"Ecclesiastical Institutions" begins with a short restatement and re-enforcement of the ghost-theory of the origin of religion already laid down in the first volume of the Sociology. It is Interesting to note how much new confirmatory evidence has been rapidly accumulated during the intervening period; and Mr. Spencer therefore wisely chooses most of the fresh Instances by which he strengthens his case from works published since the appearance of his earlier volume. In one of these in particular, the Rev. Duff Macdonald's "Africana," conclusions almost identical with Mr. Spencer's own have actually been arrived at by a Scotch missionary in the heart of Africa, in apparent total ignorance and independence. and without a passing glimpse of their ulterior implications. From the origin of the religious idea itself, hero assigned to the belief in a soul, and consequent ancestor-worship, Mr. Spencer gradually passes on to the evolution of ecclesiastical or hierarchical systems. Beginning with the medicine-man, as the propitiator or averter of hostile ghosts, and the priest properly so called, as the propitiator and attendant of friendly ghosts—the family gods or manes—he proceeds to trace the gradual development of the organization which results with increasing culture from the last of these two classes of functionary. Descendants, ho shows, are the first priests; and more especially male descendants, at least wherever the position of women has become one of marked inferiority. But the eldest male descendant in particular—in short, the head of the family—tends to concentrate upon himself the highest duty of the priesthood. Moreover, as the chief gods In early communities are deceased rulers, the king, as their living representative, exercises the functions of priest also. In process of time, the king frequently finds the priestly offices clash with other duties, and then he delegates them to others: they are performed by proxy. Hence in most instances the origin of a distinct non-royal priesthood. The rise of such priesthoods is well shown in the case of the Flamens, instituted at Rome to replace the king during his temporary absence. As the ghost gradually develops into the god, polytheistic priesthoods of the advanced type are evolved hide by side with the evolving religion. Sometimes the Pantheon has its relative ranks assigned by conquest and incorporation; the gods of the vanquished tribes take their place amicably In the some system with the gods of the victors, but naturally enough on a lower level. Eventually the slow elevation of one great god to a position of marked superiority in the Pantheon may give rise to a gravitation towards monotheism. Thus, to the philosophic Greeks of the ago of Socrates, Zeus had almost arrived at that point of supremacy over other gods which lifts the "father of gods and men" into the true monotheistic religion, the other deities at the same time sinking to the subordinate grades in a sort of angelic hierarchy, Mr. Spencer next goes on to notice the value of the ecclesiastical system as a social bond, especially in early times, the military and civil functions of priests, and the question of the relations between Church and State, A very Spencerian chapter on Nonconformity is replete with its author's ingrained independence and individuality of character; for Mr. Spencer Is nothing if not individualist in fiber. The book ends with an ecclesiastical and then a religious retrospect and prospect where timid waverers may find much to console and to reassure them. Mr. Spencer does not see in the threatened changes of form any final menace even to religious worship in its proper essence, he anticipates that there will always remain a necessity for qualifying the too prosaic and material form of daily life by religious observances; that a sphere will still exist for those who are able to impress their hearers with a due sense of the mystery which enshrouds the universe; and that musical expression to the sentiment accompanying this sense will not only survive but will undergo further development. Finally ho concludes with the reiteration of the idea already so fully insisted upon in the "First Principles": "One truth must ever grow clearer—the truth that there is an inscrutable existence everywhere manifested, to which [man] can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.'