Few figures in the story of the rise and establishment of Christianity have drawn so much attention as Julian the Apostate. The emperor who attempted to overthrow the church and reestablish the ancient pagan faith has from his own day to this been bitterly attacked by some, and as stoutly defended by others, until he has become almost a legendary character. Whether monster or tragic hero, his brief career has inevitably called forth an enormous literature in which every shade of the Christian and the pagan points of view is represented. Professional scholars and men of letters, attracted by a number of different aspects of the emperor's life, find rich material in the problem of his curiously mixed personality and in the spectacle of this last concerted; attempt to revive dying paganism. The manner in which the pagans responded to the attempt, and the way in which the church combatted this attack upon it, are alike subjects which will seem to every student to offer valuable lessons. Scholars realize both the difficulty and the importance of a just appreciation of these problems, and the effort to assay them properly has produced studies of the highest value.

Father Tyrrell is one of the foremost exponents of Roman Catholic Modernism, the attempt to reconcile Roman Catholicism and modern culture. Roman Catholic Modernism is not a system, a coherent whole proceeding from a philosophical foundation, not a body of doctrine, but rather an “orientation,” a “method.” It does not form a school, but rather consists “of a number of individual attempts to set forward a revision of traditional orthodoxy.” Such attempt is made by Laberthonnière, LeRoy, Loisy in France, by Murri, Fogazzaro in Italy, and von Hügel and Tyrrell in England.

The name of John Hus is the symbol of the Czech Reformation. Through him the reform movement in Bohemia and Moravia was linked both with the activities of John Wyclif and with the coming of Martin Luther. The close connection between Wyclif and Hus is sufficiently known. In the polemics against an English adversary of Wyclif, John Stokes, Hus stated that he was greatly attracted by Wyclif's endeavor to bring all men back to God's law, and especially the clergy, so that they would renounce all ostentation and secular power in the world to live the Christlike life like the apostles. Martin Luther knew some Latin writings of John Hus, especially his treatise De Ecclesia, and approved of his views. In his disputation with Dr. Eck in 1519, he defended Wyclif and Hus against the attacks of his opponent, to the great satisfaction of some Czech students who were present in Leipzig and spread throughout Bohemia the news of his zeal. There is a miniature in a Czech manuscript of 1572, where one can see Wyclif striking fire, Hus lighting a candle from the spark, and Luther waving a flaming torch; it shows that the Czech Hussites were well aware of the affinity between the doctrines of Wyclif and Hus and of the influence of Hus on the first German reformer.

Gerald Massey, once hailed by Landor as comparable to Keats, to “a chastened Hafiz,” to Shakespeare when at his best in his sonnets, has earned the reward of forgotten prophets. This poet, who espoused the cause of chartism in the England of his day, who worked for the common people, who helped shape democracy, was eclipsed by Tennyson, his contemporary and rival. Massey, who came to the defence of F. D. Maurice with these lines:

God bless you, Brave One, in our dearth,

Your life shall leave a trailing glory;

And round the poor man's homely hearth

We proudly tell your suffering's story,

brought to America the seed of the social gospel. It was this same Massey whom George Eliot met and admired in London and later portrayed in Felix Holt, the Radical.