BROKEN Lichrs. By Harold Besbie.
que Ant or Exreurom Sreaxinc.. By Harold. Ford, 3A, LI, (Herbert Jenkins, Ss. 6.) fre One op Preacuinc. By Harold Ford, 34, liely DEL. (Herbert Senking. 23. 64)
To be able to understand the outlook of other people is a gift, but. having understood, to be able to state it clearly and fairly without partisanship and without bitterness is a grace. Those who read Mr. Harold Begbie's newspaper articles fon the various phases of religious belief will be glad to know thet he has expanded them into a book which is a model of clearness and of fairness. Anglo-Catholic, Evange-Vieal, Modernist, Quaker, Methodist and Agnostic alike are caught in the sympathetic web of his mind and thoughtfully examined.
Mr. Begbie makes much the same appeal as Donald Hankey did in articles published in the "Spectator" during the War. "Every school of religions opinion," he writes, "is a beam of light broken from the white radiance of eternity," and he ends his book with a brief appeal for tolerance and earnestness: a willing ness "to recognize as ce-workers all those who sincerely serve truth, goodness and beauty.
Granted the message—whichever message it be—how shall it be delivered? Dr. Ford has written two excellent and compact guides on how to speak and how to prepare for raking, and on the pitfalls to be ided by the orator, whether he be layman or cleric,' amateur or professional One welcomes the frank reeogn tion of the deficiencies of both mat tov and manner te which he alludes.
Dr. Ford is an oratorical anatomist, 0 to speak, who teaches us how to make up skeleton speeches and sermons, and how to clothe the bones so that we shall make He is undoubtedly right that self improvement is taken in hand seriously: such training is a duty owed to their hearers by all who preach or speak. Yet I believe the root of the matter, so far as the pulpit ix concerned, lies deeper than he re-
'Meditation, prayer and study are deeply necessary for the highest spiritual fruits, but T think that the churchoer would say that hie greatest trial is to listen to' the pulpit oratory of men who really do not know the world as it men who have no experience of is life and its troubles, and who fail to grasp the extent to which psychology. and_ physiology.
mer into the ups and downs of the soul.
It is seid that a coloured preacher, taken to task by one of his elders for dealing with subjects which, the latter said, were inscrutable, replied with dignity, re, Sah, to lunserew de unserewtable"! Perhaps it is too much to promise that the preacher imbued with Mr. Begbie's:|spirit_ and fortified. by Dr. Ford's directions will be able to perform this feat. But at least he would keep somnolent worshippers awake, and make some at least center the house of God with kindness who now stay away. movements of the age, places M. Halevy's account in the happy mean between the dreariness of the "outline" text-book, and the pro-laxity of the history readable only by the professional histon The volume should at once taki as the perfect history of its p for use in schools and Universities alike, in the literary only was he a novelist, poet, des criptive writer and essayist, but he held very strong opinions'on al the questions of his day and he pressed them with great force and point. Hig letters, which cover a jad of many years, in "The Letters of Maurice Hewlett" are full of attractive;'wancies, loyalties and righteous anger. 'The Rev. Edward Hewlett, the author's brother, has provided' some charming memories of early days, and Bir, Laurence Binyon has written a preface and an editorial gloss.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.