Continued Industy By a Gentleman With a Duster Painted Windows: a Study in Religi Personality. By Gentleman swith a Duster. Mills and Boon. 5s, net.
Whoever the Gentleman with a Duster" may be—and, as Lord Salisbury said of the donor of the Cromwell statue, "his identity, Suppose, none of us will ever, discover''—he must be a person of singular modesty; or he would not wish to hide his light under the bushel of anonymity. His Mirrors of Downing Street'' offered him a reputation which many writers night covet; but he put by "the glistering foil." Now he has writ ten a still better book about our religious leaders; and again he forgoes the credit which is his due. Can he be a journalist? His flair both in the choosing and in the handling of his subject. suggests it. But what journalist is even mora at-home in theology than in politics? And what journalist is possessed by such a zealous piety? The literary Sherlock Holmes, bent on detecting the Gentleman with Duster, could not ask for a better clue.
The special value of Painted Windows" is that it is inspired not only by knowledge but by deep earnestness. It is not only written admirably ¢rom the literary point of view, but it is full of satisfying natter for those who, like Malvolio, think nobly of the soul.
The author supplies a_ series of appreciations, written with great sympathy and insight; and the impression left is that, if such good and gifted men are with us, then indeed "God's in His heaven. All's right with the world." And yet in spite of these influences and voices, the author is depressed about the soul-state of the Church.
Out of such a lethargy as that which now holds her captive (he writes) I do not think the Church can be roused except by the trumpets of war. Let her, then, consider whether there is not here, in this world of false values, of low ambitions. of mean pleasures, of dark materialism, and, of perilous superstations a world to be fought as the doctors fight it and the best kind of newspapers, if only for the sake of posterity, a world against. which it is good to oppose oneself—the Children of Light against the Children of Darkness.
But is the fault that of the Church? Is.it not really, as this collection of studies in effect suggests, the fault of the age which having ears will not hear, and having eyes will not see—"'The Times.'" confidence in the hands, say, of M. Briand. If he does not laugh aloud, it will be because he cane not read English.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.