Volume 53 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY APRIL 1871 (continued 9)

The career of Harold Erle is well told. Certain scenes are portrayed with pictorial power. There are tender touches of consummate grace, and emotions, events, and sacrifices are narrated which show how fertile this unwelcome theme has become in the hand of an accomplished writer.

Martha. By William Gilbert, Author of 'Lucrezia Borgia,' &c. Hurst and Blackett. 1871.

In the conduct of this story Mr. Gilbert has not stinted his readers in the matter of time. We are furnished with the family history and domestic details of four, if not five, successive generations. Near the commencement of the story we are introduced to a wealthy young spendthrift, who is startled by losses on the turf into propriety, thrift, and marriage. The closing pages of the novel bring us acquainted with the great-grandchildren of this worthy. An extraordinary number of prosy and uninteresting characters—many of them mere dummies—try the patience of the reader. With aggravating minuteness circumstances which have no bearing on the story are laboriously detailed. About a dozen different illnesses or accidents are portrayed at such length as to suggest the notion that a hospital clerk had nefariously introduced into the author's manuscript some pages from his medical note-book. The oracular twaddle of the medical adviser who figures throughout the story is redeemed from common-place only by the presentation of a rather interesting psychological problem which, we presume, may be stated thus: Is it possible on purely physical, or at least subjective, grounds to account for the belief entertained by an otherwise rational person that the phantoms of her departed relatives continually visited her in the great crises of a chequered life? We presume that Mr. Gilbert intends to suggest a strong affirmative. The subject of these hallucinations, called Martha Thornburg, is the only character of the story who possesses the minutest tittle of interest. She is the impersonation of unselfish consecration of life to the good of others, and on two separate occasions in her long life, at considerable intervals from each other, she is represented as enduring the very extremity of human suffering. She becomes a lightning-conductor of all the accumulated misfortune with which the devil of the piece has charged the thunder-cloud that spends its fury on this ill-fated family.

There are two villains, at least, among the dramatis personæ so utterly unredeemed by a single ray of goodness as to despoil them of all human interest. The one apparently belongs to the genus rattlesnake, the other to the genus hyæna. Bigamy, fraudulent bankruptcy, forgery, destitution of natural affection, detestable cowardice, attempted fratricide and murder, are a few of the peccadilloes of the more refined devil, who at last dies in his bed; the other, we are thankful to say, hangs himself. The vigorous, prosperous, generous brother of 'Martha,' as well as many other characters, are very faintly sketched, and the principal, if not the sole, interest of the story consists in the misguided goodness of 'Martha,' who covers herself with the suspicion of complicity with the miscreant who had been throughout the curse of her family. However, the mystery is cumbrous in the extreme, and the solution of it by no means artistic. We certainly cannot congratulate Mr. Gilbert on a successful use of his undoubted powers; but we are glad to know that, after all their vicissitudes, Martha Thornbury, her brother, his nephew, and the wife and family of the latter are all doing well. Their furniture is excellent, their wardrobe complete, their bracelets, ornaments, and toys abundant; and we earnestly trust that should any illness or accident befall them, Dr. Wilson will be at hand, not only with skilful treatment, but with ample explanations of all the pathological phenomena.

Dorothy Fox. By Louisa Parr. Strahan and Co.

It is vain to pooh-pooh love stories, so long as the passion itself rules the world so much as it does; the thing that provokes the protest of sensible people is, that love stories are-often so ineffably foolish, as indeed are people who are in love. A thoroughly good love story, high-minded, true-hearted, and sensible, is about as good a service as a novelist can render to her generation. To inculcate noble principles, and inspire noble feelings in the pursuit of the passion upon which the chief social happiness of the world depends, is a work worthy of the highest genius, and demanding the gratitude of all who wish well to mankind. 'Dorothy Fox' is a love story pure and simple. Dorothy is the daughter of a Quaker of the strictest sort, a wealthy hosier, destined to marry Josiah Crewdson, also a well-to-do tradesman; but, as even the primmest and most dutiful Quakeresses will do, she takes it into her pretty head or heart to fall in love with Captain Charles Verschoyle, a poor cadet of a good family, whose mother, Lady Laura, is bent upon both him and his sister making good matches. Charles reciprocates Dorothy's love, and will not marry Miss Bingham's fifty thousand pounds. While Audrey, the sister of Charles, instead of marrying as she ought old Mr. Ford, the millionaire parvenu, perversely falls in love against her own intention with Mr. Dynecourt, a poor barrister of ancient lineage. How Lady Laura schemed, and old Mr. Fox was scandalized; how wise and generous old Mr. Ford was, and how noble Josiah Crewdson—his disagreeable sisters notwithstanding—how charming Patience Fox was, and Grace, and John Hanbury, and how beautiful and refined Quaker-life may be, and often is, the authoress has told very charmingly. The characters of Charles and Audrey, with their glaze of worldly selfishness, which melts away like hoar frost under the heat of pure love, leaving an innate and uncorrupted nobleness, are very cleverly delineated; so is Harry Egerton, the rough old squire, with his kind, manly heart.

The story is a very pleasant and a very wholesome one. We trust that Miss Parr will again present to us pictures of Quaker interiors, with which she is so well acquainted. In them her strength lies.

On the Eve: A Tale by Ivan S. Tourguéneff. Translated from the Russian by C. E. Turner, English Lecturer in the University of St. Petersburg. Hodder and Stoughton.

Rather more than a couple of years ago (British Quarterly, Oct., 1869) we directed the attention of English readers to the novels of Tourguéneff, in an article in which a detailed account of 'On the Eve' was given. We need not, therefore, do more than refer our readers to what we then said about this very charming little story, which paints Russian life from the interior with the hand not only of skill, but of genius. Its social freedom surprises us, and its indications of easy social vices startle us. Ellen, the heroine, is a very beautiful creature. The translation reads smoothly and brightly. Mr. Turner seems to have done his work well. We are glad to possess this work of a great artist in an English dress.

Marquis and Merchant. By Mortimer Collins. Three vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Mr. Collins in this new novel has aimed to portray two of the great social classes that constitute England, and the two that are, perhaps, in more active rivalry, if not antagonism, than any other, and to show that the prejudice is not chiefly with the higher. The Marquis of Wraysbury, whose hereditary seat is at Ashbridge, is a favourable representative of what we are proud to designate our noble aristocracy. Wealthy, generous, liberal, frank, gentlemanly, he is the beau ideal of his class. His son, Lord Waynflete, the hero of the story, is the inheritor of his father's virtues, with a freedom from class conventionalities which is his own, and which permits him, as quite a thing of course, to marry a poor governess.

Mr. Mowbray, who buys an estate at Ashbridge and builds there a splendid mansion overpowering in magnitude, luxury, and appendages of garden, conservatory, &c., and which quite dwarfs the more modest belongings of Ashbridge Manor, is a Manchester millionaire; also a favourable representative of his class—keen, clever, generous, but with some drawbacks of class prejudice and obstinacy, which Mr. Collins paints with an evident gusto. He is the rival of the Marquis in spite of the latter; and the story is made up not unpleasantly of the history of their rivalries, with the issue thereof. Much of the subsidiary delineation is very good. The interiors at Ashbridge Manor, at Mowbray Mansion, at the Orphan Institute, at Mrs. Gutch's, and at delicious Wyvern Grange, are cleverly sketched, in these well-selected contrasts. The subordinate characters; that clever woman, Miss Pinnock, great in Johnsonese; the Bohemian lawyer, Terrell; the learned, gentlemanly recluse, Métivier, full of gipsy and all other lore; and a dozen others, are also admirably delineated. The novel is deficient as a work of art, but only a very clever and accomplished man could have written it. It is somewhat Bohemian in itself, and has an unpleasant vinous flavour—allusions, characterizations, or eulogies on wines occurring perpetually, as if the chief good of man were to have a good wine-cellar and to be a connoisseur of good vintages. The book is, moreover, an odd mélange of all conceivable things; one chapter is devoted to a criticism on Tennyson, another to a criticism on Dickens; verses apropos of everything and nothing abound. Mr. Collins has a marvellous Ingoldsby facility for running off rhymes, and when prose fails him or wearies him, he takes to verse. A diagram of a game of chess, an algebraic equation, and no end of classical quotations, are kneaded like currants into the dough of Mr. Collins's cookery. Not only has he been at a feast of languages, and stolen the scraps, he has evidently carved the dishes for himself. The story is, as we have said, not so well constructed as it might be. It is not always in good taste; it rumbles and rollicks along; but it is very clever and very amusing. It is less melodramatic than Mr. Collins usually is, and is, we think, the best book he has written.

The Green-Eyed Monster. By Kay Spen. Smith, Elder, and Co.

The title of this little book indicates its character. Hugh Barrington falls in love in a railway carriage with Adela Gwynne, a blue-eyed Welsh girl, and marries her. She is of a preposterously jealous disposition, and perversely interprets countless little incidents as justifying her jealousy. The story details the working out of these feelings and their disastrous issues, and the ability of the writer is shown in her psychological knowledge and skill. It is in this point of view very clever. Of course incidents occur with preternatural consentaneousness, and people act and feel in a very infatuated way, setting common sense at defiance, else how would novels get written? But Kay Spen has managed her materials well, and has written an interesting story with a very wholesome moral.

Jasmine Leigh. By C. C. Fraser-Tytler. Strahan and Co.

This is a very dainty little story. It is written in an autobiographical form, and narrates the history of a young girl blossoming into womanhood and love, who is abducted by a rough and sordid wooer, whom, nevertheless, she learns to pity, if not to love. It is written with a delicate touch, and is full of graceful and refined feeling. If, as we surmise, it is a first work, it is full of promise.

Her Own Fault. By Mrs. J. K. Spender. Hurst and Blackett.

Mrs. Spender writes with great care and with considerable strength. Her story is well constructed, and the characters are marked by strong individuality. The story is a stormy one. Sara, who is a very fine creation, is 'a beautiful embodied storm.' Indeed, the defect of Mrs. Spender is, that her strength is not sufficiently calm. Every character is wrought up to the agony pitch: Sara, when she has accepted Rosswith Maxwell—Bryan on the night when he learns his rejection—Lawrence Routh in his suppressed intensity—Charley in her passionate sisterliness—all are wrought up to powerful and exaggerated passion. Mrs. Spender might say with the American young lady after dinner, 'I guess I've piled it on.' The story, however, is vigorous and original, although it is not a very pleasant one. Everybody is to be pitied. Poor Bryan is left with a sentence of death recorded against him.

JUVENILE LITERATURE.

Among children's books of the past Christmas which reached us too late for notice in our New-Year's Juvenile Section, are two or three, altogether too remarkable to be passed over. 'At the Back of the North Wind' (Strahan), and 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood,' both by George Macdonald, are two books almost sufficient by their excellences to mark an epoch in juvenile literature. Excepting 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' no recent work that we can remember is worthy of being compared with the former. In no other of his many books has Mr. Macdonald shown more strikingly the power and delicacy of his imaginative genius. The blending of sober history with the most Puck-like fancies—the underlying thoughtfulness of both—the inlaying of wise reflections, subtly hinted or delicately touched—the blossoming into poetical beauty of almost every position and teaching—the light, graceful hand with which the whole is carried on—the deep, spiritual meanings that transfigure the lightest incidents—altogether constitute a fairy tale the like of which we have rarely seen, and which is as suggestive to the mature as it is amusing to the juvenile. We know youngsters in the nursery who, if they could not literally recite it by heart, would infallibly detect the alteration of a single sentence. Mr. Macdonald has attained to that perfection of excellency which understands the heart of a child. He has made 'Diamond' immortal. 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood' (Strahan), is altogether different in conception, feeling, and style. Mr. Macdonald's affluence of fancy is, with perhaps an equal exercise of imagination, subdued to the plain matter-of-fact, no-nonsense-about-it, autobiography of a school-boy. The sympathy with boy-nature is as perfect as in the other volume is the sympathy with child-nature. The narrative is bright, generous, and true—the exact tone of a noble-hearted boy, who has, however, to speak of some of the troubles and sorrows of life. Mr. Macdonald, however, never lacks humour. His description of Mrs. Mitchell, his father's sour housekeeper, and of the Dame School to which Ronald was sent, as well as of Kirsty and the experiences at the farm, is rich and racy in a high degree. Kirsty tells some capital kelpie and other Scotch stories and legends. It is a beautiful picture of childhood, teaching, by its impressions and suggestions, all noble things. 'Chamber Dramas for Children,' by Mrs. George Macdonald (Strahan), are four little plays, good as Hannah More's Sacred Dramas, and amusing as the stories of Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, out of which two of them are constructed. They are cleverly done, and will doubtless do duty in many an acted charade. The 'Tetterby's' is founded upon Dickens's Haunted Man. The 'Snowdrop' is new to us. 'The Boy in Grey' (Strahan), by Henry Kingsley, which appeared in Good Words for the Young, together with the above, was thereby subjected to a severe ordeal. It can ill bear the comparison. Instead of the translucent fancies of Mr. Macdonald, it is turgid and confused, and when it would be aërial, produces the effect that sculptured clouds do. Its allusions are often beyond the range of a boy's knowledge; its nonsense limps, and its wisdom is ponderous. We have found it very difficult to understand Mr. Kingsley's meaning. 'Lilliput Lectures,' by the author of 'Lilliput Levée' (Strahan), is again perfect in its way. The lectures are on all sorts of things—social and religious, physical and metaphysical, artistic and commercial. The writer tells us that he writes for no particular age, but aims generally at a childlike way of putting things. Some of the things put are high and mysterious; but then youth has wondrous dreams and speculations, and the happy simplicity of the writer helps youthful thought to climb. Each lecture winds up with some verses such as only the author of 'Lilliput Levée' can write. 'Choice Poetry for Children' (Religious Tract Society), is a small selection of religious and moral pieces by modern writers—of course, of unequal merit, but wisely and suitably chosen. 'The Pearl of Story Books' (Nelson) is a collection for children of Bible narratives in Bible words. 'Mrs. Montmorency's Money,' by Emma Jane Worboise (Clarke), belongs to minor fiction rather than to juvenile literature. Its moral is that 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' As is always the case with Miss Worboise, it is carefully written, and there are clever descriptions and scenes of pathos in it; but it is overlaid with moral, and not so successful in its plot as some of her tales. It is, however, a wholesome and readable story, and its moral is as timely as it is unexceptional.

Brevia, Short Essays, and Aphorisms. By the Author of 'Friends in Council.' Bell and Daldy.

Most of the writings of Mr. Helps are Brevia. His books are made like Armstrong guns, of welded pieces; and the process would not be a very violent or destructive one that resolved them into the shape of these fragments. We can well imagine them to be not so much chips as prepared blocks for larger works, which the architecture did not admit of, and which, therefore, the author has wrought into independent art forms. They are brimful of thoughtfulness and practical wisdom; always genial, often humorous, they make up a table book of aphorism and apologue, of colloquia, and short essay, independently conceived and gracefully expressed—which among living writers it would be difficult to parallel. They remind us most of Whately; only Mr. Helps is more terse than he. Sometimes reams of discussion are gathered into half a page; sometimes a single sentence contains seeds for reams of discussion. Mr. Helps has given us a volume of 'Aids for Reflection,' which is worthy the study of the most desultory. Most of these short essays and aphorisms have appeared in Good Words. We quote one sentence—'Some persons, instead of making a religion of their God, are content to make a God of their religion.'

Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain. By John Ruskin, LL.D. Sold only by G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent.

In these letters Mr. Ruskin seeks to teach the workmen and labourers of Great Britain some political economy which we are commonplace enough to think fallacious, and some history which we are not Vikings enough to think otherwise than mischievous. But we are in full accord with him in his desire to lighten the national distress around us, and to exterminate the yahoos of civilization; and if he can show us, as he seems to think he can, some sure method of doing both or either, we will abandon Mr. Mill, and will take our history from Mr. Carlyle. In the three letters already published we have not been able to discover any proposal leading to action, or, indeed, leading to anything at all, except weariness and vexation of spirit. But we are perhaps even now on the verge of the promised land. Mr. Ruskin has become so practical of late years that we are inclined to think he has made a real discovery. But he seems in no hurry to announce it, and delay is naturally tantalizing.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY.

Essays, Theological and Literary. By Richard Holt Hutton, M.A. (Lond.) Two vols. Strahan and Co.

These volumes are likely to take a high place in English literature, and to measure and expound the influence which their author has for many years exerted on the higher thought of our generation, through the periodical press. He has submitted a selection of his more elaborate essays to final revision, and has brought them together with much skill and felicity of arrangement. The two volumes are, in fact, two separate works of exceeding interest, the one bearing on the highest forms of modern literature, and the other on the theological and philosophical speculations of the last twenty years. The polish and finish of the revision have excised the genial humour and delicate satire which have characterized some of Mr. Hutton's critical efforts, but they have not altered the substance or modified the tone of these remarkable papers. In almost all of them it is easy to trace the hand of the accomplished publicist, who has acquired the faculty of seizing one main characteristic of the poetry or philosophy, political career, or moral tendency he is wishful to examine, and having made himself master of this, is resolved to establish or illustrate it at his leisure. He decides on a good working hypothesis to account for the composition of a great poet, or the spirit of a remarkable book, and leisurely sits down to transform his hypothesis into a true induction. When Mr. Hutton brings Wordsworth, or George Eliot, or Ernest Rénan, or Henry Rogers into his field of view, he seems to say to himself, 'some explanation is possible of this congeries of spiritual phenomena,' and he forthwith attacks the problem with the enthusiasm of a naturalist, and often with the penetration of a true philosopher. He exhibits great insight, and his speculation is always worthy of attention, but it too much resembles the bar of sunshine gleaming through an aperture in a shutter, which throws an intense light on some portions of a painted chamber but leaves other portions in hazy and dubious shadow. We heartily thank him for the vivid image he has drawn, and for the key he has often given us to the intellectual treasures of some of our greatest modern thinkers; but we do not feel that he has adequately solved all the problem, or has definitely formulated the mental life or calibre of either the poets or theologians whom he passes in review. Thus almost all that he says of Wordsworth is nobly and truly said. There is consummate ability in his reply to Hazlitt's 'thorny praise,' in his comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson, and in his method of proving the thesis with which he starts, viz., that the charge against Wordsworth, of 'profundity and transcendentalism,' sprang from the same root as that which declaims against his 'unintelligible fuss about common feelings and common things.' Still, in his anxiety to establish this position, Mr. Hutton appears to us to overstate the frugality of Wordsworth's genius, and to exaggerate the poet's habit of making a very minute modicum of incident furnish all the material he needed for the exercise of his imagination and the development of his vast subjective energies. The entire series of ecclesiastical sonnets, as well as those which were dedicated to national independence, cover a prodigious field, and make no inconsiderable demand upon the reader's knowledge, as well as upon his sympathy. In the description of the retreat from Moscow, Wordsworth surely chose a theme big enough for the historic imagination of Scott, and he dealt with it in an as objective a fashion, with Dryden's fire and Shelley's pomp of style to boot. Again, in Mr. Hutton's profoundly interesting paper on the 'Poetry of the Old Testament,' there is a principle which is full of force, and our author's working hypothesis will and does explain a great deal. He urges with eloquence and beauty of illustration, that 'faith in the glorious destiny of the nation, and the overseeing providence of God as the power which had wrought out that destiny,' are the two roots of the Hebrew traditionary poems, and he sees these roots in all the efflorescence of the glorious tree; but while there is truth in the remark that this double idea underlies and absorbs the significance of all the Hebrew poet's references to the beauty of nature, and much also of the tragic human interest of the life that was being lived by the prophets, there is some niggardliness in failing to acknowledge how the very fringes of the tabernacle that enshrined both the nation's destiny and the Divine presence are glittering with touches of refined gold, and how much nearer an approach the few Hebrews made to the modern conceptions of the transcendent and pathetic beauty of nature, than all the Greeks and Romans put together.

If the Hebrews rose to the stupendous idea of the universe being but the shadow of Jehovah's might, and believed that the light was the skirt of His raiment, that the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, were the work of His fingers, that the 'seven stars and Orion,' the 'sweet influence of Pleiades,' and 'the morning spread upon the mountains,' were alike declaring His glory, there is sufficient evidence in the abundance of their imagery and the sweetness of their song, that they exulted in as well as beheld the primal beauty. Interesting and demonstrative as Mr. Hutton's essay is, he leaves a range of facts unaccounted for. The gorgeous imagery of Ezekiel, when in parabolic fashion he sees the analogies between nature and national life, the idyllic, perhaps dramatic grace of the Song of Songs, and the genuine lyrical cry of large portions of the minor prophets and Psalms, seem to us to transgress the canon of our author.

One of the volumes before us consists of eighteen theological essays, admirably classified. They start from the moral and religious significance of Atheism; they proceed to show the insufficiency of the scientific and positivistic explanation of our moral relations. The Pantheistic hypothesis is displayed in its strength and its weakness. The question, 'What is revelation?' is then handled, and Mr. Maurice is vindicated and Dean Mansel demolished. In another essay the historic problems of the fourth Gospel are discussed with great candour and success. 'The principles of evidence' are illustrated in their application to the 'Doctrine of Incarnation,' which our author, like Mr. Baring-Gould, would hold, even if the New Testament should pass out of existence. Two papers on M. Rénan's recent works, and a vehement attack upon the evangelical doctrine, under the irritating title of 'The Hard Church,' are followed by an estimate of the relative position of the 'Romanists, Protestants, and Anglicans.' Several of these papers were published in the National Review, and one of them forms part of a series of essays entitled 'Tracts for Priests and People.' We acknowledge great obligation to Mr. Hutton for many of these dissertations. We sympathise most profoundly in the general estimate he forms of the position of the Atheist, the Positivist, and the Pantheist; and we are confident, after again perusing his examination of 'the historical problems of the fourth Gospel,' that though we differ from him in many details, and regret that he should find it necessary to relinquish the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, it is the noblest and most triumphant vindication in the English language of this stronghold of Christianity. In the graceful preface to the first volume, in which Mr. Hutton acknowledges his debt of obligation to Mr. Maurice, he sums up in a sentence the living principle of Mr. Maurice's writings. There, as elsewhere, too much credit is given to a key; too much of a jet of light is thrown upon a portion of Mr. Maurice's theology. We do not believe that this great and suggestive writer can be crushed into a proposition. Still it does cover much of the speculation associated with Mr. Maurice's name. It is as follows:—'All beliefs about God are but inadequate intellectual attempts to justify a belief in Him, which is never a merely intellectual affirmation, but rather a living act of the spirit, by no means confined to those who consciously confess His presence.' The paper entitled 'What is Revelation?' and part of the argument entitled 'The Hard Church,' are expansions of this principle, in vehement opposition to the philosophy of Hamilton, as it was applied by Dean Mansel to theological problems. We think that we may give Mr. Hutton credit for having made the difference between Dean Mansel and Professor Maurice more obvious than those distinguished men ever succeeded in making it appear for themselves; but we imagine that he has forced them into more irreconcilable antagonism than they are themselves conscious of, and has effected this by a slight exaggeration of the position of each disputant. We sympathize with Mr. Hutton far more than with Dean Mansel, in his general philosophical opinions; but this vehement scolding and irate horror caught from Mr. Maurice seems to us perfectly misplaced. Surely, surely the 'living act of the spirit,' by which man knows the only true God, the intuition of God by the eye of the soul, the transcendental conclusion or conviction of the whole intelligence, the bound heavenwards of the sanctified imagination, the 'real assent' to super-sensuous, extra-logical, metaphysical facts, all of which processes are aided by the facts and words of Scripture, by the recorded life of Christ, by the sublime utterances and confessions of the creeds, will not be rejected by Dean Mansel. They are differently described but thankfully acknowledged. What Mansel seems to us to imply is that these processes do not solve the contradictions which are involved in the logical effort to formulate the infinite; the knowledge they supply is approximate rather than exhaustive, regulative rather than absolute; a spiritual apprehension rather than scientific comprehension. The intuitions of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Maurice are far more numerous and intense than Dean Mansel's. Our author has more confidence in his direct experiences of truth than Dean Mansel has. The living God is more visible, more accessible to some minds than others, and these want less help and fewer manifestations to penetrate the mystery; but we do not see why Mr. Hutton should be so wrath with Dean Mansel for the position that 'the faculties in man furnish the conditions of constructing a philosophical theory of the object presented.' 'The object presented' is not the living and infinite God, but the finite manifestation and unveiling of his perfections through a certain series of human experiences. The criticism of Mr. Hutton shows that he is attributing to the words 'philosophical theory' more than it is meant by Mansel to carry. It is just because Dean Mansel cannot form a theory of the underlying 'infinite' and the 'abysmal deep' of human personality, that he is content to theorize about that which is presented in the person and voice and known history and character of a human being. It is because the infinite baffles and confounds us, and refuses to come under the formal laws of thought, that Mansel and Hamilton made a virtue and a science out of the recognition of our nescience, and would confine their theorizing to that which was manageable and apprehensible; but the entire philosophy of the unconditioned turns on the presence in our consciousness of these stupendous factors, unlabelled and untheorized. It appears to us that the conflict narrows itself to the name to be given to our personal relations with the transcendental and eternal realities in which both disputants profoundly believe; and therefore we do not for one moment think that this summation of Dean Mansel's position would be accepted by him. Can Mr. Hutton really mean that Dean Mansel would deny that we can be 'conscious of God's presence with us, conscious of the life we receive from Him, conscious of what He really is, and in the same, indeed, even in far higher sense than that in which we are conscious of what human beings are?' We heartily agree with Mr. Hutton in his denunciation of the idea that the moral nature of man is fundamentally different from the moral nature of God, that the goodness and mercy of God's being must be essentially different from the goodness and mercy in a human will, and that the 'revelation to us of the very character and life of the Eternal God' has been made by the 'purification of human vision,' and is 'the history of the awakening, purifying, and answering of the yearnings of the human spirit for a direct knowledge of Him. It proceeds from God, and not from man.' He details with clearness and force the spread of this 'revelation,' the human condition of it, and the widely diffused material of it, in the instincts and regrets, and secret hopes and fears of universal man. 'The revelation through Christ fulfilled ... the desire of all nations, by revealing the living power in man, by which human nature is wrought into His likeness.' But in his defence of this position he appears to us partially, if not utterly, to ignore the new life given to our humanity in Christ. 'Grace' seems on this theory rather to be a development of dormant powers than the conference of a new tendency, and 'Christ' to become rather the name of a sleeping but universal divineness in all humanity, which is at length realized to the conscience, rather than to be the personal source of all the life. The 'Father,' in the theology of Mr. Hutton, is a living God, as against the Pantheistic tendencies of modern science; but we are not sure—and few things would be farther from our wish than to misrepresent him—that the Christ and the Spirit of God are distinguishable from the voice of universal conscience and the hidden and better nature of the (not fallen but) ever aspiring child of the living God.

Each of Mr. Hutton's papers deserves careful study; we regret that we cannot even refer to more than one other, and this, moreover, one to which we cannot fail to take certain exceptions. It is entitled 'The Hard Church,' a 'degraded phase of the Church of common sense.' It is the Church whose logic has been supplied by Whately, whose metaphysic has been elaborated by Dr. Mansel; one of its most 'merciless and slashing captains' is seen in Professor Henry Rogers, and Mr. Binney caught its exact spirit in his lecture addressed to young persons on the possibility of 'Making the best of both Worlds.' 'Its heroes,' we are told, are 'latitudinarian but not catholic in the tone of their theology.' It has no sympathy, no heart, offers 'no divine reconciliation of contradictory yearnings;' it glories in 'hard sense,' and 'dismisses from view all those fluctuating elements of human life which do not seem deeply imbedded in the average notions of average men.' Its representatives scold away all individuality, denounce the eccentricities of positive faith, and are, in short, 'the most mischievous section of Christendom.' All this is introductory to a tremendous attack on Mr. Rogers for the pitiless severity with which he introduces a thoroughly sceptical mind, seeing no intellectual standing-place in a 'shallow Deism,' and more consistency in thoroughfaced Positivism or Pantheism, and more hope too, because he is sure that at the very bottom of the abyss, the heart will spring upward and the conscience will rise in rebellion. Mr. Hutton should remember that 'the real and deep Theism, holding by prayer, near to Christianity,' was not the intellectual position condemned by the author of 'The Eclipse of Faith;' it was a Theism that is or was in a fluent and changeable condition, a Theism that had, in deference to certain loudly-vaunted principles of reasoning, relinquished Christianity, and spoken of the moral character of Jesus—to put it mildly—with disloyalty if not with disrespect; it was a Theism trembling on the verge of Atheism, yet boasting itself to be a spiritual religion. Methods of thought may surely be harmless in some regions, and deadly in other spheres. It is not hardness but goodness which exposes the worthlessness of the method. This seems to us to have been the work of Mr. Rogers. We are not called upon to defend Mr. Rogers's strong way of putting certain things, but we think that Mr. Hutton has not shown him a more excellent way when he speaks of his 'throttling art,' and would give you to believe that he is a spiritual garotter, rather perhaps of the Antæus proportions, who has at last found a Hercules. Mr. Hutton appears to us to be too angry to see the genuine humour as well as rather grim pleasantry with which Mr. Rogers has represented the enemies of the Christianity infinitely dear to him as destroying each other. The doctrine that 'Christianity is against the grain of human nature,' is spoken of as demonstrating the truth that 'the Hard Church has a hard Master.' Nothing surely is more true than this language of Mr. Rogers, and we are astonished that Mr. Hutton thinks he replies to this estimate of Christianity by saying that Paul told the Athenians that they were 'seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.' Our author is generally quite ready to admit the complexity of human nature, the multiplicity of the forces that are moving it. The same apostle who thus spake to Athenians, said to Galatians, 'Brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the Cross ceased.' We can conceive of no more satisfactory response to the position here assailed than that so often attributed to Lord Palmerston, 'that all children are born good.' We suppose Mr. Hutton must endorse it. The paper on 'Romanism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism' cannot be discussed by us here for want of space. Its delicate insight into 'root-principles,' and formulated tendencies, is another illustration of the author's disposition to generalise, and to cast pencils of coloured light upon the parts of a theme, or of a system of thought. With the general estimate of Luther we have not much to contend against, except that no reference is made to the objects or reasons of his faith. The unlimited, ecstatic, violent confidence in an unproved, transcendental fact, with nothing but personal intuitions to guide the triumphant trust—itself a Saviour—may be apparently proved from certain table-talk of Luther, but is a very imperfect exhibition of Luther's position. Why, by implication, should all whom Mr. Hutton calls 'pseudo-Protestants' be supposed to deny the indispensable necessity of an entire moral surrender of the whole nature to the will of God? With some of those whom Mr. Hutton thus denounces, as for example, Bishop Bull and all who agree with him, faith is identifiable with moral surrender to the will of God; in the view of others, as proved by almost all the Protestant confessions, it is inseparably associated with saving trust. Where, we ask, is 'the bibliolatry which relegates the Holy Spirit to the province of explaining the Bible,' except in a small section of Scotch divines, whose hard and artificial lines have long since shown a tendency to vanish away? Mr. Hutton seems to try to take from those whose joy and crown it is to speak of trust in a present Christ their most distinctive feature; because here and there a logical theologian may use scholastic or forensic phrases in his theorizing, it is ungenerous to say that 'the passionate faith of Luther is degraded into the acceptance of an artificial contract,' or that 'the orthodox theory of substitution excludes the purifying influence of spiritual union with Christ.' The best reply that we can make to Mr. Hutton's contemptuous allusion to Dr. Candlish is to call his attention to Dr. Candlish's sermon on 'His servants shall serve Him,' and to the greater part of his Commentary on the first Epistle of St. John. Would that our great thinkers succeeded in learning more of each other's mind! There are a hundred other questions raised by Mr. Hutton on which it is tempting but difficult to dilate. We cannot part from him, however, without assuring him that we believe these volumes will gain what they richly deserve—a high place in English literature. Our remarks have been somewhat critical and dissatisfied, but we are anxious to express, notwithstanding, the exceeding admiration which we feel for these eloquent and noble essays. It is often most instructive to see how the position we occupy shapes itself to the intelligence of one who is only in partial sympathy with us.

First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth. Essays on the Church and Society. By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

This volume consists of ten essays: the first four are entitled 'The Doctrine of the Infallible,' and contain Mr. Brown's exposition of the inquiry—What is truth? a brave and full exhibition of the answer to that question given by the infallible church; a criticism of the Protestant dictum that an infallible book is adequate to the solution of every great moral and spiritual problem; and in the last place a passionate vindication for the free spirit of the possession of the true infallibility. Two essays then follow, of considerable speculative interest, under the titles of 'The Natural History of Antichrist,' and 'The Christian Commonwealth.' The volume is completed by four lecture essays on the 'Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' the intellectual, social, ecclesiastical and theological revolution which has unrolled itself during the twenty-five years of Mr. Brown's fruitful and stimulating ministry. We have said enough to indicate the comprehensiveness and multifariousness of the theme which our author has here investigated. It is as though he had taken his stand on some high promontory which overlooks a boundless sea of thought, and with well practised, almost prophetic eye, taken in the vast expanse, the rolling tides, the brooding storms of the great highway of the nations; here a very maelström of confusion and wreathing agony, where equatorial and arctic currents blend in driving mist and fierce agitation, and there a dreamy outlook of serene though glittering colour; now, the breaker and the wreck and then the ark of refuge, the busy craft, the haven of rest. Few writers of the present day appear to us to take a larger view of men and things, and though his senses seem painfully acute to the moan of distress and the shriek of the torment, yet few appear to hear more distinctly the sound of the Master's voice, or to see more clearly the triumphant form of Him who holds that ocean in the hollow of His hand.

We think this volume is unquestionably the noblest production of Mr. Baldwin Brown's pen. In refinement and elevation of style, in high sympathy with the good and the noble side of that which he condemns, in readiness to learn from his opponents, and to see himself and his own position with their eyes, amounting to what some may deem almost a dangerous concession to the misconception of the free spirit entertained by both the Romish doctor and the apostle of science, coupled with outspoken and brave utterance of unpopular truth, this volume will hardly find its parallel in modern times.

We cannot attempt more than to touch on a few points. We are inclined to think that the paper on 'The Natural History of Antichrist' is not only the most original and suggestive portion of the volume, but that it is, in fact, the pivot, or the centre of the entire argument. Our author has drawn a comparison between 'Babel,' 'Babylon,' and 'Babylon the Great,' and has shown how the hoary legend of man's first endeavour to establish a worldly and human independence of the Supreme will, found its counterpart in the subsequent efforts to produce the four world-wide monarchies of pre-Christian times, and again, in the towering system of Pontifical rule, the rise, triumph, and fall of which are seen in the visions of Patmos. He has discussed with consummate eloquence and brilliancy of touch, the analogies which link these three manifestations of the spirit of antichrist, and how God's providence has undermined them one after the other by a like energy of the individual conscience and the free spirit. The paper on the 'Christian Commonwealth' provides a delicately-sketched theory of the true relation between the governing and the Christian spirit. Mr. Brown admits, nay, contends, for the fact that the Church and the State in their last significance and highest development are one, and argues with great ingenuity that a supposed alliance between the Church and the State, as between two contracting parties, is essentially unchristian; it is, moreover, 'an exceedingly low and false conception of the true character of the National Establishment, and is quite unsupported by its early history.' He acknowledges the difficulty of realizing the Christian idea in any Christian State, and asserts 'that the Gospel has still a missionary function in every State in Christendom; men have not only to be helped to live by it, they have to be persuaded to believe in it;' but 'that the idea of a National Church whose rulers are clergy, which shall have the whole spiritual interests of the community in charge, having its own ordinances, officers, and laws, of which it is the only lawful custodian and administrator, lending a Christian character to the State by its alliance, and deriving material countenance and support from the State in return, is simply anti-Christian. The only National Church is the whole community which has been redeemed by Christ, and on which, and in which, He is working as the head of the Church in a thousand ways, of which theologians of all parties little dream.'

Mr. Brown differs from many Nonconformists in holding the competency of the public assemblies of a Christian State to deal with spiritual matters, and would prefer to have such regulation as the British Parliament might supply to religious belief and life to that of any 'spiritual synod that he is acquainted with;' but he considers that a body like the British Parliament may and must 'abstain from all attempt at legislation on certain subjects, because they know that they would only mar them if they were to touch them with their legal fingers.' He does not think that domestic sympathies and affections, the higher intellectual life of the community, or the religious life of the people, are palpably beyond the sphere of a government, but that they are beyond 'their power. One shudders to think of the costly, wasteful, pompous, grasping, titled, beneficed, wealthy and bigoted thing which has been presented during three hundred years to the English people, as the visible embodiment of His kingdom, who was the incarnation of tenderness, compassion, purity, patience, gentleness, and love. The Establishment principle, under the most favourable conditions, seems to run directly counter to the fundamental principle of the spiritual government of men as we watch it working through all the ages. It belongs to the age of stagnancy and deadness, is vested in the old and decaying order, is doomed, and must die.' The theoretical admission of competency, coupled with the trenchant disavowal of power to deal with the higher regions of the social and religious life of the people, reminds us of the ground taken for some years by a large section of the free kirk of Scotland. There is no practical difference between the views held by Mr. Brown and by the bulk of Nonconformists; his condemnation of the Establishment principle is at least the result of experience, and appears to be final.

As Christianity and the Church are the form and life of the truth, Mr. Brown has prepared the way for his discussion of both by his discourses on the infallible. The first paper, entitled 'What is Truth?' exhibits with painful intensity the anguish, even the torment that accompanies the search after this hidden treasure. Expressing, as we suppose, the feelings of others rather than his own, the signs of the times rather than his own heart-throbbings, his language almost amounts occasionally to a wail of despair: nor does he, in the discourse which is entitled the 'Intellectual Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' exonerate the Christian teachers of the present day from the charge of augmenting that despair. After clearly expounding the theory of the Positivist, and showing how in its isolation it fails to satisfy the need of either the intelligence or the heart of man, he boldly charges theology and the Church with the sin of giving to science such a representation of God as to induce it to do without him. In his extreme anxiety to do justice to the scientific spirit, Mr. Brown appears to us to do some injustice to the age-long yearning after truth which has characterized theological science. Perhaps he does not sufficiently take notice that the mental faculties which are quite adequate to secure the broadest generalizations of science are insufficient to furnish us with some of the chief data of theology. He speaks with perfect confidence of 'common ground in our Christian belief for us and the leaders of the intellectual progress of men.' We believe that this common ground will be found only when the methods of theology and the methods of science are alike seen to be incomplete; but a difference of method in the two regions there must ever be.

In the paper on 'the Infallible Church,' our author frankly admits that there must be infallibility somewhere. With high courage and honesty he traces the confidence with which the Catholic Church has entertained a consciousness of the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit, and he has done much to show how reasonable is the expectation of such a guidance and the truth that underlies the celebrated dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins; and with distinguished skill he has indicated the way in which vagueness and uncertainty have forced some of the strongest minds in the Romish Church to sigh after and ultimately to secure the definition of a Papal infallibility. Few things are more remarkable than the steady growth of this yearning in face of the proved forgeries and infinite gullibility on which the modern dogma conspicuously rests. Mr. Brown thinks that some deep necessities of human nature must be the explanation of this mystery. We believe he need not go much deeper than the ignorance, credulity, laziness, cowardice, and abjectness of the human mind, and the wide-spread incapacity, independently of the Holy Spirit, for the spiritual apprehension of transcendental truth. In his papers on the infallible book and the doctrine of Christ, Mr. Brown has shown how dependent a man with the Bible in his hand must ever be, on the spiritual presence and indwelling light of the Comforter. He may almost be said to have drawn Bossuet's rapier from its scabbard, and made some vigorous passes at the 'variations of Protestantism;' but it is not that he may turn back to an infallible Pope for guidance or for rest, but that he might fight his way past sects and churches, and dogmas and popes, into the true temple, where all who have received the fulness of the spirit are worshipping their father. As we have already said, Mr. Brown opens up so many controversies, and displays such varied culture and exceeding fairness in his treatment of these high themes, that we will now content ourselves with urging our readers to peruse the whole volume.

The Office and Work of the Christian Ministry. By James M. Hoppin, Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology in Yale College. Second Edition. New York: Sheldon and Co. 1870.

This elaborate course on homiletics and pastoral theology may be said almost to exhaust the subject. The history of preaching, the art of preaching, the analysis of a sermon in all its various parts, from the text to the peroration, constitute the first part of the homiletical manual. The second part contains a series of valuable dissertations on the application of rhetoric to preaching. The pastoral office is then examined in its divine institution, in its ideal, in the call to its high functions, and the ordination to the office. The author further discusses the pastor as a man, the pastor in his relations to society, and the pastor in his relations to the Church. Here Dr. Hoppin investigates the conduct of public worship, and under this heading such details even as church music, marriages, and funerals are included. Finally the whole question of the care and cure of souls is wisely and affectionately urged upon the student. We have never seen a more complete treatise on the question with which the author deals. There is not much room for originality, and the analytical tone of the discussion precludes the presence of much enthusiasm or fire. There is an abundance of wise, godly counsel, and a considerable reference to the literature of the subject.

SERMONS.

Sermons Preached in the Temple Church. By the Rev. Alfred Ainger, M.A., Reader at the Temple Church. (Macmillan and Co.) There is about Mr. Ainger's sermons the great charm of perfect simplicity, unconventionally, intelligence, and fearlessness. Neither in style nor in thought are they like any sermons that we can recall. They are not eloquent; or if so, it is the eloquence of a perfectly transparent medium of thought. Not a fine word or a rhetorical figure occurs in them; but neither is there anything commonplace. It is the fresh, unconventional talk of a clear, independent thinker, addressed to a congregation of thinkers. The uncultured would have no difficulty in understanding; but the colourless thought would fail long to interest such. For popular effect, it wants sensuousness and passion, and, therefore, rhetoric. Mr. Ainger belongs to the liberal-orthodox school; but he does not shape his opinions to any school. He speaks right out what he thinks, and often surprises us with fresh views of familiar texts. He is not great; but he is unconventional and earnest. In doctrine he is broad, not however in any sense that is inconsistent with what are understood by Evangelical views. The moral aspects of the Atonement—forgiveness of sins, regeneration, and the life to come—which he exhibits, are the highest truths of the Gospel; but he exhibits them with such predominance, almost exclusiveness, that he is apt to forget his own principle that the Atonement of Christ has many aspects. Thoughtful men will be greatly charmed by this little volume; they will learn from its perusal how the Gospel of Christ commends itself to all the mind as well as to all the heart of men. The sermons, moreover, are preached in the light of the thought of the present day, and are rich glimpses of great questions now stirring men's hearts.—The City Temple Sermons, Preached in the Poultry Chapel, London, 1869-70. By Joseph Parker, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Dr. Parker, also, is a City preacher; but, perhaps, the three kingdoms could not furnish a greater pulpit contrast than between him and Mr. Ainger. Dr. Parker's sermons are much stronger, but they are far less thoughtful. They are more rhetorical, but less beautifully clear. They are abrupt, striking, sensational in style, and abound with rhetorical devices for catching the ear of the multitude. Sometimes, for instance, Dr. Parker renounces the idea of a sermon, and tells a story, after the manner of the Parables. His sermons often offend good taste, and are to be excused only on the ground that the end justifies the means. Certainly Mr. Ainger could not do what Dr. Parker is doing at the Poultry.—Christ Satisfying the Instincts of Humanity. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D. (Macmillan.) Half-hours in the Temple Church. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D., Master of the Temple. (Strahan and Co.) Counsels to Young Students. Three Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge at the opening of the academical year 1870-71. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D. (Macmillan and Co.) Concerning three new books by the author of upwards of twenty volumes of published sermons, it is almost enough to say that they are his: only these sermons, while preserving the admirable simplicity and practical spiritual unction of the parochial sermons, have more of intellectual fibre. The conception of the first series addresses itself more to thinking men, and the treatment has a more thoughtful cast. Seven of these letters were delivered on Wednesday evenings in Lent, the eighth on a Sunday just after. The instincts which Christ is represented as satisfying are the instincts of Truth, Reverence, Perfection, Liberty, Courage, Sympathy, Sacrifice, and Unity. The only text of doubtful relevancy is that of the sermon on Courage, taken from the Corinthians, 'Quit you like men.' It is matter for devout thankfulness that a preacher so single-hearted, so practical, so faithful to evangelical truth, and so spiritual, should address so large a number of the learned profession on the great themes of the Gospel, and that these qualities should find such acceptance as they do. The crowds who gather round the Temple pulpit prove that preachers need have recourse neither to strange doctrines nor to oddities of manner to make the Gospel attractive. Dr. Vaughan must preach almost all that he thinks, as he prints almost all that he preaches. His sermons have the natural, simple strength and freshness of an intelligent, scholarly, and devout man. They are not made, they grow; if they may not claim the merit of great originality, they are in every wise and wholesome sense independent. There is no reason why his series of little volumes should not go on for ever, and certainly we have every desire that they should. Dr. Vaughan's devout, spirit-searching fidelity, and evangelical theology, make his books almost everything that we could desire them to be for popular religious reading. There can be no better sign of our times than the favour with which such books are received. Because Dr. Vaughan's sermons are the simple, spontaneous outcome of his mind and heart, they always have an admirable adaptation, whether to the alumni of Cambridge or to the lawyers of the Temple. He speaks with exact pertinence, and therefore with power. We are devoutly thankful that both these classes should hear such faithful, searching, loving words as are addressed to them respectively in these three volumes.—The Lost Found, and the Wanderer Welcomed. By the Rev. W. M. Taylor, M.A., U.P., Liverpool. (Edinburgh: Oliphant and Co.) A lively series of expository and practical homilies on the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel. Almost too lively at times, when the Prodigal Son is represented as departing to the 'El Dorado of his dreams,' and hopes to return a 'nabob;' but there is a dash, and force, and sweetness withal, that render the volume impressive and attractive.—Tender Herbs; or, Lessons for the Lambs. By George W. Conder. (Manchester: Tubbs and Brook; London: Kent and Co.) Few more charming volumes than this have ever been prepared for young Christians. A 'Little Bunch of Herbs for the Lambs,' the author calls them; but they have rare fragrance and beauty. Under such titles as 'The Broken Vase,' 'Thistle Gardens,' 'The Coat and the Dream,' 'The Golden Key,' 'The Shepherd and the Lambs,' Mr. Conder pours forth his affluent treasures of tender fancy and abounding affection. Underneath the almost playful tone of some of his addresses, and the genial kindness of all, there is plenty of strong masculine sense, of vigorous and noble thought, of original and novel argument.—A Practical Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in Simple and Familiar Language. By G. B. (Nisbet and Co.) Evangelical but feeble.—Life and Truth; or, Bible Thoughts and Themes. The Lesser Epistles. By Horatius Bonar, D.D. (Nisbet and Co.) In our notice of the two previous volumes of this series we have sufficiently characterized the sermons of which it consists. Dr. Bonar seems to have been guided in the selection of passages for texts simply by his sympathetic fancy. In his treatment he is somewhat ultra-orthodox, deeply spiritual, not very critical, and not very original or striking. He is closely textual, and in his frame-work of divisions, resembles some of the old Puritans, rather than divines of the present day. Eighty-five discourses, in a small volume, necessitate brevity; they are, indeed, outlines rather than compositions. Perhaps we may best convey an idea of their character when we say they resemble Chalmers' 'Daily Readings;' only they have more of a sermon-plan in them—sometimes a division or sub-division is dismissed in a sentence. Their most fitting designation would be 'Sermons in Outline.'—Symbols of Christ. By Charles Stanford. (Hodder and Stoughton.) A second edition of a little book that has commended itself to devout readers by its healthy spiritual tone of devout practical religiousness. Mr. Stanford has just that tinge of mysticism which spiritualises events, and uses emblems with unction; but he never becomes mawkish or obscure. His sermons are pure and breezy; emotion is appealed to and excited in an intelligent, manly way. Hence few more wholesome helps to the spiritual life could be named. This is a companion volume to the edition of 'Central Truths,' which we commended on its appearance a few months ago.—Sermons on Historical Subjects. By the Rev. D. Rowlands, B.A. (Hodder & Stoughton.) Mr. Rowlands' sermons are ingenious and effective. In some of them he is remarkably happy in seizing and condensing into a paragraph or two the essence of a great lesson; thus the sermon on Jacob's dream at Bethel treats—1. The 'Duality of Existence;' 2. The 'Unity of Existence.' The treatment is sometimes inadequate, an undue space being given to mere description with which imagination has a good deal to do. On the whole, the sermons may be commended as fresh, sensible, vigorous, and useful.—Sermons. By Henry Melville. Two volumes. (Rivingtons.) Sermon readers will feel a great obligation to the publishers for this cheap reprint of the sermons of one of the most effective preachers of this generation. We are not too old to remember the electrical way in which, for an hour, the preacher at Camden Chapel held spell-bound the multitudes that crowded every available corner: A severe critic might characterise Mr. Melville's preaching as somewhat artificial, and his sermons as fanciful and sometimes wire-drawn; but they are full of unction, and contain precious evangelical truth enforced in a way not to be forgotten. We hope these volumes will be succeeded by others.—Beacons and Patterns; or, Lessons for Young Men. By the Rev. W. Landels, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) These sermons, on some of the historical characters of Scripture, containing lessons specially adapted to young men, are reprinted from 'The Bible Student.' They rise to that level of popular excellence which characterizes all that Dr. Landels does, and are calculated to be useful.—The Prophet's Mantle. Being Scenes from the Life of Elisha, the Son of Shaphat. By the Rev. James Murray, Minister of Old Cumnoch. (Blackwood & Son.) An exceedingly good example of the expository preaching to which, much more than ourselves, our Scottish brethren are given. Mr. Murray, while evidently having a scholarly acquaintance with critical difficulties, knows how to keep them subordinate to popular statement and practical uses. Great good sense characterises all that he says, and regulates every touch. The sermons are Biblical rather than practical, that is, they simply furnish a running practical comment upon the Biblical narrative. Really useful preaching demands somewhat larger and wider uses suited to the practical life of our own day; the historical instance should not have larger prominence than its application.—Sermons. By Charles Wadsworth. San Francisco. (R. D. Dickenson.) We welcome this volume of sermons from the rapidly-growing and vigorous Christian life of San Francisco, where, as everywhere else throughout the States, religious provision fully keeps up with the rapid growth of the community. Mr. Wadsworth's sermons have some of the characteristics of Western life: they are full of vigour, fire, and fearlessness, but with that defective culture of form which in its excess is designated pedantry. The thought is cast in a scholastic form, the scientific illustrations are often in excess, and the style wants ease and simplicity; hard words and harsh compounds occur, and, together with this, the practical applications are too ejaculatory and coercive. Mr. Wadsworth will do better as he mellows, but his volume is able and has much good stuff in it.—Foreign Protestant Pulpit. Sermons by eminent Preachers of France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Second Series. (R. D. Dickinson). We can only adduce as vouchers for the great excellency of this volume the names of the preachers of these six-and-thirty sermons; they are Lange, Grandpierre, César, Malan, Horace Monod, Tholuck, Bersier, Hocart, Gaussen, Krummacher, Luthardt, Schwartz, Rothe, Pressensé, and Julius Müller. In addition to the intrinsic excellence of the sermons, they have the exciting freshness of modes of religious thought and pulpit presentation which are different from our own; they seem to be well translated, their flavour is carefully retained. We cordially commend them to both sermon preachers and sermon readers.—The True Vine; or, the Analogies of our Lord's Allegory. By Rev. Hugh Macmillan. (Macmillan and Co.) Mr. Macmillan combines the eye of a poet and the knowledge of a savant with the heart of a saint; while he analyses the phenomena of nature on purely scientific principles, he interprets them on the principles of a devout Christian theist. He sees in nature the wonderful ways of Him who made it; 'looks through nature up to nature's God,' and often, in virtue of his religious insight, invests familiar things with unobserved and beautiful significance. Beneath the surface of natural symbolism he discerns the religious and loving ways of a divine Creator and father; and thus, in a subtle and beautiful way, he knits together the two great departments of the one kingdom of God. In this volume he is primarily a theologian, investigating the religious meaning of our Lord's great allegory of the vine and its branches—perhaps the greatest of his self-assertions on the one hand, and of his religious assurances on the other. Mr. Macmillan here, therefore, makes science the handmaid of theology, and brings his knowledge of natural phenomena to bear upon the significance of our Lord's similes. He has, we think, a little overdone this; the religious thought is overlaid, the illustration is more than the thing illustrated; but he has thrown beautiful light upon many points of natural symbolism. Readers and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as valuable as they are beautiful. His wild luxuriance somewhat reminds us of that of James Hamilton.—Truth and Trust: Lessons of the War. Four Advent Sermons. By Henry Alford, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) These are the last products of Dean Alford's pen, the last utterances from his lips. The proof was but partly corrected when he died. We could not subject them to criticism if we would. They are 'the sound of a voice that is still,' and love for an honoured and noble-hearted servant of God, and for a dear personal friend, seals our lips in reverence. Under any circumstances, we should have only words of eulogy for them. They are, in spiritual intelligence, strength, and cogency, about the best of the many sermons that he published.—The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church; a Series of Discourses on the Epistle to the Hebrews. By R. W. Dale, M.A. Second Edition. Revised, with additional notes. (Hodder and Stoughton). We cannot but regret that Mr. Dale has not made this volume much more than 'discourses, not for scholars, but for ordinary Christian people to whom learned commentaries are inaccessible or useless.' He has in them laid the foundations of an exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews of great spiritual insight and philosophic breadth, and he might advantageously have wrought out his plan, even in successive editions, until the work had become the worthy magnum opus of his life. It is, however, useless regretting what he has not done; we can simply commend what he has done, as one of the best popular hand-books to this great and suggestive epistle that is extant. Pulpit purposes demand broad treatment and the avoidance of minute exegesis; but the broad treatment here is always the fruit of careful exegesis, good scholarship, and sound, vigorous thought. Some of the sermons are not even wrought out as they were preached; the notes thereof only are given. It is virtually what Robinson's 'Lectures on the Corinthians' are, and will scarcely suffer by comparison with them.—Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David. By Charles Vince. (Elliot Stock.) In ten discourses, Mr. Vince selects certain incidents and points in the history of David. He makes no pretension to biographical completeness, or to relative importance. Spiritual, and not biographical, reasons have guided his selections. Thus one discourse is devoted to the influence of Rizpah's pathetic fidelity in quickening David's conscience; and two to the two things which David had never seen—'the righteous forsaken, and his seed begging their bread.' The volume is a very charming one—full of delicate spiritual discernment and tender religious sensibility; the style is simple and chaste; and the quiet, natural way in which the practical side of everything is presented is very felicitous. Mr. Vince does not 'strive nor cry;' he has recourse to no feverish rhetoric or tumultuous passion; his doctrine 'distils as the dew,' and, in a searching, potent way, finds the soul of every hearer and saturates it.—Misread Passages of Scripture. Second Series. By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Very different is Mr. Brown, who is urgent with intellectual force and moral earnestness. His thought is inquisitive, aggressive, and demonstrative; his spiritual zeal takes cogent forms. He is full of intellectual surprises and unexpected spiritual motives; very independent, very instructive, very forcible, fulfilling the great practical religious ends of the ministry in a masterly, forceful way. His books are full of strong, wise, earnest words, such as place him among the noblest teachers of our day. Nothing could be more characteristic of him than these two series of sermons on 'Misread Passages.' In the second, as distinguished from the first which treats chiefly of textual misinterpretations, Mr. Brown deals with doctrines and conclusions derived from misinterpreted texts; e.g., 'The Principle of Christian Unity,' regarded in the light of the true reading. 'There shall be one flock and one shepherd,' instead of 'one fold and one shepherd;' and the true significance of the simile of the potter and the clay. We commend to special attention the sermon on the 'True Idea of Substitution,' in which, denying the theories of mere martyrdom and commercial substitution, Mr. Brown insists upon the substitution which has its character and power in Christ as the representative of the race—the true theory, as we venture to think. The volume is full of thoughtfulness, light, and power.—The Story of Job, and Meditation on Passages of the Book of Job. By Rev. Alfred Clayton Thistleton. (Nisbet and Co.) There is no distinctive character either of intelligence or strength in Mr. Thistleton's sermons. They are devout and practical, but very commonplace, abounding in unctuous words, and not over careful about exact meanings.—Sermons for the Christian Year. By the Rev. W. H. Lewis, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn. (R. D. Dickinson.) A reprint of a volume of sermons published twenty years ago. It is a poor criterion of sermons to measure them by the clock—a poor compliment when the first commendation is of shortness; but Mr. Lewis's sermons have this merit. This little volume of 500 pages contains sixty-six. Few of them could have exceeded the orthodox Episcopal fifteen minutes. We differ from many of the tenets of Mr. Lewis. Thus, from the text, 'Cease ye from man,' he teaches that we are from human corruption to expect only ingratitude and wrong, to live among men as among natural enemies. This is a very doleful and, we think, an unwarrantable doctrine. Mr. Lewis is an orthodox evangelical. He discourses in the old mechanical way. He is pious, sincere, and earnest, but he furnishes no great help for men struggling with the real difficulties of human darkness and experience. The volume is typical, and should be very useful to rectors.—The Measure of Faith and other Sermons. By Philip Colborne, Norwich. With Preface by the Rev. John Stoughton, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Mr. Colborne's sermons are thoroughly individual, as if elaborated in some solitary place, with but little reference either to theologians, critics, or conventional modes of preaching. They somewhat lack fluency, but they are vigorous and discerning. The working out of Mr. Colborne's conceptions is not always so happy as the conceptions themselves; but his little volume contrasts nobly with the vague vapid stuff that often comes before us under the guise of sermons, and is a favourable specimen of that strength of the Nonconformist pulpit which, under God's blessing, has made our churches what they are. We would specially commend the sermon on 'Christian Heroism,' and the two sermons on 'The Origin of Christian Life,' and 'God's Principle of Selection,' preached during the meetings in Norwich of the British Association.—Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, preached at Surbiton. By Alexander Mackennal, B.A. (Elliot Stock.) Mr. Mackennal's sermons combine, in an unusual degree, the freshness of an independent thinker and the power of a robust one, with the spiritual penetration of a devout man, the evangelical fervour of a believing man, and the practical urgency of an earnest man. No one, we think, can read this unpretending volume without being interested—we might say fascinated—by its manifold excellencies, or lay it down without a high estimate of its author's ministerial power. The people who listen to such a preacher are rarely privileged. The volume is one of the few that, without qualification or reserve, we can heartily commend. Mr. Mackennal has a rare faculty for eliciting the latent meanings of things without obtruding the sense of his ingenuity, or failing in broad, practical evangelical applications.—The Wisdom of the King, or Studies in Ecclesiastes. By the Rev. James Bennet, St. John's, New Brunswick. (Edinburgh: William Oliphant.) Mr. Bennet writes with much intelligence and good sense. In a plain, practical way he shapes the lessons to be derived from Ecclesiastes into a series of week-day lectures, and his book may be commended as worthy to take its place in the homiletical literature of Ecclesiastes. Mr. Bennet still adheres to the almost exploded notion that it is the veritable religious autobiography of Solomon.—Things Above. By the late F. W. French, Rector of Newtown, near Kells, County Meath. (James Nisbet and Co.) Mr. French was, as the preface tells us, an aged minister, who had entered upon his eighth decade, and who died before this little book was finished. It is a series of short chapters or lectures concerning things above—their reality, locality, character, &c.—written with devout feeling, and largely illustrated by quotations from a considerable range of writers.—Sermons and Lectures. By the late William M'Combie. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.) Mr. M'Combie was the editor of the Aberdeen Free Press, and a layman. He was accustomed to preach, chiefly in the Baptist Church, of which he was a member; and these discourses were prepared, not for publication, but for preaching. Mr. M'Combie was one of the most able men in the North of Scotland. He had much in common with Hugh Miller. His intellectual independence, vigorous thinking, manifold attainments, and cultured beauty and precision of expression, were not surpassed by any of his compeers. His 'Hours of Thought,' and still more, his 'Moral Agency,' proved, in their revolt from Predestinarianism, as commonly taught by Scotch Calvinism, both his profound metaphysical thinking and his intellectual independence. These sermons have not the finish of his own published works, but they are full of rare thoughtfulness and wisdom, and of rich spiritual feeling and suggestiveness. Their strong, unwavering faith in the sufficiency and power of the religion of Jesus to satisfy every necessity of the individual and social life of men is a fine tonic in these degenerate days. It is something to hear a man who believes as Mr. M'Combie believes speak as he speaks.—Sermons for the Times, preached at the Independent Chapel, Newbury. By E. W. Shalders, B.A. (Blacket and Son, Newbury.) Mr. Shalders has done most excellent service to the cause of spiritual Christianity by the issue of this series of discourses on the questions at issue between the Ritualist and the Free Churchman. The topics chosen by our author have been 'Baptismal Regeneration,' 'Apostolic Succession,' 'The Childishness of Ritualism,' 'Exclusiveness the real Schism.' Scholarship, candour, strength, clearness, and fine manly tone, pervade each of these discussions. We should be glad to see them circulated by tens of thousands.—The Revision of the New Testament, being a Popular Exposition of its Needs and Limits; a Lecture delivered before the Norwich Young Men's Christian Association. By George S. Barrett, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.) This lecture is admirably well done. There is a refined tone in the discussion, and a thorough grasp of the whole subject. When he was about it, however, Mr. Barrett might as well have explained a little more fully what is meant by 'The Text of Scripture.' The class addressed by the lecturer are singularly hazy on this point. It is not uncommon to meet with pious folk who, when the rejection, e.g., of 1 John v. 7, is made to depend on its absence from all Greek MSS., are ready to exclaim—'So much the worse for the MSS!' We heartily thank Mr. Barrett for his timely publication.—The Plymouth Pulpit. Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher. Third Series. (Dickenson.) The third series of Mr. Beecher's sermons fully sustains the interest excited by the previous volumes. There are the same high passion and earnest, practical love, the same brilliant touch, the ring of the same musical metal which have charmed and instructed us so often. This volume is characterized by more frequent treatment of great doctrinal themes, when liberal views are guarded by conservative love. There is a most powerful, practical, and useful discourse on the fearful theme of 'The Sin against the Holy Ghost.'

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