Tue batch of newspapers and revi hand por Mirzapore are particularly in ting. Among them are the Contemporary and Mineteenth Century for Novem! both excellent numbers. Shanghai in the former, wh written in his most attractive aty 'Mr. R. 8. Gundry, formerly editor ich in Tong. king,' article is a review of ecclesiastical matters between 1864, when f¢ London for Shanghai, and' 1881, when he returned to England.' Under the heading of 'The Pulpit,' Dean Butcher notices the vast improvement that has taken place in the character of the sermons preached. Seventeon years ago, he says, th discourses delivered on Sundays, in town and country, were for the most part frigid and artificial, "Lot any one who thinks this condemnation too sweeping take down from the dusty shelves of some second-hand bookshop a volume of the Church of England Magazine, and contrast the sermons of the dignitaries and rectors there given with the sermons now published in the Sunday at Home or Good rds, and 1 be able to appreciate the extent of the improvement which has taken place, It is like going from a museum full of akelotons into an assembly of men of flesh and blood." When however the Dean a little further on makes the unqualified statement that 'I scarcely ever now hear a bad sermon in a church" we can only say that he must be singularly fortunate in his selection of churches. The following sentences are more to the point The change is particularly apparent in sermons dealing with Old Testament events and characters. Nothing could be more une real than the aspect which the acts of patriarchs and kings, of judges and prophets, were presented in the sermons to which one was dautally bound to listen in the early di f my clerical lit The preacher had certain stereotyped lessons to be drawn from the transactions recorded in Genesis and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.