haustive, be found upon this great Pentecostal truth-the more full revival and development of which seems to have been the very life's blood of the times of the Reformation." (pp. 33-35.)

And then comes a concluding passage:

"To preach the Gospel as it was preached by these worthies, to treat of the nature and necessity of true conversion as they did, to portray all the hopes and fears, all the struggles and conflicts, all the joys and sorrows of this most inner life, as they felt and discoursed of it, would give scope and aim large enough for the greatest and best of our divines. And the nearer the great preachers of the Church of England in the eighteenth century came to these models, the more largely Cecil, and Romaine, and Newton, and Simeon drew from these inexhaustible resources, the more abundantly was their way strewn with the fruits of righteousness and true holiness. And our own most successful ministers, Bishops Moore, and Griswold, and Henshaw, followed by a host of only less illustrious names, our Milners, Bedells, Jacksons, and Gallaghers, sought and found the chief and most successful weapons of their ministry, next to the prayerful study of the Bible itself, and the silent, powerful, and congenial influence of the Prayer Book, in those views of conversion, of the exercises and emotions proper to a renewed nature, and of the work and office of the Holy Ghost, in that great armoury of which I am now speaking. And I am persuaded that the more we use the like weapon, the more valiant and successful, dear brethren, shall we be in fighting the Lord's battles in our day!

To shut out these topics from our pulpits, or to assign to them a subordinate and secondary place, or worse still, to supply their place with any newly vamped up theory of our own, would be to impoverish our people to the last degree of spiritual famine." (pp. 35, 36.)

"So, if we honour the Holy Ghost in our preaching and the whole manner of conducting our ministry; if we exalt His office and His work; if we feel and teach that without Him we are nothing, that of ourselves we cannot think a good thought or perform a good action of the lowest class, why, then we shall be at pains to place ourselves in harmony with the principles of His influence in the spiritual world. We shall be upon our guard lest we grieve the Holy Ghost; we shall wait for His sweet and all-powerful grace, in all the ways of His appointment-in ministering and receiving all the ordinances and sacraments of the Gospel, in the careful early religious training and education of our children, in the noiseless but perpetual application of all the appliances of social and public worship; in the faithful, searching, and pungent preaching of the word of God; and, above all, in diligent prayer for the gift of the Holy Ghost, in all His ordinary converting and sanctifying influences." (pp. 36, 37.)

Surely these are noble passages, and worthy of the place we have assigned them in our pages. May they prove to be no dead letter to ourselves! May the language find an echo in our own souls, and the Right Reverend Author have the comfort of knowing that, as by an electric wire threading the vast ocean which lies between the two countries, his own glowing words have reached many ears and hearts in the mother-land; and that the feeble steps of age have been strengthened and quickened by contact with a more vigorous and healthy religion.

Glaucus; or, Wonders of the Shore. By the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co.

THIS little work has been long on our hands; and any notice of it might seem to be fitter for summer than winter, inasmuch as it specially addresses the class of wanderers who are, at this season of the year, seeking at their home fire-side the satisfaction which they seek in the summer or autumn, by flitting to all parts of the world where health is to be found. But we are so often called to find fault with Mr. Kingsley, that we rejoice in an opportunity of saying a kind word to him, and had rather praise out of season than not praise at all.

We may begin, then, by observing, that this book might properly be entitled, "Mr. Kingsley at Home;" for here we have him in his natural element and true character-a light-hearted, good-natured, intelligent, and sympathizing man-taking upon him to exhibit a pleasant picture of a portion of his own life, and teaching others how to find satisfaction where they have hitherto found only ennui and vexation. Hundreds of our countrymen and women, at particular seasons, wander from our dingy metropolis, in quest of change and recreation, to a fashionable bathingplace. Let us look at the Author's description of at least a por tion of them :

"You know your doom by experience,-a great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with a telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade and down another, interminable reading of the silliest novels, over which you fall asleep in the sun, and probably have your umbrella stolen, while your boys deafen your ears and endanger your personal safety by blazing away at innocent gulls and willocks, who go off to die slowly-a sport which you feel in your heart to be wanton, and cowardly, and cruel, and yet cannot find in your heart to stop, because at all events the lads have nothing else to do, and it keeps them out of the billiard-rooms; and after, at night, a soulless rechauffe of thirdrate London frivolity. This is the life and death in which thousands spend the golden weeks of summer, aud in which you confess with a sigh, that you are going to spend them."

This is a vigorous picture of the highest class of these offenders. But there are others who, without sinking so low in the catalogue of disappointed candidates for happiness, are yet far from finding the salutary and cheering influence which they might on these expeditions, because they mistake the fountains at which to dip for enjoyment. For all these various classes of offenders, Mr. Kingsley has a word; and he addresses them in that true English language of which he must be admitted to be so considerable a master:

"There must be, surely, many a thing worth looking at earnestly, and thinking over earnestly in a world like this, about the making of the least

part whereof God has employed ages and ages, further back than wisdom, can guess or imagination picture, and upholds that least part by laws and forces so complex and wonderful, that science, when it tries to fathom them, can only learn how little it can learn. And does it not seem to you that six weeks' rest from the cares of London business and the whirlwind of town pleasure could not be better spent, than in examining those wonders a little, instead of wandering up and down like the many, still wrapt up in their little world of vanity and self-interest, unconscious what and where they really are, as they gaze lazily round at earth, and sea, and sky? Why not then try to discover a few of the wonders of the shore?"

The Author next proceeds to touch on these wonders, to discuss many of them, and brings to bear on the subject much reading, intelligence, vivacity, vigour; and displays many an object of interest where the idler finds nothing to occupy him, but which all would do well to examine more carefully.

We cannot say how deeply we ourselves lament to have been born in an age when no one thought of initiating the young mind in "wonders" of this class; and how earnestly we hope that parents will no longer be satisfied to give their children the education too common in our schools of all classes-a smattering acquaintance with the dead languages and an absolute ignorance of the Great Volume of Life and Providence, which is ever open to them. Mr. Kingsley's little book is well worth reading on this score. Now and then his peculiar views on deeper subjects peep out like a fish from its shell, or a rock from some softer stratum around it but rejecting Mr. Kingsley the Divine, our readers will find Mr. Kingsley the Geologist, Botanist, Entomologist-a very pleasant and useful instructor. He strongly recommends to those anxious for elementary knowledge on these subjects, among others, four little volumes of Mr. Gosse on mammalia, birds, reptiles, fishes, published, "at a marvellously cheap rate," by the "Christian Knowledge Society;" and they are works which ought to be in every schoolroom.

Mr. Kingsley himself, in the volume before us, is largely indebted to Mr. Gosse; so largely, indeed, that it might have been well to have more distinctly acknowledged the debt. But the province of discovery on these, and indeed on all other subjects, is confined to a few master spirits. Mr. Gosse himself searches for facts in the pages of others, and Mr. Kingsley draws on Mr. Gosse; and so we go on, each borrowing a good deal, and perhaps adding a little, to the superstructure of which others have laid the foundation. Such writers, in the great bulk of instances, make no claim to originality. What they do lay claim to is accuracy in facts and statements; and there is nothing to complain of as to these points in the pages of Mr. Kingsley. How heartily we wish to be able always to speak as favourably of all the Author's publications. Whoever designated him to the Christian ministry, or invited him into the field of political speculation, appears to us to have made a capital mistake. The rule, Nec sutor, &c., would have been most profitably applied. Christian ministrations, and

even religious authorship, demands a spirit of reverence, seriousness, and devotion of soul which, as it appears to us, does not belong to the writer. Let any one who doubts this, read his "Westward Ho !" As holy men, in the early ages of Christianity, were called from their fishing nets to be "fishers of men," so now it would be well to recall some constituted fishers of men to their fishing nets. And few men, within their proper sphere, could do more for the amusement, and often for the instruction of others, than the Author of this pleasant little volume.

BRIEF NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

Form or Freedom: Five Colloquies on Liturgies. Reported by a Manchester Congregationalist. London: Jackson and Walford.

In this little volume we have five fictitious conversations, carried on, in the midst of very attractive scenery, on the controversy between "forms of prayer" and "extempore prayer" in public worship. They appear to be founded on some alleged partiality to "forms," discovered by a no less eminent authority among "Congregationalists" than Mr. Binney, and to be designed to expose his mistakes. We have not chanced to fall in with the heretical statements of that gentleman to which this work refers. But we can well understand that so acute an observer is just now brought, as a Congregationalist, to a position in which he is. likely to have the advantages of a Liturgy brought home to his mind with unusual force. In the infancy of religious bodies-the season of a "first love"-when hearts are warm and men in earnest, and minds concentrated on one object, and a large and living sympathy prevails, so that the minister of a congregation is almost sure to express in prayer the general feeling,—the extempore petition of one man may answer the purpose of expressing the sympathies of the whole. But when, on the contrary, the religious spirit decays, and the common feeling is gone, and the society perhaps is split into various factions, one man cannot possibly pray for the whole. He may pray well, but he will often pray alone. Is there no reason, as far as the "Rivulet" controversy enlightens us on the subject, to fear that this is precisely the condition of many of the Congregational assemblies? In such circumstances, and especially where there are no common "articles" of faith, how great must be the value of a sound, Scriptural, unchanging, warm-hearted Liturgy,enshrining, as it does, the principles and sentiments, not of one man or another, but of our common nature! Its prayers are like

the living form of the Prophet stretched on the dead frame of the child to bring it to life.-Our Congregationalist friends will not, we fear, regard us as impartial, and, therefore, competent judges in such a case. But if they would condescend to take our advice, they will, without any doubt, adopt a Liturgy; and, as we firmly believe that no human Liturgy is likely to be framed as good as our own, we should earnestly recommend them to adopt, first the Liturgy of the Church of England, and then, the Church itself. It is no disparagement of Mr. Binney to say, that we should like him far better as a friend than as an antagonist.

Landmarks of Truth. Pastoral Addresses, Doctrinal and Practical. By the Rev. W. Dalton, Prebendary of Lichfield; Vicar of St. Paul's, Wolverhampton. Seeley. 1857.

THESE Essays contain the

substance of the Pastoral Addresses which the Author, during a period of twenty years, has published for the benefit of his flock. They are, as he tells us, a little condensed, and are so far altered, as to fit them for the more general reader. And they supply a volume much needed in the Church, inasmuch as they give us a series of Essays, clear, well digested, well written, true to Scripture, and of large practical bearing on the minds and habits of Christian men.

The subjects are--Devotedness to God; the Scriptures; the Holy Trinity; the Divine Comforter; Christian Assurance; Christ's Coming in Glory; Baptism and Regeneration; Conformity to the World; the Agency of Satan; the Rod of Affliction; the Communion of Saints; Growth in Grace; Divine Forgiveness and Ministerial Absolution; Union with Christ; the Eucharistic Feast; Grace and Glory. The book is, we think, of especial value to the young; and may be usefully distributed in our parishes.

How refreshing it is, in this age of misty divinity, to meet with an old-fashioned divine who discovers nothing to improve in the statements of the first Fathers of our Church, and a Churchman of the old stamp-loving his Church, not as the mere accidental heir-loom of his country, but as the true transcript of the Bible, Such men are the salt of the community.

Essays, Biographical and Critical, chiefly of the British Poets. By David Masson, Professor of English Literature in University College. London: Macmillan.

THESE are Essays of no common order. They abound with acute and curious criticism, and may be used with advantage by the students in "Belles Lettres." The Table of Contents refers us to "Shakespeare and Göethe; to Milton's youth; to the distinct CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 231.

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