Encyclopedias

An organization, of which the chief officers are Federal Judge* Henry Wade Rogers and Carl Elias Milliken, one-time Governor of Maine, announced that it would make every effort to produce an American Encyclopedia of Christianity. It is to be written with American pens dipped in Protestant ink.

The great Catholic encyclopedias are obvious, but probably improper parallels. At least one Catholic set treats of all manner of things, ecclesiastical, historical, scientific and otherwise, and treats of them all from a Catholic point of view. The plan of Judge Rogers' encyclopedia would seem to limit it to those subjects on which there should properly exist both a Protestant and a Catholic point of view. "Protestants will continue to trust secular encyclopedias for their knowledge of secular affairs," said one commentator.

Twelve volumes of 1,000,000 words are expected to encompass the matter of the new encyclopedia. Articles on controversial topics will be written "to record rather than to create opinion." The financing of the undertaking is under way.

The editorial board consists of : Joseph Cullen Ayer, of the Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia; Benjamin W. Bacon, of the Yale Divinity School, New Haven; William H. P. Hatch, of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge; Charles Michael Jacobs, of the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Mount Airy, Pa.; Frederick William Loetscher, of Princeton Theological Seminary; William Walker Rockwell, of Union Theological Seminary, New York; and Henry Herman Meyer, of the International Sunday School Association and Lesson Committee. Judge Rogers, now aged 70, was admitted to the Bar in 1877. He served as chairman of the World's Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform in 1893; in 1906 was President of the Association of American Law Schools; is the author of numerous law treatises; was associate editor of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia; has contributed to the American Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He has always been active in M. E. Church affairs.

*Of the 2nd Judicial Circuit, which embraces the States of Vermont, Connecticut, New York.