Iis sad to think that this, 1 the eighth volume of DanielRops's History of the Church of Christ is the last one that the author was himself to see in print, for he died only earlier this year.
It seems that the final volume of this work, bringing the story up to the present, is at the press in France, and that it will appear in English under the title of The Battle for God.
The present volume The
Church in an Age of Revolution, 1789-1780 (Dent, 45s.) has all the qualities one has come to expect as a result of reading the previous volumes; it is written in an intense and lively style which, combined with an eye for the striking incident, engrosses the reader from the beginning and leaves him wondering how on earth so many authors manage to make history seem dull.
The author has also managed to cream off the richest products from the more detailed and scholarly treatises he has consulted, which means that the general reader is saved the labour of consulting those treatises himself.
The corollary of this, of
course, is that Daniel-Rope sometimes over-simplifies the issues, especially perhaps in the intellectual field. He also has the Gallic tendency to attach too much importance to events in France. Both these failings may be remedied by reading, in conjunction with his work, the brilliant History of the Church in the Nineteenth Century: Germany, by Alick Dru.
Donald Nichol!