world of
civilization--the existing society of that day--and in the Bible we
find one writer for each of these nations, and one for the whole
Church. This is certainly a rational and unembarrasse