Methodism will through it regain her hold upon the population of our country districts. One fact cannot fail to impress every one who reads the reports contained in Appendix II. the large numbers of backsliders with whom the evangelists meet. It is matter of devout thankfulness that so many have been recovered, and that others have been deeply affected. A very pleasing feature in the reports is the frequency with which we are told-that the converts made during previous Missions are still holding fast their profession.'

The accounts given by the Army Chaplains are very encouraging. With one voice they bear testimony to the value of Soldiers' Homes. Those at Aldershot, and the newly-opened Home at Eastney, have been the means of attracting many of the men from the public-houses to the services of God's House-in not a few

cases to the service of God also. Mr. Burgess has opened a temporary Home at Chatham, but is labouring and praying for a larger and permanent building. Money and trouble laid out on such an undertaking will yield a very high and blessed interest. Next year we hope he may report the fulfilment of his heart's desire.

It will be obvious to all our readers that the work of the Home-Missionary Committee cannot be done without the expenditure of a large sum of money-much larger, alas! than is placed at its disposal; for the debt, slightly increased this year, now stands at rather more than £8,500. Much as has been done, unspeakably more is scarcely touched. As Mr. M'Aulay truly says: If to win Great Britain for Christ be the object of Home-Mission enterprise, [and what Methodist, what Christian will look for less than that?] our work is not done; it is barely begun.'

·

G. E. A.

Nine Lectures on Preaching; delivered at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. By R. W. Dale, Birmingham. Second Edition. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1878.

Second Series of Lectures to my Students. By C.H. Spurgeon. London: Passmore and Alabaster. 1877.-To produce an original treatise on preaching has become almost as hard a task as to bring forth an ExPresidential Charge to newly-ordained Ministers, marked by any startling novelty either in treatment or theme. Nevertheless, it does come to pass that, owing to the strong individuality, the intense and solemn reality and the freedom from affectation or ambition of successive Presidents of the Conference, we have, from year to year, official Charges as various and as notable as the personality of our Presidents. Even so here: Lectures by Mr. Dale on any subject, however worn, will inevitably be Dalian; Lectures by Mr. Spurgeon will, in like manner, be purely Spurgeonesque; and, therefore, both will be eagerly read, vividly remembered, and presently and permanently useful.

With all due appreciation of earlier books on Homiletics, especially the valuable treatise of Dr. Kidder, we regard Mr. Dale's volume as, on the whole, the most serviceable which has yet come in our way. Its great charm and strength is its clear, sound, strong sense. He achieves originality by sheer indifference to it and by singleness and straightforwardness of aim.

6

Seeking first the solid instruction of his hearers, all the winning accessories of style are added unto him. His first Lecture on the Perils of Young Preachers should be read by every member of that much imperilled class, especially by him that thinketh he standeth;' by the young man of conscious powers, who does not need the Yorkshireman's prayer for a 'raytherly dafted' probationer: 'Lord, give him a good concate of hissen.' The defence of dogmatic theology' is most timely, and, coming from such a man, most telling. The caveat against bringing into the pulpit one's 'theological difficulties,' and 'theological discoveries,' and 'preaching negations,' is invaluable. His denunciation of some Preachers of the present day, both Anglican and Nonconformist, who have discarded the grand old motto of the ministry: We believe, and therefore speak,' and adopted a new motto: We disbelieve, and therefore speak,' is as terrible as it is just, terrible because so just. Next in importance we should rank his Lecture on Reading, and his advices on Style, at the close of the Sixth Lecture. In naming the qualities of the style to be cultivated, he unconsciously describes his own: 'Clear, strong, racy, picturesque, musical.'

On some points, however, we cannot altogether agree with him. We think he much underestimates the helpfulness to the hearers' perception and memory of

natural, clear, striking divisions of a discourse. His earlier remarks on 'Religion and Science,' Apologetic Preaching,' and 'How to Meet Modern Doubt' needed the correction of his later and, in our judgment, much more apposite observations. Whilst we quite agree with him that there is no cause for panic in the present irruption of doubt; yet we cannot but see great danger in the opposite feeling, that of security; especially in view of the deadly earnestness of the enemy,-for an enemy it frankly is, and must be frankly met as such, and especially in the fact that the foe has already gained a footing in the pulpit as well as at the desk. The disbelieving scientists and speculatists have, in our time, as in all former ages, begun the contest. Mr. Dale sounds the right note in 'No Concessions to Unbelief,' and in his just strictures on accommodating apologists,' and the preachers of a 'goodnatured God.' One of the very finest parts of the book is that which comes under the heading, 'Did St. Paul temporize? Very rarely, Mr. Dale is carried by his strength of feeling on some particular subject into an outrageousness of denunciation strangely out of harmony with his natural tone: as when he declares with regard to such dereliction of 'public duty as the declining to vote at an election: It is as morally disgraceful as for a clerk to claim his salary from his employer after leaving other men to do the work for which his employer pays him.' (Pp. 256-258.) The Lecturer's invariable mode of addressing his Ministerial audience as Gentlemen,' instead of using, like Mr. Spurgeon, the grave, old-fashioned Biblical brethren,' we should regard as an affectation in any other man.

But we

religiously exhort all young Preachers to read and inwardly digest this manly, sensible and devout production.

Mr. Spurgeon's book is partly confirmatory of, and partly supplemental to, Mr. Dale's. Mr. Spurgeon, too, makes a gallant stand in defence of positive theological teaching, in his invaluable Lecture on The Need of Decision for the Truth. But whilst both are at once intensely practical and fervidly devout, Mr. Spurgeon is the more inward and spiritual. Mr. Dale, when once the steam is up, darts onward with the swinging impetus of an express train: whilst the nearer relation between Mr. Spurgeon and 'my students' (may they be his students in more senses than one: students of him, of his style and spirit!) gives a more leisurely pace and a homelier colloquial tone to his advices, as that of some confidential, sympathetic, heart-enkindling talk by the way. There

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is an archaic simplicity, a patriarchal gravity, a Baxterian earnestness about his counsels, with which his humour, now broad, now subtile, does not jar. Sometimes, however, he loses sight of his own judicious caution: If any brother naturally boils over too soon, let him mind that when he does so he scalds nobody but the devil.' For example: after saying, Those who use a liturgy I judge not; he forthwith pronounces the grave, yet thoughtless condemnation : Rather than seek Divine aid, they will go down to Egypt for help. Rather than be dependent on the Spirit of God, they will pray by a book.'

We heartily, devoutly congratulate young Ministers on the almost simultaneous appearance of two such works as these. It seems that preaching, so much poohpoohed of late, is not quite out of date yet.

Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Gospel of Matthew. By H. A. W. Meyer, Th.D. Translated from the Sixth Edition of the German, by Rev. P. Christie. Revised and Edited by F. Crombie, D.D. Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. It were superfluous to repeat our high estimate of this great exegete expressed in our reviews of his Commentaries on the Acts and the first Epistle to the Corinthians. He reminds one of two of the four symbolic living ones in the Apocalypse, combining the patient laboriousness of the ox with the keen vision of the eagle. But, in this volume, as in his first volume on the Acts, the brain-bewildering rationalistic infection works.' Hence we find absolute supernaturalism in strange companionship with the most capricious mythical hypotheses. Witness his treatment of the pilgrimage of the Wise Men to Bethlehem. It would have been well if Dr. Murphy had been retained to do a like good service for Meyer to that which he rendered Zöckler in Lange's series of Commentaries; by showing, in his quiet and conclusive way, the inconsiderateness of Meyer's legendary hypotheses. These Exegetical Handbooks are rendered much less handy by being so overladen with the fantastic mis-interpretations of far inferior writers, quoted only to be exposed and exploded; so that page after page is crowded with the mere curiosities of commenting; till, asking for the hall of genuine exegesis, one finds oneself in a pathological museum of morbid and aberrant criticism. A highly interesting Biographical Notice of Dr. Meyer by his son is appropriately prefixed to this volume. We heartily deplore the premature death of this giant commentator.

Studies in the CL Psalms: their Undesigned Coincidences with the Independent Scripture Histories Confirming and Illustrating both. By Rev. A. B. Fausset, M.A. London: The Christian Book Society; Hodder and Stoughton. -A thoroughly good book, only less original than the cognate works of Paley and Blount, because the writer had the advantage of their example. Besides its apologetic value, its utility as a Commentary is very considerable. One of the best parts of the work is the defence of the superscriptions of the Psalms against the shallow objections of recent destructive criticism.

A Popular Exposition of the Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia. By E. H. Plumptre, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.)-A reprint from the Expositor well worthy of separate publication. The word 'popular' hardly applies to all these Lectures. Dr. Plumptre's forte is, to use his own phrase, 'Textual Criticism; hence the critical generally prevails over the homiletic element. The last Lecture, on the Epistle to Laodicea, is, by far the best; is, indeed, spikenard very precious.' It would be very useful as a distinct pamphlet. Dr. Plumptre throws considerable light on these Epistles, notwithstanding all that had been previously written. We do not, however, find it possible always to agree with him : for example, his attempt to identify Timothy with the Angel of the Church at Ephesus, seems to us very unsuccessful. It is, in fact, one of those startling bits of Apocryphal biography of which he is so fond. His assertion that the mystical marriage relation is referred by Scripture always and exclusively to the union of Christ with the collective Church, never to that of the individual believer, and his consequent condemnation of sermons and hymns in which the latter is assumed, is inconsistent with such passages as 1 Cor. vi. 17; and with the clear teaching of the New Testament that the union of Christ with His Church grows out of His union with the individual believer. Still worse, exegetically and therefore theologically, is his interpretation of washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb''steeped in the spirit of sacrifice of which the blood of Christ is the symbol.' We also think it high time, at least since the triumphant vindications of Godet and Luthardt, that such uncertain positions should be abandoned as that implied in the words, If we accept the Fourth Gospel as either being by St. John, or as, at least, representing the characteristic

features of his teaching.' Are such questions never to be regarded as settled? Is the wantonness of destructive criticism to keep the Church in perpetual uncertainty?

Revised English Bible. The Holy Bible, according to the Authorized Version, compared with the Hebrew and Greek Texts, and carefully Revised, with Supplementary Notes, References, etc. London: Printed for the Editor by Eyre and Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen.-J.G., Westminster, the respected Editor of this handsome and erudite volume, it is not difficult to identify. Under him have worked four other learned men: on the old Testament, Drs. Gotch and B. Davies; and on the New, Drs. Jacob and S. G. Green. Awaiting the completion of the work of the Revision Committee, they only attempt to correct what may be considered indisputable errors and inadequate renderings in the present English Bible; and in the New Testament to give also the more important emendations of the text which have been adopted by the best editions of the New Testament.' The names of the four distinguished scholars who have undertaken this laborious task excite high anticipations. The first, the veteran Hebraist, Dr. Gotch, is a member of the Revision Committee, and Dr. Davies was up to the time of his recent and lamented death. The other two are also well known; Dr. Jacob, as till lately Head Master of Christ's Hospital; Dr. Green, by his very useful Handbook of the Grammar of the Greek Testament. Their aim too was modest and their plan well-considered. The result is a book which will be of real service to the Biblical Student. It is not, however, altogether free from incongruities and defects. They say, 'The peculiar rhythm of the language of our English Bible has been, as far as possible, preserved.' Yet more modern and less musical renderings have been too often adopted without the slightest advantage to the sense. We cannot quite understand the principle of retention or rejection which has been acted

upon.

For instance, the subscriptions to the Epistles are given as integral parts of the Canon. It was to be expected that great deference would be paid to the texts of the oldest Uncial MSS., but we are glad to find that this deference has not been slavish; some respect has been shown to strong internal evidence. We cannot but think that, considering the comparative fewness of these MSS., too much authority has been conceded to them. We hope that both the Revision Companies will derive some serviceable hints from this

volume. The Tables, Maps, etc., add much to the value of the book. The page giving a summary of Jewish history during the period between the Old and New Testaments is a feat of vigorous compression without injury to the life and interest of the theme. Bible-readers will find this a useful book.

A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament, together with an Index of Greek Words, and several Appendices. By Rev. E. W. Bullinger. London: Longmans, Green and Co.-This book supplies a real and widely felt want, its great advantage being the combination of the Lexicon and Concordance. It is a work of very great labour, but not labour in vain: the author deserves the gratitude of Biblical Students. We have more than one good Greek Concordance, but the lexical element was wanting. This volume by no means exemplifies the proverbial dryness of a dictionary: like some older lexicographers, such as Gussetius in Hebrew and Parkhurst in Greek, our author introduces interesting matter opportunely and briefly. The worst of it is that he has embraced some strange eschatological notions which betray him into the adoption of arbitrary and violent interpretations of Scripture. Thus the theological theorizer dominates, under such words as Heaven and Hell, the lexicographer. One example must suffice. To escape the destruction to his hypotheses dealt by the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he maintains that in this parable our Lord avails Himself of false Jewish notions of the unseen world to represent 'the transference of Jewish privileges to the Gentiles'! To make this out he reBorts to a style of interpretation almost incredibly absurd. He says: The gulf is that which prevents a Jew, as such, i. e., while he continues in the Jewish faith and under the old Covenant, from being a Christian, and also will not allow Christians, as such, to unite with Jews.' In plain words, no one can pass,' even if he 'would,'' the great gulf fixed,' so long as he persists in stopping on the side on which he at present finds himself.

We hope that a new and less expensive edition of this very able work may be soon called for, from which these reckless vagaries of exegesis may be eliminated. At present the very excellence and handsomeness of the entire get up of the book -of which it is well worthy-must limit its accessibility.

The Wines of the Bible; an Examination and Refutation of the Unfermented

Wine Theory. By Rev. A. M. Wilson. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co.The author announces himself as 'a teetotaler for more than thirty years,' whose 'personal habits, associations and sympathies have all been in favour of the unfermented wine theory.' 'Recent discussions on the wine of the Communion' have 'forced' this question upon his mind. Leaving his readers to judge of the conclusiveness of his argument, we will only say if well-directed and indefatigable research, thoroughness of investigation, and fairness and acuteness of reasoning can entitle a man to a hearing, then every one who wishes to ascertain the facts of the case, and to be put in possession of the requisite data for forming a correct judgment on the question, should by all means read this book. The only fault we can find with the writer's tone and spirit is a slight tendency to twit his opponents, which manifests itself towards the close of the book.

The Levitical Priests; a Contribution to the Criticism of the Pentateuch. By S. J. Curtiss, Jun., Doctor of Philosophy, Leipzig. With a Preface by Professor F. Delitzch. Edinburgh: T. and T Clark. A book of real excellence and value, both as a defence against destructive criticism and a contribution to the exposition of the Pentateuch. Its spirit is manly, loyal and devout, and its handling of a perplexed subject scholarly and workmanly.

Sir Titus Salt, Bart. His Life and its Lessons. By Rev. R. Balgarnie. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1877. -Sir Titus Salt was one of the most súccessful men of business, and one of the most munificent philanthropists of this century, and the world had a right to expect some biography of him. Yet his life is in many respects a most difficult one to write. His biographer has had at his disposal little more than the accounts of his achievements given in various newspapers, magazines, etc.; for Sir Titus kept no journal and wrote few letters, and was a man of little speech but much work. His best memorial is to be found in the fine town of Saltaire, near Bradford, with its model mills, good houses and splendid public buildings, and in the many religious and charitable institutions which were established or benefited by him. Mr. Balgarnie has, however, succeeded in writing a very interesting book, which will be specially useful to those for whom it is principally intended-young men entering upon business-life. The volume is throughout a striking com

mentary on the texts, 'The hand of the diligent maketh rich,' and, 'He that watereth shall be watered also himself.'

It would be easy to point out several blemishes in the literary execution of the work, but doubtless these are due to the fact that the book has been written somewhat hastily and amidst the pressure of other engagements.

Homes and Home-Life in Bible Lands. By J. R. S. Clifford. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1878.-Our young people will find in this prettily bound and profusely illustrated little volume not only profitable but very enjoyable reading. These simple descriptions of Eastern life and customs will help to an intelligent appreciation of many portions of Holy Writ that would otherwise be obscure.

MRS. HANNAH JONES died at Gloucester, August 1st, 1876. Having enjoyed the privilege of the careful training and consistent example of pious parents, her early life was of a strictly moral character, and she was from childhood the subject of religious impressions. It was not, however, until she had attained the age of eighteen that, after severe struggle, she gave her heart entirely to the Lord and joined the Wesleyan-Methodist Society. She had been induced by an elder sister to attend a week-night Prayer-meeting, and, after wrestling some time, was there enabled to cast her soul on Jesus. So great was her rapture that she engaged audibly in prayer and praise, and became so absorbed in the exercise that she was with difficulty persuaded to retire from the house of God.

Her

No sooner had she decided for the Lord, than she entered heartily into His service, attaching herself to the Sunday-school at Beverley where she then resided. persevering labours involved no small amount of self-denial, owing to the onerous domestic duties, which, on account of the helplessness of an invalid father, devolved upon her. In after years, when comparatively free from domestic ties, she found ever-increasing delight in Sunday-school work. During a residence with a relative in London she pursued her labours amid the agitation of 1849-52. Both chapel and school were nearly deserted and were ultimately sold. The zeal of the few who continued their labours is, however, at the present time amply rewarded by a flourishing cause in the same locality.

In 1861 Miss Cass was married, and undertook the care of a young family left motherless. This new relationship developed fresh capacities for usefulness, which served to exhibit still further the Christian excellencies of her character. Her daily study was to make a truly happy home; yet, while ardent in her attachments, she conscientiously endeavoured to subordinate them to higher claims. Shortly after coming to reside at Gloucester Mrs. Jones' health became so much impaired that she

was compelled to relinquish her loved em. ployment in the Sunday-school; but she cherished a pleasant remembrance of the many happy days thus spent, and never abandoned the hope of being again permitted to engage in it. In those works of charity and usefulness which were still within her reach, such as the Dorcas, Benevolent and Sick-Visiting Societies, she took great and active interest.

Her last illness was characterized by excessive exhaustion, which she bore with great patience and resignation. The little she was able to say gave testimony to her firm trust in Christ. In suffering she frequently exclaimed, 'Heavenly Father, help me, shield me!' which latter expression seemed emphatically to indicate the kind of help she needed. On one occasion she exclaimed with inexpressible sweetness, 'The Lord is my sun and shield, and "my exceeding great reward." ." The reading to her of some of her favourite hymns lighted up her countenance with heavenly brightness; among them were: 'O! happy day that fixed my choice;' 'I will not let Thee go, Thou Help in time of need;' 'Jesus, my strength, my hope;' Thy way, not mine,

O Lord!'

With great earnestness she urged those of her family who were not decided in their religious profession to promise her that they would give their hearts to God; and after the severe struggles occasioned by the thought of parting with those she loved here, her thoughts reverted to those who had gone before, and naming them one by one, with ecstatic delight, she exclaimed, 'O what a meeting it will be!'

One of her former Pastors writes: 'Mrs. Jones was, I believe, a true Christian: her character combined simplicity, godly sincerity and charity. The charity which "thinketh no evil, hopeth all things," and ever puts the best construction upon morally doubtful actions, evidently reigned in her heart.' Another Minister writes: 'Her conversation was truly without covetousness and without uncharitableness.'

J. T. H.