Parallel with the main current of the Protestant Reformation there ran from the very beginning another powerful current which has always received far less consideration from historians than it deserves. Some have supposed it to be a mis-guided, if not a monstrous, undertaking. Others have considered it one more among the many “lost causes” about which history is more or less silent. Neither of these positions is, however, quite tenable. It was, like Bunker Hill in the American Revolution, “a battle lost but a cause won,” since nearly everything which these minor reformers aimed at has since been achieved or is on the way to achievement.

The rise and fall of early free-thinking societies in America offers a picture of considerable interest. The background is that of eighteenth-century deism—with the neutral tints of unbelief; the high lights are furnished by the fires of the French Revolution, the shadows by the dark fires of reaction. Across this canvas march many figures—rationalists like Franklin and Washington, ardent innovators like Jefferson, and a host of lesser characters—Frenchmen like Genêt and his Jacobins, Anglo-Americans like Paine and Houston, plain Americans like Elihu Palmer, with his Principles of Nature, English reformers like Robert Owen and his sons with their liberalizing communism; and ever opposing this army of radicals, the conservative elements—heads of colleges, leaders of the bar, and, as particular defenders of the faith, the clergy of New England.

The approaching tercentenary of the founding of Plymouth incites, not to say compels, a review of the remarkable developments and departures from the doctrines of the fathers that have taken place in these three hundred years and calls for a conscientious consideration of what these changes ought to lead to in theological and ecclesiastical readjustments. It is a task which overawes as well as invites and one in which there is need of wide coöperation.

Through the pages of its Mittheilungen, of which 55 numbers appeared prior to 1915, the German Orient Society has kept its members informed concerning the excavations which since 1899 it has been conducting in the East. The more technical details have from time to time appeared in the Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen issued by the Society. That Assyria and Babylon have been a field of special attractiveness seems natural for a Society the inception and direction of which have been in large measure the work of the eminent Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch. It is due to his enthusiasm that the Society has secured such large financial support that it could project and execute plans on a scale and with a degree of thoroughness not seen before in the Babylonian-Assyrian territory. The friendly relations between the German and Turkish governments have likewise greatly eased the path of the explorer.

The most interesting contribution to New Testament criticism in recent times has come from a scholar in another field. Professor Torrey, a student of Semitics and particularly of the Aramaic, the language of the common people in Palestine before and after the Christian era, has propounded a new theory regarding the Book of Acts. Chapters 1 1b —15 35 are thought by him to have comprised an Aramaic book written about 49 or 50 A.D., which Luke later procured in Palestine and translated as faithfully as he was able, at the same time adding the remaining chapters himself in Greek on the basis of his own knowledge and investigation. The two parts of the book are accordingly designated I and II Acts, respectively. The evidence for the hypothesis is primarily linguistic. A striking series of Aramaisms and of mistranslations which can be plausibly corrected on the basis of the Aramaic, is found in I Acts, while in II Acts the reflections of Aramaic idiom are rare and instances of mistranslation are wholly lacking. The literature of the subject is not yet large, but a careful résumé and discussion of the new theory has appeared from the pen of Professor Foakes-Jackson. Since he questions the validity of Professor Torrey's more important deductions—conclusions whose correctness had been accepted almost without qualification by the present writer—a further consideration of their claims to credence may be permissible.